St. Trump delivers his word on “The Freedom of My Religion.” “Blessed are the DOGE, for they shall imprison the earth!”
“Blessed are the DOGE, for they shall imprison the earth!”
“Due Process is Not in My Bible!”
Political Power Entwined with Faith Snares the Faithful
The chart below shows some of the Christian upon Christian conflicts from the time of Jesus Christ. These persecutions stemmed from theological disagreements, cultural divides, and the entwining of political power with religion. The Anabaptists faced severe persecution following the inception of the of Reformation, considering their beliefs challenged the State Church by rejecting infant baptism for baptism of believing adults. Both Catholics and Protestants viewed rejection of infant baptism as heretical, undermining centuries of tradition. The Anabaptists also rejected military service, oaths, and government authority, threatening social hierarchy. To maintain control, the authorities resorted to suppression, torture, summary executions, and exile.
Toward a Pluralistic U.S.
The First Amendment and the historic teachings of separatist groups, such as the Anabaptists, believed that fostering a pluralistic society in the U.S. where multiple faiths could coexist without fear of retaliation or exile would protect their own rights to worship free from persecution. For example, the Mormons, following the mob-murder of their founder, Joseph Smith, in Carthage, Illinois, and facing increasing mob violence, sought a new home where they could practice their faith without fear and further persecution. Thus the Mormons, led by Brigham Young, traveled West to form a “Zion” free from persecution.
This painting depicts future President of the Mormon Church Joseph F. Smith leading a yoke of oxen with his mother, Mary Fielding Smith. Latter Day Saints migrated West to escape religious persecution.
Today, cross-wearing Christians, descended from the Anabaptists, push for their brand of Church State in the name of Jesus, forgetting their own historical cornerstone teaching of separation of church and state held that no single religious group could dominate government institutions and oppress others. The once-oppressed now become the oppressors. Are we preparing to add “Evangelicals vs. All Other Faiths” to the conflict chart?
Caged Bird
By Maya Angelou
A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.
*Maya Angelou, “Caged Bird” from “Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?“
A Caged Song
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” were among the nearly 400 volumes were removed from the U.S. Naval Academy, following orders by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the school to get rid of ones that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Ultra Christian nationalists partnered with corrupt politicians in an attempt to create a utopia, where everything black-and-white and where greed, wealth, and corruption are displayed as victor’s spoils of the new Christian Patriotacy.
The above podcast was one minor voice who made observations regarding the beliefs about much bigger players of a Christian jihad to overthrow the U.S. Government in the name of God (and wealthy oligarchs). I have made my own in-person observations.
Roger Williams founded the colony at Rhode Island and the oldest Baptist church in the United States. He was an ardent supporter of separation of church and state. I paraphrase his words: “If earthly bodies of government are dead to things of the Spirit, and the Christian is alive to the Spirit, what happens if a Christians joins himself to the corpus of Government? Nothing happens to Government, as it is already dead; however, the Christian changes and begins to stink.” The original quote from Williams – I answer, secondly, Dead men cannot be infected. The civil state, the world, being in a natural state, dead in sin, whatever be the state-religion unto which persons are forced, it is impossible it should be infected. Indeed the living, the believing, the church and spiritual state, that and that only is capable of infection; for whose help we shall presently see what preservatives and remedies the Lord Jesus hath appointed (See The Bloudy Tenant by Roger Williams at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65739/65739-h/65739-h.htm#Page_96), page 97.
Williams taught the importance of keeping the church “at arm’s distance” from Government and influence as “salt of the earth.” Notwithstanding, salt makes an awful main course. Roger Williams and other Christian groups were persecuted by the Church of England, the church-of-state under King Charles I.
For example if a politician is voting against the bill as a matter of personal reflection of what is best for the country, does the other “Politician for God” consider this vote as a vote for or against God? If so, do Evangelicals now consider themselves the new “church-of-state”? If so, to disagree with the party’s vote or its candidate would brand someone not only political “nay” vote but also a heretic. There is a difference between, “Let us pray for our leaders as we seek to do the work of government” and “Let us pray for my bill and the “nay” voters be damned.”
“Congress Calls Security on Moses”
The above image shows the theological basis for separation of church and state, namely the First and Second Commandment: I. You shall have no other gods before Me. And II. You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor [b]serve them
3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor [b]serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting[c] the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments (Exodus 20).
