Yesterday, Monroe asked me:
Aren’t there people in the USA who call themselves Christians who truly want a Theocracy here – somewhat like the Taliban described below?
Absolutely. The scariest of the bunch (in my opinion) are the ones who follow and expand upon the teachings of Rousas John Rushdoony (1916 – 2001). He was educated in your backyard (Berkeley) and wrote the highly influential “Institutes of Biblical Law” which argues that Old Testament law should be applied to modern society and that there should be a Christian theonomy. According to Wikipedia, Rushdoony’s work has been used by Dominion Theology advocates who attempt to implement a Christian theocracy.
I don’t know if Rushdoony himself was a bad guy, any more than Karl Marx was, but some very dangerous characters have taken his ideas and run with them. I’ve known one person (also from California) who met Rushdoony and was, for a while back in the 70s or 80s, a disciple. Rushdoony was practically the messiah for some of these guys, lecturing small groups of followers in his home every week. More recently, I have encountered others who still dream of an eventual theocracy based (at least partly) on Rushdoony’s ideas, discussing their visions of grandeur as casually as you or I might discuss upcoming sports events or political elections. I can tell you from experience that they are very dismissive of the once-orthodox Baptistic principle that government meddling in religious affairs (and vice versa) is something to be eschewed rather than embraced.
These aren’t your garden-variety white supremacists or skinheads or “Left Behind” apocalypse hunters. These are very smart people who have thought long and hard about how to make their ideas a reality. I wouldn’t be surprised to find some sort of convergence between Rushdoony’s people and the neocons who advise our present prince. How far they have gotten, or how strong they still are, I’m not sure…
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushdoony for more re. Rousas John Rushdoony.