When I published Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy in 1997, some thought using the word “theocracy” was a bit out there.
Times have changed, and the word has entered mainstream discourse as Christian right political leaders have made tremendous gains, and have been bolder in surfacing their theocratic intentions. What is remarkable to me is that much of the book remains quite fresh and relevant. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. One of the main points of the book itself is that the struggle between theocracy and democracy is one of the central themes of American history.
I plan to base several pieces on material from the book over the next few weeks. But first I want to tell the story of the title of the book, since not everyone knows it.
In the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson was the Democratic candidate for president. And of course it was well known that he would do all that he could to continue the process of the disestablishment of the official churches that had been set in motion by the ratification of the Constitution. So in the course of the campaign, Jefferson was vilified by the established clergy and the media outlets associated with the Federalist Party. They ran a character assassination campaign aimed at his religious views. Because, when he was president Washington’s ambassador to France, he hung out with the philosophers of the Englightenment, so he was labeled an “atheist” and a “French infidel” and of course, “anti-Christ.” And so on.
Jefferson scholar Charles Sanford wrote: “Numerous sermons were preached warning if Jefferson was elected he would discredit religion, overthrow the church and destroy the Bible.” When the news came that Jefferson had been elected, people in New England actually hid their family Bibles, certain that agents of Jefferson would come to seize them.
Jefferson did not answer the many public attacks on his religious character made during the campaign, believing that it was useless to argue about such things in the newspapers. In fact, Jefferson was a religious man. He was a member of his local Anglican church, although theologically, he was an early Unitarian.
But in a private letter to his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush, he discussed these attacks, which he understood were central to the meaning of religious freedom, pluralism and religious bigotry in the young nation. He wrote in part, “I have sworn on the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” This sentence is so central to Jefferson’s thought, career and legacy that it is engraved inside the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.
Today’s Democrats could probably take a lesson or two from the founder of the party. He didn’t pander to the Christian Right of his day, and he won the presidency twice.