Religious Obligations and Political Loyalty

I think everyone should have strong religious and spiritual sympathies.  However I do not debate the merits or demerits of any particular religion.  For political purposes I tend to discourage debating religious details in the folk and prefer to keep political activism as secular as possible to avoid the whole issue except when highly relevant.

I wanted to elaborate on why I do this and discuss what kind of ramifications a religious community’s loyalty has in a nation.

It is my opinion that defaming the religious values of a person or group is not only considered socially unacceptable but can be ineffective in understanding the role that a religion plays in political conflicts.

For the purpose of this article I will define defaming an individual to include identifying an individual as a member of a particular faith, denomination, or tradition that is expressed with the intent to explain the negative connotations of an individual’s character or a person’s behavior.  However, as religions have political and social ramifications for nationalities understanding who and where the loyalty of a particular religion is aimed at is essential to understanding that religion’s role in a society and by extension it’s religious adherents.

To explain what I mean is that by itself it is ineffective to label a person as a Luthern, Jew, or Muslim but it is valuable to conclude that a dual citizen of Israel and the United States would have a conflict of interest in a government role.

If a conflict erupts between religious and temporal interests everyone would expect most religious adherents to choose the side of their faith.

Islam itself has an explicit doctrine for this and the faithful are instructed to place their political loyalty with the ummah:

“Ummah is an Arabic word meaning “community” or “nation“. It is commonly used to mean either the collective nation of states, or (in the context of pan-Arabism) the whole Arab world. In the context of Islam, the word ummah is used to mean the diaspora or “Community of the Believers” (ummat al-mu’minin), and thus the whole Muslim world.”

Jews ostensibly have a loyalty to the government of Israel as the temporal homeland of their people but this loyalty is no where near monolithic and that it is a grave error to assume that all Jews have the same attitudes to the policies or existence of Israel.

This is important because there are vast political consequences for these loyalties. This is why the religion of the members of a nationality or tribe is so important.

Up until the late 20th century it was possible to be highly accurate about a person’s religion based on their nationality however in Western societies such an assumption can be wrong.  This has correspondences in political and professional domains as well.  I think it is clear without providing additional examples that a Nation that consists of multiple religions inevitably polarizes the loyalty of its citizens into incompatible agendas.

I think illustrates that loyalty is the key to a nationality’s existence. However this popular loyalty can be undermined from within.  For example as a Nation, Americans have implicitly authorized a centralized entity to decide who is welcome to come into our nation and it operates based on laws made 45 years ago.  There has not been a major interest in changing the policy that exists other than roll out the welcome mat to an estimated 20 million that are here illegally and do not make up a part of the Nation.

So let me ask you dear reader, if someone says they are an American and then stabs me in the back, what does that say about what it means to be American?

Do we just go through the motions of nationhood with no real responsibility to the consequences of those decisions?  If the social contract between an institution and the trust of the people it depends on is betrayed, then that institution and it’s policies are illegitimate.

The bottom line is that we should not trust foreigners who often have the religious obligation to be disloyal to us, some of whom wish to do us great harm, and then further to provide them with the means to victimize our people.

To do this is insanity and I’m afraid it will continue to happen as long as the traitors in the power structure are allowed to do so.  The power structures managers needs domestic instability and outbreaks of violence to justify their existence.  What gives me hope is that an increasing number of Americans is judging this government as criminally insane and they may eventually force it to pay for its crimes of dispossessing, murdering, and victimizing the American people for profit.

9 Comments

  1. “As Jesus also said in another place, “My words are SPIRIT and they are life”. In order to understand his words or the Bible in general, you have to have the same Spirit. Of course you won’t understand that either, and will more than likely start throwing stones…..”

    So in oder to understand the Bible, you have to be possessed by imaginary magic spirits?

  2. Brutus on Aug 2 at 10:37 PM: I make a real effort to say exactly what I mean. You insist on ascribing to me things that I did not say. When, in a two paragraph post, I FAIL TO MENTION that which you consider important, you assume that I must have certain views. You throw CAPS at me as if I can’t read. You say “people like you” and “these puritan types”, as if I were a specimen in your collection. You announce that I am things which I am not, and that I hold opinions which I do not. You are apparently too much of an ignorant, bigoted, bullying, jackass to grasp that my views might actually be in between the extremes. You are a fool, and not worth further posting.

  3. By my reckoning, the essay at:
    http://www.revilo-oliver.com/rpo/By_Their_Fruits.html

    is not convincing.

    Oliver cites the scholarship as if it were settled. However, a quick scan of recent literature shows that Allegro had to back down from his claims, and that everyone has (at best) highly speculative interpretations.

    Oliver was writing before the texts got released, but his expertise in other areas of classical studies seems to have made him overconfident.

    http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862089,00.html


    Apr. 02, 1956
    Last week Allegro had to admit that his fascinating story was based not on facts in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but “largely on inference. All reconstructions of historical events,” said he, “are inference.”…

    five scholars* currently working on the scrolls declared:

    “In view of the broad repercussions of [Allegro’s] statements, and the fact that the materials on which they are based are not yet available to the public, we, his colleagues, feel obliged to make the following statement:

    “There are no unpublished texts at the disposal of Mr. Allegro other than those of which the originals are at present in the Palestine Archaeological Museum where we are working. Upon the appearance in the press of citations from Mr. Allegro’s broadcasts we have reviewed all the pertinent materials, published and unpublished. We are unable to see in the text the ‘findings’ of Mr. Allegro.

    “We find no crucifixion of the ‘teacher,’ no deposition from the cross, and no ‘broken body of their Master’ to be stood guard over until Judgement Day … It is our conviction that either he has misread the texts or he has built up a chain of conjectures which the materials do not support.”

  4. Well, at least he didn’t tell us all once again how sick we are all going to be since the wealth is disapearing.

  5. I notice some new posters here, so in case you haven’t figured out yet, MGLS is a little slow on the draw, as you can see from his last post. He needs me to tell him what I mean by Puritanism in the context I have been discussing it!

  6. I notice some new posters here, so in case you haven’t figured out yet, MGLS is a little slow on the draw, as you can see from his last post. He needs me to tell him what I mean by Puritanism in the context I have been discussing it!

    You’ve been using the word “Puritanism” a lot, but that doesn’t mean you’ve made it clear what you mean by “Puritanism.”

    It appears that to you “Puritanism” is nothing more than a catch-all epithet for whatever you dislike in the realm of morality.

    Stop evading the question, Brutus. What do you consider “Puritanical”?

    Is it “Puritanical” to support laws against adultery? Alcoholism? Premarital sex? Pornography? Prostitution? Drug abuse?

    Is is “Puritanical” to support social taboos against adultery? Alcoholism? Premarital sex? Pornography? Prostitution? Drug abuse?

    Is is “Puritanical” to personally believe adultery is wrong? Alcoholism? Premarital sex? Pornography? Prostitution? Drug abuse?

    Be specific and stop speaking in vague generalities about the “Puritanism” bogeyman.

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