Religion and Its Hopes for Government
Blatant liberal that I am, I've spent a lot of time listening to friends and associates go off about conservative Christians attempting to "hijack" the US government with their own values and outlooks.
The truth is people generally want to see their government reflect their own values. Sometimes they express this more subtly, supporting or opposing particular pieces of legislature according to their own beliefs. Sometimes they are more organized, and sometimes whole religious groups move toward specific governmental goals.
Christianity is certainly no stranger in this movement. The Baha'i Faith, for example, strongly supports the idea of a single world government working toward the betterment of all people rather than being dedicated to the welfare of people within certain geographic borders. The Raelians go even farther, envisioning a united world able to function without money in a system they call paradism, where robots will do most of the day-to-day work, breaking down the need for social classes.
The fact of the matter is religions commonly work toward their own vision of the greater good. When they work toward changes in government, it is less about proving themselves right and more about being driven by the belief that their ideas are what is ultimately best. Of course, non-believers will frequently disagree, which is one of the underlying reasons why a united world is a long way off, if it ever happens at all.
Comments
Small typo here:
worlding should read working
By the way, about a source for photographs of Bahais doing what Bahais do:
http://media.bahai.org/subjects/activities
You have to creat an account but that goes smoothly
Thanks for the suggestion. That site generally provides images only for non-commercial uses, so I don’t qualify, although I have contacted them asking if it would be possible.
The religious right have been quite successful in some of their twisted quests. The Bush administration changed foreign policy in a number of ways to suit them.
IE; no country that promotes planned parenthood could be considered for foreign aid of any kind. These are, of course countries who need birth control the most, who can’t feed, clothe, provide medical services, etc for their existing population.
As a Baha’i, I have often heard other mention as you have stated here, that Baha’is are interested in a single world government. That bring all sorts of misconceptions to the listeners mind, very few of them accurate. Certainly the system we envision is likely to be very far off in the world’s history and to describe it here would be to do it an injustice. There are of course many Baha’i books written on the subject if the reader wishes, but there are a few brief points I’d like to give as clarification.
While one of our well known “slogans” is “One planet, One people please”, the idea has to do with bringing the world to a place of understanding that we are all one human family and that the earth is our home. That said, the idea that the world should be under one government, often implies to the reader that the object is to have one country, and that is simply false. We firmly believe that countries should preserve their own customs, traditions, laws, languages etc., but that there should be a world governing body that should include ALL countries and should be used to maintain order in the world. The design, and concepts of this body are the subject of much of Baha’i literature. An example of what this body would be like is similar to the United Nations, and is also similar to our own Constitution.