Iran’s Theocracy: An Uneasy Fusion of Religion and Political Economy

As mass protests erupted in Iran during the second week of January, 2026, Iran’s theocracy was on edge. That the protests stemmed from the dire economic conditions facing the people amid staggering inflation, including on basic food staples, rather than from foreign affairs, raises the question of whether religious clergy, including the “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are competent in making economic policy. Without the ongoing political pressure that can come from constituents in a representative democracy, or republic, it is no surprise that the protests in Iran quickly became mass riots. In other words, bad economic policy by religious clerics in power in an autocracy can easily result in popular protests abruptly erupting into rioting. The overreaching of functionaries based in the domain of religion into politics (including economic policy), such that the distinctiveness of the two domains is ignored or obfuscated, can be distinguished from the problems that go with autocracy.

On January 9, 2026, the theocracy signaled that the rioting would be dealt with severely. Iran’s judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, in assuming a non-judicial political role, “vowed that punishment for protesters ‘will be decisive, maximum and without any legal leniency.”[1] Separation of powers obviously did not exist in the Islamic regime. That both the internet and international calls were being blocked by the government signals that the protests could realistically result in the fall of the Islamic revolution in Iran. In other words, the severity of the government’s measures in shutting down communication can be read as indicative of a government whose days are numbered. In an interview, U.S. President Trump said that Iran’s dictator was already “looking to go someplace” because the situation on the streets was “getting very bad.”[2]

Demonstrating that expertise in theology does not extend to politics (as well as economics), Khamenei accused the rioters of “ruining their own streets . . . in order to please the president of the United States.”[3] Nothing was said about the hyperinflation that was putting even basic foodstuffs out of reach for an increasing number of people as the reason for the protests. Nothing was said about Crown Prince Reza Pahavi having called for the protests on January 8, 2025, and that the protests “included cries in support of the shah,” which can be distinguished from chants in favor of President Trump, which did not occur.[4] Pahavi was not calling for the United States to invade Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rhetoric was therefore very poor from a political standpoint (i.e., his statement was incorrect), and he did not address the reeling economy in any constructive way in terms of advocating economic reform that actually had a chance of working. Knowledge in theology does not carry over onto the domains of politics and economics, so the overreach is problematic.

This critique can be distinguished from one premised on the American separation of “church and state,” which actually could use some work in American jurisprudence because “In God We Trust” is printed on the currency. To be against a government establishing a religion (e.g., proclaiming a religion to be the official religion) is different than being against a religion superimposing its distinctive criteria onto a civic government because an over-reaching of the political domain into the religious domain is distinct from the religious domain overreaching into the political realm, even though both instantiate the conflation of two distinct domains of human experience. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should have stuck to theology as a cleric rather than try to run a government, and his response to the economic protests—even that such protests morphed so quickly into riots—demonstrates the intractably problematic nature of overreaching from one domain onto another, qualitatively different, one as if the criteria and credentials of the former could and should supplant those of the latter in the latter.

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1. Jon Gambrell, “Iran Supreme Leader Signals Upcoming Crackdown on Protesters ‘Ruining Their Own Streets’ for Trump,” APnews.com, January 9, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

American Federalism: Christianity as the Official Religion in North Carolina

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or preventing the free exercise thereof.” Congress. The writers of the First Amendment of the U.S. federal Constitution were obviously excluding the state governments. Even so, the U.S. Supreme Court has established that the amendment applies to the states as well as Congress. From Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), the Court gave us what is known as the Lemon test. State funding for parochial schools (e.g., Catholic schools) must have a secular legislative purpose (e.g., education), neither advance nor inhibit religion in its consequences, and not foster “an excessive government entanglement with religion.” Yet the leap in claiming that the amendment bears on the states must deal with the explicit language that “Congress shall make no law.” Even so, it did not seem constitutional to many people in 1913 when the North Carolina legislature tried to make Christianity the republic's official religion. Even so, because the United States is essentially a federal empire of fifty republics, care ought to be taken when applying a one-size-fits-all approach as it does not take into account interstate political, religious, and cultural differences. Much is made of these in the European Union, but not in the United States.  
When the 13 original American states that formed the United States had been colonies, Calvinism was the “state religion” in all of the New England Confederation, which excluded Rhode Island on account of its freedom of religion. Pennsylvania was known as the Quaker experiment. Maryland was heavily Catholic. Virginia was Anglican. New Jersey split in two for a few decades in the late seventeenth century, with the Calvinists taking East New Jersey and the Quakers taking West New Jersey. Even by the time the U.S. Constitution was being considered, the notion of a state religion in a particular state would have been familiar to most Americans. The U.S. Supreme Court’s precedent seems artificial in comparison.
Even so, the North Carolina General Assembly would have gone too far had it passed the bill in 2013 stating in part that the North Carolina General Assembly “does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools or any political subdivisions.”[1] The bill also states that the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit states from making laws respecting an establishment of religion. While this assertion is probably correct in theory, the precedent set down by the U.S. Supreme Court makes the prohibition the law of the land. Refusing to recognize the U.S. Supreme Court as bearing on the states harkens back to the Nullification Crisis centered on South Carolina. President Andrew Jackson pointed out in 1831 that the Union would not long last if the states could decide for themselves whether they would be bound by federal law.

