{"id":49364,"date":"2025-03-20T01:34:11","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T07:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=49364"},"modified":"2025-03-20T00:00:22","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T06:00:22","slug":"civil-religion-and-imperial-cult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2025\/03\/civil-religion-and-imperial-cult\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil religion and imperial cult"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does it mean to abstain from food polluted by idols<\/a>? It\u2019s one of the more pressing questions that we face today.<\/p>\n

\"\"One of the issues addressed multiple times in Acts and in Paul\u2019s epistles is the relationship between Christians, Jews and the adherents of other religions in the civic context of the Roman Empire. To my understanding, the result of the debate was that Christian proselytes were not bound to follow the Jewish dietary code, but neither should they appear to participate in pagan rituals. It wasn\u2019t that the sacrificial offering itself was unclean, but that eating it could cause scandal or sow doubt<\/a> \u2013 \u201cDo not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God.\u201d And there was also a more important principle involved, as Paul writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord\u2019s table and the table of demons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Within a relatively short time, Christians would find the demands of being both loyal subjects of Rome and abstainers from idolatrous worship difficult or impossible to reconcile. The best account of the roots of the problem and its stakes for both Christians and pagans is from (T&S guest poster) Steven Smith:<\/p>\n

Following the triumph of Augustus, cults to the divine emperors proliferated; some were regional, some municipal, some even more localized. But in one form or another, as Steven Friessen explains, \u201cimperial cults in Asia permeated Roman imperial society, leaving nothing untouched. So it is almost impossible to separate imperial cults from public religion, from entertainment, from commerce, from governance, from household worship, and so on.\u201d Bruce Winter observes that \u201cparticipation in these cultic activities in the Greek East and the Latin West in the first century provided the opportunity for everyone to express publicly undivided loyalty to those who brought them the divine blessing of pax romana<\/em>.\u201d But \u201copportunity\u201d is not quite the right word, because the expression of loyalty was not optional. \u201cAll citizens were required<\/em> to express loyalty to emperors who…were addressed with the same titles that the Christians used of Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Christians, this requirement presented a serious theological and practical problem. They of course did not believe in the gods\u2014or rather, they believed the \u201cgods\u201d were in reality demons\u2014nor did they believe that the emperors were divine. Could they nonetheless perform the ritual sacrifices, on the assumption that no real harm was done in pretending to sacrifice to ostensible deities that were not in fact real, or at least not really deities? Some Christians drew this convenient conclusion. But others regarded such performances as a betrayal of the faith and a forbidden performance of idolatrous worship….<\/p>\n

To the Romans, this refusal signified a failure of allegiance; persecution and punishment predictably followed. (Steven D. Smith, Pagans and Christians in the City<\/em>, Eerdmans, 2018)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The United States has long had all the hallmarks of a civil religion, including publicly promoted values, formulas, symbols, sacred sites and holidays. For most of its history, American civil religion has been either tacitly or overtly Protestant. Although there have certainly been areas of tension between Church members and elements of American civil religion, relations have usually been cordial.<\/p>\n

Civil religion changes over time as new elements are incorporated, such as the environmental consciousness of recent decades. The social justice movement has also been compared to a religion<\/a>, with original sins, acts of atonement, and trained intercessors to help with the process. But even these recent additions to our syncretic civil religion are ultimately rooted in Christian beliefs, including the worth of each soul and the divine injunction to care for the needy and dispossessed. At least in some formulations, it is entirely possible to reconcile Church teachings with progressive goals, easing potential friction with civil religion.<\/p>\n

But that was the problem of a previous era. The latest addition to American civil religion takes the form of an imperial cult (in the technical sense, like the \u201ccult of St. Michael\u201d) with its own sacred formulas and rituals. Its values are however distinctly pagan rather than Christian: ostentation rather than modesty, luxury rather than industry, celebrity rather than humility, licentiousness rather than chastity, vengeance rather than reconciliation, vulgarity rather than decorum, impudence rather than respect, scorn rather than empathy, dominance rather than peaceable relations, racial hierarchy rather than equality, and above all personal loyalty to the sovereign.<\/p>\n

Idolatrous participation in civil religion was always a possibility, even when it was overtly Christian. But now the answer needs to be recalibrated: To what extent can Latter-day Saints participate in our new civil religion without betraying our own faith? Like Joseph, advisor to Pharaoh, and Daniel, counselor to Nebuchadnezzar, we are (until informed otherwise) still called to support our society rather than flee into the wilderness<\/a> \u2013 but there are also limits beyond which we cannot go.<\/p>\n

Where do we draw the line? I\u2019m open to suggestion. Of course people should avoid sin for its own sake, but let me suggest a few things where wickedness would be compounded by idolatrous participation in the pagan rituals of our new civil religion.<\/p>\n

Dishonesty<\/strong>. Joe Biden won the 2020 election legitimately and convincingly. Denying the truth for the sake of political convenience is a boundary that should not be crossed.<\/p>\n

Malice<\/strong>. We are commanded to love our enemies and pray for those who spitefully use us. To rejoice in the sorrow of others, including political enemies, is to deny the teachings of Jesus.<\/p>\n

Sacrilege<\/strong>. Our prophet has not designated Trump as the Lord\u2019s Anointed, and treating him as an instrument of God\u2019s will is heresy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even if you\u2019re generally satisfied with the election outcome and the direction the country is going, you should think carefully in advance about the boundaries between personal faith and civil religion that you would not want to cross.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does it mean to abstain from food polluted by idols? It\u2019s one of the more pressing questions that we face today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":49365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/goldstatue.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49364"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49376,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49364\/revisions\/49376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}