Profs & Pints Baltimore: America's Advocates of Theocracy

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “America’s Advocates of Theocracy,” a look at past and current religious challenges to our nation’s separation of church and state, with Jerome Copulsky, scholar of religion and political theory, former senior advisor at the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs and author of the acclaimed book American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/advocates-of-theocracy .]

President Trump has on a number of occasions promised to elevate the place of religion in our nation’s governance and public life. Among his actions to further that goal, he has issued an executive order to eradicate anti-Christian bias in the federal government, established a Religious Liberty Commission, and installed televangelist Paula White-Cain as head of a newly created White House Faith Office. Many of his supporters hope that he will go further.

Such a pushback against the separation of church and state is nothing new. Throughout out nation’s history there have always been those who contested the country’s liberal foundations, constitutional settlement, and failure to properly acknowledge divine authority, even while most Americans support the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion that they enjoy.

Gain a deep historical perspective of these tensions and today’s religious movements and landscape with Jerome Copulsky, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World affairs and former assistant professor at Virginia Tech.

We’ll begin by looking at how the American Revolution marked a break not only with the monarchy but from the English conception of the relationship of church and state, thus ushering in a new way of thinking about religion and political life.

Then we’ll look at how this new settlement was contested throughout American history. Among its detractors: Southern pro-slavery theologians complained that the Declaration of Independence’s assertion of human equality was an affront to biblical teaching. The Religious Amendment movement sought to rewrite the Constitution to make America a properly Christian state.

You’ll learn about the arguments for even more radical solutions from Catholic Integralists who believe that the temporal realm should be guided by their social teachings and religious values, Seven Mountains Mandate enthusiasts who want to utilize spiritual warfare conquer all the heights of human endeavor, and Reformed Protestants who long for a theocratic republic under biblical law.

All regarded religion as a concern of the state and politics as fundamentally theological, and all held that the United States needs a religious refounding.

Among the big questions the talk will tackle: What is the relationship between religious ideas and political regimes? Is Christianity compatible with liberal democracy or in tension with it? Does the United States remain a religious country because of its separation or church and state—or despite it? (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Talk begins at 4:30. Attendees may arrive any time after 3 pm.)

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