NEWLY POSTED BUSH ATROCITIES ARTICLE 10
"This Republican Party of
Theocracy is derived from the two Greek words Qeo/j(Theos) meaning "God" and kra/tein (cratein) meaning "to rule." Theocracy is the civil rule of God, or the belief in government by divine guidance.
The powerful Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, Tom DeLay (R-TX) embodies government by divine guidance:
He [God] is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for a biblical worldview in everything that I do and everywhere I am. He is training me.
Tom DeLay represents an ultraconservative religious movement seeking to impose a narrow theological agenda on secular society. Chip Berlet and Margaret Quigley, senior analysts at Political Research Associates, have named this movement the theocratic right:
The predominantly Christian leadership envisions a religiously-based authoritarian society; therefore we prefer to describe this movement as the "theocratic right."
Television preacher Pat Robertson sent out a memo to his political organization in 1986 calling on his followers to "Rule the world for God." That call to arms sums up the goals of the theocratic right, and explains their Congressional leadership which suspends the basic rules of Democracy: all that matters is winning, because it is for God. The ends justify the means.
This web site explores the narrow theological agenda that the theocratic right is imposing on secular society. Twenty-five years ago it targeted the Republican Party as the vehicle through which it could advance its agenda. Today it has extraordinary power in the
This movement values guns and the death penalty. It values the rich at the expense of the poor. It favors corporations at the expense of individuals. It seeks to eliminate virtually all regulations that protect the environment, worker safety, and public health.
It opposes international treaties and the United Nations. In his book The New World Order, Pat Robertson accused Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and the first President George Bush of being agents for Satan because they supported international groups of nations such as the United Nations.
In an effort to fulfill the dominionist belief in the manifest destiny of "Christian" nations, the theocratic right values an aggressive foreign policy. And It claims that the principle of separation of church and state is "a myth."
It is possessed of absolute moral righteousness. It tolerates no dissent.
The theocratic right is not a conservative movement. It is striving to radically change the status quo. From a training manual of the theocratic right:
We will not try to reform the existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them, and eventually destroy them.
Christian Coalition Rates the U.S. Senate, 2004
As portrayed in the graph below, the The graph shows how often members of the U.S. Senate voted with or against Christian Coalition supported bills. Republicans are red, Democrats are blue. Forty-one One Democrat received a score of 100% -- Zell Miller, (D-GA) who was in the national spotlight when he spoke at the Republican convention. Occasionally, a Democrat comes from the theocratic right, but it is the exception. Now that Zell Miller has retired, he will become a regular contributor to the Fox News Channel, which has been dubbed "Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism." Only three Senate Republicans are in the 60% column. They are Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins from |
To see Senate scorecards produced by the League of Conservation Voters, a consortium of environmental organizations, compared to the scorecards produced by three organizations that promote the theocratic right -- the Christian Coalition, the Family Research Council, and the Eagle Forum -- click here. (These tables were provided by Glenn Scherer, October, 2004.)
Do you know these people?
| | They are the seven highest ranking Republican Senators in the Every one of them received a scorecard of 100% from Christian Coalition. That means they voted with Christian Coalition 100% of the time. They all received scores of 0 to 8% from the League of Conservation Voters -- a consortium of environmental groups. How were people representing such an extreme ideological point of view elected to the top positions in the Republican Party? The leaders of the Republican Party were chosen by their colleagues who share their values. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Christianization of the Republican Party: In Their Own Words
Christianization of the Republican Party, an article from The Christian Statesman, claims,
Once dismissed as a small regional movement, Christian conservatives have become a staple of politics nearly everywhere. Christian conservatives now hold a majority of seats in 36% of all Republican Party state committees (or 18 of 50 states), plus large minorities in 81% of the rest, double their strength from a decade before.
The twin surges of Christians into GOP ranks in the early 1980s and early 1990s have begun to bear fruit, as naive, idealistic recruits have transformed into savvy operatives and leaders, building organizations, winning leadership positions, fighting onto platform committees, and electing many of their own to public office.
The Christian Statesman is a publication of the National Reform Association. Who is the National Reform Association?
The mission of the National Reform Association is to maintain and promote in our national life the Christian principles of civil government, which include, but are not limited to, the following:
Jesus Christ is Lord in all aspects of life, including civil government.
Jesus Christ is, therefore, the Ruler of Nations, and should be explicitly confessed as such in any constitutional documents. The civil ruler is to be a servant of God, he derives his authority from God and he is duty-bound to govern according to the expressed will of God.
