Theocracy and Violence

A recent piece in the New York Times raised an alarm about the “theocratic worldview” of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

Uh oh! I have a theocratic worldview.

I’m a Calvinist, and I speak of the “Sovereignty of God.” You don’t have to be a Calvinist to belt out “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” from the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Of course there are any number of theocratic worldviews. They can be thick or thin or hard or soft. Judge Alito’s is Roman Catholic, but so was Dorothy Day’s. You might have been taught the theocratic worldview of Abraham Kuyper, probably leaning more towards his later Common Grace than his earlier Antithesis. At Calvin College I was challenged with the critically theocratic worldview of Jacques Ellul, who himself developed the dialectical theocracy of Karl Barth. At New Brunswick Seminary I learned the very different theocratic worldview of Dutch theologian A. A. van Ruler.

Theocratic worldviews are widespread. Islam is inherently theocratic. Hinduism has not been actively theocratic until recently, with Narendra Modi’s Hindu Nationalism threatening the secular democracy of India.

I admit that I get defensive when the critique of “theocratic worldviews” comes from a pretended neutrality that wants to keep religion in a small, safe box. But I also fully sympathize with the New York Times on the danger of theocratic worldviews to America right now — for at least two reasons.

First, I just don’t want to go back to Christendom. I have no interest in the United States being a Christian nation. I believe that the Holy Catholic Church is much better off when it keeps itself from possessing political power, even if that means surrendering certain rights to which we might actually be entitled. The Lord Jesus rejected the political power to which he was entitled as the Son of David.

Second, the United States is a particularly violent country, and theocracy in America could not help but be a violent one. There may well have been theocracies that were generally beneficial, and I would be intrigued to see them identified, but the USA would not be one of them. As H. Rap Brown famously said, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.”

Managing violence is one chief function of religion. That management might variously glorify violence, sanctify it, focus it, channel it, structure it, restrict it, or condemn it. Hinduism, for example, structured violence as a caste system, and India had to become a secular state to dismantle it. Christians have been able to justify our own violence because the Bible is full of violence, much of it apparently sanctioned by God. The Cross itself is violent, but the Gospel claims that this violence is the end of all further violence.

The United States is the most violent country I have ever spent time in. As a dual citizen, I can vouch that Canada is certainly less violent than the States. I am no expert on the Sultanate of Oman, but for the month I spent there I found it to be a remarkably peaceful country. All countries are more or less violent, essentially so, because they hold “the power of the sword,” which St. Paul says is God’s will. In peaceful countries like Oman the government holds a “monopoly on violence.” That’s mostly so in Canada. It is not so in the United States, if it ever was. Americans believe that their personal right to violence is guaranteed them by the Bill of Rights. We are taught that we can use violence to protect ourselves from violence!

Theocracy is particularly alarming when it’s violent. Narendra Modi’s theocratic Hinduism sanctions violence against Muslims, to which state governments turn blind eyes. Donald Trump has no theocratic worldview, but his followers do. The guy who keeps hinting at more violence to come has the support of the Speaker of the House, who claims that his “worldview” comes right out of the Bible.

Yes, you can make the Bible supportive of violence. Bibi Netanyahu has done so by calling Palestinians “Amalek.” But the Lord Jesus clearly rejected it, and kept his disciples from it, and the early church refused it.

The task of theology to correctly interpret the Bible is as critically important now as it ever was. I don’t mean just preaching against violence. I mean boning up on and rightly dividing such doctrines as the Atonement, Creation, and Covenant, and preaching and teaching those, and I mean addressing what is the nature and to what end is the Kingdom of God. Public safety may be at stake.