Moses Addresses Congress
Because government requires compromises, a Christian group is tempted to endorse a candidate as “more favorable” their views, though his other views stand against anything remotely Christian. The golden calf of politics presents two horns of power and money, more addictive than fentanyl. The theological gymnastics in the U.S. today that tries to turn empathy into a sin is simply redaction of the Bible for Christian nationalists to hold onto power and money in their quest to establish a far right church-of-state.
You can especially see this demonstrated when Christian led government leaders attempt to justify their cuts to programs that would benefit the poor, the elderly, and the immigrant in the name of protecting the offering plates of the rich. In this Unholy Version of the Politician’s Bible, it reads, “Cursed are the poor and those with empathy, for theirs will be ours.”
In the rules of quantum mechanics, a particle can exist in multiple states at the same time … until it is measured. Erwin Schrödinger’s(1935) thought experiment described a cat inside an opaque box, sealed with a radioactive flask of poison and a Geiger counter. Until the box is opened and the cat is observed, the cat is both alive and dead. The act of prying open the box and peering inside marks the collapse of the superimposed state.
Similarly, U.S. political parties represent simultaneous multiple states of justice, mercy, and grace. The parties can also be represented as possessing qualities of male, female and neutral gender platforms. Like quantum computing, the U.S. political process generates “noise” — a lot of noise as political platforms are spun up and down. Like quantum computing, the solution for this political noise is an error checking process that is independent and outside of the political box itself. A survey of St. Paul’s writings demonstrates the best influence of the cat in the political box is to resist the temptation to pry open the box itself and tamper with the outcome, collapsing the quantum state into a lopsided and imbalanced state.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to describe the Republicans as the party of justice, the Democrats as mercy. Or, the Republicans represent the party of Alpha Males, the Democrats as Mother Earthers, and the Independents as neutral, wavering between the parties, like a free radical awaiting capture. For simplicity, we will use Republican and Democrat for our discussion.
A Quantum Balanced System
In quantum politics, the Republicans and Democrats remain each in a simultaneous state of balance, like male complements female. Reasonably, the Republican’s manifest more of a masculine dominance while the Democrats gravitate toward the feminine state. The combined state of the two parties together results in one noisy simultaneous equilibrium of masculine/feminine and justice/mercy/grace. An example of equilibrium- DACA recipient children of undocumented immigrants face calls for deportation by the Republicans for justice while Democrats call for mercy and path to citizenship. Equilibrium results in a “noisy” state in which DACA youth live suspended between deportation and citizenship, allowed to work and remain in the U.S.
U.S. Christians have been seduced by political candidates who overturned Roe v. Wade in exchange for their support of the Republican MAGA ticket. Branding MAGA as Christian and non-MAGA as secular blinds Christians to the inherent weakness of a politicized faith system — they have traded other key faith elements to secure one favored faith element. As Satan tempted Jesus, “All this I will give you, if you will kneel and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). The emergence of “Dominion Theology” has radicalized Christians to embrace political power and might to secure the Christian ticket in this world. The problem is that this is counter to Christ’s own teaching that if “one wants to become Great, he must be the servant of all” (Mark 10:43-45).
“I believe in the Right to Life!,” boasts the man who voted a straight “Pro-Life” ticket. “But I can’t get on board this “free childcare and healthcare for single mothers. That’s Socialism! Our Right to Life gives the mother two weeks of disposable diapers and baby food, which is the Christian thing to do. It’s not our job to find the mother housing or childcare while she works. She made her choice and has to live with it.” A quantum Right to Life ticket would be kept in equilibrium by the Right to Childhood, the Right to Housing, the Right Over My Own Body, the Right to Education, and the Right to Healthcare.
Q: “Pastor Jim, why that is silly and impossible. How could you have a system that provides all these things?”
A: “These things are impossible with us but all things are possible with God. Consider the disastrous extremes of Right to Life, with women dying slowing in hospital parking lots in an attempt to secure a medical abortion for a dead fetus. Or, the teenager trapped in perpetual cycle of poverty, with no access to contraception, healthcare, or daycare. We need the balanced interplay of the other parties to temper the extremes of our own party and its inherent prejudices.”
This waxing and waining process of harmonization is captured in the Chinese philosophy of Yinyang — “Yin in its highest form is freezing while yang in its highest form is boiling.“ Yinyang represents “the dynamic balance of all things.”
