Discussion Group Report

Along with the steady numbers of dead soldiers in Iraq, there are two other categories of American casualty, says James Heflin, the author of Their Will Be Done: Creating a Theocracy in America. One consists of civilian contractors, Halliburton employees and others who are helping rebuild Iraq, and the other of Southern Baptist missionaries. The presence of the latter in harm's way has been made possible by the curious relationship of the Religious Right and the Republican Right. These missionaries are the ultimate recruiting tool for the Islamic Right. The Islamic fundamentalists can point to direct evidence of Bush, the Christian Crusader, not Bush the benevolent exporter of freedom. That's OK with the Christian fundamentalists, who view America as a Christian nation that is directly favored by God in world affairs.

Heflin grew up in the Southern Baptist church, the son of a minister. Baptists were strong supporters of the separation of church and state--until recently. The denomination's foundational beliefs were trampled in the '80s and '90s by a minority who forced it from conservatism to rigid fundamentalism. This transformation was made "through cynical manipulation of the Southern Baptist Convention's democratic procedures, a no-holds-barred, unethical ruthlessness that used every loophole and ugly smearing of anyone who stood in the way. A self-declared righteous few left Christian behavior far behind, and through fear mongering about 'liberals' turned Southern Baptist sentiment ever further toward absolutism."

When in 2000, the fundamentalist faction changed the Southern Baptist statement of belief, the takeover was complete: Ex-president Jimmy Carter left the denomination and Jerry Falwell joined. In place of the Convention stands a monolithic power structure bent on imposing its version of Christianity--a rigid, exclusive, Old Testament, fire-and-brimstone, fear-and-loathing, un-Christ like Christianity--on more moderate Christians, on the federal government and the rest of the world.

The plans of these Christians are preached in pulpits weekly. Heflin fears, "If we do not pay attention to their manipulation of American democratic processes now that they have gained remarkable power among Republicans, the principles of our democracy will eventually be as distant a memory as the kinder, gentler southern Baptist Convention of my childhood."

He says we're a country founded by people fleeing religious persecution, who understood that, when it comes to protecting the rights of religious groups, every group, no matter who is the majority, must be equally protected to preserve "religious freedom." The framers of the Constitution were so adamantly opposed to the theocratic-style governments of the American colonies that they expressly forbade religious tests for public servants.

Author Frederick Clark explains, "Before 1787, most of the colonies and early states had required pledges of allegiance to Christianity and that one be a Christian of the correct sect to hold office. Part of the struggle toward democracy at the time was the disestablishment of the state churches--the power structures of the local colonial theocracies."

In the present day, Christian fundamentalists have introduced in Congress the Constitution Restoration Act, sponsored in the Senate by Richard Shelby (R-Ala) and Zell Miller (D-Ga). If backers get their way, Americans will no longer receive the same protections that Washington has insisted that Iraqis have. The act calls for exemption from Supreme Court jurisdiction of all cases in which public servants, including judges, "acknowledge" God as "the source" of law. It would disallow the Supreme Court from referencing any source other than the Constitution or English common law in its decisions. It would retroactively exempt from Supreme Court jurisdiction cases such as that of Roy Moore, a judge who was recently removed from office for his refusal to remove a Ten Commandments monument from a courthouse. A judge who attempted to rule in such cases could be impeached. Who knows what actions a public servant could get away with under the banner of invoking God as the source of law.

Westerners get outraged at the barbarity of calls for the imposition of Islam's laws called sharia, in which, for example, an adulterous woman is to be stoned. But Heflin says, "Many of the fundamentalists are--really--actively pursuing an America in which a judge who says that adulterous women are to be stoned according to biblical law would be allowed to impose that sentence, not to mention execution for such things as heresy, apostasy, and homosexuality. Although the Constitution Restoration Act will probably disappear like most extremist bills, Heflin believes it is important because it is a "brazen play to further the wishes of an insatiable, power-hungry minority convinced of God's exclusive blessing."

Christian Reconstructionist thought is pervasive among fundamentalists of several denominations. The idea is simple: Christians have not only the right but the duty to take the reins of government and establish a secular manifestation of God's power. It is theirs, they believe, to enforce biblical law on the rest of us, at least the Old Testament kind, not the "turn the other cheek" New Testament variety. They feel they would be stripping away our rights for our own good, for the saving of our souls. To hold that religious pluralism is good, they contend, is to hold that moral relativism is good. They know the Truth, and they know that even moderate Protestants are hell bound, in need of saving. Theirs is a world of absolutes, and it is to them only a matter of our sinfulness that keeps us from seeing those absolutes.

"This would be," states Heflin, "a mere curiosity if it were not for George Bush's reliance on the Religious Right for much of his power. They have anointed him as the nation's Christian leader, who was installed by the Supreme Court because God willed it, even if the American people, in their sinful folly, did not vote according to the Divine Will. Bush passes the only important fundamentalist test: the acceptance of Christ as his 'personal savior.' That phrase absolves him of all need to justify his actions. If Bush says God told him so, then God told him so… [The fundamentalists] grant Bush precisely what America fought a revolution to get rid of: the divine right of kings…

"They could deliver votes and systematically take over Republican infrastructure. That's what the liberal Left needs to do."