{"id":6729,"date":"2006-07-21T16:04:28","date_gmt":"2006-07-21T16:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/theocracy.html"},"modified":"2006-07-21T16:04:28","modified_gmt":"2006-07-21T16:04:28","slug":"theocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/theocracy.html","title":{"rendered":"Theocracy!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just posted at First Things, a review\/essay of the recent spate of Theocracy’s-Around-the-Bend books by Ross Douthat.<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s excellent – he does us all a great favor by explaining just how all of these writers connect-the-theocratic-christianist-dots, in case you were wondering. He then pulls it all together:<\/p>\n

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In addition to casting religious conservatives as mullahs, proto-fascists, and agents of American decline, this strict-separationist interpretation of world history frees the anti-theocrats from the messy business of actually arguing<\/em> with their opponents. From sex education and government support for religious charities to stem cells and abortion, it\u2019s enough to call something \u201cfaith-based\u201d and dismiss it. Indeed, reading through the anti-theocrat literature, one gets the sense that the surest way to judge if a political idea is wrong, dangerous, or antidemocratic is to tally up the number of religious people who support it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now…wait for it…<\/em><\/p>\n

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Except that nobody really believes this line. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Exactly. To read why he says this read the rest.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just posted at First Things, a review\/essay of the recent spate of Theocracy’s-Around-the-Bend books by Ross Douthat. It’s excellent – he does us all a great favor by explaining just how all of these writers connect-the-theocratic-christianist-dots, in case you were wondering. He then pulls it all together: In addition to casting religious conservatives as mullahs,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nTheocracy! - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/theocracy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Theocracy! - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Just posted at First Things, a review\/essay of the recent spate of Theocracy’s-Around-the-Bend books by Ross Douthat. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}