Much has happened in the wake of the first Justice Sunday, a national rally for theocracy led by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and James Dobson of Focus on the Family in April. The showdown over the nuclear option came and went. Several judges the theocrats liked were confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. Religious progressives have begun to organize. And now, with more federal judgeships up for consideration, including at least one opening on the Supreme Court, Justice Sunday II is planned for August 14th in Nashville.

I wrote a bit about all this yesterday. And today I found an analysis of the first Justice Sunday, titled “On the Brink of Theocracy,” written by Reverend Carlton W. Veazey, president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. The Religious Coalition “is an alliance of national organizations from major faiths, affiliates throughout the country, and the national Clergy for Choice Network, Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom, and The Black Church Initiative. While our members are religiously and theologically diverse, they are unified in the commitment to preserve reproductive choice as a basic part of religious liberty.”

Here are a few excerpts from Veazy’s analysis, but it is worth reading the whole thing — and spreading it widely. This is a time when some democrats are making noises about abandoning Roe vs. Wade. It is a view not shared by thousands of mainstream religious leaders who are prochoice, prosexuality education, and certain theocratic demagogues not withstanding, obviously pro-faith.

“Progressives who think warnings about ‘theocracy’ are an exaggeration should take a closer look at ‘Justice Sunday: Filibustering People of Faith,’ Veazy wrote. The event was “beamed into conservative churches across the country: a political rally from a large, comfortable mega-church in Louisville, with a middle-class audience listening with rapt attention to political operatives who self-identify as religious leaders-and at the bottom of the screen, streaming video with the photos, names and phone numbers of targeted U.S. senators. The visual message was clear: the church is dominant over the state and senators should toe the line on eliminating the filibuster and confirming Bush judges or pay the price.”

“There is a right way and a wrong way to engage religious voices in the public square. I believe “Justice Sunday” reflects the latter and highlights several disturbing trends… As a Baptist minister for more than 40 years with a profound respect for religious freedom and pluralism, I fear it will get worse. In fact, I think we are teetering on the brink of theocracy and the Christian Right could conceivably use the battle over the judiciary and weakening support for reproductive rights to push us over the edge….”

“One of the “Justice Sunday” speakers, Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary… believes there is only one correct interpretation of the Bible — his — and he equated the inerrancy of his interpretation of the Bible with the inerrancy of the Constitution, based on his biblical beliefs. In bringing the Bible and the Constitution together, fundamentalists like Mohler are moving toward mainstreaming their biblically based interpretation of the Constitution. Judges would be held to the standard of biblical teachings, as interpreted by fundamentalists. I don’t doubt the sincerity of Mohler and other fundamentalist ministers who share this view that the Bible is literally true and they alone know what it means, but they are on dangerous ground when they then suggest that they alone also know what the Constitution means-and that anyone who thinks differently is anti-Christian. Christians have strong differences of opinion on the meaning of scriptures and most of us don’t want to see a particular brand of Christianity held up as the only real Christianity. We certainly don’t want a particular brand of Christianity enacted as the law of the land.”

“Reproductive justice is an issue on which they hope to divide and conquer progressives.”

“In my view, the intensifying battle over the courts has brought progressives face-to-face with the need to take a firm stand on the morality of reproductive rights. Not only must we overcome the polarization generated by the Christian Right, we also must find a way to come together in compassionate concern for women and families. Speaking as a minister, I believe that the realities of women’s lives must be included in any vision of a moral society that honors individual dignity and worth. I believe that women, and men, cannot live in dignity and equality if they cannot render for themselves their most intimate family decisions.”

[Crossposted at Talk to Action]

The Christian Right has always sought cast their opponents as “opponents of faith,” “anti-Christian,” “secular humanists,” and more recently, “secular fundamentalists.” But the tactic has moved to center stage in Washington politics as the battle over the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court heats up again.

