Theocracy is non-denominational. As I stated above - “It’s the social norm of a blurry God concept. A Santa Clause God who hates abortion, blesses America, protects our military, inspired our Constitution and gave us gun rights. The God in whom we Trust and under whom we fly our flag.”
It is a matter of degree. To some extent we are currently a theocracy. Most citizens accept the blurry-God concept and go along with ‘in God we trust’ and ‘one nation under God’ as political norms.
Check out the Pew Religious Landscape Study (http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/).
Organized religion is becoming less important as you look at younger age groups across the board. Church attendance is down, prayer is down, identification as “None” is up to above 20%.
The “Unaffiliated” aren’t self-reporting as atheists, most seem to vaguely hope/believe in some squishy form of afterlife/god. But it does show that the sort of organized religiosity behind things like the Southern Baptist Convention, the Moral Majority and all that is definitely losing people over time.
I do think like others have alluded to there is a quasi-secular “God” that non-practicing “Christian” conservatives “believe” in. These are people that never go to Church and can’t tell you much about Christian theology, but they “like” the thought that there’s a God out there that represents “them.” To them it’s basically a form of quasi-religion that justifies bigotries they hold already. It’s not a fully fleshed out religion, and by some standards these people probably should be categorized as not really religious, but it’s become like a cultural symbol that they hold onto without actually having deep religious feelings about it.
Heck, the U.S. has about as much territory and about half as many people as Europe, so naturally we can expect an awful lot of diversity. As a nation, I don’t think it’ll do much more than dangerously flirt with theocracy. Some of the individual states will embrace it as hard as they’re allowed to.
I would agree with Crane, it’s just a matter of having the right person get into the right position and it can all easily go sideways.
In Japan, for example, the population love peace, are glad that they have no appreciable military and that it’s not allowed to engage in battle, and would never allow the government to create nor purchase nuclear weapons.
The government, on the other hand, is formed almost completely of nationalists who wish they could form a strong military, build nukes, etc.
Turkey worships Kemal Atataturk, just as we do so for George Washington, and he was a devout secularist and championed it strongly as one of the founding principals of the nation. Yet, despite that, Erdogan has successfully used the Islamic voting block to power his way to absolute power, which has meant the ability to rewrite the makeup of the government, fill key government roles with loyalists, and adjust voting measures to ensure continued power.
While it may well be that religiosity is on the fall, if you get someone in power who can suppress speech effectively, change school doctrine to include religious materials, and rig elections, then they would be able to maintain power for a Christian party and see that it lasts long enough until the population was forced back into widespread belief.
A minority group can take control over a country and force the rest of the country to go their way, if they are dedicated enough.
I would also worry about the continued irreligiosity of our youth. The Internet allowed atheists and agnostics were a majority of the first netizens and they influenced a lot of the new users to the Internet. But now the Internet is starting to allow communities to go off and dive into their own navels with impunity. The Internet is may continue its plunge into empowering stupidity, craziness, and woo, rather than hindering it.
And also, people tend to go back to the way that they were raised once they settle down and get married. I’ve had occassion to witness and hear about many a relationship with a person from Asia and Latin America and where the man/woman will initially seem progressive and American, suddenly things start to get serious, they tie the knot, or whatever and suddenly everything from the home country comes back, deep religiosity, horribly conservative values, etc. So while it could be that all the 20-somethings are currently living it up and championing LGBT rights and so on, they could hit 30 and go back to being the Christian fundamentalists that they were raised as.
Tantrums and meanness are very common among powerful people. I think maybe you meant “confident people” or “secure people”.
You’re right.
I should have said that they feel insecure. And with good reason, if they insist on defining themselves through their waspness.
Here is a recent article that goes deeper into the topic.
The article starts with the involvement of Maria Butina and the National Prayer Breakfast but then points out some of the history of the religious right with Russia. Both the gun culture and anti-LGBT movements have been used by Russia to divide us - all under the guise of religion.
