Theocracy as a Parlor Game April 27, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : Uncategorized , trackback

Psychological literature is chockablock with case histories of people who suffer from irrational fears, and the run-up to midterm elections in a lame-duck presidency is a fine time to add another one to that collection. Some people fear George W. Bush not because his policies keep them up at night, but because the Christianity he brings without guile or apology to an under-dressed public square marks him as the chief scout for what they imagine is a theocracy coming soon to the United States. Anyone trying to confront this fear must come at it on two fronts, the personal and the political.

When a dear friend described this malady to me, my initial reaction was perhaps more sarcastic than it should have been: if George W. Bush is the harbinger of a theocracy, then the American Christian bench isn’t as deep as we sometimes like to think it is. Whatever his merits as president, everything that the current occupant of the Oval Office has said publicly about his faith suggests that it gives him comfort and strength rather than the kind of paint-by-numbers direction his detractors would prefer to be scandalized by. On the evidence available, one may speculate that the unremarkable religious pedigree bequeathed to George W. from his father was revivified some years ago by a recovering alcoholic’s confidence in a Higher Power. One may also suppose that the evangelical Protestant theology of his loving wife helped the president recognize Jesus as that higher power. The point of these speculations is that nothing in the character of this president’s faith implies the kind of fondness for ecclesiastical authority that ought to mark a proper harbinger of theocracy.