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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Israel a theocracy?
Message-ID: <874@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Dec-85 21:56:48 EST
Article-I.D.: mmintl.874
Posted: Tue Dec 10 21:56:48 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 16-Dec-85 20:00:04 EST
References: <1461@ihlpg.UUCP> <695@k.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 24
Xref: lsuc net.politics:2449 net.religion.jewish:1712
Summary: 


In article <695@k.cs.cmu.edu> tim@k.cs.cmu.edu (Tim Maroney) writes:
>
>Thank you, Bill Tannenbaum for a mostly reasonable response on a point of
>disagreement.  I believe our difference is in the definition of theocracy.
>I do consider both England and Israel to be theocracies, because they
>contain laws which explicitly refer to precepts of specific religions, and
>because to some extent they limit immigration based on the religious views
>of the applicant.  (In case you didn't know, England will not allow any
>Scientologists to enter the country, and I would guess that they treat some
>other groups the same way, though I don't know for sure.)  It is not
>necessary to have a complete correspondence between secular and religious
>law to be a theocracy, only to impose religion on others to the extent of
>having laws explicitly based in religious dogma.

An interesting distinction, and one there ought to be a word for (the best
that comes to mind is "having an established religion"), but that isn't
what theocracy means.  Theocracy means that religious figures rule, as in
Iran.  The concept is basically applicable to, for example, medieval Europe,
where the nominal rulers were not primarily religious figures, but the
Church was in fact the dominant force.  This is not really true in modern
Israel, and certainly not true in modern Great Britain.

Frank Adams                           ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108