The theocratic Christian Right, this time led by the Family Research Council are portraying opponents of President Bush’s judicial nominations — as well as the Supreme Court — as opponents of “people of faith” in announcing Justice Sunday II, a rally for theocratic judicial nominees to be held in a church in Nashville on August 14th. The rally, led by such veterans of the Christian Right as James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly and Chuck Colson will be simulcast to churches and they hope on cable networks.

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council and the principal organizer of the event told The New York Times that the rally will focus on “the court’s hostility toward religion and Christianity in particular.”

The nadir of the Christian Right’s rhetorical assault on the religious character of their fellow Americans was the first Justice Sunday in April. At the time fliers for the event claimed that those who oppose the Christian Right’s most extreme judicial nominations were “against people of faith.”

“As the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated in almost every recent election, the courts have become the last great bastion of liberalism,” Perkins wrote on the Family Research Council web site. “For years, he continued, “activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups like the A.C.L.U., have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedom.”

The ugly attack on the religious faith of the opponents of the theocratic right, drew outrage and sparked a mobilization in response.

The New York Times editorialized against what they called Bill Frist’s “religious war”:

“Right-wing Christian groups and the Republican politicians they bankroll have done much since the last election to impose their particular religious views on all Americans. But nothing comes close to the shameful declaration of religious war by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, over the selection of judges for federal courts…. Frist is determined to get judges on the federal bench who are loyal to the Republican fringe and, he hopes, would accept a theocratic test on decisions.”

Numerous editorial writers and columnists agreed.

I wrote at the time: “The Christian Right has framed it’s battles as against the supposed religion of “secular humanism,” but this was always a straw man. It was and is a war of agression being waged by a certain coalition of rightist Christians who hold to overlapping notions of Christian theocracy. They share a common cause in their desire to demolish the wall of separation between church and state, and to be able to utilize taxpayer money and public institutions and infrastructure to build their movement to a position of unassailable and permanent power in the United States.”

Once again, the theocratic Christian Right is making a big show of conflating the notion of “people of faith” with membership in he Christian Right of the Republican party. The rhetoric is a tad less strident, but the message is the same.

But the preach-fest of last time has been replaced with a more dramatic production, that will include three country music stars. Notably Lee Greenwood, the singer-songwriter best known for his patriotic hit, “God Bless the USA.” This song has been an anthem at Christian Right rallies for years, and no doubt it will be the emotional highlight of what we can expect will be a carefully choreographed program.

Like last time, religious leaders who do not share the theocratic agenda of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and his allies can be expected to be outraged. The first to speak out was the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of The Interfaith Alliance:

“Here we go again!” Rev. Gaddy said. “And, this time the imagery and the implications of the message advanced by leaders of the religious right are more offensive, sacrilegious, and undemocratic than those so integral to Justice Sunday I.”

“Right now, the most serious threats to the fundamental rights and liberties in our nation are not coming from a lack of God’s interest but from a small group of religious right leaders who have assumed the mantle of national religious authorities and seek to impose on the whole nation and its constitution their particular views on religion, the courts, politics, and justice.”

Its my sense that the Christian Right’s power is cresting, and that with the fortunes of President Bush and the GOP plummeting in the polls, if they want to get more theocrats nominated and confirmed to the federal bench, they will have to pull out the stops. This is just the beginning.

Marci Hamilton, a constitutional lawyer has a fine commentary on Alternet in which she attacks the bogus history undergirding Christian Nationalism, one of the ideological building blocks of the theocratic Christian Right. She is understandably concerned about the clout the Christian Right will exercise in the selection of a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Here is some of what she wrote:

“This country was not founded on a single religious viewpoint, as the far right would have it, but rather on a wide diversity of religious beliefs. The current far right believers are reminiscent of the Puritans who settled what would become Massachusetts and who established their religion as the religion of the colony (and then the state). The Puritans believed in the right to believe whatever one wanted, so long as dissenters left their cities and communities. They believed in a religious culture controlled by the majority. Rhode Island was founded because of the Puritans’ rank intolerance.”

