Separation of Church and State

"We advocate a spirituality that is taught in the Greater Community, not the spirituality that is governed by nations, governments or political alliances, but a natural spirituality - the ability to know, to see and to act."

Government Free of Religion

"Religion should never govern. It should only encourage, inspire and advise."

“The state must impose limitations and will have to restrain certain kinds of behavior, even leading to incarceration, but religion does not do this and must not do this.”

Religion free of State Control

“Religion is there to free the spirit. Politics is there to guide actions and to restrain certain kinds of behavior." ... "Let religion speak to the deeper conscience of people and support them taking the steps to Knowledge, and let politics deal with running the machinery of civilization.”

"In no case should the state and religion be the same. That has proven to be disastrous in history. The great casualty of attempting to join those two is religion itself, which becomes a tool of the state, which becomes used as a form of manipulation and persuasion, of self-righteousness and condemnation of others."

"Religion must be free of the state, must be free of politics, which will only taint and corrupt it to the point where those who claim to be holy men will call for the execution of people."

Influence

“The spirit of religion becomes lost when it is united with commercial and practical needs exclusively. Its ethical foundation erodes away; its spiritual emphasis erodes away; it becomes formalized, rigid, governed by rules and regulations; it becomes constrained by the governance of the state, of political powers, economic power; and the life goes out of it. It becomes stale and static and oppressive as a result.”

“Certainly religion today is extremely important in its ethical teachings and in maintaining and providing a pathway to experience the Divine nature of each and what that Divine nature asks of each person. But religion has fallen, in so many places, under the domination of the state and in some cases even united with the state. That cannot be. That is essentially unhealthy.”

“When religion is wedded with politics, religion becomes politics—all of its deceptions, its compromises, its limitations. It ceases to be a pathway to Knowledge and becomes like a yoke to harness people’s intelligence and abilities in service to the state. On an institutional basis, religion has become so corrupt that it now punishes people for their errors, even executes people for their errors. It acts like a state. It has become political in nature.”

"Of course religion has political aims as well."

Further study

• The Purpose of Religion (July 20, 2009)

• Life in the Universe, Chapter 9: Religion in the Greater Community

See Also

Political exploitation

Religious trauma