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What’s a Theocrat To Do?

“What would America look like if the Religious Right had its way?” Balmer wonders. “The best answer” is that Christian conservatism “hankers for the kind of homogeneous theocracy that the Puritans tried to establish in seventeenth-century Massachusetts.” A few attempts to insert Intelligent Design into public school curricula constitute an “insidious” plot to overturn the […]

“What would America look like if the Religious Right had its way?” Balmer wonders. “The best answer” is that Christian conservatism “hankers for the kind of homogeneous theocracy that the Puritans tried to establish in seventeenth-century Massachusetts.” A few attempts to insert Intelligent Design into public school curricula constitute an “insidious” plot to overturn the Enlightenment, while the campaign to allow voluntary prayer in public schools is an attempt “to dismantle the First Amendment.” In the debate over vouchers and homeschooling, Balmer (who opposes both) assures his readers that “the future of American democracy hangs in the balance.” ~Ross Douthat, First Things

Via Michael Brendan Dougherty

Mr. Douthat does a fine job dismantling the loonier accusations of the professional anti-theocrats (who have a surprisingly booming business in a country as un-Byzantine as can be), including these claims of neo-Puritan revival.  While part of my family stems from those very Puritans, one thing that I hope everyone can agree on is that virtually no serious Christian conservative in this country today thinks of Yankee Calvinism as the right way to do things.  He might want a new Byzantium or new Christendom, but a new Geneva is rarely on his mind.  Considering the gradual collapse of Congregationalism into ever more unfortunate kinds of religious error, surely some other precedent for religious establishment could be found that would be much more welcome to any real theocrats who are out there.  In creating the caricature of American theocracy, the anti-theocrats do not even think through the bogeys they choose to use to scare the public.

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