Jeroboam’s approach to worship would also be at home with today’s politicians. The historian Edward Gibbon said that in the last days of Rome, “all religions were regarded by the people as equally true, by the philosophers as equally false, and by the politicians as equally useful.” This was Jeroboam’s view exactly. He was mainly interested in religion as a means of gaining political and economic control. Setting up temples in Bethel and Dan was a power play and a money grab. By using religion in