The United States became great not because of Christian involvement with politics, rather Christians influencing culture apart from politics. Religious tampering destabilizes the quantum yinyang suspended state and results in a lopsided manifestation of masculine combativeness at the expense of the feminine state of nurture. As the “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13), the function of Christians in culture is to prevent decay by truth-affirming and error checking without prying open Schrödinger’s box and corrupting the outcome. Dietrich Bonhoeffer captured the quantum nature of the church in his quote borrowed below:
The limiting nature of power and money in political systems forces a political party’s member to adhere to a limited agenda of that party’s platform, at the expense of the valid items slated on the other party’s platform. Christians are tempted to go “all in” on what they perceive as a lesser of two evils and declare one political party as inherently Christian while damning the other party. In contrast, the Apostle Paul reminds us that a Christian’s exclusive allegiance to a party has been preempted by “one body, one faith, and one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5).
The sister system to quantum politics is Adam Smith’s invisible hand in ”quantum economics.” By respecting the balances of a stable economic system, the system will find its own equilibrium. The U.S. stock market, for example, is suspended in the balanced quantum state of both gain and loss. However, by tampering with the “invisible hand” by tax or by tariff, the invisible hand is forced to write a manuscript it did not author, resulting in short sighted gains at the expense of long -term progress.
Like a three legged stool, the biblical system of love, justice and mercy forms the Christian basis of U.S. society. Like a tariff’s “pay to play” model, Christians who “pay to play” to prop up their chosen “Christian Party” will find they have sacrificed one or more legs of the stool for a political platform. The result is justice without mercy or mercy without justice.
St. Paul in I Corinthians 13 said, “When one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere human beings? … So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.”
The “Quantum Cardinal” Kurt Koch
Catholic Cardinal Kurt Koch rejected the extreme position of both the traditionalists and the progressives in favor the the tension of the balanced. See this press release:
Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Dicastery Promoting Christian Unity.
I asked Gemini AI to create a quantum image for the two sayings of Jesus, “You are the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13) and “My kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36)-
The Superposition of Faith and Works, Of Progressive and Traditional
The image captures that believers are both in the world but not of it, in divine tension. The AI’s own misses reflect the noisy process as our work continues, misses the ideal, and starts again. The Christian is both “salt of the earth” and “not of this world,” at the same time, held in balance by God’s quantum grace.
The Political Path Forward
The Schrödinger temptation is to pry open the box in an attempt to save the cat. Jesus did not call his church to pry open and destabilize government by christening a political party as Christian at the expense of labeling the other party as unChristian. The truth affirming, error checking role of believers as salt and light in the community provides stabilization that prevents a political party from moving from imbalance to fanaticism. Dr. Guy Greenfield, former Professor of Ethics at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, described this process as “the heresy of the extremes and the orthodoxy of the balanced.”
The temptation of Christ was for him to “do something right now”! Throw yourself off the Temple and show everyone that you are a real man … the guy in charge! Throw the Romans out of Jerusalem and become the Alpha Messiah! Instead, Jesus wept and prayed over Jerusalem in Matthew 23, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
– Pastor Jim
As in quantum economics, one can participate in insider trading and order Government to improve conditions that guarantee profit; however, the outcomes deteriorate in correlation with the tampering. So it is with Christians who try to force the manifestation of God’s kingdom on earth.
Q: “Jim, are you asking us to do nothing and sit back as Satan’s dark forces capture the US?”
A: St. Paul reminds us, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). As we said, worldly political parties are limited by money and power regarding what policies they can support on their platform. In order to keep that party from moving into imbalance and even fanaticism, it takes the other parties to harmonize balance.
Q: “So, are you saying no Christian should commit to a political party?”
A: A declaration of party affiliation should be safeguarded with an allegiance only to Jesus Christ and a humility that we need the other parties to bring the noisy harmony needed for a balanced path forward.
Salt: Truth Affirming Error Checking
As the particle spin of quantum computing creates nothing short of an AI hallucination, so does an imbalanced political party create its own climate of disinformation and distrust. The church’s response as salt and light is to form a balanced dialogue with the prevailing political parties. This week I watched a national politician’s show on a Christian television network. The presumption was that this politician and his party were the “Christian party” and that the other parties were of the devil. He hosted a fellow national politician as they castigated a politician and his family, members of the opposing party.
While the politician generates appearance that he is “doing something for God and fighting the devil,” in truth he is destabilizing his own political process down a path of self-deception fueled by money and power rather than the presence of the Holy Spirit.