Rep. Carl Ford of the NC Assembly. He proposed the bill that would have sidelined the U.S. Supreme Court and paved the way for Christianity as the state's official religion. 

The challenge is to get back to the wording, “Congress shall make no law,” without throwing out the U.S. Supreme Court. Proposing state laws, whether on religion or abortion, that are obviously unconstitutional under the Court’s rulings makes a state body look foolish. Rather than having selective amnesia, state representatives could seek to reverse the Court’s precedent either through the consent power of U.S. senators or by proposing a federal constitutional amendment. The first route may require state governments to have greater sway over the senators. Originally, they were to represent their respective states by representing the governments.
In terms of an official religion at the state level, Utah would obviously be Morman, but not every state has such a concentration of one particular denomination. Nor is religion itself equally strong in every state. Not every state would want to institute an official religion. All of this suggests that the United States would be a richer quilt to the extent that states can differ on religion as a phenomenon and with respect to the particular religions. Put another way, the U.S., being imperial in scale, is innately more diverse than can be seen by the extent of one-size-fits-all Congressional action. Allowing the states to fulfill their particularities more fully would make the U.S. itself a richer tapestry and thus a strong union.
If some of the American republics in the U.S. were to have established state religions, a person in the minority in one of those states might feel more like an outsider in one’s own town. Being a non-Mormon in Utah would be even harder were Mormonism the official state religion.  However, is it not already awkward for atheists in the small towns of several states, such as Alabama and Mississippi? Is there really so much difference between an overwhelmingly Christian population and making Christianity the official state religion? It would not be as though the heretics could legally be burned alive. To counter any unfairness more generally, equal protection under the law and due process could be used in a non-Christian’s defense.  
I would even say that it should not be the case that the typical American feels equally at home in every state, for that would mean that the one-size-fits-all approach of Congress has effectively homogenized an empire that is inherently diverse.[2] In terms of historical political theory, an empire is “different in kind” (i.e., qualitatively) than the kingdom-level on the next scale down. It is not only that an empire is larger than a kingdom (i.e., quantitatively). Whereas a kingdom is only large enough that it may or may not be diverse within, an empire by definition consists of kingdom-level polities and is thus inherently diverse because kingdoms are different. From the beginning, the American colonies/states were mapped on the scale of the then-extant early-modern kingdoms in Europe. The European countries and American republics generally are comparable. France is a bit smaller than Texas, Germany is roughly the size of Montana, Spain matches Arizona and Italy is the size of California. Among the respective smaller states, Malta, Luxemburg, and Cyprus cluster with Rhode Island, Delaware, and New Jersey. Belgium and Maryland are both mid-sized states in their respective unions. To compare the U.S. and France or the E.U. and Texas thus evinces a category mistake. Flawed conclusions should be expected.
The United States altogether thus form an empire, which is composed of kingdom-level polities/cultures/territories.[3] We should not be surprised to find that the culture in Texas differs from that of Massachusetts, for example. One of the benefits of living in the U.S. is that one can live in a republic that fits one’s ideology or lifestyle. For example, a gay person can move to a culture such as Massachusetts or California in which greater acceptance exists. People in the majority cultures in Oklahoma and Arkansas would not have to be pushed into changing their respective cultures into accepting homosexuality, though the marriages made in the other states would have to be recognized due to the full faith and credit clause of the U.S. Constitution.  A fuller happiness for both gays and traditionalists/Biblicalists would result if each can find a fitting environment than would be the case were Congress to pass an empire-wide one-size-fits-all “solution.”  Were it made under one giant compromise, U.S.-wide, it is likely that the result is not a fit for any American. Moreover, to suppose that every state should be virtually the same just because the U.S. is recognized as “a” country ignores the intrinsic diversity that exists within an empire-scale complex-polity. Even the poll finding that roughly a third of Americans want Christianity to be the official religion in their own state cannot be generalized using a broad brush across the United States. I suspect that a much higher percentage of Arkansans than New Yorkers or Californians want Christianity to be their official religion.
In short, the establishment of state religions in some of the states even as strong majorities in other states prefer their respective cultures (and governments) to remain primarily secular would provide a closer fit for not only the people involved, but also the diversity that exists anyway within an empire that is composed of kingdoms and/or republics. To treat an empire as though it were synonymous with one of its republics or kingdoms evinces a category mistake. The benefits of diversity that can be enjoyed within an empire are threatened when Congress makes the mistake by acting like a state legislature. Put another way, the United States would be stronger were the strictures relaxed such that they could more fully manifest their uniqueness. Seeing a strip-mall with a McDonalds restaurant in every town from coast to coast is appreciably more bland. “Sameness” multiplied across a continent is not only tiring; it fails to take advantage of the inherent diversity that springs from distance and more than one government. One need only look at the E.U. states to get a sense of how little distance is necessary for culture to differ. Even though the North Carolina’s General Assembly was pursuing a foolish strategy in proposing a bill that would have the government ignore the U.S. Supreme Court when convenient, the presumed article of separation between church and state at the state level can and should be re-considered.