There certainly seems to be a movement among the evangelical set to distance themselves from the Republican Party, after spending 40-odd years being the GOP. Exhibit A: last month’s Southern Baptist Convention.
I think Crane and Sage Rat have a good handle on the actual danger. A combination of the current squishy (i.e. not strongly held) secularism of young people, and a charismatic leader who pushes just enough fuzzy “Christianity” as part of their message, might push/pull the US into an even stronger religion/politics alliance than already exists. Reagan moved the needle in that direction, and I don’t see it getting any weaker since.
I’m not sure about “allowing” but I think I get what you mean. Almost any wacko believer can find others of his/her ilk on the internet and establish a virtual community, whereas before it wasn’t nearly so easy. Competing sects may not be able to agree on sharing power, but the overall level of anti-rationality seems to be growing (or just becoming more obvious) from the influence of the internet.
The pragmatist in me thinks we’re going the way of Europe.
I believe we need a new demographic template to use in our discussion. The population described by the old template:
1940s:
Socially Church/Temple centered - locally denominational - largely Judeo/Christian.
Information disbursed through the Pulpit, radio, newspaper.
Role models - local and movies.
Mobility - low
Economy de-centralized
2018:
Socially - Internet and lifestyle centered
Information disbursed through the Internet, TV, radio
Role models - International, Sports, TV, internet
Mobility - high
Economy centralized
Social norms are in competition. Folks can go to prayer meeting on Wednesday night or they can watch Survivor. On Sunday it’s church or football. Limbaugh and Beck are more stimulating than books on political science. The falling away from organized religion is a result not a cause.
That still leaves belief as an open issue. Folks may be some kind of religious without being “Christian” or belonging to a Jesus Club.
One of the things that led me to start this thread was wondering whether there’s a real relationship between a certain category of religion (one in which claims of belief not just beyond evidence but in direct spite of evidence are greatly emphasized) and a certain category of current politics (in which outright denial of evidence and lack of interest in evidence are essential).
I hope that was understandable to read. It felt clumsy to write. Sorry. Maybe someone else can say it better.
Maybe I can say it better: Are the anti-evidence faction in politics mostly also religious people of a similar faction?
Not really either. The OP is using the fallacy of the excluded middle.
American Evangelicals are still pretty numerous, but remember that Trump ran as a pretty secular candidate. It was only really his choice of Pence as VP that shored up the Evangelical vote; they really would have preferred Cruz.
Liberal Christians are far more common than people realize. I know a lot of Unitarians and Episcopalians who are socially liberal, highly educated, and believe strongly in their Christian faith, though they don’t try to push it on others.
Catholicism is still strong in America also, among both liberals and conservatives. A lot of Catholics are in fact quite proud of the current Pope and are trying to move their religion in a less absolutist direction.
There are also African-American Christians to consider; there are a lot of them, they are often deeply religious, and those religious principles guide their values and the way they live their lives. Most of my African-American friends belong to churches. And I know white people who attend predominantly African-American churches, often because they enjoy the music and the camaraderie and feel welcomed there.
I agree about the excluded middle.
I too can make an anecdotal report of “knowing a lot of” more liberal Christians, but I think that’s an illusion we both have, based on who we happen to know.
I once heard a writer say that the US is about 50 years behind europe in several ways, including religion. So if so, the future of religion in the US will be where Europe is now.
Secularism is growing among young people. It seems each generation is more secular than the last.
I thought about it a little, and I think my excluded-middle fallacy had at least a little bit of a reason for existing. It seems to me that a lot of people in a lot of places are making a concerted effort to “exclude the middle” in society, and I’m wondering how that might play out.
I’m guessing… doughnut-like.
Thanks 
Religion in any customary sense is definitely on the wane, I think. However, America is suffering discord almost unprecedented in the modern developed world and I fear that we may be headed toward some dystopia, perhaps based on some pseudo-religion. Although itself far-fetched in the near term, Handmaid’s Tale Season 1 had hints about the direction of American character.