Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Theocrats and the Separation of Church and State Who Are the Theocrats? What Do They Want?

F6: One tiny contribution to your book. LOLLOL

By Austin Cline, About.com .. See More About:

* religion in government .. http://atheism.about.com/lr/religion_in_government/283968/1/
* christian right in america .. http://atheism.about.com/lr/christian_right_in_america/283968/2/
* christian nationalism & dominion theology .. http://atheism.about.com/lr/christian_nationalism_dominion_theology/283968/3/

Sponsored Links
New Emerging ReligionThe Only Major Religion To Emerge in 20th Century. Watch Online VideoScientology.org ..
Insert: video inside if you wish .. this a fuagf, substitute .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology ]

The most extreme position opposed to separationism in all of its forms is held by those who can be called “theocrats,” these are people who wish to create a theocratic government in the United States. To state it plainly, the theocrats consider even the most conservative Christians in the Religious Right to not be “godly” enough. Sometimes arguing that a theocracy was intended for the United States from the very beginning, theocrats believe that any sort of compromise would be invalid.

The theocracy they want would, of course, be entirely Christian in nature. Theocrats oppose the “neutrality” among various religious groups which is advocated by non-preferentialists, and they even oppose the more extreme views held by some “accommodationists” which would allow for local communities to impose some particular religion on minorities (because in some communities, the majority might be non-Christian).

Despite their extremism, however, theocrats have a lot of support from the rest of the Religious Right for many of their basic principles. For example, their arguments that the United States is a “Christian Nation” is echoed by many who would not otherwise admit to wanting to replace American democracy with a more repressive system.

One way of understanding this phenomenon is to consider the label “Christian Nationalism” (also sometimes referred to as "Christianism," an analogue to the label "Islamism"). For Christian Nationalists, America is God’s chosen country which he has blessed beyond all others for our faith and belief in him. American leaders are directly empowered by God to do his work here on earth. Anyone who opposes the work of American leaders must, therefore, also be opposing the will of God. This makes them simultaneously blasphemers and traitors.

As should be evident, such an ideology conflates America and Christianity to a great extent — a Christian Nationalist is quite unable to differentiate between American Patriotism and Chrisitan Dogma. They portray America as ever being under attack by enemies — whether enemies of the body politic or enemies of God (rhetoric usually starts out by describing someone as belonging to one of those two categories, but by the end they become a member of the other as well).

Christian Nationalism owes a great deal to Christian Reconstructionism — and, in fact, can probably be regarded as a form of Reconstructionism. They share with Reconstructionists the idea that American laws should be modeled on biblical laws. The primary difference seems to be that whereas Reconstructionists emphasize in their writings the Bible and biblical laws, Christian Nationalists give equal weight to American patriotism and the Bible. Reconstructionists might actually argue that the Christian Nationalists are making idols out patriotic symbols like the American flag, but in the end the goals of both groups are largely the same.

Suggested Reading
Church & State 101Books on Church & State SeparationSeparation of Church & State: News .. Church & State Issues ..

Pledge of AllegianceTen CommandmentsChurch/State Myths

Related Articles

* One Nation, Under God: America is a Christian Nation, You Aren't a Real...
* One Nation, Under God: America is a Christian Nation, You Aren't a Real...
* Christian Reconstructionism: Biblical Law, Theocracy, and Rule by Christian...
* Reconstructionist Christianity
* Christianism & Christian Nationalism: Extreme Nationalism plus Extremis... [MULTI links inside]
http://atheism.about.com/od/churchstate101/a/theocrats.htm

Dominionism as a broader movement

In the early 1990s, sociologist Sara Diamond and journalist Frederick Clarkson defined dominionism as a movement that, while including Dominion Theology and Reconstructionism as subsets, is much broader in scope, extending to much of the Christian Right. In his 1992 study of Dominion Theology and its influence on the Christian Right, Bruce Barron writes,

In the context of American evangelical efforts to penetrate and transform public life, the distinguishing mark of a dominionist is a commitment to defining and carrying out an approach to building society that is self-consciously defined as exclusively Christian, and dependent specifically on the work of Christians, rather than based on a broader consensus. (p. 14, emphasis in original) [fuagf: added emphasis here]

According to Diamond, the defining concept of dominionism is "that Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns". In 1989, Diamond declared that this concept "has become the central unifying ideology for the Christian Right" (p.138, emphasis in original). In 1995, she called it "prevalent on the Christian Right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism