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I tried to summarise what follows and then decided to share it as it was written by Heather Cox Richardson because nothing I could say could add to it. I offer it as an admiring promotion of her free, family, newsletter, ‘Letters from an American’, to which you can subscribe here:
The Alabama Supreme Court on February 16, 2024, decided that cells awaiting implantation for in vitro fertilization are children and that the accidental destruction of such an embryo falls under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. In an opinion concurring with the ruling, Chief Justice Tom Parker declared that the people of Alabama have adopted the “theologically based view of the sanctity of life” and said that “human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”
Payton Armstrong of media watchdog Media Matters for America reported today that on the same day the Alabama decision came down, an interview Parker did on the program of a self-proclaimed “prophet” and Q-Anon conspiracy theorist appeared. In it, Parker claimed that “God created government” and called it “heartbreaking” that “we have let it go into the possession of others.”
Parker referred to the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a theory that appeared in 1975, which claims that Christians must take over the “seven mountains” of U.S. life: religion, family, education, media, entertainment, business…and government. He told his interviewer that “we’ve abandoned those Seven Mountains and they’ve been occupied by the other side.” God “is calling and equipping people to step back into these mountains right now,” he said.
While Republicans are split on the decision about embryos after a number of hospitals have ended their popular IVF programs out of fear of prosecution, others, like Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley agreed that “embryos, to me, are babies.”
House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) identifies himself as a Christian, has argued that the United States is a Christian nation, and has called for “biblically sanctioned government.” At a retreat of Republican leaders this weekend, as the country is grappling with both the need to support Ukraine and the need to fund the government, he tried to rally the attendees with what some called a “sermon” arguing that the Republican Party needed to save the country from its lack of morality.
As Charles Blow of the New York Times put it: “If you don’t think this country is sliding toward theocracy, you’re not paying attention.”
This madness is going on in the USA right now.
Liz Truss was speaking at a conference promoting this type of madness this week.
And then note this, reported by Harry Coles in the Sun, based on comments made by Boris Johnson to the same far-right think tank conference that Truss was speaking at. He said:
When you look back at Trump’s last term in office there is little doubt that the world felt safer and calmer and more stable. Right now much of the world is craving the stability that goes with strong and decisive American leadership.
So there we have Johnson playing straight into the fascist copy-book portrayal of the strong male leader as the saviour of the world.
Theocratic fascism is threatening us all. We really do need to wake up to it.
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