Theocracy Alert

Commingling church and state is a prescription for self-destruction

By Jim Dodgins
Online Journal Contributing Writer

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January 7, 2004�The commingling of church and state is a perditious union, one that was sanctioned at the crossroads of Christianity. A time when the mother church conjoined with mammon, spawning bastard offspring obsessed with inflicting Christianity on the masses. A road gilded in gold and mired in blood.

As we exhume what Christians prefer to leave buried, it becomes apparent they are striving to resurrect an age of darkness, envisioned by the unenlightened steeped and submerged in their intolerance and born again to the innocence of ignorance.

At the onset of the transformation of Christianity, Crusaders marched to Jerusalem ankle deep in the blood of heretics to rid the Holy Land of Jews and Muslims�their Semitic brothers, the seeds of Abraham�claiming justification in the name of the Prince of Peace.

This was soon followed by 300 years of the Inquisition, an attempt at ridding the world of thinkers, healers, non-subordinate women, progressives and all the insufficiently righteous, a concept that turned the forefathers of this nation off to the idea of a theocracy and its inherent evil. An odious government that suppresses man's God-given freewill forcing him to bow down and worship the inflexible dogma of religious superstition; a philosophy that devised the concept of "Manifest Destiny," an idea that allowed the self-righteous to remove Native Americans from their land and declared ownership under the pretense that the righteous were endowed by God to prosper at the expense of the "savages." These "savage" cultures in many cases adhered to the tenets of Christianity more profoundly than their persecutors, who relegated the "savages" to reservations where they were systematically starved, infected with disease, and sold into slavery. The missionaries converted many to Christianity in an attempt to save their souls from damnation and eternal hell�a sentence that they were already serving. These Christians had done what the Creator had not�evicted America's indigenous people from the Garden of Eden.

Sanctioned by Christianity, slavery became the most hideous institution created by our Government�one that was justified by Scripture, including those written by St. Peter and St. Paul. In 1844 the Baptist church fractured and split over slavery, giving birth to the Southern Baptist church�the linchpin of today's extremist, fundamentalist movement�one that fathered "The Invisible Empire," that, under the auspices of religion, terrorized blacks, promoted xenophobia and stressed fundamentalist religion. Its ranks swelled to as many as 5 million card carrying members, including President Harry Truman, who used nukes against Japan, sparing predominantly white Cbristian Germans.

At the near middle of the last century, a twisted ideology, symbolized by a convoluted cross, struggled against Communism and soon turned on its own population. They believed they were endowed by God to be the "Master Race," and thus absolved themselves of any responsibility in the extermination of a "subhuman" race, the Jews, whom they believed had a preoccupation with earthly riches and had undermined the Germanic people. "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against Jews, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."�Adolf Hitler

At one point in his life Hitler considered becoming a priest. If we can juxtapose for a moment the mentality of this leader who interjected scripture in his rhetoric and invoked God to his policies with today's fundamentalist Christian mentality, we find stunning similarities. Consider:

"We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and not merely with a few theoretical declarations we have stamped it out."�Adolph Hitler

"Let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good . . . our goal is a Christian nation . . . we have a biblical duty, we are called of God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism. We want theocracy."�Randall Terry, head of Operation Rescue.

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air."�Adolph Hitler

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The church will have taken them over and Christians will be running them."�Jerry Falwell

"Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord bless our battle."�Adolf Hitler

"I believe we have a duty to free people . . . I would hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we have a duty . . . going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will."�George W. Bush

"God gave the Saviour to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakable faith that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God . . ."�Hermann Goering

"George Bush was not elected by a majority of voters in the U.S. . . . he was appointed by God."�Gen. Jerry Boykin

From the Crusaders' battle cry of "Deus Vult" (God's will), to the Third Reichs' "Gott Mitt Uns" (God is with us) inscribed on every soldier's belt buckle, to "In God We Trust," powerful regimes infused with God have always invoked God in their battles against a perceived evil.

If we believe that our nation could never commit genocide (again), let's look at the rhetoric of the self-righteous:

"The wars of extermination have given a lot of people trouble unless they know what was going on. The people in the land of Palestine were very wicked. They were given over to idolatry; they sacrificed their children; they had all kinds of abominable sex practices; they were having sex, apparently, with animals; they were having sex men with men, and women with women; they were committing adultery, fornication; they were worshipping idols, offering their children up; and they were forsaking God. God told the Israelites to kill them all�men, women and children, to destroy them. And that seems to be a terrible thing to do. Is it? Or isn't it? Well, let us assume there were 2,000 of them, or 10,000 of them living in the land, or whatever number there was of them. I don't have the exact number. Pick a number. God said, 'Kill them all.' Well, that would seem hard, wouldn't it? That would be 10,000 people who would probably go to Hell. But, if they stayed and reproduced, in 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 or 100 more years, they could conceivably be�10,000 would go to a 100,000�100,000 could conceivably go to a million. And then, there would be a million people who would have to spend eternity in Hell! And it's far more merciful to take away a few than to see in the future a 100 years down the road, and say, 'Well, I have to take away a million people that would forever be apart from God,' because the abomination was there like a contagium. God saw that there was no cure for it. It wasn't going to change; their hearts weren't going to change; and all they would do is cause trouble for the Israelites, and pull the Israelites away from God, and prevent the truth of God from reaching the Earth. So, God, in love, took away a small number that he might not have to take away a large number."�Pat Robertson

The seeds of genocide lie in fertile ground, hidden just under the surface, only needing to be cultivated by intolerance. The Semitic religions have been at war with themselves for centuries. This sibling rivalry has led to fratricide. Christianity has evolved into an apocalyptic religion, preaching that mankind must be destroyed in order to be saved. We are at the brink of self-destruction�religion, the catalyst. As we embark on another government-sanctioned Holy war, will we sit back as our great, diverse nation is taken over by religious zealots wanting to create a Falwellian world that is anti-freedom, anti-justice, anti-equality, and most of all, anti-Christ?