More from the American Taliban front...
May 10, 2002

Ugh. Stopped off at the Brothers Judd after finding it on a list of conservative links. I generally enjoy reading people whose views I disagree with, in whole or in part. Generally....

He reviews Christian Faith and Modern Democracy: God and Politics in the Fallen World which, from the glowing comments he gives it, reads as a wish list for Christian derivative of an American Taliban.

Quoting from the text, which is quoted in the blog:

But the democratic movements have become too one-sided or one-dimensional themselves, tying Christianity too closely to liberal democracy and associated structures, such as capitalism, that are not always hospitable to Christian spiritual and moral life and that are not necessarily the best choice for the temporal realm. What has been lost in the democratic age is respect for the hierarchical principle of authority and its beneficial effects in ordering and elevating the human soul.

I've heard that one before.

The legislative and judicial bodies of the modern democratic state need to lower the wall separating church and state in order to permit the traditional practices of nondenominational prayer in public schools, graduation ceremonies, official state events, courtrooms, military parades and funerals, as well as permitting faith-based prison chaplaincies and welfare programs. The state also needs to protect the Christian family by promoting profamily legislation--such as the Defense of Marriage Act passed by the U. S. Congress in 1996, defending monogamous heterosexual marriage as the norm for official state purposes. It should promote prolife legislation in order to protect the sanctity of innocent human life; and it should make divorce extremely difficult or nearly impossible in order to protect the union of male and female and to encourage the procreation and proper rearing of children. Protecting the family would also mean some curbs on contemporary feminism to ensure that the divinely ordained and natural distinctions between men and women are not lost in today's unisex society. This would mean, for example, opposing the military experiment of gender-integrated training and permitting women in combat. And it would entail reeducating modern citizens to reject the unnatural and unspiritual idea that men and women are simply interchangeable and that motherhood and homemaking are unworthy tasks of modern educated women.

Handmaids Tale, anyone?

Our fair reviewer writes:

The legislation produced by the political process--the city of Man--must serve the end of trying to create something approaching a city of God, else Christians are obligated to question the legitimacy of the system. And the issue that this invokes for people of every political and religious persuasion is that if liberal democracy, instead of leading towards the city of God, is actually leading away from it, if liberal democracy has become antithetical to the very Christianity that provides its moral support, then how can democracy survive in the long run? And if it can not survive this self-inflicted damage, then shouldn't we all take a more skeptical look at liberal democracy and examine some alternatives?

And when the revolution comes, who do you think will be the first against the wall? Of course, I'd love to stick around long enough to see the second and third groups against the wall -- those whose views on the new society aren't "right" enough. Those whose tracts of land in the City of Man that get "redeveloped" by each new wave of developers back from the mayor's office in the City of God with a new "master zoning plan".

Folks, we've done as well as we have precisely because such sentiments are kept in check by both tradition and the Constitution. It's really not alarmist to realize that such far right views -- not conservative, we shouldn't change this opinions but reactionary, we-know-best-how-to-change things-by-taking-away-your-freedom-to-choose ones -- can very easily sneak in, "like a thief in the night," and send us into Taliban territory. Or for that matter Utah.

God save us from your followers....

Posted by Jody at May 10, 2002 10:27 AM

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