We Can’t Be Theocrats: A Political Challenge to Antigua & Barbuda
I am not a Christian. Since I am not one, laws should not be enacted that oblige me to function as if I were. The decision to live a life free from religion should not be infringed by any state sanctioned religious law. When this occurs, Antigua and Barbuda begin to take on the trappings of a Theocracy.
The Government is Not A Conduit For Behaviors Desired by the Church
Antigua and Barbuda can resist the temptation to appear theocratic and still guarantee adherents of all religions their safety to practice their faiths in their temples. Nevertheless, the demarcation between the State and Church must become so pronounced that it remains clear at all times that the government is not a conduit for laws that encourage behaviors desired by the Church. Christians should know that Caesar and their God operate in opposite worlds and require from them the fulfillment of different obligations. But Caesar and God cannot be the only available options. Equally important is the freedom to be obligated to neither and to feel that it is possible to evolve a functional democracy that concretely expresses that political power can come to reside in the people and not in Kings Queens, Sheiks, Priests and Pastors.
Do We Realize How Politically Oppressive Theocracies Have Been?
People in Antigua behave as if they are unaware of how culturally stultifying and politically oppressive a Theocracy can be. For example, Afghanistan has a theocratic state governed by the Taliban. The Taliban officials are all Sunni Islamist, and, in the name of religion, they have banned secular music. Recently, male workers replaced female employees in the public sector. Women who once relished the opportunity to work are now confined to domesticity. How women appear in public and how far they can travel unaccompanied by a male companion are determined by the Taliban. The women who cannot flee Afghanistan face gender-based inequality and repression when they protest. Girls aren’t assured the right to an education. Boys are. The Taliban’s policies receive legal cover under Sharia law, which they find consistent with their own understanding of Islamic texts.
Whether Christian or Muslim: Theocratic Law Reinforces Patriarchy
The Taliban isn’t the first and only Theocracy to appear in history. Europe had its own advocates and practitioners. Their Theocracy was hostile to dissenters whom it publicly shamed, imprisoned, or executed in the name of religion. The idea that Government ought to be by, for, and of the people had not yet taken deep roots within European society. For that reason, James the 1st could tell the fledgling British Parliament in 1610, that “Kings are not only God’s lieutenant on earth and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called gods.” Queen Elizabeth reminded her subjects that “Kings were not required to give reasons for their actions to any other but to God their only sovereign lord.” (The English Revolution by Roger Howell, Jr.) And in the name of God, they enslaved and colonized Africa and committed genocide against indigenous peoples.
Theocracy Is Hostile to Dissent, Democracy, and the Colonized
It is inconceivable that Antiguans and Barbudans would allow their lives to be supervised in the name of religion or surrender to a political/church power over which they could exercise very restricted influence. Yet, there are some who demonstrate theocratic inclinations at the very same time that they oppose the ruling Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (A&BLP). I am aware of their presence because they have called into radio stations to assert that “Antigua and Barbuda is a Christian society” and that its laws should reflect that it is. This may explain why they became terribly upset when the government hinted that it was going to make legal the purchase of alcohol on Good Friday. These callers wanted the government to retain the religious law that mandated believers and nonbelievers to follow the same Christian observance on Good Friday, which it eventually did.
It’s Not Just About the Sale of Alcohol: A&B Is NOT A Christian Society
This is an example of the theocratic temperament that wishes for Antigua and Barbuda to reflect, if only in part, a very specific ecclesiastical orientation that is unmindful of the possible existence of an unorthodox, religious thinking that does not value ritualistic observances. It seemed willing to accommodate the violation of the rights of those who want to live free from religious pronouncements. A government that was being accused of showing antidemocratic tendencies was being asked, even by its opponents, to violate the rights of others for religious reasons. This conflicted political mindset suggested to me that these callers were unsatisfied with the general state of things in Antigua and the possible lifting of the ban on the sale of alcohol on Good Friday would indicate a further drift towards more unsettling times. The absence of a political vision, something akin to the anticolonial struggles of the 50s and 60s or the revolutionary alternatives presented to the Caribbean people in the 1970s, was and is not present to help people to reimagine a new Antigua and Barbuda.
Can People Who Challenge Undemocratic Government Simultaneously Allow Orthodox Authorities to Promote Violation of Rights for Religious Reasons?
As the bellyful politics continue to lose its appeal in this time of scarcity and concentration of wealth, people are being encouraged to believe the false correlation that “evil and wickedness” are to be partly blamed for economic problems. Politicians know that this isn’t so, but it suits the narrative that a more Christian like government that abhors “evil and wickedness” will be better religiously oriented to solve the economic problems. These theocratic impulses are appearing because there is no insistence that Antigua and Barbuda ought to aspire to be a truly secular society, that offers the real possibility to articulate a political and economic vision that centers the population as the solvers of socioeconomic problems, which are reflections of a system that is unsuited to free us from dependency, and the system of government that helps to sustain that dependency.
Beyond Good and Evil: Our Problems are Political and Economic Not Supernatural or Out of Our Own Hands
Those who want to toy with theocratic notions and see some redemptive qualities in them have to be made aware of the fact that a Theocracy is deliberately antidemocratic. It produces rulers who are incorrigible in their beliefs that their rule is authorized by God or gods, whom they appropriate in service of their caprices. A Theocracy does not accept that ordinary people can govern themselves. The violence inflicted on demonstrators during the mass uprising in 2011, that was labeled the “Arab Spring,” bears testimony to the antidemocratic nature of the Theocratic state. It is estimated that more than three thousand protestors were murdered throughout the Arab world in 2011. Finally, a Theocracy is a political aberration. It is an aberration because history has proven that rights slowly emerge out of class struggles for new and liberating social relationships and are its only source.
A Theocracy Does Not Accept Ordinary People Can Directly Govern: History Has Proven That Rights Slowly Emerge Out of Class Struggles
Wherever a Theocracy exists and regardless to its composition, it shows its hostility towards the mass democratic movement that discovers while it is motion, an expression of people’s power that opposes the politically centralized and autocratic power. Antigua and Barbuda cannot come to mimic a Theocracy. In opposition to it, there needs to be developed a liberation theory that unmasks the theocratic suggestions that are now seeping into the political discourse as parties battle for political influence. These old theocratic ideas which the revolutions of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, revealed to be economically and politically counter revolutionary, remain so in this the 21st century.
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