If you are trying to kill a religion, there is no surer method than marrying it to a government.
Consider Iran, where vast crowds gathered recently in Tehran’s streets to protest the theft of an election by turbaned clerics. From the rooftops, the people chanted the same words that the masses roared 30 years ago when they brought down the Shah and ushered in the current theocratic government: “God is great, death to the dictator!” Read: "God is great, but we are done with the people who claim to rule us on God's behalf!" The majority of the people of Iran are under 30 years old, and most of them are chafing under the repressive rule of unelected ayatollahs. Whatever moral authority Ayatollah Khamenei had before the protests has been seriously eroded since his brutal crackdown on dissent.
Consider Europe, where the churches are sponsored by the state in many countries. Hardly anybody goes to church anymore. Europeans don’t have religion forced down their throats nearly to the degree suffered by Iranians. But they still find it hard to swallow. The holiness of the church doesn’t rub off on the state nearly as much as the unholiness of the state rubs off on the church, in countries where the two are intertwined.
Iran’s case is a cautionary example for us in America. It’s really nice to have a progressive Christian in the White House. But the last thing the country needs, and the last thing progressive Christianity needs, would be for the President to identify his administration strongly with our religion. As long as progressive Christianity is not seen as the force that runs the country, we have some chance of influencing America for the better, while preserving the integrity of our faith. We need to keep the state from being run by a church, and a church from being supported by the state, at all costs.
The damage done to Islam by Islamic theocracy in Iran is enormous. The clerical leadership has alienated a vast swath of the population, particularly the younger generation, from the rich heritage of the religion. Clergymen use goon squads to silence the protests. If we think it couldn’t happen here, we ought to think again: there are millions of people in the US who yearn for “Christian dominion”, a vision of a theocratic state that would force everybody, Christian or not, to obey laws based on fundamentalist Christian interpretations of biblical laws. (For scary reading, see www.chalcedon.edu .) Imagine posses of self-anointed Christian Dominionists in America enforcing a legal code from the Bronze Age, and you get the picture.
I’d like to think that these recent events have eclipsed America’s neo-conservative hype about Iran as a monolithic enemy of the West. Consider the deep contradiction of millions of Iranians protesting against theocracy, and John McCain’s theme song of “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.” How would our bombs distinguish between the pro-democracy protesters and the pro-theocracy thugs that attacked them? Hopefully it is now obvious that a ham-handed approach won’t work in a country of people who don’t eat pork. Yes, the prospect of Iran as a nuclear power is a real problem. But it’s a problem our Air Force can’t fix.
Even the clerics in Iran aren’t of one mind about their form of government. In the seminary city of Qom, debates have been raging for years about whether or not it serves Islam for a cabal of ayatollahs to run the country. Those debates are at a high pitch now. A significant number of influential religious scholars are pleading for recognition that the will of the majority of the people is the best way to interpret and apply “sharia” in society. These scholars see the awful damage done to their religion by the clerical oligarchy, and are striving behind the scenes to change the system. Indeed, what happens in the cloisters of its seminaries may have as much impact on Iran’s future as what happens its the streets.
While the election of Obama made the prospect more remote – thank God – the possibility that our country could go the way of Iran is far from unthinkable. May recent events on the streets of Tehran inspire us to vigilance in preserving religion and democracy by keeping their institutions a healthy distance from each other.
