"John Knight" <johnknight at usa.com> wrote:
>Christians Are Theocrats
>...
>Modern "liberals" dislike the Puritan view of Christian statesmanship
>because of its hostility toward the Messianic State. A Biblical
>"reconstruction" of the State strips away its power, its bureaucracies, and
>its prestige, and in its place creates decentralized personal responsibility
>and a distrust of political power.
>>Modern "evangelicals" also dislike Puritan statesmanship because it looks to
>all of the Bible - including the Old Testament - for binding authority on
>the "reconstruction" of politics. Both "liberals" and "evangelicals" are
>alarmed at the "intolerance" of the Puritans.
>>There is no escaping this fact: the Biblical doctrine of oaths and the
>Puritan implementation of these laws resulted in oaths which could not be
>taken honestly by those who were not Christian. This meant that
>non-Christians could not hold political office. The word most often used to
>describe this situation is "theocracy." I believe a mature Christian
>statesman, consistent with Biblical teachings, will advocate Christian
>Theocracy and oppose "pluralism."
>>Theocracy or Pluralism: Which is Evil?
>One morning you walk out front to get your newspaper and you see that your
>pagan next-door neighbor has built an altar on his front lawn and is
>preparing to rip the heart out of his young daughter's chest as a gift to
>his gods. Will you rescue the child -- and thereby "impose" your religious
>values on your "devout" neighbor -- or are you a "pluralist?" Will your
>religion govern all of your life, or will you keep it in a spiritual
>compartment reserved for a church building on Sunday mornings?
>>As we will see on this page, the Puritans believed that all of life should
>be governed by their Christianity. Even civil government was to be governed
>by their religion. For the Puritans, Christian statesmanship was Theocratic
>statesmanship.
...
Hey, nincompoop. Do you remember Jefferson castigating the Calvinists who
had corrupted Christianity?
Guess what? Calvinist = Puritan
lojbab
