Religion and Political Power

Throughout history, religion has been used to support peoples’ pursuit of power. Leaders would use religious beliefs and the “views” of God or another deity to manufacture support for an action, no matter how moral or immoral. For example, John Edwards uses religious beliefs and The Bible to justify the conversion of the Israelites.  This is an immoral action because it is taking away their religious freedom, and yet he receives support from the Puritan community because of his connections to the will of God. In John Winthrop’s Speech to the General Court in 1645 he used religion to corrupt the idea of democracy in the minds of American people. This is not necessarily an immoral action, but people who may have considered being democratic now will not because Winthrop convinced them that it was against their religion. Thomas Jefferson takes a similar approach when trying to convince the public to abolish the slaves despite their so-called racial inferiority. Jefferson claims that his conclusion of the Africans’ inferiority would “degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them.” (Jefferson 3). He connected his claims to religion and God, which would cause people to support his motion of abolishing slavery and having the slaves be integrated into society (but also segregating them). Therefore, these three power-seeking leaders used religious meaning to coax support out of the general public to their get the political position that they wanted.