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At the same conference, where I went public with my conviction that there is such a thing as God’s Economy or the Great Economy after all, I met up with the phrase “functional religion. I attended a session in which William Cavanaugh, from the faculty of St. Thomas University, St. Paul, MN, (since then moved to De Paul, Chicago) spoke about it. In his remarks he said that in a past era he most likely would have used the word “idolatry,” but at the moment the preferred phrase was “functional religion.”

Idolatry sounds just to primitive for us. We flatter ourselves into believing we’ve long ago left behind a culture of idols. Still, “functional religon,” clicked for me. Cavanaugh spoke about how the state engages in functional religion, performing acts ritually and liturgically.

As I heard him describe state religion, my mind was simultaneously translating his words to economic religion. His phrase “functional religion” stamped “Approval” on my belief that going deeper into how the economy functioned religiously was necessary for us to see how to leave behind Multi Earth living.