The Theocons: Damon Linker

Among the Authoritarian groups comprising the modern Republican Party, the largest and most vocal has been the faction of Christian Nationalists – those who wish to remake our nation into one that is pleasing unto their version of the Christian God. Author Damon Linker calls them “The Theocons”, in his book of that title [Doubleday, 2006]. In order to oppose them, it is necessary first to understand their worldview.

Linker does us a great service by spelling out the major premises of the Theocon ideology:

• “…for most of its history the United States has been a thoroughly Christian nation founded on absolute moral principles that make no sense outside of a religious context;

• “…the liberal and secular drift of American culture since the 1960s is the result of an organized effort by liberal and secular elites in the nation’s education and media establishments to impose their corrupt views on the nation through antidemocratic means [especially through the courts];

• “…the practical consequences of secularization are a sex-saturated popular culture, the collapse of crucially important social institutions [such as traditional marriage], a general separation of law from religiously based moral principles, and the rise of a ‘culture of death’ in which abortion and euthanasia are widely permitted and practiced;

• “…the solution to secularization is to bring modern America [back] into line with the moral strictures of biblical religion; and

• “…this revision can be accomplished by allowing the country’s Christian essence to reassert itself democratically – primarily by citizens voting for conservative Christian politicians…but also by proposing popular referenda...which frustrate the tyrannical ambitions of secularists.” [p. 4]

This ideology informs the Theocon worldview, in which they see themselves as being the popular majority of Americans, dismissed and persecuted by a liberal secularist elite, struggling to restore what was begun, not as a social contract, but as a national covenant under God. Their goal, as indicated by Linker, is to cure America’s “spiritual malaise” and generate “a unifying source of meaning” for Americans. Linker believes that a Theocon America would outwardly appear much as it does now, but it would be organized so that it injected “Christian values into every aspect of their lives.” Being authoritarian, its core expectation would be that Americans “Believe and obey.”

There are many fallacies in the premises of Theocon ideology, and Linker discusses them at length. I will note only that the Founders did not set out to establish a “Christian” nation, for they well knew all of the problems in Europe that were created by competing “Christian” churches. A number of the Founders were not even “Christians” in the traditional sense, but “Deists.” And while a majority of Americans might describe themselves as “Christian”, they are not at all unanimous in their beliefs and values.