Today's Post-Christian Political Religion Adopts Christian Forms

We live in a post-Christian society. As a result, our worship of Jupiter, god of politics, takes on previously Christian forms. Jacques Ellul tells us how in The New Demons (trans. C. Edward Hopkin, 1975).

     
1. God. In our contemporary worship of Jupiter, the part of the god, or of his incarnation, is established by an official “cult of personality” (170) or creation of the Great Personality. The establishment of such a cult is unavoidable. On one side, there’s the public’s desire for salvation with “all hopes concentrated on one, fervently adored man” (171). On the other, there’s the leader’s commitment to provide that salvation. The result: a cult of personality that deifies a dictator. Holding all power, he “is the supreme person, corresponding to the personal God of Christianity” (171).

Jewish Movements of Reform (800-1800)

Jewish movements of reform were creative responses to fresh challenges. Sometimes these challenges were external as the broader Christian or Muslim context improved or declined. Sometimes they were internal as Jewish society itself stratified, hardened, and lost its cultural vitality. Between 800 and 1800, Jewish movements were always a reform of the dominant and normative Talmudic tradition and the organized social groups which embodied it.