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Kingdoms and Countries, Prophets and Preachers

Glen Beck, a FOX News hero, has apparently appointed himself The Chief Conspiracy Theorist.  He doesn't look graceful, but he has danced himself to the front of a huge crowd of people who see things in the dark that no one can see with the naked eye, except for a lynx, which is said to see things that exist nowhere.


Glenbeck says that what is happening in Egypt right now 
is a grand plot on the part of Muslims to take over the whole
Middle East, and Spain and Portugal and France, too, 
and England, and Allah only know what else.  A successor 
to Mohammad--a Caliph, or more menacingly, a Khalif--will emerge, 
and we will all be Muslims.  Something like that.  


Glenbeck is losing it.  Has lost it.  Never had it.


What is happening in the Middle East right now is the stirrings
of democracy.  What is happening is similar to what has happened
to most of Europe, earlier.  Earlier, most of Europe was governed
by something like a Holy Roman Empire; a combination of 
religion and monarchy.  Historians often speak of the medieval
notion of two kingdoms--the kingdom of God and the kingdom
of earth--which really meant a struggle between the Pope and
the Emperor.  Sometimes it was a cooperation between the Pope 
and the Emperor.   Usually, it was a standoff.


That notion of "the two swords of God" eventually led to a more
modern idea of the separation of church and state.  


Islam is a newer religion than Christianity, by about 600 years. 
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all clearly kin, but in many ways
the age difference has meant that, religiously speaking, Islam's 
growing pains have mirrored those of European Christianity,
several centuries later.  Today, only the Pope, in Western Europe,
yearns for the days of a Holy Empire.  The Empire has become
democratic Europe.  It has become the Common Market, and the Euro.


It is probably important to remember that Glenbeck is a recent
convert to Mormonism:  the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Glenbeck is seeing the world through his Joseph Smith glasses.
He is seeing empires, and religious conquest, and kingdoms, 
and caliphates.  He is not seeing a turn to democracy, through
the inevitable messiness that are the first stirrings of self-rule. 


Most of the Arab world is ruled by kings and religious leaders
in roughly the same way Europe was ruled, although sometimes
the king is now called a dictator, and the religious leader has 
a Muslim title.  It is top-down.  It is authoritarian, both religiously
and politically.  It is oppressive.  It cannot last.  It is crumbling.


What is happening in Tunisia, and in Egypt, and perhaps in
Jordan and Yemen, and surely soon everywhere else in the
Arab world is a birth of Arab democracy, which surely will not look
like Scandinavian or French democracy, but which will be
forms of government of,and by, and for, the people. 


Then, Allah have mercy on them, they will get the equivalents
of Michele Bachmann, and Sarah Palin, and Glen Beck!  Why?
Because there are people in the Arab world, too, who think
like Our Belle, and Sister Sarah, and Glenbeck.  Egyptians will
have to figure out how to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood,
and with the people who want a strongman at the top, and with
goof balls, and libertarians, and capitalists, and socialists.


It won't be pretty, but it will be better, in the long run, 
especially for women, people who aren't religious, for all those
people who have no voice at all now in how they govern 
themselves, and for all the rest of us, too.  


The kingdoms have become countries, 
and the prophets have become preachers.  


Some of the politicians will still think they speak to God, and for God,
and some of the preachers will think the gospel is about getting rich,
but the sooner the Holy Empires fall, the better for us all.  


.

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