"Theocracy” is defined as “government of a state by officials who are regarded as divinely guided or who claim to have divine sanction.” I recently finished former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips’ book, American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, in which Phillips describes how self-interested religious zealotry contributed to the decline of former world powers such as ancient Rome, 17th century Spain, and the British Empire prior to 1914. He observes that one of the major symptoms of each empire’s period of decline was a growing religious fervor and a too-close link between government and religion leading to the elevation of faith over reason in the shaping of national policies and priorities. This in turn led to a de-emphasis of science (such as the Catholic Church putting Galileo under house arrest for heresy for his hypothesis that the earth revolved around the sun), and a “hubris-driven national strategic and military overreach” involving pursuit of “abstract international missions” that the nation could no longer afford. Sound familiar?

Phillips sees ominous parallels between what caused the demise of those former empires and the theocratic impulses besetting modern-day America under its current political leadership. There is now irrefutable evidence that peer-reviewed scientific studies proving both the existence and devastating effects of global warming were altered by self-interested Bush political appointees. A Supreme Court dominated by justices carefully screened by the intolerant mullahs of fundamentalistic Christianity last week upheld a federal ban on a late-term abortion procedure which lacked any exception for the woman’s health, using reasoning not based on medicine or science but, in the words of Justice Ginsburg’s dissent, 5 male justices’ “ancient notions about women’s place in the family…that have long since been discredited.”

An intolerant, self-righteous theology—one which elevates faith over reason, evidence and science--has shaped Bush Administration policies on everything from combating AIDS (emphasizing abstinence over all else), defining when life begins and ends (the Schiavo case, opposition to stem-cell research), and regulating intimate personal relationships (legislative attempts to deprive gay persons of fundamental rights and liberties). Phillips also reminds that in 2004, sixty-two preeminent scientists charged the Bush Administration with an unprecedented “manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions” much in the way it manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq. More recently a similar disregard for the evidence has even extended into the U. S. Department of Justice, as exemplified by the firing of U.S. Attorneys who were unwilling to prosecute law-abiding citizens based on unproven claims of “vote fraud”. Extreme politicization and corruption has also infected civil rights enforcement, as seen from the recent revelation that the only attorney in the civil rights division who sided with the State of Georgia in approving a strict voter identification law (a law later struck down by a federal court as discriminatory against minorities and poor people) was rewarded for his efforts with a cash bonus. Phillips notes that though the theocratic elements of the Republican Party took a real beating in the 2006 elections, the ramifications of their influence over policymakers in the current Administration will continue to damage our nation for decades.

Faith in a supreme being can be an important force driving social justice, such as policies that promote quality health care, decent housing and a living income for the poor, humility in our dealings with other nations, and tolerance of belief-systems and cultures different from our own. But when Administration policymakers embrace too closely an intolerant and self-righteous strain of right-wing Christian fundamentalism, they take the nation on a dangerous journey, one leading down the path to national hubris, loss of moral authority and international prestige, and ultimately to national decline.

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