NOM

How do religion based governments compare to secular based governments? what are your thoughts?

deacon blues wrote: ↑Tue May 20, 2025 9:40 am How do religion based governments compare to secular based governments? what are your thoughts?

Do you really need to even ask this?

Do a deep dive on Henry VIII of England and his family and then try to imagine the situation with no churches involved. Look at the Middle East and what they were doing in the 1970s with a secular government compared to women’s rights today under the Taliban. Read The Handmaids Tale. Look at the direction the US is being drug by Christian Nationalists. Look up the story currently in the news about the women who was 8 weeks pregnant (barely starting) and had blood clots in her brain and is brain dead and has already been kept alive for 12 weeks on machines because the can’t about the baby. And there are still 20 more weeks to go and her family wants the machines keeping her body functioning turned off. Think of the medical bills for this baby who most likely isn’t going to make it and will never be normal if it does. Look up the deaths in Texas because abortions were refused after a miscarriage. The baby is dead and yet they let the mother die too because of some warped religious laws. Then get back to us with what you think.

Secular-based law does not seem as outrageous as Shariah or Mormiah-based laws. Remember Brigham's proscription of both death on the spot for interracial marriages, as well as his idea of Blood Atonement? Glad we had federal troops posted at Fort Douglas to keep Brigham Young from being as terrible a tyrant as he could have been. No more group massacres for religious purposes.

Thanks for the excellent responses. I didn't want to start with my views on the topic, but I'll share them now. I am concerned with the potential that the USA could follow the pattern of Muslim governments such as Iran, and revert to Christian fundamentalist views and laws. I don't think that TBM's realize what the "Mormon Reformation" could have led to if the US army hadn't arrived in Utah in 1858. There might have been more than one massacre like the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Something just ain't right when we have to fear that a "Christian" government would do the most harm to people.

Philosophically, I think a secular-based government is essential to maintaining long-term classically liberal principles, but unfortunately the effectiveness of a secular government is still highly dependent on the populace being governed.

The U.S. is secular, but we have more than our share of religious 'crazies,' meaning people for whom religion is personally highly important, yet they can't seem to fathom that while their religious beliefs are important to them, that doesn't necessarily mean those religious values should have the force of law on fellow citizens who personally disagree with them.

In contrast, not every Scandinavian country is secular (in that the church and the state in not all cases are formally separated), yet most of the populace is highly secular in that religion tends to not be very important to them, and consequently while there is nominally a favored state religion, that religion doesn't tend to have enough sway to materially alter the secular nature or secular trend of the country because the populace won't have it.

So I'd rather have a secular government than not, but that's not necessarily a sufficient condition because you need a population not willing to run roughshod over the separation of church and state. Right now, in the U.S., we have plenty of crazies who get riled up at the voting booths specifically on the notion of advancing Christian nationalism or whatever else nonsense, and plenty of Supreme Court justices willing to take the position that, in fact, the Constitution requires the favoring of religion. That politicians backing this type of nonsense aren't immediately laughed out of office represents a sickness/deficiency in the U.S. population writ large, irrespective of whatever our founding documents may or may not say.