The civil government of our nation, its laws, institutions, and practices must therefore be conformed to the principles of Biblical law as revealed in the Old and New Testaments.
The terms "Christian Conservative" are misnomers. Many Christian leaders believe the theocratic right is an aberration of Christianity. And the movement is anything but conservative. One can see from the record budget deficit that the theocratic right cares nothing for fiscal discipline, a traditional conservative Republican value. In fact they seek radical change which appears to include bankrupting the federal government and shifting responsibility for welfare and education to the churches.
It is Dominion We Are After
Author and educator George Grant was Executive Director of Coral Ridge Ministries for many years. He explains in The Changing of the Guard, Biblical Principles for Political Action:
Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.
But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.
It is dominion we are after.
World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less... Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the
How did this happen?
Voter apathy is the key to the phenomenal ascent of the theocratic right in the
With the apathy that exists today, a small, well-organized minority can influence the selection of candidates to an astonishing degree.
Pat Robertson wrote those words in The Millennium, 1990, and it has been a key organizing principle of the theocratic right ever since.
Pat Robertson tells us who makes up that "well-organized minority." It includes only Christians who share his point of view. As he said on his television program, the 700 Club: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists, and this and that and the other thing. Nonsense! I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." (Pat Robertson, the Most Dangerous Man in America?, p. 149.)
"The apathy of other Americans can become a blessing and advantage to Christians," wrote Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell in 1989, in America's Providential History, a popular textbook for Christian schools and the Christian homeschool movement.
If just 10% of all Christians in America today woke up and realized how easy it is, got involved consistently for the long haul, it would not take long to reform America completely. (p.266)
For the authors, the term "Christian" refers uniquely to people who share their "Christian" nation worldview. The word "reform" is key. It means reforming the
Where do we go from here?
The most important issue of the moment, and the least recognized, is the Senate filibuster. The only leverage that Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans have left is the filibuster. If the Republican leadership removes the filibuster then the theocratic right will have a carte blanche to appoint Scalia clones to the Supreme Court. If two or three Scalia clones are added to the court, the theocratic right will control all three branches of the
How to Beat the Christian Right, Part I, by Frederick Clarkson, DailyKos, March 20, 2005:
The answer to the power of the Christian Right is electoral power of our own. No excuses. Many of us have tended to abandon this cornerstone of citizenship in favor of other things. It is time to get our priorities strait. Less talk, more action. Less entertainment, more citizen involvement. Less TV and sports. More electoral politics. Do we want the theocrats to win? More electoral politics.
If we believe that democracy is a good thing, we need to learn to get very good at it. We need to be better at it than those who would destroy it.
While a record number of people voted in the 2004 elections, there are still 100 million eligible voters who didn't vote. The theocratic right began to seriously mobilize politically in the
The political momentum of the 2004 election needs to be sustained. The theocratic right has historically targeted midterm elections because voter turnout is much smaller than in Presidential elections. Those who favor Democracy and a pluralistic society need to be passionate about saving our Constitution, and they need to be involved in politics. Legislators representing the theocratic right can be replaced in the 2006 elections, but it will take hard, sustained work, and lots of passion.
And traditional Republicans need to wake up. George Bush was re-elected because he hid behind moderates. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, spoke at the Republican Convention about how the Republican Party is tolerant and inclusive. His speech demonstrates that this country values tolerance and diversity.
But the theocratic right is not a movement of tolerance. In the words of the Christian Coalition field director, Bill Thomson, the "leftist" foes should be destroyed:
You're going to run over them. Get around them, run over the top of them, destroy them - whatever you need to do so that God's word is the word that is being practiced in Congress, town halls and state legislatures. That's your job.
Christine Todd Whitman, former Governor of New Jersey who favors environmental protections, stepped down as director of the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency that has become, under the Bush administration, an advocate for polluters. Strangely, after she left the EPA in frustration, she then went on to lead the Bush re-election campaign in
Senator Arlen Specter, (R-PA) is considered a moderate even though he received an 80% scorecard from Christian Coalition. This high scorecard from the theocratic right was not enough to protect him from the RINO hunters, a group dedicated to purging the Republican Party of moderates. They tried to defeat him in a difficult primary campaign.
Specter, a pro-choice Republican, has supported Bush's anti-choice judicial nominees 100% of the time. In order to become Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Specter has promised that he will continue to support all of the President's nominations. It is time to educate moderate Republicans about the forces driving their Party.
And we need to stop using terms such as "Christian," "conservative" and most of all "moral," and start calling it what it is: theocracy.