1. John Celock, “North Carolina House Speaker Kills Bill to Create State Religion,” The Huffington Post, April 4, 2013. See also Emily Swanson, “Christianity As State Religion Supported By One-Third of Americans, Poll Finds,” The Huffington Post, April 6, 2013.
2. Skip Worden, British Colonies Forge an American Empire. Available at Amazon.
3. Ibid.

American religion and politics: Overreaching Realms

Even though they are formally separated in the U.S. under the constitutional rubric that the federal government cannot lawfully establish a religion and infringe on the free exercise of religion, religion has ventured into politics and vice versa. Valued ideals pertain to both even though the highest in religion are transcendent, meaning that they extend beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility, according to St. Denis (aka Pseudo-Dionysius) in the sixth century. So far is the political variety from such ideals as being in heaven! Yet the political sort has enjoyed a near monopoly in the world, including its public discourse. At least as 2019 was giving way to a new decade, captivation on President Trump’s tweets (i.e., brief statements made on the internet’s social media) and the process of impeaching him in the U.S. House of Representatives was strangely devoid of any religious discussion in the public square. This is all the more extraordinary because of the significant role that religion had played historically in presidential politics.

During the U.S. presidential campaign of 1928, for example, Al Smith was chastised for being a Catholic, and therefore thought to be under the sway of the Pope in Rome. During the campaign of 1960, John F. Kennedy found himself subject to the same charge. The simple assumption of papal dictate turned out to be naïve. For one thing, the American presidency is firmly within the governmental realm, and the Second Amendment bars the use of the office to establish (or give preference to) a religion or sect/denomination thereof. Kennedy ran against Richard M. Nixon, whose Quaker background, which presumably disdained lying, turned out in his own presidency (1968-1974) to be particularly lacking as revealed in the Watergate hearings. In short, the impact of a president’s inner religious sense and identity on his conduct (and mentality) can be massively overstated.

The role of religion in politics has been present, however, in reactions to the assumed, overstated impact of a candidate’s religion on his role should he get to the office. For example, based on the overblown fears held by protestant Americans, some protestant leaders, including Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham, and their allies in the political realm were able to gain popularity and power. Graham secretly met with other protestant pastors in 1960 to coordinate campaigning against Kennedy, essentially capitalizing on the popular fear among Protestants. This movement in turn prompted Kennedy to give a speech on September 12, 1960 to the Houston Ministerial Association. He insisted that his Catholicism would not direct or obstruct his policy-making judgment. Interestingly, the push of religion into the political sphere was made by religious figures ostensibly in the religious realm—overextending into the other realm.

In 1980, however, a presidential candidate by the name of Ronald Reagan realized that politicians like himself could make use of the political lobbying of religious leaders and groups. Implicitly, he showed Americans just how trivial the political divide had really been between Catholics and Protestants in presidential politics. While Reagan was still the governor of California in the 1970’s, Phyllis Schlafly, a Catholic, was reaching out to evangelical women to lobby against the Equal Rights Amendment (for women). Along with evangelical political action committees, she established the Eagle Forum in the next decade, when Ronald Reagan was president of the United States. By the time he was in office, he had already realized that he could publically galvanize evangelicals and conservative Catholics to support his political ambitions.

