A Bit of Religious Anxiety

A bit is necessary. Only, though, if its source is the purest spiritual sort. Too often, though, anxiety of this kind is optional, or, in most cases in my life, not present in any shape or form. Religion is dead among my peers and in my culture. It is a sort of faux pas to even mention it, or betray any inclination towards, or thought of religion.

This is true: spiritual thought is necessary. This is the real tragedy of this trend--that spiritual thought is being banished from the minds of the people. I mean thinking about dying and the universe and metaphysics, and what is beyond ourselves as individuals, animals, and living creatures.

For the most part, religion distracts from this essential thought. Religion is political, not spiritual. Still, I was raised in the Baptist church, and so any spiritual thought that I endeavor in includes some amount of religious anxiety for the ideas that I was raised with. The bible, the new testament, and the commandments of Jesus Christ are to be seen as absolute truths. This I can't rationalize with certain passages, pivotal moments in the gospel, that are so human. Commands to loyalty sound to me like the orders of a ruler to maintain his authority. Authority and dominance of ideas are devices of this world, but aren't the stuff of the spirit.

Another idea of interest is the chance of dominance of the catholic (christian) church. Christ died and his apostles went out into the world. Churches sprung up, but it was a time of religious turmoil, and there were many religions vying for dominance. To what degree of chance do we owe the catholic church being adopted by the late Roman Empire? And then, it is more to the political force of that empire that we owe the spread of this religion, its survival of the Dark Ages (and some diligent monks) and the whole course of events that leads eventually the protestant reformation and the religious identity that I was first inculcated with.

One last point about the political nature of religion. Thinkers throughout the years have pointed to the power of religion as a force for keeping populations in check. Dostoevsky sees the religious imperative to control men because they are incapable of moral and spiritual self-governance. How many others view it as an essential function of the state that social order might be maintained through the religion of the populous. My question, then, if so many historical thinkers have viewed religion as providing an essential function of social control, what has replaced it in our non-religious age? Certainly this trend to non-religion, or non-religious social control began after the French Revolution, and whatever political organ acting in the absence of religion has been honing its function and efficacy since then. Is it high rates of employment? economics? culture? Surely the state would not let go the reigns it has held for so long, so what form do they masquerade under today?