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Liberalism today is what the Romans would call religio, while religion today is what the Romans would call supersitio.
Liberalism today is what the Romans would call religio, while religion today is what the Romans would call supersitio.
Religio was the state religion. It was not about belief but practice. You perform the ritual, and the empire prospers as a result. Likewise, in liberalism if you perform the ritual of voting, the state prospers. If things are bad, it is only because some people have failed...
...to offer the gods of voting their due rituals. It also doesn’t matter if you believe your vote matters, all that matters is that you perform the ritual.
Cicero says that the other aspect of religio is omens. We have this through the media and “experts”. Experts predict the future and the media declares their omens to the people. It doesn’t matter how often they are wrong, they have been divinely appointed to perform these omens.
Cicero says that religio goes back to Romulus and Numa. Likewise, our religio goes back to our founders and is therefore unquestionable wisdom.
Superstitio on the other hand was local cultural belief and practice which was not the formal religio. The term is not necessarily negative in connotation. It was fine for people to have their own local superstitio, but they still had to participate in public religio.
It was only when people refused to participate in religio that the Romans sought to stamp out their superstitio. This is exactly what happened with Christianity. In the modern day, religion is seen as fine, so long as one still participates in liberalism.
While Christians still ought to participate in the public order, we should avoid offering incense to false gods. Daniel worked in the Babylonian court, but he refused to offer to the idols. However, the false gods of our day have no face, but are the values of liberalism. We...
...ought not to accept the religio of the United States and allow Christianity to be relegated to superstitio.
It’s not merely enough to say that liberalism is a religion, as though it were an alternative to Christianity, but we need to realize that it is pagan religio reborn.