God needeth not the help of a material sword of steel to assist the sword of the Spirit in the affairs of conscience.-Roger Williams
The Paradox Ring of Power
Imagine two politicians walking opposite directions, each on a far side of the planet. Both walk faster than the speed of light on a sidewalk suspended like Saturn’s ring. Around and around the politicians whirl, each blaming and accusing the of walking and leading the other the wrong direction. Some proposed offering a reward if the “wrong-way” politician was captured. Each used telephoto X-ray cameras to capture proof that the other was wrong and should be shunned at all costs. One day a child pointed out that, “You blamed the other for moving the wrong direction, but you are walking on the same path and direction, but on opposite sides. Without that direction you couldn’t go your direction.” Without the perspective of the other, the circle would never be completed. Traveling faster than light, both politicians would be perceived in a state of occupying the same space at the same time. So it is with quantum politics; we have met the extremists and the extremists is us. The opposing party is with us on the same path of humanity and a future U.S.
The Path Forward: More Variety, Less Variation
W. Edwards Deming, the man who taught the Japanese about quality improvement, warned about variation while encouraging variety as the path to improvement. ( See https://demingalliance.org/resources/articles/understanding-variation-the-springboard-for-process-improvement). Variation are those forces that destabilize a business or a nation so you don’t know what will happen if you show up at work, if you have a job. Fear and chaos waft through the air at a system of variation like the odors of an outhouse. In contrast, variety is the “spice of life,” meaning something new and wonderful is brewing in the kitchen. An enlightened “Republicrat,” who sees the value of variety between different parties and the danger of extreme variation may blaze the path forward for the political system of the U.S.
Evangelical Christians, in believing about a coming Armageddon, must take care lest they actually cause an Armageddon as self-fulfilling prophecy. #separatechurchandhate
If I did a second doctorate, my thesis would be the role of well-intended souls who thought they did God’s will in forcing God’s hand to usher in the Kingdom. This was the devil’s temptation to Jesus. This was replayed in Judas’s betrayal to force Jesus’s hand. The Spanish and French Inquisitions, The Crusades, the Canadian Indian Residential Schools, and Conversion Therapy groups sought to enforce their brand of “pure religion.”
In contrast, Jesus taught – Jesus answered, “My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world” John 18:36.
Jesus answered, “My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.”
John 18:36
The Third Reich sought its pure Millennial Reign. False zealot messiahs have historically proclaimed a salvation by brute force over grace. Give me the lowly, the despised and rejected, for of such is the Kingdom of God.
Jesus revealed his political party by saying, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Well-intentioned zealots have historically promoted forcing Jesus’s hand as the Messiah, including Judas Iscariot on the betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane. In a world of hate for those of a different political bent, different ethnicity, or orientation, consider how you can enlarge your border and replace resentment and hate with grace. Consider also Jesus’s choice of disciples. Peter, Andrew, James, and John were fisherman and involved in the fishing business. Matthew was a hated tax collector, whose money was considered unclean. Judas Iscariot likely worked in bookkeeping. Simon the Canaanite was a stubborn zealot who wished for an insurrection over the Romans. Some of the disciples we don’t know what they did. Later Paul was a Pharisee and persecutor of the church.
Begin this week following Jesus’s example by making space in your life for those different from you. Remember, “Resentment and hatred have imprisoned more people than all the jails in the world combined.”
My Texan Sunday School teacher was a Democrat who managed to work the Party’s platform into of every lesson to captive Baptist seminarians. Democrats ruled Texas for 100 years, voting last for Jimmy Carter in 1976. After all, “Jesus rode into Jerusalem, not on an elephant, but a donkey!” Another ancient and frequent visitor was an old geezer member of the “Temperance Movement,” spouting the evils of any alcohol. Looking back, I wish I would have listened more to the geezer but found a another Sunday class. You may say, “Jim, God could still use that teacher.” Yes, God even used the jawbone of an ass to slay the Philistines. Ergo, I know, Samson was a proto-Democrat? Don’t get me started.
I arrived in seminary in January of 1981, with the Democrats stinging from their defeat to Ronald Reagan. As I consider separation of church and state, I remember my old teacher and his taking liberty to mold young seminarians in the ideal that God was a Southern Democrat.
Republicans and Democrats need not worship together like the feuding Hatfields and the McCoys. Let us beat our political swords into bowls to catch the new rain of God’s Spirit to a thirsty world. In this we can find common ground.
