Theocracy in America: An Historical Perspective by Matthew Fox

 (reprint from Matthew Fox's Daily Meditations)

September 27, 2022

 

Yesterday we considered the reality of theocracy going on today, both in Muslim Iran and in the Supreme Court and politics of current America.  And intrinsic to theocracy there very often lies misogyny. Women are under fire wherever patriarchy (and Empire) rule.

 

One of the insights that David Korten has researched in his book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community is the reality that theocracy has a history in early America.   Indeed, he underscores that it is

 

“crucial to understanding current U.S. politics” to recognize a legacy that includes “extremes of theocracy” along with genocide, slavery, racism and sexism in US history.   “Religious theocrats of a mind to flog, imprison, or hand all who did not share their particular faith” were part of the scene at the time of the Revolutionary War that overthrew the English king.    The official charter that established the first colony in Virginia in 1609 declared that one purpose of the colony was to convert the “people in those Parts unto the true Worship of God and Christian Religion.”     The Puritans, escaping Anglican persecution in Europe,

 

...came to North America in search of the freedom to establish a theocracy based on the teachings of John Calvin which meant using the authority of government to deny others the same religious freedom they had come to America to gain for themselves.

 

Puritans settled Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, established Congregational churches there, and mandated the Calvinist faith while banning the practice of any other.  One influential preacher, John Cotton, preached that theocratic rule and not democracy was the will of God calling “Theocracy the best forme of government in the commonwealth, as well as in the church.”  Religious liberty is understood as freedom from the “heresies of Anglicanism, Catholicism and all other deviant faiths.”

 

Mary Dyer, a Quaker preacher, was

 

Today, there are actual politicians in America taking us back to these pre-constitutional and theocratic times.  There is also the Opus Dei driven Supreme Court and its enablers.

The Choice of a City by Bill Washabaugh

Augustine lamented the decline of the City of Man and looked instead toward the City of God. He was, after all, a deeply committed Roman, and could not easily let his beloved City languish without some compensating vision. 

 So, ever since Augustine, we have been searching for the political order that best realizes the Christian vision. 

 A recent effort in this regard is offered by Adam Gopnik in a spell-binding essay in The New Yorker (Sept.12). (I reprinted it below).

 We were talking about it last night, and we focused our attention on the proposal that maybe the most promising political order would be one in which individuals feel free to pick up and leave when they find that conditions become oppressive.

 Karatani argues that this possibility was realized in pre-Athens Greece. He calls it "isonomia."

  “Isonomia”…. the condition of a society in which equal speaks to equal as equal, with none ruled or ruling…Such an order existed around the Ionian Islands of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E., before the rise of Athens.

But I argue that, before we go all "isonomic," we should pause to wonder how individuals can ever know when conditions are sufficiently oppressive to warrant flight.  After all, there is no such thing as unalloyed equality.  Every liberty carries hidden oppression.  Every good brings its bad.  So, how is one to ever know when there is sufficient equality to "compensate" for otherwise oppressive conditions?

(I find R.W. Emerson's argument compelling:  No man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him....As no man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances or talents of men, until he has suffered from the one, and seen the triumph of the other over his own want of the same. )

 Yes, Iceland had its drowning pool, but it also had its Þingvellir. Should the drowning pool be enough to force one to leave Iceland?  If not, then what oppressive condition should be enough?  And how would one know?

The long and short of the matter is that there is no isonomic utopia.  We are stuck in a world that forces us to compromise good with evil at every turn.  

What would Augustine say?

Bill Washabaugh is a retired professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  

THE ROOT CAUSE

Is Evangelization the road to a moral society?  A warning is necessary.

The New Testament contains anti-Jewish statements that could lead to hate crimes, as we know in the Holocaust.  

At Dachau Concentration camp in Germany

The New Testament is advertised as the ‘Word of God.’  Communications experts hired by oil companies couldn’t have done a better job of selling a lie.  As seminal experts in political propaganda, Gospel writers accused their rivals in the 1^st century Jewish community of killing Jesus of Nazareth, a crime committed by Roman occupiers and their government collaborators. 

The Jesus story turns to Deicide after he is officially declared Divine centuries later.  Ironically, in the synoptic Gospels Jesus makes it clear that Caesar is not God.  “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  (Mark 12:17)  Could this be a reason the Romans took Jesus out?

A quote from the Gospel of Matthew is a sample of anti-Jewish propaganda.  After Pilate the Roman Governor declared himself innocent of Jesus’ crucifixion, “the whole people said in reply, ‘His blood be on us and our children.’ ”  (Mt. 27:24) The Gospel of John says the ‘Jews’ (‘the whole people’) demanded crucifixion. (Jn. 19)

Sister Edith Stein

What were the consequences?  Carmelite nun Edith Stein wrote to Pius Xll to protest the murder of Jews in the concentration camps.  He did nothing.  Sister Edith Stein was executed at Auschwitz April 9, 1942.