With the political realm dipping into the religious realm and vice versa, the societal issue of abortion also played an important role at the time in uniting socially conservative Protestants and Catholics. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973, Francis Schaeffer brought in prominent evangelicals including Jerry Falwell to oppose abortion politically. Gay marriage in the early 2000’s would play a similar role in uniting the division that had hitherto hampered Al Smith and John Kennedy. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, which had formed in the 1980s during Reagan’s flourishing years in office, pushed what they publicized as family values against both abortion and gay marriage. Both Focus and the Council were both church-related and lobbyists close to the Republican Party. For example, the groups lobbied for conservative fiscal policies—something near and dear to the Party but less obviously based in Christianity, especially as Jesus espouses giving to the poor and giving up one’s wealth to follow him. The rich man getting into the Kingdom of Heaven is like getting a camel through a needle. Even so, the evangelical lobbying groups became wealthy, using the prosperity gospel from the Old Testament—that God would make Israel prosperous if it keeps the covenant—as a rationale. To be sure, the pro-wealth paradigm had long become dominant over the anti-wealth paradigm, which hitherto had been dominant.[1] Perhaps this shift within Christianity made it easier for evangelical/Catholic political groups to not only pursue wealth themselves, but also appeal to the Republican Party that Reagan had made (i.e., fiscal and social conservatism). 

 

In conclusion, Americans could look back by the end of the twentieth century and see the old religious division as politically artificial, and thus not nearly as important as Americans had believed in 1928 and 1960. But could those same Americans see their contemporary divisions as just as artificial or at least over-drawn? In the Middle Ages amid the Commercial Revolution, the sin of usury (i.e., charging interest on loaned funds) was the moral/religious/political controversy in Europe. By Reagan’s time, the charging of interest even on consumption loans was a dead issue, whereas abortion could be viewed as an extremely important matter. Could this presumed overriding importance of the issue of the day be questioned by looking back at how the salience of the usury debate had run its course in its own time? In other words, in matters of religion and politics, and even their intermeshing, can the human mind put even its most cherished ideals in proper perspective? Can we question our own presumed importance, including that of our ideological ideals, whether religious or political (or both!)?

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1. Skip Worden, God’s Gold (1915), available at Amazon.

Being Partisan in the Pulpit: Going the Extra Mile

The Johnson Amendment, which became law in the U.S. in 1954 and was named for Lyndon Johnson, then a U.S. Senator, “is a provision in the tax code that prohibits tax-exempt organizations from openly supporting political candidates. In the words of the tax code, ‘all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”[1] I submit that it is in a cleric’s interest to expand this prohibition to include advocating for (or opposing) particular public policies. This general principle would of course be subject to exceptions in which a proposed or enacted policy is strongly anathema to the religious principles of the given religious organization or religion.

The full essay is at "Being Partisan in the Pulpit."

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1. Randall Balmer, “The Peril of Being Partisan at the Pulpit,” Stars and Stripes, February 7, 2017.

On the Democratization of Credibility: Global Warming Experts

Even as late as 2013, as if the mounting evidence of global warming and our carbon footprint were some new kind of faith narrative whose white-coated high priests preside over a new political religion distinctly American, some members of Congress, political commentators, and lay apostates recoiled with the declaration, "I don't believe in global warming." Epistemologically, to believe is less rigorous than to know. Actually, what they mean is that they know that our industries and carbon-emitting vehicles are blameless, even pure. It is the sheer declarativeness and the underlying epistemological assumption that I want to make transparent, as being inherently problematic and yet likely "hard-wired" in the very fabric of human brain. 

In mid-February, 2014, Charles Krauthammer, a former psychiatrist turned political analyst after his paralyzing accident, sarcastically asked on a Fox "News" show how the "Global Warming Religion" was doing since the polar vortex had drifted southward, well into several U.S. states unaccustomed to such frigid air, in January. He also pointed to the severe drought in California as discrediting the scientists' belief that warmer temperatures would bring more, not less, rain. Were global warming a religion, belief would be the appropriate currency and the political commentator would be entitled to protest the established civic religion by preaching his own belief. Unfortunately for Krauthammer, who strikes me as a natural in analyzing politics, the abundance of scientific evidence on the warming planet and a human contribution made him look ignorant rather than as a prophet chastising zealots. 

Perhaps most incredibly, Krauthammer was ignorant of the actual scientific position on rainfall. Rather than increasing precipitation everywhere, the pattern is expected to shift closer toward the poles. So, while Alaska, Canada, and Europe gain, regions already lean on rainfall, like California, Arizona, Texas, and North Africa, would tend to face even more severe droughts. Not only was the political commentator unaware of the "more extremes" nuance even in the planet warming over all; he also missed the ubiquitous refrain of climatologists that 1) it is extremely difficult to assess the impact that climate change has on a particular storm or season's weather in a given region in part because 2) the predicted changes from global warming are tendencies rather than the case for every storm or season. 

