While Americans may not be too happy about the idea of setting up a theocracy in Iraq, there's another group of Americans trying to set up one here. The Los Angeles Times reports on the Statesmanship Institute, dedicated to help prospective federal staffers "integrate biblical principles with [their] calling to public service."
The six-month class teaches students about the Biblical bases for such topics as law, foreign policy and social policy, and not with that sissy stuff I learned in Catholic school like the Beatitudes or "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24, also Mark 10:25 and Luke 18:25). Or how about JC's admonition to feed, clothe and otherwise assist the less fortunate? "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire" (Matthew 25:40). No, according to the LAT, Statesmanship students take a different meaning from the gospels:
[West Virginia native Jessica] Echard says Jesus would approve of a call for lower taxes: "God calls on us to be stewards of our [own] money." She dips into the Bible to explain her opposition to most global treaties, reasoning that Americans have a holy obligation to protect their God-given freedom by avoiding foreign entanglements.
Another student "came away from the institute's seminars confident that abolishing the Department of Education is not just a Republican goal, but also a Christian imperative." Suffer the little children, indeed.
The two-year-old Statesmanship Institute is "one of half a dozen evangelical leadership programs making steady inroads into Washington," says the LAT, but they don't seem to have garnered much coverage from the mainstream media. Given our homegrown radical clerics, maybe some investigative reporter could find out just what version of the Bible these people are using to get their ideas.