Theocracy!

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.

I suppose
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 point out some levity (well, almost) about their
current frenzy over the word "theocracy."

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 enmity 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.