Faith in Public Live Part 9: Balmer on Theocracy Hitting a Nerve
Dear Bruce,
I supposed there’s not much that can properly be identified as amusing about the actions and agenda of the Religious Right these days — especially their cooperation with the present administration to compromise civil liberties, prosecute an unjust war in Iraq and condone the torture of those the administration has designated “enemy combatants.” But allow me to inject a note of levity (well, almost) into this final posting.
The thing I find most amusing about the leaders of the Religious Right these days is the way fly into an apoplectic fit anytime anyone mentions the word “theocracy.” Kevin Phillips, of course, earned their undying obloquy for using it in the title of his best-selling book “American Theocracy.” To the best of my recollection, I used the word only once in “Thy Kingdom Come,” when I suggested that what the Religious Right wanted more than anything else was a theocratic order patterned after Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. I went on to say that New England Puritanism was a grand and noble experiment that ultimately collapsed beneath the weight of its own pretensions — precisely as Roger Williams, America’s first Baptist, predicted it would.
Despite my singular use of the term “theocracy,” the Religious Right went ballistic. Someone on a radio show (the same right-wing nut who pontificated at length about my unhappy evangelical childhood) yelled and screamed about my use of the word. And another soldier in the army of the Religious Right used the term “theocracy” three times in the title of his review — well, not a review really, more of a hatchet job.
One has to wonder why a single word provokes such a dramatic response. Could it be that it strikes a nerve? Hmmm. The Religious Right passionately denies that it seeks a theocracy, of course, but my view of the matter is that it’s appropriate to administer the duck test: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s almost certainly a duck.
The first step toward creating a theocracy is to eviscerate the First Amendment and to demolish the line of separation between church and state. And this, of course, brings our discussion full circle. If you seek to undermine the Baptist principles that have served this nation — and the faith — so well for more than two centuries, you begin by undermining the First Amendment.
Once you do that, you’re well on your way to a theocracy.
Randall Balmer
First, thank you for an interesting, informative discussion. I am not a Baptist, so my interest is less personal and more academic (shall we say). I believe that the apoplexy you site, and it is not limited to religious right-wingers as it can be observed in a variety of rightist media personalities, is due to the fact that they sense their time is up. The game is over, the wind is turning against them, they do not control the agenda, the debate, or much else besides a few motivated followers. The threat of theocracy is, I think, overblown, except in a de facto sense; there is certainly a group around the President, and the President himself to a certain extent, who act as if their were divine sanction for their rule, and for their policies. This threat is far greater, in many respects (especially as the Bush Administration seems to have no sense of the rule of law as it applies to the Executive Branch of government) than any chipping away of the separation of church and state, but even here, I believe it is limited due to the simple fact of our overwhelming national diversity. There is no religious, racial, ethnic, or cultural norm or majority any more. The levelling-down effects of national media and the internet simply haven’t taken place. I am of the opinion, the more the merrier – in art, in music, in society, and in politics. Theocracy can become a dictatorship, of course, but again, I believe the threat, never huge, is diminishing greatly.
Thanks again for a great discussion.