But I drew my sister's consternation when I added, "Fundamentalists of any kind can't be trusted, including the Christian ones." She replied, basically, that Christian fundamentalists are a kinder, gentler version of the breed. And she won the argument for the moment because the only bad apple I could think of was convicted murderer Scott Roeder. He was a poor example to cite, I had to admit, because of many different factors contributing to the ease with which he murdered George Tiller: his chronic unemployment, prior criminal record, involvement in a government-hating militia group, and clinical diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. (The Kansas Free Press website contains some very informative articles on Roeder's checkered past.)

But I still think we kid ourselves if we don't consider Christian fundamentalists a threat to the common weal in this precariously free country of ours. They threaten first and foremost the separation of church and state established by founding fathers who had seen in Europe the ills wrought by too-strong a mixture of religion and politics. One hundred years later, an Austrian priest migrated to Wisconsin to serve the needs of German and Irish Catholic immigrants there. He ended up loving the American way of life so much that he became a US citizen. Furthermore, as Margaret Lorimer notes in her book Ordinary Sisters, something that Father Casper Rehrl came especially to prize was this country's separation of church and state. He, too, had seen the harm done in Europe by carelessly mingling the two entities. Now, more than 100 years after Father Rehrl's death, I find myself thinking that separation of church and state remains, more than ever, necessary to our American way of life.

What if Christian fundamentalists were to abolish the separation clause and take over our government entirely? Have we ever seriously tried to imagine that? What happens when the Christian thought police begin deciding what non-Christians may think, say, and do about matters properly belonging to the realm of personal conscience? For that matter, what happens when only the Christian fundamentalists get to decide what Christianity really is?

If you think Prohibition was a failed policy, wait until card-playing, dancing, all forms of gambling, and many forms of art are banned, too. Wait until government disaster relief programs disappear because earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions all are considered part of God's plan to punish his (and America's) enemies--whether foreign (Haiti) or domestic (New Orleans, commonly dubbed "a city of sin" by Christian fundamentalists). You think Vietnam was a failed policy? Wait until we start seeing an enemy of God and country behind every bush on every God-forsaken place on earth. Wait until we, with all of our military might, start giving the term holy war a whole new meaning.

In high school I had an English teacher, Sister Amadea, who always used to tell us, "Our poets are often our greatest prophets." She said that specifically in praise of the poet Daniel Berrigan--but she meant his social activism as well as his poetry. I know because the research paper that she later assigned to me carried the intriguing title, "Daniel Berrigan as Poet and Dove." I liked his poetry in our American literature textbook, but before I could begin my research, I had to ask Sister Amadea what a dove was.

I do believe that if our revered Sister Amadea were alive today, she would be recommending to mature adults (if not to high school students) the works of Margaret Atwood. For chills worse than any that Freddie on Elm Street might deliver, go see the film based on Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale. And when you begin to think its dark vision incredibly far-fetched, remember that our poets are often our greatest prophets. First published in 1985, this work of fiction depicts a new American theocracy rising up from the ashes of an old democracy destroyed by a horrific act of terrorism.

Sources:

Tim McGirk and Shomali Plain, Lifting the Veil on Taliban Sex Slavery.
Ellen Goodman, Taliban: the sequel.
Margaret Lorimer, Ordinary Sisters.