Theocons And Theocrats
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/14/opinion/main1500788.shtml
CBS News - USA
[ excerpt]
(The Nation) This column was written by Kevin Phillips.
Is theocracy in the United States (1) a legitimate fear, as some liberals
argue; (2) a joke, given the nation's rising secular population and moral
laxity; (3) a worrisome bias of major GOP constituencies and pressure
groups; or (4) all of the above? The last, I would argue.
The characteristics are not inconsistent. No large nation — no leading
world power — could ever resemble theocracies like John Calvin's Geneva,
Puritan Massachusetts or early Mormon Utah. These were all small polities
produced by unusual migrations of true believers.
As a great power, a large heterogeneous nation like the United States goes
about as far in a theocratic direction as it can when it meets the
unfortunate criteria on display in George W. Bush's Washington: an elected
leader who believes himself in some way to be speaking for God; a ruling
party that represents religious true believers and seeks to mobilize the
nation's churches; the conviction of many rank-and-file Republicans that
government should be guided by religion and religious leaders; and White
House implementation of domestic and international political agendas that
seem to be driven by religious motivations and biblical worldviews.
As several chapters in "American Theocracy" make clear, this kind of
religious excess has been a problem — indeed, a repeating Achilles' heel —
of leading powers from late-stage Rome (historian Gibbon thus explained
Roman decline and fall) to the militant Catholicism of Habsburg Spain and
most recently the evangelical and moral imperialist Britain that saw 1914
as something of an Armageddon against the German Kaiser's Antichrist and
wound up in 1917-18 crusading in the Middle East to liberate Jerusalem. But
although this facet of historical decline constitutes a major caution
regarding the future of the United States, this essay will concentrate on
the domestic political aspects — the theocratic tendencies in the GOP and
the notable "religification" of American politics across a spectrum from
life and death to science and medicine to climate change and biblical
creationism.
The Growth of Theocratic Sentiment
The essential US conditions for a theocratic trend fell into place in the
late 1980s and '90s with the growing mass of evangelical, fundamentalist
and Pentecostal Christianity, expressed politically by the religious right;
and the rise of the Republican Party as a powerful vehicle for religious
policy-making and eventual erosion of the accepted degree of separation
between church and state. This transformation was most vivid at the state
level, where fifteen to twenty state Republican parties came under the
control of the religious right, and party conventions in the South and West
endorsed so-called "Christian nation" platforms. As yet nationally
uncatalogued — a shortfall that cries out for a serious research project —
these platforms set out in varying degrees the radical political theology
of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, ranging from the Bible as the
basis for domestic law to an emphasis on religious schools and women's
subordination to men. The 2004 platform of the Texas Republican Party is a
case in point.
So are the political careers of Pat Robertson and John Ashcroft, two
presidential aspirants whose careers were milestones in the theocratization
of the Republican Party. Robertson's 1988 presidential bid brought huge
numbers of Pentecostals into the Republican Party. Missouri Senator
Ashcroft, who explored a presidential race in 1997-98, got much of his
funding from Robertson and other evangelicals. Picked as Attorney General
by Bush after the 2000 election, Ashcroft was the choice of the religious
right. Earlier in his career Ashcroft had decried the wall between church
and state as "a wall of religious oppression," and his memoir describes
each of his many electoral defeats as a crucifixion and every important
political victory as a resurrection, and recounts scenes in which he had
friends and family anoint him with oil in the manner "of the ancient kings
of Israel."
-end excerpt]
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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 US 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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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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