Catechism of the Citizen Review
The argument in Simon Critchley’s The Catechism of the Citizen is that many modern governments proclaim the separation of church and state, but religion is still at the core of many governments and embedded within many layers of politics. This paper reviews The Catechism of the Citizen and assess how and why politics and religion are intertwined. Government is an important tool that humans use to organize many individuals to afford them protection and ensure efficiency in allocating resources. Politics is the means by which government is created and organized. Theoretically, politics and government are created for the greater good of all citizens. They are intended to ensure that no one person gains at the expense…show more content… Why would a person accept laws and a structure that may not benefit him alone? The goal is to get a group of people to agree to give up their natural-born freedoms in exchange for civil liberties. This exchange is appealing for someone like an impoverished farmer, for whom it makes sense to pay taxes to gain the protection of an entire community. On the other hand, it may not be so attractive to a wealthy landowner who can already afford all the protection he needs. Why would he enter into a social contract where he is unable to profit limitlessly off the poor and must pay taxes? This arrangement would not make good business sense to him. While we may have more advanced communication and reasoning skills, humans are still animals that are greedy by nature. People’s main drive in life is simply to survive, prosper and propagate. This seems counterintuitive to government. Without an entire community agreeing to the act of ‘pure assembly’ and a defined set of laws, this idea of government will not work. The question then becomes, How can we persuade everyone to unite for the greater good while forsaking their own good? This is where the need for religion comes into…show more content… The idea of a higher power backing the formation of government might be the extra incentive required to get all members of a community to agree to come together. Without saying so directly, they are trying to stress the fact that, without the oversight of a higher power, humans might not behave so morally and selflessly. What better way to organize a set of people under a set of common goals and rules than to threaten their eternal souls if they disobey those rules? However, this is a poor argument, because this reasoning suggests that, without religion, humans would be just as wild as other beasts. Religion may help some people adhere better to politics and government, and it may be helpful in uniting people around a common goal and establishing an accepted form of government and tolerable politics. The question is, once this creation is complete, does religion still have a place in politics? Religion may need to play a role in the government system due to the inherent flaws in politics arising from philosophical incongruities or flawed human