To the Editor:

Many of the non-believing members of the Yale community are often the first to criticize the concept of a state religion and attack it on groundless bases. What many members of the community fail to realize is that a state religion is the most sensible decision a society can make to protect its most vulnerable members — children.

Children growing up in a home without religion are being denied the tool that can show them to love each other as equals. Studies by religious non-profits have consistently shown that there is an absence of love in non-religious households. The same studies show that many children growing up in ‘non-religious’ households do not see each other as equals and thus physically and verbally attack each other to assert their dominance.

This violent need to become dominant is the very problem that is currently destroying society from within — much more effectively than any terrorist ever could.

When children feel dominant they eventually see their parents as equals. The children then feel wronged by their parents for not being treated as the equals they think themselves to be. That is when the problems start. In their infantile delusion of self-deification, the children commence to play God. At this stage they are violent creatures with fits of rage so powerful that it may require armed police officers simply to calm their tempers. I suggest that a state-mandated religious program taught and implemented to the letter in all schools, detention centers, prisons and government offices would help solve the problems of delinquency and disobedience almost immediately.

Students from religious homes perform better in school than children from homes that identify themselves as ‘non-religious’. To understand the problem of high crime rates, under-performing schools and pregnant teens is to understand the problem of Godlessness.

These three problems are addressed and confronted early in nearly all deeply religious homes, yet they often go unnoticed by those who think of nothing but themselves while the rest of society is dragged down by their carelessness. Present statistics prove that state-sponsored religion works: but the best evidence of all is history.

In 1492, Spain made Catholicism the state religion. That same year Spain became the wealthiest nation in the world and the first country with a transatlantic empire. Many nations of Europe followed the example of Spain and instituted a state religion of their own. Soon after, Europe entered an era of enlightenment, exploration and relative internal peace, which allowed it to produce some of humanity’s greatest thinkers. The need to maintain a transatlantic empire created a need for faster ships, which would be met centuries later by the steam engine and the industrial revolution.

We are lucky to have a president who is so committed to progress and the concept of unifying the confused masses. As it is written in scripture, those who stop believing in their leader in turn corrupt leaders into losing mental clarity.

If our leaders lose mental clarity because we are overburdening them with cosmically unimportant non-events, then who will lead us?

José Abrego

Nov. 13

Abrego is a junior in Ezra Stiles College.