Posted on Apr 10th, 2009
by
onemind
I try to keep up with things that are being written about spirituality in various places and to that end I have customized my Google News page so it follows the topic. This morning,
a very interesting piece by Arturo Mora showed up from the Kansas City Star's community voices page.
Mora asks the question, "Are We (America) a Christian Nation?" and then proceeds to point out how essentially unanswerable that question is without a second question: "Whose Christianity should hold sway." He points out the fact that there are a significant number of flavors of Christianity that differ from one another in very deep ways. Those who would make of America a Christian theocracy are, as is so often the case with shallow thinkers, vasty oversimplifying a very complicated issue.
Interestingly, Mora's spiritual path and current walk bear some striking parallels to my own, which may help explain why I was sufficiently drawn to this article to post a blog entry about it. In my own life, Jesus holds the exceedingly important position of elder brother and wayshower and my own Christology varies substantially from that of others on both ends of the spectrum, I'm sure.
Only Christians who are convinced that their view of Jesus is the only correct one would of course advocate a theocracy based on his teachings as they understood them. Which translates to the fact that only Christians who are at the right edge of the scale -- in other words, those who are fundamentalist and evangelical -- would seriously suggest this. And I know for a fact that not all such Christians would agree with that position, either.
So what do you think? Are there ways in which a theocracy -- regardless of its basis or core teachings -- would be an improvement over an open, pluralistic democracy such as we have (even if only in large part)? Is there a common underpinning in Christianity's teachings that all Christians can be found to share that could form the basis for such a society? If there were should we consider it?
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