The movement toward theocracy in the USA is something I keep my eye on here. I also pay attention to interesting religious commentary opposing the movement toward theocracy, and I want to present an example of anti-theocratic commentary below.

An appreciative child of a Christian professor honored her father by reprinting a speech he gave to a Christian audience.

In the speech, the professor critiqued major episodes in the history of Christians’ political activities. His message is that Christians are not commanded in the Bible to try to make “Christian Nations”, and the effort corrupts the mission of the Church.

Although his message is well reasoned and thoughtful, I expect the message willl be dismissed as the ravings of a Liberal who doesn’t really know Christ.

The Success of Christian Governments

[snip]

In 312 Constantine became Emperor in a battle fought in legend if not in fact, under a new standard–the cross of Christ. Christians were, of course, ecstatic. Finally, they had an emperor who publicly embraced Christianity. How could the country fail to become more like the Kingdom of God when the emperor himself now advocated a Christian agenda? And indeed he did. Constantine immediately set about redressing injustices against the Christians; in fact, Christianity became the favored religion of the Empire. (snip)

In a limited sense Christian ascendancy in the government made the world a better place. In this period the empire encouraged almsgiving and improved prison conditions. A new law forbade prison-keepers to let their prisoners starve to death. Prisoners were even allowed a weekly bath–on Sunday, a new holiday.

But in other areas the new Christian nation didn’t do so well. The simple fact that Christians entered the political process did not change the nature of human empires, which differ profoundly in their goals and ground rules from the Kingdom of God. The Christianized Roman Empire was still involved in machinations for power, compromises of ethics for money, and war. Constantine, newly won to Christianity, deferred his baptism until he was dying–largely because being an effective leader of the Christian Roman Empire demanded some unpleasant things of him, like killing his father-in-law, three brothers-in-law, his eldest son, and his wife.

Nor was the church made stronger by the change of government. To the contrary, it was co-opted. Within 2 years of Constantine’s conversion, Christian churches announced that Christian military conscripts who refused to fight would be excommunicated. How could Christians fail to support a nation that now protected and encouraged their religion?

So, the government continued to use torture, unethical measures for raising revenues, gladiatorial events and other politically useful, but ethically wicked activities. What changed was that the church was largely co-opted. They put the sword of Christ’s mouth back into its scabbard. It would be somehow uncouth to continue to wield it now that they were protected by the mouth of Caesar’s sword. Christian ministers ceased to insist with the same vigor as in the past that Christians must not support gladiatorial events or that torturing, enslaving, or killing another human was wicked, since those things were now so obviously necessary not for the support of a pagan empire, but of a Christian one.

[snip]

The New Testament knows nothing of Christian nations–even as a goal in the far-off future. Nowhere in the New Testament are Christians commanded or authorized to take over a nation or to make laws for their unbelieving neighbors. We are most severely enjoined to love our neighbors, to do good to them, to forgive them if they do us wrong, to pray for them, and to bear truthful witness to Christ among them. (snip) But let there be no nonsense about Christians employing the force of law to compel God’s unbelieving children to obey what they do not believe and cannot, therefore, understand–in order to gain something called a Christian nation. (snip) Such grand strategies, nowhere commanded by our Lord or his apostles, distract our attention from the missions we are commanded to undertake, whitewash over the walls of our churches, which so often are a home for dead men’s bones, make us feared and hated by unbelievers in ways that our Lord never intended, and close people’s ears to the Gospel for generations.

[snip]

I worry about the children if the Church gets sidetracked from its mission. What happens if the dearest of our children, who are devoted to Christ from their earliest years, are sidetracked into supporting an agenda which somehow causes them to spend their lives persecuting rather than serving, cursing rather than blessing, regarding God’s unbelieving children as dangerous enemies to be forced into submission “for the greater glory of God”? Far more important than the nature of this weak little country, that lives for a day and tomorrow is gone, the church is responsible for the eternal souls of each little child who grows up in its care, and who will learn from us what Christians do and how they think. I cannot imagine that the goal of Christian education is a generation of Pat Robertsons and Pat Buchanans. That is not the Spirit of Christ.