Who is America's Top Theocrat?

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the biggest theocrat of all? There sure are a lot of candidates for top theocrat these days. Two major contenders emerged this past week.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, in anticipation of two cases about public displays of the Ten Commandments in public spaces, declared, "I hope the Supreme Court will finally read the Constitution and see there's no such thing, or no mention, of separation of church and state in the Constitution."

It certainly true that those words do not appear in the Constitution or any of the amendments. But the idea of church state separation is present in the clear intentions of the framers. As I noted in December, the Framers did their damndest to disestablish what were then called "established churches" in the states -- which had had mini-theocracies to varying degrees for some 150 years. One had to have been a member of the correct sect to vote and hold public office. Here, as in Europe, there was often state funding of the church in power. The Framers not only wanted to put a stop to that, but they wanted to enshrine the notion of religious equality, which meant the right of individual citizens to believe as they will, or not. This idea is present in Article Six, Clause Three of the Constitution, which states:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

There is no question that the framers meant separation of church and state as part of the notion of religious equality extended to citizens in Article Six, and the disestablishment of churches as specified in the First Amendment. The phrase "separation of church and state" was not only in common use at the time, but it was central to the thinking of James Madison in 1786 when he pushed the crucial Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom through the legislature -- just prior to the writing and ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Madison is credited with being the principal author of the Constitution and of the First Amendment. (The Virgina Statute was written by Thomas Jefferson.)

Dr. Bruce Prescott, (whose Mainstream Baptist blog is must read for those following matters of church state separation} notes that prior to the ratification of the Constitution, Madison "wrote a letter to James Monroe discussing opinions about Patrick Henry's bill to provide government funding for religion in Virginia. Here's what he said:

"The Episcopal clergy are generally for it. . . . The Presbyterians seem as ready to set up an establishment which would take them in as they were to pull one down which shut them out. The Baptists, however, standing firm by their avowed principle of the complete separation of church and state, declared it to be 'repugnant to the spirit of the Gospel for the Legislature thus to proceed in matters of religion, that no human laws ought to be established for the purpose.'"

"Henry's bill failed," Prescott continuted, "after Madison circulated his Memorial and Remonstrance as a petition throughout the state. Then Madison successfully won passage of Thomas Jefferson's Act for Religious Freedom. Virginia Baptists were instrumental both in defeating Henry's bill and in promoting Jefferson's Act."

DeLay gets major points in the contest for top theocrat for his insistent use of crackpot Constitutional literalism in the service of the historical revisionism -- an intergral part of the theocratic game plan.

Not be to upstaged by the likes of Tom DeLay, Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia engaged in one of the ugliest displays of religious majoritarianism ever seen in the high court. Scalia made his move during oral arguments in a case in which the justices will decided whether display of the Ten Commandments in the Texas state legislature is unconstitutional. According to The Washington Post's account, "The Commandments" [Scalia told Duke University Law professor Erwin Chemerinsky] are "a symbol that government authority comes from God, and that's appropriate." When Chemerinsky objected that "it is a profoundly religious message," Scalia responded: "It is a profoundly religious message, but it's shared by the vast majority of the people. . . . It seems to me the minority has to be tolerant of the majority's view."

"I've heard Scalia say some pretty callous things about separation of church and state over the years," Rev. Barry Lynn, wrote on The Wall of Separation blog, "but today he hit a new low. According to Scalia, government-sponsored Ten Commandments displays are only intended to reinforce the idea that our government flows from God. He had an easy remedy for those who might be offended: "Look away if you don't like it."

Scalia clearly made such effective use of this high profile case, and his aggressive display from the bench, that he remains in the first teir of contenders for top theocrat.

Well, those are this week's top contenders for biggest theocrat. Based on this week's extraordinary performances, it is fair to expect the competition to heat up.