Let's take the extreme cold dipping unusually southward in North America in the winter of 2013-2014 as an example. Can we conclude that the onslaught of frigid Arctic air would occur every winter thereafter? No. We can say that the occurrence is more likely to occur. Because the poles are warming disproportionately over the warming going on closer to the equator, the differential from the latter to the poles reduces (i.e., a less steep downward slope). Less energy in "riding" the slope downward means the resulting "river of air," or jet-stream," is weaker, hence more loopy (not unlike some tired people). Similarly, the circular "river of air" going around the Arctic (and AntArctic) air weakens too (the temperature differential there too being less). As a result, this polar vortex "relaxes" in circulating further southward and with greater lopsidedness. 

Combine the Northern Hemisphere's jet-stream and the Arctic’s spinning polar vortex fencing in the Arctic air, and you have a vortex elongating more and being "enabled" by the elongated loops of the jet stream. The video and pictures (from NASA) below tell the tale. The jet stream looks like a white noodle winding around the Northern Hemisphere. The elongated loop southward in North America captured here on December 16, 2013, opens a sort of void into which the Arctic air can slip because the vortex "river of air" is more pliable or stretchable. 

Can we say therefore that the cold winter of 2013-2014 resulted from climate change (paradoxically the way in which the planet warms causes both warm and cold extremes in various regions)? Perhaps if the extreme cold weather is understood as a more likely tendency, though here too factors idiosyncratic to that winter had a significant impact. Namely, the low-pressure system over Hudson's Bay in Canada meant that a counter-clockwise movement of air around the low would facilitate the Arctic air's trip southward. 

Therefore, to claim that a cold winter in North America (and Siberia too, as shown in "The Big Chill" picture above) invalidates global warming shows just how substantial ignorance of the science can be. Similarly, to claim that a drought in California also invalidates "the religion of global warming" rather than adding support to it shows the same sort of gross over-simplification. Charles Krauthammer's innate insight into politics does not translate into scientific knowledge on climatology. The same can be said of many other self-declared "experts" on global warming on both sides of the political debate.

Being active in political public-discourse is not sufficient to count oneself as knowledgeable on the underlying science. Similarly, having a college degree in medicine does not necessarily mean that a person knows something about climate change, not to mention climatology. In fact, few Americans know that the M.D. degree in medicine is the first degree in medicine, and thus a prerequisite to the doctorate in medicine, the D.Sci.M. (Doctorate in the Science of Medicine). In being a terminal degree, a doctoral degree (even those of professional schools like law, medicine, and business) cannot be a prerequisite to a higher degree in the same discipline or body of knowledge (e.g., medicine). Perhaps the sheer extent of esteem in American society for the well-compensated practices of law and medicine relative to the irrelevant academics in the "ivory towers" (e.g., "those who can't do, teach.") has enabled the undergraduate degrees in medicine (MD) and law (LLB a.k.a. JD) to be counted as if they were doctoral degrees (i.e., terminal rather than prerequisite to another degree, comprehensive exams by professors (not industry boards), and a substantial contribution of original research (typically a book-length dissertation, defended in front of professors in the specialty)).

Therefore, Americans are particularly susceptible to the fallacy that a psychiatrist, physician, or lawyer can be taken as a credible mouthpiece on another discipline, such as climatology. Put another way, Charles Krauthammer was not even entitled to use the title of the doctorate even as he presumed he had earned a degree equivalent to the D.Sci.M. degree (which would be illogical, as only graduates of medicine (i.e., holding the M.D. degree) can be admitted to the doctoral program in medicine), assuming he had even heard of the doctorate in his own field. As though arrogance on stilts during a flood, the political pundit could leap from that presumption to the one I have detailed in this essay. Put another way, presumption can be addictive, even perhaps becoming a personality disorder. This disorder can even be part of the collective unconscious of a society. Now, to round this circle (of hot air?), might it be that presuming we know more than we do has a genetic basis in our species' DNA?  

Human nature may contain the seed of its own destruction to manifest as extinction due to human-induced climate change? That carbon emissions hit a record high in 2012 (rather than being on a downturn by then) may point to such a basic dysfunction in the species that had ironically done so well in terms of natural selection (i.e., multiplying DNA via population growth). We fail to realize that too much success for a species can spell disaster as a result.