AMERICAN THEOCRACY
review by
Larry Shallenberger
AMERICAN THEOCRACY:
The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st
Century
by Kevin Phillips
(Viking)
Reader Appeal: Adults
Genre: Politics
Chances are, by very virtue of your reading a book review on FAMILYFANS.com, you contribute to the erosion of our national health. At least that's what former Republican strategist, Kevin Phillips, would say, because he believes he knows what is wrong with our nation--and he's not afraid to point fingers.
Philips book, American Theocracy: The Politics and Peril of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century is at times scathing and at times coolly analytical in its survey of dangers the author sees threatening America's superpower status.
Part I of this book examines the effects of America’s dependency on oil. Our industry, automobiles, and military have an insatiable appetite for oil. Phillips argues that this energy dependency gives "Big Oil" too much sway over our domestic and foreign policies. At home we lax our environmental laws to accommodate oil drilling, and abroad we resort to alleged international "thuggery" to secure control of Iraq’s mostly untapped oil fields. “The war on terror?”, “Importing democracy to the Middle East?” Phillips sees these as slogans to sell an imperialistic war.
In Part II of his book: “Too Many Preachers”, Phillips takes aim at Christian Fundamentalism, a movement the he sees embodied by the Southern Baptist Convention, Pentecostals, and the charismatic movements. Phillips chronicles these denominations rise to prominence and how they shape national politics. According to Phillips, culture wars are provoked by radical Christians attempting to establish a theocracy—a Christian America governed by God’s rules. “Disenlightenment” is Phillip’s descriptor for the effect that these empowered believers have on our country: They value faith over science and a literal Armageddon over peace.
Phillips closes his diatribe with Part III, an reprimand about our national and individual debt. Again, the uathor provides a valuable historical context at how debt played a role in the decline of England, Spain, and the Netherlands as superpowers. Phillips offers an undeniable outline of the depths of our national debt as well as personal credit lodes. He argues that our increasing debt and decreasing hard industry has created a thin ice that will eventually give in under American largesse.
American Theocracy finds its value when Phillips is able to sustain his analytical voice--and he’s able to do that for extended periods of time within the pages of this book. His historical perspective on our oil dependency, the changing face of American religion, and our national debt demand your attention. I’ll confess, as an evangelical with political tendencies a few notches right of centrist, this was uncomfortable stuff to read. Even so, Phillips places important issues on the table.
However when Phillips slips into his polemic voice the book becomes tedious and shrill. The author has open contempt for people of faith who actually believe the Biblical creation account, the (hi)story of Noah's Ark, or a literal interpretation of Revelation, such as the one popularized by the Left Behind franchise. Phillips also makes too many gaps in his evidence with clauses like, “Although the evidence is weak...” He appears on a mission to connect the dots against the legitimacy of Christianity and is willing to supply any missing points along the way.
Make no mistake; Kevin Phillips wields too much anger and bias to be objective. But are there any takeaways in American Theocracy for the evangelical and fundamentalist Christian communities? I think so. this book provokes us to ask several poignant questions, such as:
-- Have we developed what Phillip’s calls “American Exceptionalism”; a belief that America has an exclusive blessing from God? How does this belief influence our voting tendencies and foreign policy?
-- Does our theology concerning the end times make us overly tolerant of military interventions in the Middle East? (i.e., “The faster we get to Armageddon the faster we get to heaven.”)
-- Should the political arena be our primary method of advancing God’s kingdom on Earth? Does Jesus truly expect that we establish an “American Theocracy?”
I won’t pretend to offer the final word on these questions. Instead, I will just note that in spite of all the book’s weaknesses, American Theocracy provides the agenda for an important conversation that’s long overdue among Christians.
FAMILYFANS RATING: B. (with points deducted for unnecessary, acerbic jabs and shortcuts in logic.)
Note: For more in this area, be sure to read Mike Nappa's review of Mark W. Smith's' book,
--LS