“Many of the dissenting Christians in Massachusetts were Baptists, whose charismatic preachers, including the Revs. Isaac Backus and John Leland, preached the separation of church and state. Backus declared that the “notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever” while Leland called established religions, ‘all of them, anti-Christocracies.’”

“Yet, far right Christians today, many of them Baptists, have no respect for disestablishment principles. They are intent on removing barriers between government and religion, and, in fact, making government the servant to religion. They want their religious messages on courthouse walls, their theology in the science classrooms, their prayers in public schools, and their values to mandate constitutional policy. They even argue that Protestants are a majority and therefore have the right to have the government deliver their religious messages. This is their agenda for the next Supreme Court Justice.”

I learned by reading the tag line on Hamilton’s piece about her new book — which sounds like a must read. Here is a bit more about it from the publisher’s web site:

“God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law challenges the pervasive assumption that all religious conduct deserves constitutional protection. While religious conduct provides many benefits to society, it is not always benign. The thesis of the book is that anyone who harms another person should be governed by the laws that govern everyone else — and truth be told, religion is capable of great harm.”

“This may not sound like a radical proposition, but it has been under assault since the 1960s. The majority of academics and many religious organizations would construct a fortress around religious conduct that would make it extremely difficult to prosecute child abuse by clergy, medical neglect of children by faith healers, and other socially intolerable behaviors. This book intends to change the course of the public debate over religion by bringing to the public’s attention the tactics of religious entities to avoid the law and therefore harm others. God vs. the Gavel will bring much-needed balance to the contemporary, heated debate about religion and its role in society.”

Tip o’ the hat to Jesus Politics for alerting me to the post on Mainstream Baptist about Hamilton’s article on Alternet. These blogs are increasingly important sources of information and analysis in the struggle with the theocratic Christian Right.

Our Judges here at FrederickClarkson.com have been toiling, sometimes late into the night, seeking that certain someone who meets the High Standards of Theocrat of the Week. We were, as always, richly blessed with candidates. But we are pleased to announce our Theocrat of the Week: U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA).

Santorum surged ahead of the pack by sticking to his guns in blaming liberals for the worldwide scandal of serial child rape and abuse by priests of the Catholic Church, and the decades long cover-up by bishops and other higher ups. “While it is no excuse for this scandal,” he said three years ago, “it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

The Boston Globe — the newspaper that broke the story of the scandal and won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, asked Sen. Santorum about his comments — and he repeated the charge: “‘The basic liberal attitude in that area…. has an impact on people’s behavior,’ Santorum said in an interview yesterday at the Capitol.”

“‘If you have a world view that I’m describing [about Boston]…. that affirms alternative views of sexuality, that can lead to a lot of people taking it the wrong way,’ Santorum said.”

It will take a broad theocratic coalition to smash the wall of separation between church and state and — Catholic priests and leaders are integral to its success. Its smart to shift blame for serial child rape by priests and cover-up by bishops to the liberals and stay on message — even if it risks Santorum’s reelection campaign for the Senate and his possible bid for the GOP presidential nomination. Santorum is a Loyal Theocrat to be willing to sacrifice his career for The Cause.

Indeed, his response outraged Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) who went to the Senate floor and stated:

“Rick Santorum owes an immediate apology to the tragic, long-suffering victims of sexual abuse and their families in Boston, in Massachusetts, in Pennsylvania and around this country. His outrageous and offensive comments — which he had the indecency to repeat yesterday — blamed the people of Boston for the depraved behavior of sick individuals who stole the innocence of children in the most horrible way imaginable… Boston bashing might be in vogue with some Republicans, but Rick Santorum’s statements are beyond the pale.”

Does Santorum really still believe what he said? Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory wanted to check. “‘It’s an open secret that you have Harvard University and MIT that tend to tilt to the left in terms of academic biases,’ said Robert Traynham, [a]… Santorum aide. ‘I think that’s what the senator was speaking to.’”

“Of course,” McCrory writes. “The whole thing is MIT’s fault. Why didn’t we realize this sooner? Maybe the Globe should give its Pulitzer Prize back because it failed to get to the root cause of the scandal: Cambridge-based rocket science professors.”

