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Note: This essay first appeared in the
June 2006 Baptist Studies Bulletin.
This morning I received yet another forwarded email from a Baptist
friend mocking the separation of church and state. Forty years ago
one would have been hard-pressed to find a Baptist in America who did
not believe in the historical Baptist belief in the separation of
church and state. In his latest book,
American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips, former Republican
strategist in the Nixon administration, asserts that the influence of
the Religious Right has transformed the modern Republican Party into
the first religious political party in American history. Earlier this
month the Georgia Baptist Conference Center in Toccoa, Georgia, hosted
a
Christian Reconstruction conference in which featured speaker and
Religious Right guru
Gary North told an audience of 600 cheering Christians that he
wants to
replace
democracy in America with theocracy. Indeed, among religious
conservatives in America today there is a popular belief that religion
should overarch and control everything else in public and private
life. This so-called “biblical worldview” invokes images of
theocratic Puritan New England, ironically, an era in which Baptists
were severely persecuted by the “Christian” government.
If the fundamentalist leaders of the Southern Baptist
Convention and their Religious Right allies have their way in subduing
politics and culture to religion, what would America become? Certain
movies, such as the Da Vinci Code, would likely be banned for
voicing heretical views.
This has already happened in Pakistan, where the religious
government (Muslim, in this instance) declared “the making of such
movies doesn’t come under the purview of freedom of expression,” a
decision applauded by many Christians in that country. In addition,
public education, viewed as
evil by some Southern Baptists, including
Al Mohler, would be shuttered and the responsibility for education
handed to churches. Indeed, the foundational freedoms of the
American nation (freedoms of speech, press, religion, assembly and
petition guaranteed by the First Amendment) would likely be discarded
in favor of laws protecting the dominance of the favored religion.
Lest the above scenario sound far-fetched, consider
Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan). The
favored candidate of the Religious Right in the upcoming 2008
presidential election, Brownback is committed to
turning America into a theocracy in which religion replaces
politics, the Ten Commandments replace current laws, social programs
(schools, Social Security and welfare) are privatized or discarded,
all abortions are prohibited, sex is a criminal act unless committed
within heterosexual marriage, men lead families and women are limited
to bearing and rearing children. As a reporter who recently
interviewed Brownback noted, he
“doesn’t demand that everyone believe his God–only that they bow down
before Him.”
While a theocratic America seems hard to fathom, the
increasingly vocal and influential segment of voters and politicians
for whom religion trumps everything else reveals the precarious nature
of longstanding democratic ideals of freedom and liberty. Most
Baptists who support the Brownback agenda probably do not realize they
are betraying their own faith heritage. Many fundamentalist
Christians who adamantly oppose Muslim fundamentalism are likely blind
to the cultural and religious biases they share with their enemies.
In the eyes of true believers, freedom and liberty are privileges that
should be granted only to the theologically correct, and toleration
extended only to those who outwardly obey God’s laws.
Kevin Phillips is right to warn America that a theocracy
is bubbling up within the Republican Party, imperiling the very
foundation of our nation. And I have decided that I will no longer
merely hit the delete button when a Baptist friend sends me yet
another forward denying America’s heritage of religious liberty and
separation of church and state. The stakes are too high and the times
too perilous to allow the lies and deception to go unchallenged. |
