The Protestant Roots of American Civil Religion

[allodial]

The third and most destructive variety of civil religion arises when religious and political objectives collapse into one another and come to resemble the kind of radical eschatology Eric Voegelin called gnosticism. The Civitas Terrena becomes confused with the Civitas Dei. Public policy becomes a means of redemption and replaces acts of charity. Law exhausts the pious desire for righteousness and replaces it with political ambition, abolishing the Augustinian distrust of both human nature and state action. The church becomes confused with the state, and the state threatens to overwhelm the church as the church—the corpus mysticum.

When the church becomes confused with the State the sheep might lose their senses and mistake wolf country for home. This confusion of church with state has 'infected' the Americas, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, etc.