But in the face of the backlash and ridicule, Traynham is already backpedaling — and risking Santorum’s coveted Theocrat of the Week award. The Associated Press reports that Traynam says “his boss recognizes that the church abuse scandal was not just in Boston, but all over the country…. [and that Santorum] ‘was speaking to a broader cultural argument about the need for everyone to take these issues very, very seriously.’”

On my way out of town for the day, here are a few items worth noting.

Sneak Preview: Religious Right Watch a new blog by Scott Isebrand, officially launches on Monday.

“This web project is essentially a blog,” he writes, “but, in addition to its regularly-posted news, narrative, and commentary, RRW will offer helpful resources, such as a glossary (just what is the difference between an Evangelical and a Fundamentalist, anyway?) and links to important perspectives and information concerning the Christian Right.”

Scott, one of my colleagues in the Talk to Action project, has assembled an excellent set of resources — key organizations, blogs, and background readings. He has picked well among the many, and for that reason alone, makes Religious Right Watch an important resource to bookmark. I am looking forward to his posts.

Bruce Prescott, another TTA leader, flags a report about and appearance by Richard Land of the Southern Baptists Convention on televagelist D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Hour. Land continues the war against the judiciary, claiming that the U.S. is now run “by the judges” and “for the judges,” who violate the original intentions of the founding fathers “under the guise of separation of church and state.”

In case you haven’t already seen it, Max Blumenthal has a chillingly hilarious report in The Nation about the secret report commissioned by Ken Tomlinson chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on alleged liberal bias in public broadcasting.

“The Mann report,” Blumenthal concludes,” may be one of the strangest documents ever produced by the federal government; however, it is not totally without value. Though it may be botched as an indictment of liberal media bias, it inadvertently offers an unfiltered glimpse into the recesses of the conservative mind.”

Chuck Currie flags a local newspaper editorial on the arson and hate graffiti at a United Church of Christ congregation in Staunton, Virginia yesterday. Currie writes: “The words are strong and are a gift to all that have been touched by this story.”

Hate crimes and violence in America go on all the time. The latest outrage is directed against a Virginia congregation of the United Church of Christ — whose General Synod endorsed gay marriage this week. Here is a report on that — and a few others from the past few days.

Thanks to blogger and UCC seminarian Chuck Currie for alerting the blogosphere to a vicious hate crime. Someone set fire to a UCC church in Viginia today. A local newspaper reports that “The outside of the church was vandalized with anti-gay messages and a declaration that United Church of Christ members were sinners. The graffiti’s message appeared to be a reference to the national church’s decision earlier this week to endorse gay and lesbian marriages. The United Church of Christ’s General Synod voted Monday in Atlanta to approve a resolution that is accepting of gay and lesbian marriages but is not binding on local congregations. A member of the congregation discovered the graffiti Saturday morning when he stopped by to mow the grass. He went into the church building, and when he opened the sanctuary there was still a small fire.”

“I have no idea,” Currie writers, “whether or not the congregation at St. John’s Reformed UCC were in favor of the resolution passed by the General Synod of the United Church of Christ supporting gay marriage or not. That is irrelevant.”

“It is tragic that whoever committed this hate crime did so because they were misled into believing that supporting legal equality for gays and lesbians is sinful. It simply is not.”

“The rhetoric of the religious right and their allies in the political right, Currie continues, “who claim that homosexuality is a sin — must take some of the responsibility for the increase in hate crimes such as this one. Albert Mohler, the prominent Southern Baptist leader, has even compared legal and legislative decisions in support of gay marriage to the attacks against the United States on September 11th. People hear that kind of hateful preaching and believe they are acting as faithful Christians as they torch churches or beat up gays.”

The United Church News further reports that “two other churches in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley were vandalized near the time the United Church of Christ’s Stillspeaking Initiative began running television ads welcoming all people, including gays and lesbians.”

