THEOCRACIES SUCK!!!

 THEOCRACIES SUCK!
(just ask the Palestinians)

I have to laugh when I hear people (usually white men) trying to explain the marriage of the right wing of democracy in this country to the fundamentalist extremists in Christianity. This idea that the GOP lovefest with Christianity started in the 80's with the rise of Jerry Falwell and the "moral majority," while maybe true for modern politics, is nothing new. It's quite rooted in the history of The West and our love affair with monotheism.

If you're not a student of The Bible, surely you've heard the stories of The Old Testament, where God directed "His people" to go kill and plunder rival nations and kingdoms. He instructed them to lay waste to every living thing--babies, livestock, crops... These nomadic Middle Eastern people were "His chosen ones." TALK ABOUT MANIFEST DESTINY!

Old Testament Jerusalem was a theocracy; just look at the Kingdom of David (Judah). He ruled from the ancient Scriptures. "Thus saith the Lord" was the law of the land. Let's be honest, it's not so different from it's cousin, Islam and Sharia Law. "Thus saith Allah," and so forth.

So where did we get this notion that today's Christian nationalism is any different? Why do we always think we're so special, so unique in America?

Our forefathers had this same idea. Manifest Destiny, a marriage of God and country, the original Christian nationalism. I mean, it was God who brought the pilgrims here, was it not? Ask the Native Americans what they think about this theory.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The Great Roman Empire (27 BCE - 476 CE), which became a theocracy in the Middle Ages as "The Holy Roman Empire," was a marriage between monotheism and politics. The Pope basically ruled Europe through the 19th century. This is NOT a new concept. King David ruled the United Kingdom of Isreal from 1010 - 970 BCE.

These ideals were carried forward by our Anglo-Saxon forbearers to the shores of America. Now one can argue that the founders were largely deists as opposed to fundamentalist Christians, but that is really minutiae.  

The idea of a government established on the authority of a monotheistic deity and laws based upon ancient scriptures predates modern history. It doesn't make that minority faction in our country unique or special. They are just reviving the ideals of Manifest Destiny. What God has given us, let's not give back, is the thinking. Or in their words, let's "take" America back and make it great again...because what this world needs is another Holy Roman Empire.

Those monotheistic kingdoms were always so "godly," kind and compassionate, weren't they?

Go back to "the beginning" and the "Manifest Destiny" of the nomadic peoples of Judea and look at Deuteronomy 7. It introduces the idea of haram, a Hebrew word for the utter annihilation of peoples (think native inhabitants of a land). There's really a great Wikipedia article about the violence of the Old Testament you should read. Sadly, it was a foreshadowing of what Europeans would do to natives in this Hemisphere in more modern history.

So we should NOT be surprised that Christian nationalists are steeped in this tradition, aka White Nationalism, Manifest Destiny and such.

This is nothing new.

It's not an American problem. It's certainly not a Protestant problem (aka the Moral Majority of the 1980's). It predates modern history.

The extremists on the right want to return this country "back" to Christianity. They want to turn this democracy into a THEOCRACY, with The Bible as the supreme authority. It's the Holy Roman Empire 2.0.

It's not much different than the current crisis in the Middle East, and specifically I mean Palestine. While modern-day Israel is not the theocracy of King David, it was certainly territory given back to the Jewish people because of this principal of Manifest Destiny (refer back to Deut. 7). Their ancient forbearers took that land by force (haram, or utter annihilation). OUR forbearers did the same!

If you ask me, we are paying dearly for "the sins of our fathers."

If you want to know what the lingering affects of theocratic governing look like, just ask the Palestinians...or the Native Americans.

(NOTE: This post was inspired by a short video I watched yesterday on YouTube where this older white guy was mansplaining the marriage of the extreme right to Protestantism gone wrong in America.)