For years I have been watching (with some degree of alarm) as a variety of Republicans have publicly pushed for America to abandon its current form of government and turn America into a Christian theocracy.
David Barton, Bryan Fischer, Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum are the most obvious examples of the pro-theocracy camp, however, they’re far from the only ones. There are large numbers of theocrats in the Republican Party, and they’re gaining influence. They’re winning elections, wielding power in our legislatures, wielding power in our armed forces, winning gubernatorial elections and spreading propaganda on America’s radio stations and cable broadcast media.
Now, some of you might think that turning America into a theocracy isn’t a bad thing. After all, America has millions of Christians. How bad could it be to allow them to turn Christian dogma into federal law?
Actually, it could cause a great deal of harm.
In a theocracy, you get about as far away from democracy as humanly possible. Individual rights get trashed as the individual is considered unimportant in a theocracy. God’s Will takes precedence over the rights of the individual.
America hasn’t even become a theocracy yet, and already Christian theocrats like the people I’ve mentioned above are calling for non-Christians (like atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims and Sikhs) to be stripped of their legal rights. Christian theocrats have also called for heretics (such as bisexuals, gays, hermaphrodites and lesbians) to be stripped of legal rights as well.
The theocrats have already passed legal statutes that make it illegal for atheists to hold public office in states like Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas.
And when the Supreme Court declared that gay couples had just as much right to marry as straight couples, Mike Huckabee declared that the states can ignore the Supreme Court, and that the Supreme Court cannot overrule God.
Huckabee has even gone so far as to say that we should amend the U.S. Constitution so that it conforms with his interpretation of what God wants.
But wait! So far, we’ve been dealing mostly in hypotheticals. America has never been a Christian theocracy, so we can only hypothesize just how bad a Christian theocracy would be.
Actually, we’ve got more than just hypotheticals. We have actual historical evidence of what a Christian theocracy looks like. There have been a number of Christian theocracies throughout history, however the most recent one was in twentieth century Europe.
From 1939 to 1945 Slovakia was a Christian theocracy under the rule of Father Jozef Tiso (a Roman Catholic priest).
Jozef Tiso ran the country as a Christian Theocracy and only ONE political party was allowed to operate in Slovakia. This was the Slovak People’s Party which was an overtly religious party and avowedly Catholic.
Only Catholics were allowed to run for public office and many priests served in the Slovak legislature. All legislation had to conform to religious dogma.
As you may have guessed, non-Christians in Slovakia were stripped of their legal rights. The Christian theocracy deported about 70,000 Jews, claiming that it was “a Christian act to expel the Jews so Slovakia could free itself from pests.”
Those Slovak Jews were all deported directly to extermination camps. More than 85% of those deported died brutal, ugly deaths while in those camps.
This should give you some idea as to why turning America into a Christian theocracy would be a mistake of epic proportions.