Contributions to help the church can be sent to:

St. John’s Reformed United Church of Christ
1515 Arbor Hill Rd
Staunton, Va 24401

The Associated Press is also reporting that two, apparently unrelated black churches were burned and heavily damaged in Tennnessee, as was a mosque in Indiana. The latter is being investigated as a hate crime.

Meanwhile, a clinic in Palm Beach, Florida was closed following a serious arson attack on Monday. The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinal reports that the arson follows a similar attack last year at this time. Terrorists often pick symbolic dates for thier crimes. In this case, the Palm Beach arsonist torches clinics on or about the fourth of July. Domestic terrorism aimed at abortion providers has been going on for a long time, inflamed in part by the rhetoric of the leaders of the Christian Right, in much the same fashion that hate is directed against others.

Hate crimes and domestic terrorism take many forms. Sometimes that hate is directed against people because of their race, thier religion, their sexual orientation, or for excercising thier constitutional right to receive or provide reproductive health services to women.

It is time to extinguish the fires of hate.

[Crossposted at Talk to Action]

When I published Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy in 1997, some thought using the word “theocracy” was a bit out there.

Times have changed, and the word has entered mainstream discourse as Christian Right political leaders have made tremendous gains, and have been bolder in surfacing their theocratic intentions. What is remarkable to me is that much of the book remains quite fresh and relevant. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. One of the main points of the book itself is that the struggle between theocracy and democracy is one of the central themes of American history.

I plan to base several pieces on material from the book over the next few weeks. But first I want to tell the story of the title of the book, since not everyone knows it.

In the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson was the Democratic candidate for president. And of course it was well known that he would do all that he could to continue the process of the disestablishment of the official churches that had been set in motion by the ratification of the Constitution. So in the course of the campaign, Jefferson was vilified by the established clergy and the media outlets associated with the Federalist Party. They ran a character assassination campaign aimed at his religious views. Because, when he was president Washington’s ambassador to France he hung out with the philosophers of the Enlightenment, so he was labeled an “atheist” and a “French infidel” and of course, “anti-Christ.” And so on.

Jefferson scholar Charles Sanford wrote: “Numerous sermons were preached warning if Jefferson was elected he would discredit religion, overthrow the church and destroy the Bible.” When the news came that Jefferson had been elected, people in New England actually hid their family Bibles, certain that agents of Jefferson would come to seize them.

Jefferson did not answer the many public attacks on his religious character made during the campaign, believing that it was useless to argue about such things in the newspapers. In fact, Jefferson was a religious man. He was a member of his local Anglican church, although theologically, he was an early Unitarian.

But in a private letter to his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush, he discussed these attacks, which he understood were central to the meaning of religious freedom, pluralism and religious bigotry in the young nation. He wrote in part, “I have sworn on the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” This sentence is so central to Jefferson’s thought, career and legacy that it is engraved inside the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.

Today’s Democrats could probably take a lesson or two from the founder of the party. He didn’t pander to the Christian Right of his day, and he won the presidency twice.

It comes as no surprise that the Washington, DC-based Christian Right lobby — Family Research Council (FRC) has a difficult time respecting other people’s religious traditions. It was the FRC that declared that those who oppose President George Bush’s nominees for federal judgeships are “against people of faith” in connection with the Christian Right’s widely denounced “Justice Sunday” event in April.

Anyway, this week, in response to the United Church of Christ’s stand endorsing marriage equality in the church and in the nation, the FRC unsurprisingly took exception. What was surprising was their line of argument and thier failure to harshly denounce the decision in the way they normally denounce homosexuality in general and marriage equality in particular:

“Ironically, this historic Congregationalist denomination, whose New England churches played a role in the American Revolution, also violated their democratic traditions in the vote of their 884-member General Synod. ‘If we had put it to a vote of the people in the pews, it would have failed overwhelmingly,’ declared the Rev. Brett Becker, a spokesman for more conservative churches in the UCC.”

