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.