Western political liberalism as an establishment of religion

Princeton University Press

     "There are two fundamental ways in which states relate to organized salvation professionals.  The first is to assume a position of neutrality and treat various claims to a monopoly of the sacred with more or less equal condescension. . . .  As Gibbon said of the Antonines, 'the various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.'  This does not mean that such states are 'secular' in the sense of being indifferent to sacred legitimacy; this means that they are self-confident enough about their own claim to sacred legitimacy not to need reinforcement from prophets unrelated to the divinity of the ruling lineage.  The Western liberal states are no exception in this regard:  by calling other would-be monopolies of the sacred 'religions' and not calling their own anything in particular, they demonstrate the un-self-conscious strength of the official faith."

     Yuri Slezkine, The house of government:  a saga of the Russian revolution (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2017), 180-181.  "The other way . . . is to identify with one of them" (181).  Cf. chap. 3, "The faith."