And what does Becker’s opinion (Becker was a sponsor of a competing, losing resolution) have to do with democracy? The United Church of Christ’s General Synod voted for this resolution by about 80%. The delegates to this body are elected. Whats more, the resolution they passed is not binding on individual congregations because the polity of the UCC respects the right to difference. Had the Synod passed Becker’s resolution would the FRC claim that the vote was a violation of the denomination’s democratic tradition? Not likely.

Let’s look a the question of democracy in Christian denominations a little further. When was the last time any of the pronouncements of Southern Baptist Convention or the Catholic Church were put to a vote of the entire membership? (How, for example, do we think that the Pope’s encyclical on birth control would fare in a plebiscite? How about the Southen Baptist Convention’s doctrine that women are to be in submission to thier husbands?) In fact, there is no Christian denomination — or any major religious grouping I can think of that puts such matters to a vote of their national membership.

The UCC, as the Family Research Council acknowledges, has a democratic polity. What they don’t mention is that the UCC has none of the doctrinal police tactics conservatives use in other denominations to enforce their views.

What stands out to me in all this is how muted the Christian Right has been in response to the UCC’s clear and strong stand in favor of marriage equality. From where I sit, I see two related reasons for the Christian Right’s overall silence on this, and for the FRC’s strained and ineffectual response.

One is that the UCC’s endorsement of marriage equality demonstrates that there are many Christians who support this, and that the UCC’s institutional weight and moral authority is more considerable than many may think. You can hear the fear in the FRC’s statement.

Indeed, the descendants of the of the Pilgrims and the Puritans have a long history not only of democracy, but of advances in social justice that were ahead of their time — such as ordaining the first African-American as a minister in 1785; and ordaining the first openly gay minister in 1972.

And as the UCC writes in its list of “firsts,” in 1853 Antoinette Brown was “the first woman since New Testament times ordained as a Christian minister, and perhaps the first woman in history elected to serve a Christian congregation as pastor. At her ordination a friend, Methodist minister Luther Lee, defends ‘a woman’s right to preach the Gospel.’ He quotes the New Testament: ‘There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’”

The other reason the Christian Right is uncharacteristically silent in the face of this historic development is that they do not want to draw any additional media attention to the UCC and UCC president Rev. John Thomas — because they want to define Christianity as representing only their point of view. Quick to denounce marriage equality and homosexuality in general, they are afraid to take on the authentic voice of the oldest Christian tradition in America, a tradition that profoundly informed the development of democracy and representative government in the United States.

This is a signficant retreat by the Christian Right. Just as their claim that the U.S. was founded as a Christian Nation is bogus, they have no standing to criticize the democratic polity of the United Church of Christ. And in the wake of the overwhelming vote of the General Synod and unequivocal language of resolution, the silence of the Christian Right suggests that they understand the weakness of thier position in the face of strong, clear and credible Christian opposition.

This week, we at FrederickClarkson.com, sought to recognize the person who epitomizes the Christian Right’s use of the Declaration of Independence to justify their contemporary views.

The Declaration was, of course a political document used to rally people to rise up in revolt against the King of England. In doing so, the signers invoked the “Creator,” whom they described as “Nature’s God.” Naturally, Christian Right leaders love to emphasize the part about the “Creator” — it sounds like the God of the Book of Genesis that created the heavens and the earth. But sometimes they mumble when they get to the part about “Nature’s God,” because, well, it sounds kinda neo-pagan or maybe even environmentalist.

But we digress.

Our Theocrat of the Week is AMann, a blogger at the far-right MassResestance.com, a virulently anti-gay blog affiliated with the Article 8 Alliance. (This Massachusetts-based organization distinguishes itself by seeking the removal of the majority of justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court who voted in favor of marriage equality last year. They especially don’t like Chief Justice Margaret Marshall.)

To explain how AMann riveted our attention, allow us what may seem like an interminable digression and restatement of stuff we write about all the time around here.

