One of the more insidious doctrines of humanitarianism and secularism is the belief that the State is the Great Redeemer. This necessitates the duties, responsibilities, functions, and roles belonging to the Church being assumed and taken over by the State.
In Europe this particular defalcation has been long in the cooking. But as secularism has advanced, this dangerous doctrine of the Redemptive State has become pretty much full-flowered. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has become the avatar of a theology which has the State as Saviour and the Great Redeemer.
In her New Year's address she assured the people that the German government would triumph as the Great Redeemer of mankind. It would triumph over hatred and Islamism with compassion, not punishment. In Merkel's world-view and twisted theology, the State has become the Church and assumed its functions. Historically and biblically, the State is God's servant with a sworn duty to punish evildoers. The Church is God's servant to extend compassion to the poor, the needy, the suffering. But in Merkel-world, the State has assumed all of these responsibilities to itself.
In the federal chancellor’s New Year address to Germany, Merkel asserted that the terror attacks committed by Islamist migrants in Würzburg, Ansbach, and recently at a Christmas market in Berlin were not attacks on Western civilisation but an attack on ‘refugees’ and Germany’s willkommenskultur (‘welcome culture’).