Liberal Christians find it easy to blow off all of this.  Their attitude is not to take the Gospels seriously.  The Holocaust happened a long time ago. Evangelicals depend on their own interpretations of the Gospels to support their political agenda.

But we still experience anti-Jewish crimes.  It is always time to look at the root cause.  October 4^th and 5^th is Yom Kippur, the days of atonement, an opportunity for Christians to discuss root causes over Grandma Ida’s chicken soup, make atonement and spread the truth.

 

SOURCES

Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, Harper One, 2014.  John Dominic Crossan,  Who Killed Jesus,  Harper, San Francisco, 1995

 

 

 

The Working Catholic: Too Much Talk by Bill Droel

 

A book discussion group is a plus for a neighborhood. In fact, any neighborhood with several such groups likely has a strong social fabric. However, a discussion group is mistaken to think it is social action--even if its selections are current affairs. A small group gathers for breakfast after the 9 A.M. Mass.  Its regulars share parish comings-and-goings and the latest on clergy shenanigans around the country.  The breakfast club certainly yields some mutual support but it is not an example of church improvement. A firm’s young lawyers gather on Friday for drinks. They talk about cases, judges, legal trends and office culture. The Friday social group is beneficial to its participants but they are not influencing the policies of their firm or the justice system in their town.

Eitan Hersh, a young professor at Tufts University, is interested in electoral politics. He keeps up with opinion polls, commentaries and surveys, plus he conducts some social science experiments and interviews grass-roots activists. He reaches a provocative conclusion: Citizens who volunteer for electoral campaigns also spend time watching and reading the news. They converse with friends about politics. However, “the opposite is not true… Those who spend a lot of time-consuming politics are not participating actively in politics at all.” Among those “who consume news every day, most report belonging to zero organizations.” They care about following politics and exhibit “a growing sophistication in talking about elections” and such. They simply don’t care quite enough to participate beyond voting. And even when it comes to voting, they are more motivated by a presidential candidate than they are by policy changes or by midterm campaigns.

Hersh, in a fascinating book Politics Is for Power (Scribner, 2020), criticizes these political junkies or political hobbyists. Their pseudo-engagement actually “hinders the pursuit of political power.”

Hersh, with convincing examples, describes the alternative, which he calls deep canvassing or simply power politics. These are people who are “not following political drama or debating issues,” but are serious about “winning people over.” Their method is eliciting stories and sincerely listening. They do not recite a script heavy on issues. These change agents (who exist on the right and left) do not focus on one-off events or “on issues and ideological purity.” They are prepared for “slow and steady progress.” For them, power is not a topic, “it’s the goal.”

Hersh is aware that effective public conversations are inherently awkward. They do not add up to a tidy political parable. This style is an exercise in calculated vulnerability. It is respectful of differences and thus has the potential to build trust.

In several asides Hersh shares research conclusions. Half of non-voters (except perhaps in a presidential election) are college graduates yet they are the group more likely to consume political news. Among the non-voters, half later claim that they voted. Big donors to electoral campaigns are not as interested in issues as they are in connecting with political insiders and other donors at, for example, celebrity events. Small donors are attracted by ideology and “provocative appeals.” Men are more interested in politics than women, but women are more likely to vote.

In another aside (one that warrants a full chapter) Hersh applies his thesis to religion. He explores the popular distinction between spiritual and religious. It is similar, he says, as the distinction between those well-informed on politics but shallow in their political behavior and those with grass-roots political involvement. The spiritual types can include those who know plenty about their denomination. But their behavior foregoes a commitment to communal or institutional settings. The longer-haul religious types experience the same awkwardness as those involved in real politics. “It takes a certain maturity to find God in the person sitting next to you” during worship, Hersh concludes.

By several measures U.S. Catholicism is in decline. Its leaders often describe their desired transition to a renewed Catholicism as one of evangelization or, to use their jargon term, the new evangelization. But what does that mean? In some parishes the Bible study group is considered new evangelization. In other parishes it means a refresher course in dogma. These are good activities, but lacking outward action they are not effective evangelization.

 Back to Hersh: Churches could channel people’s energy into productive “forms of collective action.” But they “do not typically have a serious vision or resources” to help their faithful members “act differently.” The congregation, as should be expected, has meaningful worship. But its other efforts are heavy on socializing and light on truly listening to those who are spiritual but not religious. 

It is not a simple pivot from talk to evangelizing action because, as in the political realm, people have scant experience crafting a story of their life and eliciting the story of another person’s life. A possible exception might be those worshipers and those citizens who have benefited from a 12-step program. To be continued…

Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a free newsletter on faith and work.