AHC: Iran-style Christian govt. in USA

Your mission, should you accept it, is to find a way for America to have a government similar to the Islamic Republic of Iran, but based in Christianity rather than Islam, with a POD on or after January 1, 1900.
 
Much like how outside Irans government is impossible in a non-shiite country US Protestantism ins't capable of having the entrenched organized clergy to act as an organizing focal point for a government. Iran's situation with its theocracy is pretty unique and hard to replicate elsewhere outside of maybe an independent Holy Mormon Desert or other place where there is a mainly locally powerful organized clergy with heavy political influence.
 
Much like how outside Irans government is impossible in a non-shiite country US Protestantism ins't capable of having the entrenched organized clergy to act as an organizing focal point for a government. Iran's situation with its theocracy is pretty unique and hard to replicate elsewhere outside of maybe an independent Holy Mormon Desert or other place where there is a mainly locally powerful organized clergy with heavy political influence.

A charismatic demagogue comes to power (how exactly is anyone's guess), with an army of color-shirted thugs.

A few months after coming to power, said demagogue demands that all Protestant churches in the US merge into a new "United States Church", with the clergy of the old Protestant denominations given seats on the USC's supreme council. Catholics, Jews, and other minorities are officially tolerated, but suffer low-level harassment and extra taxes to induce conversions. All Protestant churches which refuse to merge are denounced as heretical.

Within five years, the US is 75% USC, 5% heretical Protestant, and 20% Catholic/Jewish/other.

Does that solve the OP's challenge?
 
You missed out the part where they overthrow the US constitution, the preamble to which is actually an answer to Ireton's great question in the Putney Debates and one reason a Iran style (or muslim style) theocratic state is very unlikely in christian society.
 
You missed out the part where they overthrow the US constitution, the preamble to which is actually an answer to Ireton's great question in the Putney Debates and one reason a Iran style (or muslim style) theocratic state is very unlikely in christian society.

A few flowery words isn't going to stop a craven dictator from seizing power.

All that's needed for said charismatic leader is to claim the godless communists are threatening the people. Then engineer a suspicious fire in the Capitol and force Congress to rush through "temporary" laws to "clarify" certain sections of the US Constitution. After all opposition is silenced, extend these "temporary" laws as needed. Use the church as the moral enforcer of the new laws. The most craven of the church clergy are delighted to arrest what they view as the "moral decline in the hands of the godless".
 
I know many Americans now (albeit on FB) who already believe the constitution is based on Christian law and that the founding fathers want Christian law. If that kind of education can get through to a few more then you got a generation supporting said government or at least giving that impression.
 
Hmm, wouldn't the US turning into a theocracy make Canada all the more attractive to immigrants, then? ;)
 
The 1920s Klan never loses it's credibility and manages to elect a Klansman to the White House? It had members in both parties, so they form some kind of crosspartisan, Klan caucus in the House and in the Senate, push anti-black, anti-Jew, anti-Catholic, anti-labor legislation and implement a Christian, white supremacist state with permanent prohibition, strict immigration quotas, and deportations.
 
Robert Heinlein did it over 70 years ago in "If This Goes On..." and several other stories in his Future History, though he never really went into detail on how it happened except that Nehemiah Scudder was able to parlay his popularity as an evangelist into election to the Presidency, then went on from there to dismantle the Constitutional structure and turn the nation into a theocracy.
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
Maybe in a single state, but probably not with a post 1900 pod. The various Protestant denominations were never cozy enough to begin with, and I doubt the Lutherans would accept a Baptist hegemony - or the episcopleians or Methodist for that matter - let alone the issues that arise when Catholics and Jews start arriving in numbers and the resident diest / atheist population.
 
Your mission, should you accept it, is to find a way for America to have a government similar to the Islamic Republic of Iran, but based in Christianity rather than Islam, with a POD on or after January 1, 1900.

For this to be remotely possible, the vast majority of Americans would have to belong to a single organized sect whose leaders have a theological basis for power over the secular government.

Iran was 90% or so Shi'a Islam, and Islam unlike Christianity makes no distinction between religion and state.

Some of the suggestions here reverse the Iranian relationship - a dictator who overturns the Constitution, then imposes a single religion.

To follow the Iranian model, the religious condition has to come first, and drive the takeover.

In Iran, that happened with the long-established traditional religion of the country.

None of the traditional religions found in the United States would support such an interpretation, which is another profound obstacle. Some new cultish religions such as Mormonism, Christian Science*, or Scientology might be expanded to a numerically dominant position by a super-charismatic leader with a team of genius apostles, and then go for political control. But that is just about impossible starting after 1900.

* Yes, Christian Science. Circa 1900, Christian Science was growing so fast that Mark Twain predicted (seriously) it would absorb all of Protestant Christianity in another generation.
 
^ What about the Methodists? At one point the Methodists were the largest Protestant denomination in the US.
 
Hmm, wouldn't the US turning into a theocracy make Canada all the more attractive to immigrants, then? ;)

I'm fairly certain a fascist/theocratic US would turn Canada into something like Finland during the Cold War at best. More likely it will subvert Canada and install a client regime.
 
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