All Law is Based on Religion

Jacques Ellul, professor of law at Bordeaux, France, has concluded:

In its origin law is religious. This is confirmed by almost all sociological findings. Law is the expression of the will of a god; it is formulated by the priest; it is given religious sanction; it is accompanied by magic ritual. Reciprocally, religious precepts are presented in judicial garb. The relationship with the god is established by man in the form of a contract. The priest guarantees religion with the occult authority of law.

The Theological Foundation of Law, p. 18, quoted in John W. Whitehead, The Second American Revolution, Elgin, IL: David C. Cook, 1982, p. 111.

James Wilson
Signer of the Constitution
   Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters,
   friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into
   each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and the moral
   sense, forms an essential part of both.
   James Wilson, The Works of the Honourable James Wilson
   (Philadelphia: Bronson and Chauncey, 1804), Vol. I, p. 106.

Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p.14
All the aspects of any civilization arise out of a people's religion: its politics, its economics, its arts, its sciences, even its simple crafts are the by-products of religious insights and a religious cult. For until human beings are tied together by some common faith, and share certain moral principles, they prey upon one another. In the common worship of the cult, a community forms. At the heart of every culture is a body of ethics, of distinctions between good and evil; and in the beginning, at least, those distinctions are founded upon the authority of revealed religion. Not until a people have come to share religious belief are they able to work together satisfactorily, or even to make sense of the world in which they find themselves. Thus all order—even the ideological order of modern totalist states, professing atheism—could not have come into existence, had it not grown out of general belief in truths that are perceived by the moral imagination.
Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p.14
This religious origin of private and public order has been described afresh in the twentieth century by such historians as Christopher Dawson, Eric Voegelin, and Arnold Toynbee. The first social organization, beyond mere family groups, is the cult that seeks to communicate with supernatural powers.

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