Sleepycatz

Blog Against Theocracy

Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic; it is committed to spiritual aristocracy. - R.J. Rushdoony, Christian reconstructionist and father of the Christian home school movement.

The first strategy and in many ways the most important strategy for evangelicals is secrecy. Sun Tzu says that’s what you have to do to be effective at war and thats essentially what were involved in, were involved in a war. Its not a war fought with bullets. Its a war fought with ballots. –Ralph Reed, Republican strategist and consultant.

We live in what, as the curse suggests, may be called interesting times. Uncertainty, doubt, instability and chaos swirl about our daily lives. We watch as friends loose their jobs and homes (as mortgage rates rise); we begin to realize that the incompetence and corruption of our leaders has wasted the lives of our neighbors and bankrupted our treasury; we worry that we are not safe in our country, and an attack from the other could devastate us once again.

It is in times such as this, men will rise up with an answer to soothe our fears and uncertainties. They will offer a utopian vision of the future, one in which justice reigns over law and chaos is banished from the public square. They will say you feel ill at ease because modern life defies the natural order of things, and this natural order has been kept from you by a powerful group of people whose vast control of the culture serves some other purpose. These men will say, simply follow me and through battle we will return order and stability to the world. This is the clarion call of every modern authoritarian movement.

Rational Americans tend to dismiss the notion of theocracy in their country quickly and easily. They fail to understand the appeal, or believe that plurality is far too ingrained in the culture to allow for such a transition to occur. They dismiss every instance of religious dogma in public policy as isolated or temporary. Some will rationalize these policies as a step to bring morality into the public sphere so as to protect children. In all instances they fail to see the greater movement; they fail to see the ramifications of their acquiescence.

For instance, abstinence education is the public schools and the private sphere has received over $200 million in public funds; yet there is little to no evidence that it has any beneficial effect. Conversely, it has been shown that abstinence only education has led to increased risks of sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy. Many will say that abstinence education is unrelated to any theocratic movement and there exists people across all religious persuasions who support such instruction. This is disingenuous at best. The modern abstinence movement has been led by groups such as Concerned Women for America and Focus on the Family. As there exists no unbiased scientific proof that abstinence only education works, these groups (and others) have heralded it as a way to bring religious morality into our children’s lives. As the American Family Association touted in one of their pro-abstinence pieces, quoting a former Miss America, “God says to be pure and to be abstinent until marriage, and I didn’t want to let Him down”. When a government begins sponsoring religious doctrine with no rational basis it is certainly pursuing a theocratic direction. Of course abstinence education is but a small and perhaps less meaningful example of religious intrusion into government policy for most people; certainly most parents would wish their children to refrain from sexual relations in their teenage years. Yet, the success and support of religious groups in this area has allowed them to try to introduce more irrational subjects for education. Intelligent design in science classes; biblical literacy in the humanities, and Christian revisionism in American history (Chris Rodda has written extensively on latter) are all ongoing examples of the attempts to move our educational system towards one centered upon a particular religious viewpoint.

Most educated Americans believe that citizens should have some knowledge of the Bible and its stories, and that abstinence is preferable to promiscuity, and that America has a rich religious history. As it has been throughout modern history, authoritarian movements are often welcomed by the general populace. They offer security of knowledge and a promise of a return to a golden age and a more promising future. The men who wrote our founding documents understood the the power of religion to be transformed into a divisional and authoritarian force. They specifically forbade any religious test for public office, and even under pressure they refused to acknowledge God or Jesus in our Constitution. The first amendment to this unprecedented document enshrines the right of religious freedom and of government neutrality in matters of faith. These ideals are under attack today by those who are promising a better world if we will simply abandon the principles of our republic. If we simply allow a little theocracy here and there, they say, we can remove our insecurities and fears. Of course, as soon as we enshrine one religious belief with power of law, we diminish another.

American Democracy was never intended to be simple or comforting. Its history is laden with confrontations and ill wills. It is a slow moving and evolutionary process which depends upon both compromise and action. It may be that in our time of instant gratification and simplistic slogans that our Democracy has outlived its sustainability. I truly hope this is not the case. But there will always be those standing by with a bible in one hand and a flag in another offering a simple solutions.

This post is a part of the Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm.