The First Table of the Law
THE FIRST TABLE OF THE LAW BY DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS The sort of religious fundamentalism that would really or virtually conjoin church and state in unholy matrimony that they might live in the sin of theocracy is obviously the greatest threat to human liberty and world peace today. From that ungodly constitution certain legitimate Christian fundamentalists disqualify themselves by rendering unto Caesar his worldly due and unto their god their spiritual faith, wherefore we exclude them so that we may speak only of the monstrous offspring of the marriage of church and state, called by Thomas Paine a "mule-animal." "All religions are in their nature kind and benign," quoth Paine in Rights of Man , ".... How is it that they lose their native mildness, and become morose and intolerant? ... By engendering the church with the state, a sort of mule-animal, capable only of destroying, and not of breeding up, is produced, called the Church established by Law . It is a ...