If You Get Your Theology Wrong, You're Gonna Get Your Politics Wrong Too

Theology forms the foundation for our views on everything from the reason why man exists and his purpose, to how we should order society under these views. Politics is always downstream from theology and theology informs and forms our political views. So if you get your theology wrong, your politics will absolutely have major errors in them. While you can work with those of other religions on political issues that we agree on, you must always keep in mind the serious problems or issues that will arise from the views of those other religions (and yes, atheism is a religion). These are not the entirety of the problems with each of these religions, but a couple of examples for each one that can seriously impact political views.

Atheism: If God does not exist, then we’re just an objectively meaningless cosmic accident and every human being is just an electrified bags of meat. We’re merely apes that have developed the ability for rational and abstract thought. (Of course it’s fundamentally illogical and self-refuting that cosmic accidents would develop this ability, but atheism is inherently irrational and illogical.)

So if we are electrified bags of meat, we’re not special in any sense and there’s no such thing as objective morality. (Yes, atheism itself rejects the entire concept of objective morality.) If humans are not special, then anything that happens to a person is just a matter of opinion whether it is good or bad. Atheism itself rejects the concept that humans have intrinsic and objective worth. This is why humans have been slaughtered by the hundreds of millions by atheist societies and countries. Your politics are evil under atheism.

New Age / Pantheism / Environmentalism: These particular beliefs fundamentally believe that the earth or the universe is a deity. These beliefs lead to the belief that the earth or the environment is to be worshipped and that humans exist for the benefit of the earth, instead of the earth being here for the benefit of man. Man has authority over the earth and must care for it properly in line with the moral law of God, but the earth is here for mankind and to support mankind. Under the beliefs of the New Age, Pantheistic and Environmentalist religions, mankind is a virus that damages the earth. This view conscripts mankind to an enemy that must be eradicated, euthanized, aborted or contracepted out of existence (or at least vastly reduced in number).

Paganism: While much smaller today than in centuries past, Paganism is still around and there are a lot of people who are effectively Pagan while not openly admitting they are Pagan. Paganism can suffer many of the same problems as noted above with the New Age religion, it can also suffer from other issues as well. Paganism believes in deities (demons in reality) who are capricious, fallen, sinful and fallible. These “deities” are tribal and lead to warring factions that square off in violent clashes based on competing gods. Only the humans who worship your particular “god” are worthy and have value and those who worship other gods are without any intrinsic or objective value. Anything and everything is allowed against those people who belong to other gods.

Islam: Many people think that the Islamic view of God is similar to the Christian view of God. This is wildly wrong and leads to much misunderstanding. God in Islam is a master and humans are slaves. In Christianity, God is a loving Father who cares for humanity and loves us at all times. We are His children. So in Islam, humans are only of value when they are properly pleasing their master and are only useful so long as they can work towards completing the goals of God. God in Islam is also capricious, can commit evil, and anything is allowed from Him since by definition anything He would do is good. In Christianity, God cannot commit evil, since it would be contrary to His nature which is always and completely, objectively good. God is omnipotent, but He cannot contradict Himself, since that would mean that He is a liar and such a claim would mean that He was not God. This self-refuting view in Islam has never been really addressed since it cannot be addressed.

The political problem shows up in a multitude of ways. The first thing that is different from Christianity is that lying is allowed and considered a moral good, if it moves forward the goals of Allah. The bonds of society break down rather quickly when lying is not only allowed but promoted as good at times. This is one reason that Islamic societies often stagnate and remain in a state of uncivilized barbarism. It also means that there is no benefit to learning or searching for truth, since Allah will only allow mankind to find out what He wants them to discover and nothing they do can change whether they will discover it. This is completely contrary to the Christian belief in free will. These beliefs of Islam, that Allah is capricious and is a master is why Islam mimics and is attracted to socialism and its many flavors such as fascism and communism. The ultimate power is attractive to those who view humans as mere tools for the advancement of some greater good, without any inherent value of their own.

Protestantism: The foundational belief in Protestantism is a rejection of the authority of the Church that Jesus built, and rejection of the ability of the Church to affirmatively and definitively decide on doctrinal matters. What has resulted is that Protestantism is a chaotic and ever-expanding conglomeration of differing sects, each with unique doctrines and beliefs. To ignore this nonsensical state of affairs, Protestants claim these differing doctrines are either “secondary” or “non-essential” doctrines that have no effect on salvation. Of course, they cannot point to where a person can find the list of essential and non-essential doctrines and cannot point to even one single doctrine that all Protestants agree upon, even up to and including the doctrines of the Divinity of Christ, Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide. Multiple different sects of Protestantism either outright deny these doctrines or have wildly different understandings of what those doctrines are and mean.

So what is left is that Protestants like to pretend that they agree on some vague notion of a small group of “essential” doctrines, but they all agree that there is no authority on earth that can determine which sect has the correct doctrines of the Christian faith. Each sect claims that the Bible supports their doctrines and none will accept the authority claims of any other sect of Protestantism.

This view ultimately leads to relativism and the belief that truth is determined by each individual. This obviously wrecks your political views because there’s no final authority to rule on which beliefs are correct and which are false. This also leads to anti-Christian beliefs like separation of Church and State and secularism in government. Both of these beliefs are contrary to the Christian faith and deny the ultimate Kingship of Christ. All governments and authorities on earth are under the authority of Christ, and governments that do not recognize this fact are false on their face. This also leads to the silliness of allowing enemies of God to spread their errors in your country and society unabated, because there is no authority to rule that these enemies are actual enemies of God, His Church, mankind and civilization itself. A proper Catholic government should easily reject the notion that socialism and satanism should be allowed to flourish and spread in the country.

In conclusion, these and many other reasons are why Catholic theology is fundamental to having a properly ordered society and a properly ordered political viewpoint.