the entire political enterprise has a theological dimension to it that cannot be disregarded

I SHOULD HAVE given you the next paragraph in that passage from Walter Brueggemann which I excerpted yesterday but I didn't have the time to discuss it.  So here is what he said.

Study of this topic [what happens when nation states exceed the limits of God's tolerance] invites engagement with the prophetic rhetoric of the Old testament that knows that the political enterprise has a theological dimension to it that cannot be disregarded.  Such thinking is reflected in the language of the church that prays regularly, "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory."  The terms of the prayer, faithful to the Old testament, are political in a way that places all other political claims in question.   Study of this topic must resist "silly supernaturalism," but may nonetheless take seriously the claim of God that renders all other claims as penultimate. 

Of course, in the modern era, in the age of separation of church and state, such a claim would cause scandal on one side and, legitimately, risk all of the dangers of the combination of state and church which comprises the legitimately scandalous history of such quasi or, more often, pseudo-theocratic alliances.  In contemporary secular life you're supposed to entirely discount the theological dimension "that cannot be disregarded" and I think in many ways the sheer materialistic evil of contemporary political-economic activity is a product of that.   The blood drenched history of politically established religion is, if anything, exaggerated beyond legitimate measure while the even more bloody history of modern, secular and, especially materialist-atheist governance is never to be mentioned.   And that's not to mention that other even greater power than mere politics, the economic and financial systems which, like science, by common and foolish consent are exempted from the consideration of the moral consequences of their actions.   Anyone who doubts that the accumulated wealth of the economic and financial elites is not more powerful than political entities (and entirely more powerful than mere religion ever has been) has a completely unrealistic and fantasy view of all of those entities mentioned and the societies in which their existence plays out. 

The requirement of avoiding "silly supernaturalism" is a constraint within the polite realms of academia and the elite, though I don't think anyone who believes in God and the existence of such notions as rights and justice seriously can really do that.  Not without damage to the real life existence of justice and rights.  Our elites have chosen to live with that damage because it largely falls on those beneath them in the class structure. 

A few years back I wrote about an observation that the great American essayist and novelist Marilynne Robinson had mad about the theological argument that Thomas Jefferson had to make when he asserted that "men" were equally endowed by their Creator with rights, in his famous short list to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  She posed a question as to what a secular assertion of such a thing would be like, no one that I know of has ever tried to come up with a secular explanation of the origin and legitimate existence of rights, of which an egalitarian explanation of which would be far harder to claim except in metaphysical and, in the end, theological terms.  Of course, once their revolution had been fought by the common-folk, a considerable number of them People of Color, the framers of the Constitution wrote a document which excluded mention of the Creator and equal rights as they wrote one that explicitly was anti-egalitarian and which explicitly supported existing financial privilege, the slavery protecting and enhancing measures in it a proven disaster for democracy and domestic tranquility and the other things the framers claimed to be delivering.   Those anti-egalitarian, wealth privileging provisions among the things which the enemies of equality and democracy have, yet again, harnessed to bring us to the crisis we are about to embark on.  

If those of us who acknowledge the problem of regarding that theological dimension to the political enterprise while knowing full well that ignoring it is disastrously consequential have some tough puzzles to solve, those who demand that that be ignored - and that includes the entire legal apparatus, except when they choose to pretend to respect it for political ends - have a far harder task unless, as so often, they cynically and opportunistically are fine with the disastrous consequences.   

I think the mainstream of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. should start taking the theological dimensions of life in a merely formally politically secular system much more seriously.  The formal separation of church and state is a clerical necessity in a vastly religiously pluralistic country - it is a practical necessity in even a theoretically religiously uniform country to protect religion from the occasions of the corruption of power.   But one of the most obvious lessons of the 20th century (not to mention the other centuries during which liberal democracy has existed) is that secular government is quite capable of doing enormous evil all on its own, largely due to such theological issues as moral absolutes being formally held to not matter in their decisions and actions.  

The corruption of "evangelical" and "Catholic" religion in the United States is intimately tied in with those areas of life in which, by common consent, such theological and moral consideration is banned or it is held to be irrelevant no matter how obviously evil the consequences.   The entire enterprise of "American enterprise" the legal profession that, in its most profitable and even its less profitable sides exists largely to service business, businessmen and the wealthy investor class, the judiciary, the media* and entertainment are all intimately tied in with that corruption.  It is remarkable how much of the professedly pious establishment of politics and religion are so intimately tied up with such formally amoral secular life, especially when wealth accumulation is part of it.   When the Kavanaugh hearings exposed the elite Catholic prep system as largely in service of producing apparatchiks of that elite, it was quite an eye opener to me, from what I see the "Christian school" system is, if anything, even more a part of it.   The Catholic Church, at least much of its hierarchy, has the modern Catholic social teaching to deal with  which, being based on the Gospel, the Law and the Prophets, is as Chomsky said, radical.   Though that doesn't seem to much effect what such Catholics as are a fixture in Republican politics and media say or do.  

I don't have answers to how to solve these puzzles but I felt an obligation to point out the consequences of merely relying on the provisions of the slave-holder framed Constitution (I believe John Adams was about the only framer who never held anyone in slavery) in regard to the separation of church and state as the final word on that because of all the consequences mentioned above and many more beside.