Religion and governments should not mix. Beliefs are only powerful if they carry the strength of good example and nothing more.

N/t

The C of E, but it is not a religious government.

The Monarch is nominally head of both the government and the church, but reality is the monarch has no real authority. I guess that makes the UK secular de facto, if not du jure.

Of course, the whole thing has evolved since the 17th Century, but that's part of the point. Theocracies can vary a great deal over time and place. Currently nobody is interested in forming a democratic theocracy. If they were, it would probably look a lot more democratic than theocratic. It would have an official religion but give religious minorities full rights.

Israel has a democratic form of government, but is partly theocratic and partly repressive. The repressiveness is based more on geopolitics, but religion is a big contributing factor.

The Queen is literally a figure head and it has a full democratic secular government.

If someone were interested in forming a non-repressive theocracy, it is possible to do, but the social preconditions do not exist anywhere in the world today. They did exist in England in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

There are medieval and ancient examples of relatively free monarchies and theocracies. Curren liberal societies are all based on the Western European model, which are secular. Different models are possible, we just haven't seen any yet.

but never a reality. I think that says something about the true nature of any religious State.

And not sure how free those monarchies and theocracies were to the majority of the population.

to hold back a tide of authoritarianism. The current liberal democratic model may fail completely. But hopefully, future generations will learn from.our mistakes and develop new models.

Freedom is a relative thing. Premodern societies had a whole different set of expectations and capabilities. We need to judge them by their own time in history, not ours. We may seem quite repressive by a future generation's standards. The 1950s were repressive by today's standards, but people then did not think it so.

all the way to the early 20th century England was very repressive off the island. Heck, just ask the Irish how non-repressive they were.

Except now we mostly outsource our barbarism to puppet states and allied rulers. I'd like to think we'll grow out of it, but at the moment, I think it will get worse because we are facing challenges from rivals more ruthless than we are.

but I was responding to the point that england has been a tolerant theocracy that they have always been rather repressive. It's true that they have relaxed recently, but they have also gotten less theocratic, so that just kinda underlines the point.

civil war that included an overt theocracy and a whole lot of religious persecution. Remnants of theocracy persist- Tony Blair had to pretend to be Episcopalian until he ended his career, for example.

Even though we are explicitly not a theocracy and there is no religious test for office.

his position has religious aspects.

but i think your post is valid, as israel and the numerous islamic countries seem to be fairly oppressive.

the puritan government of colonial massachusets was also fairly oppressive, but catholic maryland was not bad and quaker pennsylvania seems to have been fairly tolerant.

maybe we are talking about a government by "divine right" as opposed to an enlightenment government by "consent of governed."

the inquisition was oppressive, the french cardinals had secret police, and the monk rasputin of czarist russia was particularly sadistic.

sorry for the rambling.

Advanced and accomodating it may be, but Japanese society favors conformity and the country has a spotty history with minorities of all stripes.

Social tolerance is a different matter. As is history. Based on history, no nation is non-repressive.

since it only addresses the persecution of Christians. It has no information at all about the oppression of women, LGBT people, racial or ethnic minorities, poor people, non-Christian religious minorities, or atheists. However, as limited as it is, we see that overall, the vast majority of the countries that persecute Christians are countries with religious governments.



https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2017/january/top-50-countries-christian-persecution-world-watch-list.html

is they are citing countries where Christians are attacked by other people, Mexico and India for example, and not wher the States are repressing Christianity.

But it does give a general snapshot.

in that brutally repressive Mexico and it's Catholic dominance?

a lack of tolerance generally ensues, I think. Religion, itself, is intolerant, as a rule.

If it's just human nature that is the problem, and religion is no different than secular beliefs or institutions, then we should see secular governments and theocratic governments generally engaging in the same oppression of others.

But we don't.

Fascinating, isn't it?

I mean at the very least, the secular governments often cited as bad examples are China, Cuba, and the former USSR. What they have in common is a authoritarian element - religion is often allowed, just within government-defined limits. This is generally done to prevent any competing ideologies from threatening the state. The state is worshiped above all, which in a way makes their governments theocracies to themselves.

With exception of one little quibble I have there at the last: "the state is worshiped above all."
Is it really now? Not by all of us.

But state worship is definitely promoted in those aforementioned otherwise-secular governments.

Last edited Sat Mar 2, 2019, 08:46 PM - Edit history (1)

I'm an atheist.

it becomes repressive.

Adherents of the ideology don't worship the state, per se; the state becomes the means for adherents and supporters to find that their "just" and "right" views are properly imposed on others. It doesn't matter if that state is right, left, or theocratic.

Many repressive state start out as repressive movements. As soon as there's a single "justice" and there's no tolerance for opposing viewpoints (because they're all evil), it's veering towards "just us."

Why do you suppose that is?

Would you also, all things being equal, prefer to live under a secular government rather than a theocratic one? Why or why not?