Is the US A a theocracy?

[Philistine]

Originally posted by pkt
Yes. But that's not the country in the original question. The Brits never profess to have a seperation of church and state, do they?

But there was an argument that Canada doesn't require natural-born citizenship for it's prime-minister--contrasting that with the US. I was pointing out that the head of state of Canada (the Queen/King) must be of a certain religion (not to mention bloodline).

I was also making the point (or trying to, anyway ) that what can seem to outsiders to be the trappings of a theocracy can be merely symbolism and tradition.

--Philistine

[jeff]

The US is a country that separates church and state - while acknowledging the deist beliefs of its founders, and despite the attempts of religious zealots to enforce their beliefs in secular law. The secular basis of US government makes it safer and more popular for citizens to be religious in their personal lives. This is often cited as one of the benefits (if you like religion) of separation of church and state. The requirement that the president be a native US citizen is irrelevant issue, and was probably a prudent measure at the time it was adopted

The UK clearly is far more a theocracy than the US, with an official state religion (which is related to but quite different from Roman Catholic), where neither the monarch (the head of the Church) nor the PM are allowed to be other than the State religion. If the purpose of this thread is to point fingers, then it would be well to point at the UK before the US.

Or, as eloquently stated in song:

"God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us;
God save the Queen!"

[pkt]

Originally posted by Philistine


But there was an argument that Canada doesn't require natural-born citizenship for it's prime-minister--contrasting that with the US. I was pointing out that the head of state of Canada (the Queen/King) must be of a certain religion (not to mention bloodline).

I was also making the point (or trying to, anyway ) that what can seem to outsiders to be the trappings of a theocracy can be merely symbolism and tradition.

--Philistine [/B]

The current representative of the Queen in Canada, the Governor General was born in Hong Kong.

Quite a few of the PMs of Canada were born in the British Isles.

Within the Liberal Party of Canada - the so-called governing party of Canada, when they get to retain power, they try to alternate between an English PM and a Quebecois PM. You figure out which religion they belong to. In other words, religion doesn't really come into it. In one particular instance, the leader of the party insisted a Quebecois running in English Ontario. the Q's reaction was something like, "Are you crazy?" Quite a coup to say the least. [The Quebecois did win and formed a long-time partnership with the one who suggested him to do so.]

[pkt]

jeff,

there is one fact you seem to forget:
the British Monarch is the titular head of the country only.
She exercises no power but she has all the power.
OTOH, the PM is in possession of none of the power but exercises all of them.

In the unlikely situation the Monarch can over-rule parliament. The consequence of that is constitutional crisis. But it is within the Monarch right to dissolve parliament though this is generally not done. When that's done, there's hell to pay.

PK

[jeff]

PK, I'm quite aware of those distinctions, but they make no difference: neither of those parties may be other than Church of England, therefore, a theocracy whether you're looking at the titular monarch or the head of the government.

[OCTAVIA]

Hi. I read through the thread. In China, thousands of years ago when they had emperors and emperesses' the people practiced a religion simliar to the current Shinto religion of Japan. They also did something very interesting I thought you may want to know:

The Priests in china, used to live in large temple dwellings. In the walls of the dwellings there were tunnel type structures and tubes that the priests would speak through to the people. The voices of the priests would carry through the tubes, and outside; the people would look up to the temple walls and listen to the words of their priests. The tubes were rigged so that the words of the priests would eminate through the mouth of a statue. So the people would believe they were hearing gods or whatever, Maybe some knew they were hearing words from within the walls.

At any rate they would explain things to people about the world, life, and the kingdom. Later on in about 400-300 bc, Mahayana was introduced to China and Chi'i took off with it, translating sanskrit scripture to Chinese.

Pretty good.

[grphiw]

Interesting discussion for a fencing website.
Anyway, to put this back a little more on the original track about the US , no, we're not a theocracy. A theocracy, by definition, is a, "government that accepts a deity as the supreme being." (Random House Webster's School and Office Dictionary) We, as Americans, (I apologize to anyone who is not American), do not official recognize one specific deity as our supreme being. Heck, we don't even recognize any language as our official one. God is in so many different religions it doesn't implicate any one specific God of one religion. We simply infer it's the Protestant God because all except one of our presidents have been WASPs (the execption being the Kenedy, which, interesting enough, caused a lot of fear in the US that the Vatican would be calling the shots).
So simply we are not a theocracy, but somtimes I do have to agree we are a plutocracy. It's hard to tell what kind of government we are, because the US changes so much.