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February 10, 2012
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Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
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Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
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Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
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Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
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Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
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Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
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Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
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January 17, 2012
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January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
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January 11, 2012
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Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
Oct. 17, 2006
/ 25 Tishrei, 5767
THEO-PANIC!
By
Rich Lowry
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In the 1650s, Oliver Cromwell governed England with a cadre of major generals, establishing a kind of low-church Protestant theocracy. Catholic priests were chased from the country, and Anglican clergy were suppressed. Censorship and blue laws were tightened.
What does Cromwell's rule have to do with contemporary American political life? If your answer is anything other than "nothing," you are probably in the grip of the "theo-panic" that is sweeping precincts of the American commentariat. They warn that America is beset by raging theocrats seeking to overturn our liberal democracy.
Otherwise respectable historians, Kevin Phillips and Garry Wills, have made this charge. It is a staple of The New York Times op-ed page. It has launched a slew of books with dire warnings: by Michelle Goldberg ("high tide for theocratic fever"), by James Rubin ("an effort to change America into a Christian theocracy") and by Damon Linker ("the end of secular politics").
The theocracy charge relies mainly on blowing Christian conservative positions out of proportion. Do Christian conservatives oppose the public funding of embryo-destructive stem-cell research? Well, then, Calvin's Geneva can't be far behind. Never mind that in opposing such funding, they are usually supporting the status quo. It's a little like saying that because Democrats oppose cuts in Medicaid, they favor a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Purveyors of the theo-panic love to exaggerate the influence of the bizarre Christian Reconstructionists who actually want an American theocracy. As New York Times religion writer Peter Steinfels notes in a review of the spate of new books, Christian Reconstructionists play "a greater role in the writings of the religious right's critics than they ever have in the wider evangelical world." He notes that the flagship evangelical journal, Christianity Today, almost never shows up in these books, because, inconveniently, it is "moderate, reflective and self-questioning."
National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru has pointed out that you can take all Christian conservative positions including far-fetched ones like banning sodomy and contraception and if they happened overnight they "would merely turn the clock back to the late 1950s. That may be a very bad idea, but the America of the 1950s was not a theocracy."
Writing in First Things, Ross Douthat explains a problem with the theo-panic, which is that the influence of institutional religion is at a low ebb: "No prelate wields the kind of authority that Catholic bishops once enjoyed over urban voters, no denomination can claim the kind of influence that once belonged to the old WASP mainline, and the evangelical Protestantism that figures so prominently in anti-theocracy tracts is distinguished precisely by its lack of any centralized ecclesiastical government."
The truth about Christian conservatives is that they support public-policy goals infused with a certain view of morality. This isn't unusual. The greatest reform movement of the 20th century the civil-rights movement was explicitly Christian. Today, the opposition to torture is based on a moral view that trumps all practical considerations (the inviolable dignity of the human person). A moral sense is often behind the liberal opposition to the Iraq War and to the death penalty. No one in American politics says, "I believe this is immoral and therefore should become the policy of the United States."
Some of the anti-theocracy writers claim that what sets Christian conservatives apart is that their advocacy is explicitly religious. But most of the time it isn't. Take the high-profile issue of abortion. It doesn't take any particular religious faith to think that embryos in the womb are humans deserving protection the key claim of abortion opponents. But their critics don't want to hear it.
For such self-professed advocates of reasoned discourse, they show an appalling tendency to want to shut down the other side with their swear word of "theocracy." They are emotional, self-righteous and close-minded. They are, in short, everything they accuse Christian conservatives of being. When the theo-panic passes, maybe a few of them will regret their hysteria.
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© 2006 King Features Syndicate
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