If you read 2 Timothy 3 you would know that what is happening was going to happen.
But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, 3 having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, 4 betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, 5 having an appearance of godliness but proving false to its power; and from these turn away. 6 From among these arise men who slyly work their way into households and captivate weak women loaded down with sins, led by various desires, 7 always learning and yet never able to come to an accurate knowledge of truth.
That’s nice that religion is a big part of people’s lives, but I’m not seeing that a “religious branch” would be any more objective or less political in their decision-making.
Especially given that they would have zero check upon their authority based on the criteria you have outlined as to how they would operate.
This is a thread for optimist–how it might be able to work and make us stronger for it. I think we all know the sad reality of government and those who become involved with power and wealth. A more realistic approach to government might be to do away with all lobbyists–and that anyone who went to Washington was to leave office poorer, not richer.
I mentioned the Supreme Court having the check on that branch. Keep in mind, so would the executive branch. Any needed law would still require the Executive branch to sign it.
The true question here (if I were in the Political Forum) is, "How do we stop Congress from playing their one ups-man games for themselves and go to work for us?
We actually already have a third branch of government that kind of works the way you described.
It’s called the Judiciary…and I think if you polled a lot of people you’d find that you’d get a lot of negative opinions as to how that is working out.
I believe this question would get a lot more traction if it was framed as the problem statement it appears to be attempting to solve, as opposed to a potential “solution” looking for a problem to solve.
The problem statement seems to be “Political gamesmanship is having a negative impact on the well-being of the country. If we accept this statement as true, how to we mitigate against political gamesmanship in government?”
(Of course some people will debate whether the problem statement as I have laid it out is true or not. That’s a perfectly fine debate to have!)
It’s easier to solve problems by focusing on defining what the problem is first rather than come in with a solution right off the bat.
The voters already could hold politicians responsible for broken government but by being tribal they won’t…
I will use Mitch McConnell as an example. By not allowing a vote on the Supreme court nominee he was not doing his job. Now the voters chose to let him keep his job even when he refused to do it. Some were happy about this.
No but you see, since Christians control the 4th branch and since all religious people think the same way, they can “force” a new justice onto the bench to “move things along”. Its that simple.
So would members of the “religious branch” be required to ignore their respective religious texts? The prescription for what ails us is already found in the Bible and it has nothing to do with forming another branch of government to enforce desired behavior.
We could elect the members to a religious branch to make it fair (since many religious ppl have different worldviews) then have another religious branch to ensure they follow the religious constitution correctly, then…
I like it . It would be interesting to watch a lot of people voting for the the Satanists candidate since his religious views are closely aligned with libertarian view.
Alright. So, I’ll try going along with this. So, there’s a fourth branch run by religion, but not a state religion. You also didn’t stipulate any rules beyond “make us stronger”, without defining “us” or what sorts of limits have to be followed by this new branch.
Alright, so this fourth branch would be a branch composed of representatives of every religion in the USA; so you’d have Christians of every type… but you’d also have Buddhists, Shinto, Sikhism, Jainism, Neopagans, Wiccans, and so on. There might also be a group for the “spiritual but not religious”, but not for secular humanists and other non-religious groups.
We’ll call this new branch the Religious Branch. Every religion represented by the RB, and every religion must be represented in the RB, gets one vote for the House of Religious Affairs (their equivalent to Congress or the Senate).
How does this “make us stronger”?
Let’s take a hypothetical example of a religious statue on government property. Let’s suggest that the Roman Catholic Seat votes to put a Roman Catholic cross on the White House lawn. It brings this motion before the HRA… where it is promptly voted down because the wording of the bill only allowed their cross. A new bill is revised, which now allows for every member of the HRA to put up a religious symbol on the White House lawn. This pleases every religious group, so the bill passes. Now the White House has a symbol of every religion of America.
This is also how no state religion arises; no member of the HRA would ever vote for another member to be made the official state religion.
What this also means, because every group has equal votes, is that for the HRA to do anything and win a majority of votes, it has to regularly meet with and negotiate with religious leaders of all sorts. So a ban on abortion might very well occur if a majority of HRA members agree to the ban (which might very well be possible). Likewise, a ban on guns might also pass if enough of the HRA members acquire votes.
The HRA’s majority ruling is also necessary and taken into consideration for other major votes by the three other branches of government. So, declaration of War requires not only Congress, but the HRA. So, if a future president wants to invade a Middle Eastern country, the attempt may fail as religious groups on the HRA that hail from the Middle East veto the declaration. Likewise, groups arising from Asia may veto the declaration of war on Asian countries. Likewise, a President can only be elected by majority vote of the HRA.
By agreeing to become part of the USA government, all the HRA members agree that their financial and property holdings become subject to standard corporate tax laws,
Members of the HRA are voted in by their respective religious organizations.
Since politicians are elected by the people, what leads you to believe the religious branch would be any better at speaking for the people?
Consider what sort of religious leaders are prominent today. You’d get so many slimy prosperity preachers in govt, it would be horrendous. No, I don’t think Americans would nominate good people for that branch.
