NOTE: I'm not sure if this is better placed in the politics forum, but overall I think it will (hopefully) be more of a philosophical discussion than a political one.
Coming up quickly on the 2008 US presidential elections it seems natural to begin to ask:
Is the US becoming a theocracy, or is this simply fear mongering? If fear mongering, then by whom? If not, then what would the USA as a theocracy mean for Canada, and can it be prevented?
Films like Jesus Camp, The War on Science, The Root of all Evil (The God Delusion) suggest that secular society has been asleep at the wheel, while an organized fundamentalist Christian movement has gained significant political and economic control in the United States.
Conversely Michael Barone argues that the US is not moving towards a Christian Theocracy any more than Europe's more secular populations are about to be overtaken by a Muslim Fundamentalist State.
Is the seeming rise in the religious right in America nothing more than a projection of the information age allowing sub-cultures that would otherwise remain marginalized to collectively vocalize. Is the fear of a theocracy simply a projection of secular societies' disappointment at the inability of rationalism to sweep religion out of the mainstream? Or, is this something new?
Coming up quickly on the 2008 US presidential elections it seems natural to begin to ask:
Is the US becoming a theocracy, or is this simply fear mongering? If fear mongering, then by whom? If not, then what would the USA as a theocracy mean for Canada, and can it be prevented?
Films like Jesus Camp, The War on Science, The Root of all Evil (The God Delusion) suggest that secular society has been asleep at the wheel, while an organized fundamentalist Christian movement has gained significant political and economic control in the United States.
"We need to find ways to win the war" Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political strategist, and deputy chief of staff told a gathering of the Family Research Council in March, 2002. The Family Research Council is one of the most powerful lobbying organizations of the theocratic right today. Rove wasn't talking about the war on terrorism. He was talking about the war on secular society.
The Reverend Tim LaHaye co-authored Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth in the New Millennium, published in 2000. The best-selling book issues a call to arms for evangelical Christians to battle against secular humanism. Mind Siege declares that secular humanism is a "religion," and issues marching orders to evangelical Christians to gear up for an all-out battle to root secular humanists out of public life; their bottom line is that "No humanist is fit to hold office."
LaHaye, best known for the Left Behind series, was one of the founders of the Moral Majority. He first declared war on secular humanism in 1980 with his widely read book, The Battle for the Mind, in which he claims that evangelicals need to become politically involved to fight the great evil, secular humanism, that is threatening to destroy America.
Conversely Michael Barone argues that the US is not moving towards a Christian Theocracy any more than Europe's more secular populations are about to be overtaken by a Muslim Fundamentalist State.
This doesn't mean we're headed toward a theocracy: America is too diverse and freedom loving for that. But it does mean that we're probably not headed to the predominantly secular society that liberals predicted half a century ago and that Europe has now embraced.
Is the seeming rise in the religious right in America nothing more than a projection of the information age allowing sub-cultures that would otherwise remain marginalized to collectively vocalize. Is the fear of a theocracy simply a projection of secular societies' disappointment at the inability of rationalism to sweep religion out of the mainstream? Or, is this something new?