Christian Right leaders such as Pat Robertson, Dr. D. James Kennedy, and of course, David Barton claim that the U.S. was founded as a Christian Nation. When making this claim, they frequently cite the Declaration of Independence because it invokes the “Creator” as the source of rights, and therefore, well its obvious, America was founded as a Christian Nation. Dr. Kennedy brought this up when we were both guests on the NPR program Fresh Air with Terry Gross recently. (What follows is adapted from my reply.)

The Constitution makes no mention of God or of Christianity. In fact, the only mention of religion in the Constitution is in Article VI which proscribes religious tests for public office. What this meant was that one’s religious orientation would not be a factor in determining criteria for public officials and by logical extension, the citizens. Instead of a Christian Nation, we have a nation based on religious equality.

If the framers of the Constitution had wanted to include God and Christianity in the nation’s charter, they certainly could have done so. (Indeed, some of them were also involved in that Nature’s God episode.) But they didn’t — and for very good reasons. This is the conundrum for the Christian Nationalists. Thwarted at every turn, they have been desperate for a Founding Document on which to hang thier hat. The Constitution, the document on which we base our laws, has been no help (Article VI, the First Amendment). Of course the Declaration doesn’t actually support their argument either, but at least it mentions the “Creator” — even though there is that pesky less-than-Orthodox part about “Nature’s God.”

All of which brings us around to our Theocrat of the Week — AMann — who earns the title for staying on message and invoking the Declaration as support for his position even though it is completely irrelevant.

Here is the key quote from his Award Winning blog post:

Monday, July 04, 2005

Thank God for Independence Day

Happy Independence Day!

The Declaration of Independence states that GOD gave us our human and civil rights; they were not invented or granted by courts or rulers. And it states that we, the people, hold the power He gave us through our consent; the ultimate power is not held by the courts, Empress Margaret of Massachusetts, or the senate president.”

(For those not up on the details of Massachusetts politics, Empress Margaret refers to Chief Justice Margaret Marshall of the Supreme Judicial Court. The reference to the senate president, is that it is up to the senate president to call constitutional conventions of the legislature to consider amendments. On the agenda this year is a vote on an amendment that would ban same sex marriages and legalize civil unions. If it passes this fall, it will be sent to the voters for ratification.)

David over at Blue Mass Group called my attention to his timely post about the American Baptist Church — not, as he quickly points out, to be confused with the Southern Baptist Convention. But the ABC, a member of the National Council of Churches, is like all of the mainline protestant denominations grappling with how to develop a contemporary Christian approach to homosexuality.

David reports that the ABC recently held their biennial meeting in Denver where on July 1, the General Secretary, Dr. Roy Medley, delivered a remarkable speech.

“He makes plain,” David writes, “that his personal views are not exactly gay-friendly, but that he values above all the American Baptist traditions of ‘soul freedom’ (meaning the right of every individual to his or her personal relationship with God, with no church-imposed creed or other doctrinal gobbledygook standing between them), radical discipleship, and radical love.” David then points to the part of this speech that struck him.

Here is the part that stood out to me:

“Some today set the principle of soul liberty against the principle of Biblical authority. Baptists have never understood it thus. Our deep commitment to soul liberty is because it is essential to Biblical authority in our lives…. Through soul liberty we recognize God’s own respect for our free will. Through soul liberty we recognize that no one else can answer for us — neither priest, nor preacher, nor creeds or councils. Through soul liberty we honor the primacy of every soul’s encounter with the living God. This is the very heart of what it means to be a Baptist Christian and what the priesthood of all believers means. Our commitment to biblical authority through soul freedom has been precious to us. And it is precious to us now! It doesn’t make our life together easier, but it is essential for radical personal discipleship.”

“That is why American Baptists grant the majority the right to say, ‘This is what we believe’ and also protect the right to speak a minority point of view.”

“Many of us became American Baptists because we saw in this family of faith a profound intertwining of biblical authority with the freedom to explore, examine, and even question. We can testify that coercion in matters of faith does not work…. Other Baptists may have forgotten how precious this soul freedom is. American Baptists; don’t you forget it.”