Today's GOP Prefers Theocracy Over Democracy

 

Robert Reich warns of the emerging Republican-imposed theocracy:

In a case centering on wrongful-death claims for frozen embryos that were destroyed in a mishap at a fertility clinic, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last Friday that frozen embryos are “children” under state law. As a result, Alabama in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics are ceasing services, afraid to store or destroy any embryos.

The underlying issue is whether government can interfere in the most intimate aspects of people’s lives — not only barring people from obtaining IVF services but also forbidding them from entering into gay marriage, utilizing contraception, having out-of-wedlock births, ending their pregnancies, changing their genders, checking out whatever books they want from the library, and worshipping God in whatever way they wish (or not worshipping at all). 

All of these private freedoms are under increasing assault from Republican legislators and judges who want to impose their own morality on everyone else. Republicans are increasingly at war with America’s fundamental separation of church and state.

 

According to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation — either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21 percent) or sympathizing with those views (33 percent).

This point of view has long been prominent among white evangelicals but is spreading into almost all reaches of the Republican Party, as exemplified by the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling.

It is also closely linked with authoritarianism. According to the survey, half of Christian nationalism adherents and nearly 4 in 10 sympathizers said they support the idea of an authoritarian leader powerful enough to keep these Christian values in society.

During an interview at a Turning Point USA event last August, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said party leaders need to be more responsive to the base of the party, which she claimed is made up of Christian nationalists.

“We need to be the party of nationalism,” she said. “I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

A growing number of Republican voters view Trump as the second coming of Jesus Christ and see the 2024 election as a battle not only for America’s soul but for the salvation of all mankind. Many of the Trump followers who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, carried Christian symbols, clothes, and signs invoking God and Jesus.

 

An influential think tank close to Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas into his administration if Trump returns to power, according to documents obtained by Politico.

Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and remains close to him. Vought, frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.

Those policies include banning immigration of non-Christians into the United States, overturning same-sex marriage, and barring access to contraception.

  

In a concurring opinion in last week’s Alabama Supreme Court decision, Alabama’s chief justice, Tom Parker, invoked the prophet Jeremiah and the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians. “Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote. “Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.” 

Referring to the Book of Genesis, Parker noted that “the principle itself — that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification — has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God.’”

Before joining the court, Parker was a close aide and ally of Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was twice removed from the job — first for dismissing a federal court order to remove an enormous granite monument of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the state judicial building, and then for ordering state judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision affirming gay marriage.

So far, the U.S. Supreme Court has not explicitly based its decisions on scripture, but several of its recent rulings — the Dobbs decision that overruled Roe v. Wade, its decision in Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District on behalf of a public school football coach who led students in Christian prayer, and its decision in Carson v. Makin, requiring states to fund private religious schools if they fund any other private schools, even if those religious schools would use public funds for religious instruction and worship — are consistent with Christian nationalism. 

But Christian nationalism is inconsistent with personal freedom, including the First Amendment’s guarantee that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

We can be truly free only if we’re confident we can go about our private lives without being monitored or intruded upon by government, and can practice whatever faith (or lack of faith) we wish regardless of the religious beliefs of others. 

A society where one set of religious views is imposed on a large number of citizens who disagree with them is not a democracy. It’s a theocracy.

Separation Needed

I couldn't agree more. While lowering the wall between religion and government would destroy religious freedom by allowing government to favor one religion over all others (and possibly even force people to be a part of that "official" religion, not having a wall between government and corporate America is even more dangerous. Because letting the corporations control our government destroys the whole concept of democracy. We need a secular government of all the people -- not a theocracy or a plutocracy.

The Fight Against Autocracy And Theocracy

Since the modern idea of democracy was born a few thousand years ago in Greece, there has been a struggle to keep it alive in a world that seems to love autocracy and theocracy. There are those who might be offended at my equating theocracy with autocracy, but the fact is that religion has been both a reason for establishing an autocracy and a tool for an autocracy to remain in power. Democracy simply cannot exist in any nation that decrees one religion is true and all others are false, because a democracy is more than rule by the majority. A true democracy demands respect for the rights of the minority.

During the celebrated "Arab Spring", one of the countries that successfully threw off the yoke of autocratic rule was Egypt. With the election of a new president by the people and an attempt to write a new constitution, it was hoped that democracy stood a chance of coming to that country in a real form. Those hopes have now been dimmed -- for a couple of reasons. First, because the constitution being written now is almost sure to be the vehicle for installation of a theocracy (which is nothing more than a religious autocracy). And second, because the elected president, a member of the same majority group writing the constitution, has given himself enormous new powers in a new decree -- powers that mean nothing he does can be overturned by the courts or any other organization.

President Morsy claims he is assuming these new autocratic powers to protect the "revolution" that happened in Egypt, and that nation is still on the road to democracy. Frankly that is now hard to believe. All autocrats have claimed that they are just protecting their nation and have assumed dictatorial powers for the good of the people. Even such brutal dictators as Stalin and Hitler made these claims. And it is also true that once the have assumed autocratic powers, dictators rarely give up those powers. And even if Morsy does finally bend to the will of the people and follow the dictates of a new constitution, if that constitution is simply an extension of the islamic religion (which it almost surely will be) can it really be called democratic?

Frankly, it now looks like the desire for a true democracy is Egypt has been thwarted. It has been subverted by the desire of a religious group to impose their will on all the country's citizens, and one man's desire to be the instrument of installing the new theocracy. Maybe this is the way it had to turn out. A real democracy cannot exist in a theocratic state, and until most Egyptians understand that there will not be a democracy in that country.

I know there will be many in this country, especially right-wingers, who will be saying "I told you so". But many of them don't really have the right to point a finger at Egypt, because they are trying to do the same thing in this country. The only difference is that they wish to replace our democracy with a christian theocracy instead of an islamic theocracy -- and personally, I don't see that as any better.

No theocracy, regardless of what religion it is established on, can also be a democracy (because it denies the rights of those who follow a different religion, or no religion at all). Fundamentalists will disagree, but a true democracy can only exist in a secular state that guarantees the fundamental right of religious freedom (which includes the right to be free from religion). And the funny thing is that all theocrats will agree with this when it is not their own religion that is dominant, but quickly disagree when their own religion is dominant.

We all need to understand that democracy is not the right to impose your religious views on your fellow citizens. A democracy requires that all religious views be respected and protected, and that none be elevated above all the others. Our forefathers understood this, and gave us an enduring secular constitution. And because they understood there would always be theocrats trying to destroy our democracy, they gave us the First Amendment guaranteeing religious freedom. We would be exceedingly foolish to replace that constitution with a Bible (or any other religious book).