Theocrats in charge

Dear Editor,

I am a church person, a person of faith. But I don't think the U.S. needs a government that rules as if it were the voice of God. This nation's constitution was written partly in order to help us avoid that problem -- the problem called theocracy.

Theocrats claim to know just what God wants -- therefore their decisions are in effect the very will of God. And you WILL obey.

The Founders were wise to resist that.

Unfortunately there are Americans today who think the Founders were wrong. They want their groups of churches to dictate to the White House, the Congress, the Courts and the rest of us.

We do need God's wisdom, help and protection. I hope we seek and pray for those things daily. And we need to practice the faiths we profess.

But we have three branches of government precisely in order to keep any group from running things their way without criticism or restraint.

America's would-be theo-crats raise some important concerns that we need to consider. Unfortunately, they also fully intend to have their group running things just as they wish, without accountability. In that they are wrong. We do not welcome their efforts to stamp their image on all of us.

John Danforth was an Episcopal Priest, then a U.S. Senator. He said this last year:

"Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of Conservative Christians ... The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement."

(Quoted from Jimmy Carter's "Our Endangered Values")

We are free today to practice our faiths. If we each did that more thoroughly this would be a happier and safer nation. But if we let our country surrender its freedoms to our home-grown theocrats, we, our kids, and our grandkids will deeply regret it.

Larry Harvey,

McCook