The real failure is the inability to prevent the church from re-taking over the state.
The mistake is in assuming churches weren’t running the state to begin with. This goes back to the 1950s Cold War Era, where “Being Religious” was part of the litmus test for being anti-Communist. What we’ve seen over the post-Cold War Era was an attrition of Christian religious fervor (and a general New Atheist backlash to non-Christian religions) that’s forced once prolific congregations to consolidate control in order to secure their little theocratic fiefdoms across rural America.
But they never really lost power to begin with. They only lost popularity.
America was colonized on the principles of not being taxed by a kinggenocide of native peoples and not being told how many wives you can have by a popeinstitutionalized slavery .
The mistake is in assuming churches weren’t running the state to begin with. This goes back to the 1950s Cold War Era, where “Being Religious” was part of the litmus test for being anti-Communist. What we’ve seen over the post-Cold War Era was an attrition of Christian religious fervor (and a general New Atheist backlash to non-Christian religions) that’s forced once prolific congregations to consolidate control in order to secure their little theocratic fiefdoms across rural America.
But they never really lost power to begin with. They only lost popularity.
America was colonized on the principles of not being taxed by a king and not being told how many wives you can have by a pope.
The separation of church and state was a lofty ideal, but never a realistic one given who moved to America.
But otherwise, sure. I agree.