I heard a great talk this morning by Herbert Locke, who is a professor at University of Washington. He gave a great talk at the Earl Lectures titled "America and the Theocratic Vision: Why America is Not a Christian Nation (and, Pray God, Never Will Be)". It was a fantastic talk, which looked at the original failure to create a Christian nation by the Puritans.

He made a fascinating point, one which makes a whole lot of sense, and is a different perspective than I'd been thinking of this whole thing. My standard perspective about this is that we can't, and shouldn't be a Christian nation because all faiths (and people of no faith) need to be fully a part of and empowered in our society, etc. I'm sure he would agree with this perspective, but his approach was one that really speaks specifically to Christians, about Christians.

His point was that the Protestant concept of the "priesthood of all believers" that is, the idea that one is free to interpret scripture for oneself, and determine God's will for oneself, and not be dependent upon a hierarchy for interpretation of God's will, by necessity promotes democracy, and empowers dissent. The desire for theocracy by the Puritans was done in by the democratic nature of Protestantism, and the basic idea that everyone is free to interpret God's will for themselves. And that we should never, like they did, confuse the kingdom of God (which is always an ideal) with any nation state.

It's just the same now. Fundamentalists don't get to decide for everyone how to interpret scripture, or how to decide what God's will is, just like the Puritans didn't 300 years ago. And we cannot let them continue to proclaim the ridiculous notion that the U.S. is God's chosen instrument.

So perhaps again, that inherently democratic (and messy, and chaotic, and wondrous) process of each individual having the right to decide for themselves how to interpret God's manifestation in their own lives, will eventually hoist the fundamentalists on their own petard.