# Nations With Official (or Unofficial) Theocratic Tendencies **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 27, 2009, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nations-with-official-or-unofficial-theocratic-tendencies/507921 "2009-08-27T16:17:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 20
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2009, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nations-with-official-or-unofficial-theocratic-tendencies/507921/20 "2009-08-28T04:40:29Z")
> [@Apollyon](#): > > Are you excluding the US from your question? > > Because while I’d agree that officially the US is far from being theocratic – arguably is officially as non-theocratic as it is possible to be – practically speaking being an attending member of a religion (and one religion in particular) appears to be almost a pre-requisite for election to government. Odd that. When the Atheists want to show a list of great atheists, they often include many US Presidents. Quite a few US President- while not perhaps “atheists” were not regular churchgoers or perhaps “deists”. Here’s a cite: > **[Religious affiliations of presidents of the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_affiliations_of_United_States_Presidents)** > > This is an accepted version of this page > > > Religious affiliations can affect the electability of the presidents of the United States and shape their stances on policy matters and their visions of society and also how they want to lead it. While no president so far has ever openly identified as an atheist, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and William Howard Taft were speculated to be atheists by their opponents during political campaigns; in addition, a survey during the first presidency of Do... \*The irreligious In some cases there is a paucity of material that suggests that religion was important to certain presidents. For example, next to no evidence exists for Monroe’s personal religious beliefs. This may be a consequence of his destruction of most of his personal correspondence, in which religious sentiments may have been recorded. Franklin Steiner lists four presidents as “not affiliated” and six others as “religious views doubtful”: ``` * James Madison * James Monroe * Martin Van Buren * William Henry Harrison * John Tyler * Zachary Taylor * Andrew Johnson * Ulysses S. Grant * Rutherford B. Hayes * Chester Arthur ``` As with claims of deism, these identifications are not without controversy. Deism and the founding fathers Deism was a religious philosophy in common currency in colonial times, and some founding fathers (most notably Thomas Paine, who was an explicit proponent of it) are identified more or less with this system. Nevertheless a number of early presidents are sometimes identified as holding deist tenets, though there is no president who identified himself as such. The following Presidents are often identified as having some degree of deistic beliefs:[6] ``` * George Washington * Thomas Jefferson * James Madison * James Monroe * John Tyler * Abraham Lincoln ``` Note, however, that most of these identifications are controversial. … Four presidents are positively affiliated with Unitarian churches, and a fifth (Jefferson) was an exponent of ideas now commonly associated with Unitarianism. - There are also around 13 (of 50) US Senators who are listed as Jewish, a couple who are Unitarian, and one Unspecified. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nations-with-official-or-unofficial-theocratic-tendencies/507921)._