The Time Has Come...
Religious systems should be removed from national flags. Flags make national claims of control — literally of territory and figuratively of what states’ ideologically control …and what controls them.
As is stated in the US Constitution’s first amendment, government should stay out of religion and religion should stay out of government.
Historically, they have always both abused each other, and when they work in concert, they are a mega force of abuse.
An overly ‘moralized’ government (bolstered by its claimed support of divine — all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-right — religion) frequently makes very, very bad calculations of when and how to use force to confront perceived resistance to itself.
A state-ensconced religion often feels it has a religio-moral duty to create its ‘spiritual utopian’ reality on Earth. These idealized utopian movements see removing resistance by mass killing so they can fulfill their religious mission/jihad. They do it either to create a ‘utopia’ that is better than anything that has ever been or they seek to recreate a 'nostalgic restoration’ of a former idolized/idealized state. Wahhabism, Puritans, the Jesuit movement, Chinese modern neo-Confucianism, Tibetan theocracy, Salafism, Zionism, Talibanism, the Moral Majority, Christian nationalism, The Christian Right, Hindu(istic) nationalism, Iranian ayatollaism, Saudi Arabian Islamic theocracy, Catholic nationalism of the Vatican, Japanese state Shinto and emperor worship…
How to do it? Sweden can keep its colors and move to two vertical lines of yellow on a blue field.
Symbols mean something. They shouldn’t mean the worst partnership in history. States should work tirelessly to defend the right of their multicultural and multi-religious citizens rights to worship God, gods, deus, water, rock and sun/sky as they wish, but they should not allow those citizens to impede each other or encourage one group over another.
The gOVERnment is above the people so that no people should be above each other.
Religion, means to bind/tie people together, but it should not be allowed to hold them in bondage.
The religious moralization of government is an immorality that humanity has been trying to remove for all of human history.
The world’s first city, Uruk’s, third king Gilgamesh killed the gods’ ogre Humbaba, so the gods sent the bull of heaven to kill him. Gilgamesh killed the bull of heaven so the god’s then killed Gilgamesh’s best friend and wrestle-mate Enkidu. The goddess of fertility Inanna had to then kill herself to go into the underworld, ruled over by her older sister, so she could attend the funeral of the bull of heaven — her brother-in-law the dead bull of heaven. From this story on, religions and governments have use their partnership to play a mortal game of death back-and-forth across the earth with the dead bodies they kill.
Enough said. Religion and government don’t mix well. But when they get entangled people die — millions.
Extra and super good:
Ha, they nailed these to Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, before Martin Luther did a similar thing in 1517.
America put the same demand first in its amendments 400 years later.
What follows below is Middle English [yes, it can be tough to ‘translate’ into modern think as you read it].
The First Conclusion:
State of The Church
“When the Church of England began to dote in temporality after her stepmother, the great Church of Rome, and churches were slain by appropriation to diverse places. Faith, Hope, and Charity began for to flee out of our Church. For Pride with his sorry genealogy of deadly sins challengeth it by title of heritage. This conclusion is general and proved by experience, custom, and manner, as you shall after hear.”