Dean Esmay: “It's easy to get caught up in that fear when everyone you know seems to share it, but I think a lot of people are as unafraid of such a bogeyman as I am. Americans, in my view, always get the big issues right sooner or later. We've never been a theocracy, and are farther from one today than we ever have been--indeed, some of us think we've gone so far in the opposite direction it's getting downright psychotic.”
While it's technically true that the United States has never been a theocracy, both before it came into existence and after pockets of theocracy existed: Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded on “[t]he idea that theirs was a holy community shaped life [...] making it imperitive that colonists legislate morality, enforcing marriage, church attendance, and education in the Word of God as well as relentlessly seeking out and punishing sin and sinners” and Utah before entry into the Union. Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896 looks like an excellent resource, but it's unfortunately unavailable at both my school's library and the local public libraries.
