Worshipping the State · How Liberalism Became Our State Religion by Wiker, Benjamin -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Title Page PART I - THE WAR ON CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 1 - READING THE SIGNS OF OUR TIMES

The Messiah of Liberalism? The Atheists’ Frontal Assault The Pretense of Neutrality The Larger Religious War Imposing Secularist Morality Avoiding the Reductio ad Hitlerum Going beyond Our Political Debates But What Is Liberalism? Indoctrination U The Return of Paganism and the Worship of the State

PART II - CHRISTIANITY DESTROYS THE PAGAN IDOL OF THE STATE CHAPTER 2 - BACK TO THE BEGINNING: THE CHURCH VERSUS PAGAN IMPERIAL ROME

Render unto Caesar The Corruption of the Divine Caesars The Church versus the Degraded Pagan State The Church Overruns the Empire The Roman Empire Strikes Back Christian Orthodoxy versus Pagan Tolerance Parallels to Our Situation

CHAPTER 3 - HOW THE BIBLE KEPT THE CHURCH FROM BECOMING A DEPARTMENT OF THE STATE

CHAPTER 4 - FROM THE CONVERSION OF CONSTANTINE TO THE FALL OF ROME

CHAPTER 5 - THE MIDDLE AGES: DEFINING THE CHURCH-STATE DISTINCTION

Two There Are by Which the World is Ruled Wrestling for the Truth in the Dark Ages When Bishops Became Kings When Kings Established Estate Churches The Great Church Reform The Emperor Claims Rome as His Estate The Epic Clash between Pope and Emperor: Church and State in the Balance The Light Dims Again Leading Up to the Reformation Liberals Take Credit for the Church-State Distinction—and Set Out to Undermine It

The “State” and Church before Machiavelli Machiavelli’s “Stato” Machiavelli and Materialism The Church as a Tool of the Prince’s State Christianity from the (New) Pagan Point of View Reasons of State Soulless Politics and the Original Blueprint for the Established Secular Church Machiavelli, the Reformation, and the Wars of Religion The Superiority of Pagan Religion to Christianity Pagan Religion, Pagan Education Some Historical Repercussions of the Machiavellian Revolution

CHAPTER 7 - FROM HENRY VIII TO THOMAS HOBBES: THE STATE CHURCH, LEVIATHAN, AND ...

Henry VIII and His Church Divine Right Kingship in Europe The Church of Hobbes: Established, Autocratic, Secular In with Materialism, Out with the Soul Complete Moral Relativism Sin No More The Infamous “State of Nature” and the Right to Anything and Everything The Sovereign Saves the Day The King Makes His Own (Secular) Church Hobbes’s Established Church Is Secular, but Is It Liberal? From Leviathan to the Sovereign Individual But Leviathan Wins—and Builds Liberalism’s Wall of Separation

CHAPTER 8 - SPINOZA: THE LIBERAL ELITE AND THE ESTABLISHED SECULAR CHURCH

CHAPTER 9 - ROUSSEAU’S RADICAL LIBERALISM: ESTABLISHING CIVIL RELIGION

Rousseau’s New Eden, New Adam, and New Eve Anti-Genesis as Liberal (Political) Paradise Hard and Soft Liberalism Rousseau’s Civil Religion Rousseau, Marriage, and Liberal Theocracy

PART IV - THE NEW BIG PICTURE CHAPTER 10 - LIBERALISM TRIUMPHS IN THE MODERN WORLD

World without Ends (Amen) A World without Ends Gives Us Endless Rights The Re-Paganization of Morality, and the Triumph of Liberal Rights The Passion for Extreme Democracy The Endless Evolution of Everything The Clay Becomes the Potter, the Creature Becomes a Self-Creator and Self-Redeemer The Doctrine of Historical Progress The French Revolution Salvation History According to the Religion of Soft Liberalism

CHAPTER 11 - SORTING OUT SOME CONFUSIONS

The Long Shadow of the French Revolution Throne and Altar The Religion of Nationalism Very Strange Anti-Clerical Bedfellows Disestablishing the Churches, Establishing Secularism

CHAPTER 12 - JOHN LOCKE AND THE TWO FACES OF LIBERALISM

PART V - LIBERALISM COMES TO AMERICA CHAPTER 13 - THE FIRST WAVE: LOCKE, DEISM, AND THE FOUNDERS

Paine at Our Founding Jefferson and Everson Jefferson, the Moderate Deist Estimating the Merits of Jesus The Need to Separate the Church from the State The Civil Religion of Deism Separation as Strategy Separation as Shield Deism, the de Facto Established Religion How the First Wave Prepared for the Second Locke’s America The Passion for Material Well-Being and the Eclipse of the Soul The Key to American Liberalism

CHAPTER 14 - THE SECOND WAVE: RADICALS AT THE UNIVERSITIES

Establishing the Liberal Secular Revolution, from the Top Down The Rise of the Expert: Spinoza’s Elite The Science—or Is It the Religion—of Human Physics? Dynamic Sociology Social Physics in the Ivory Tower Liberal Christianity The Common Moral Ground Proves to Be Sand An Evitable Revolution

CHAPTER 15 - SECULARIZATION, AMERICAN STYLE

A Closer Look at Everson Christians Divide and Secularists Conquer Not Made in America

PART VI - DISESTABLISHMENT CHAPTER 16 - DISESTABLISHING SECULAR LIBERALISM

Acknowledgments NOTES INDEX Copyright Page