http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/12/a_nation_under_god.html
[excerpt]

A Nation Under God

News: Let others worry about the rapture: For the increasingly powerful
Christian Reconstruction movement, the task is to establish the Kingdom of
God right now—from the courthouse to the White House.

By John Sugg

December/January 2006 Issue

# A Nation Under God
Let others worry about the rapture: For the increasingly powerful Christian
Reconstruction movement, the task is to establish the Kingdom of God right
now—from the courthouse to the White House.
TRINITY CHAPEL in suburban Atlanta’s Cobb County is hardly the picture of a
revolutionary outpost. It’s a stylishly modern Church of God—a denomination
that, though conservative, is certainly mainstream. Parishioners are drawn
from a community whose average income is a comfortable 35 percent above the
national norm, whose tree-lined country roads intersect McMansion
subdivisions. If Norman Rockwell were painting suburban sprawl, he’d likely
pick Cobb County.

On a Friday last April, Trinity’s parking lot filled with SUVs and luxury
sedans as about 400 faithful gathered inside the sanctuary. The church was
host to Restore America, a rally to “celebrate faith and patriotism”
sponsored by Christian publisher American Vision. In the lobby, neatly
blue-blazered youths were hawking So Help Me God, Roy Moore’s account of
his dethroning as chief justice

of the Alabama Supreme Court. Tables were
piled with textbooks for homeschoolers, tomes denouncing evolution,
booklets waxing nostalgic for the antebellum South. That afternoon the
congregants, who’d come to the conference from conservative churches around
the region, would hear from Sadie Fields, president of Georgia’s Christian
Coalition, and they’d sway in rhythm as country crooner Steve Vaus sang “We
Must Take America Back.”

But the marquee pitchman of the day was Moore. Ruggedly handsome, with the
military bearing he acquired at West Point, Moore has gained a rock-star
following on the Christian right—a Moses to lead the chosen from a godless
society. The judge has a stunning memory for long literary passages and
judicial opinions, and he chants them in the singsongy, down-home style of
Southern demagogues from Theo Bilbo to George Wallace—“God” is “Gawud,”
with an upward lilt. When he proclaimed that “God is still sovereign, no
matter what federal judges say,” the crowd tittered and applauded. When he
intoned that “there is no right to sodomy in the Constitution,”

they
cheered. When he roared that unless judges “acknowledge God,” they “should
be impeached,” the righteous noise shook the rafters.

It could have been nothing more than a half-hour rebel yell—except that
Moore is more than the latest prophet of the religious right. He stands a
good chance of being the next governor of Alabama; he’s also arguably the
single most significant politician to owe his ascendancy to Christian
Reconstruction—an obscure but

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Posting and reading from alt.politics.usa.constitution OR alt.education

You are invited to check out the following:

The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm

American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm

The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html

[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]

HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/

[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the U.S. and a couple from overseas as well]

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. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
. . .
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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