Our Distinguished Panel of Judges is utterly flummoxed -- and impressed! How did they do it? How were these activists -- perhaps best known for their involvement with antiabortion militants from Operation Rescue -- able to score a prayer meeting with the Prime Minister of a nation embroiled in the hottest war in the world -- let alone allowed (as well-known American Christian theocrats) -- to present the Ten Commandments to a Muslim political leader. But they as all good theocrats know, politics is thicker than water.

Such a gesture, even considering that the Ten Commandments were involved, might seem superficial to some -- but not if you have had the chance to know Gary Cass, even from a far.

It was only two-and-a-half years ago when, at a large conference sponsored by Cass's Center for Reclaiming America, Judge Roy Moore displayed the two-and-a-half ton monument to the Ten Commandments that had made him a hero to theocrats everywhere. The Christian Science Monitor reported:  

"If they don't vote our way, we'll change their view one way or another," executive director Gary Cass tells the group. As a California pastor, Dr. Cass spearheaded efforts to close abortion clinics and recruit Christians to seek positions on local school boards. "We're going to take back what we lost in the last half of the 20th century," he adds.

"Taking back" is a major theme - taking back the schools, the media, the courts.

The Monitor further reported.

In material given to conference attendees, the Rev. D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge pastor wrote:

"As the vice-regents of God, we are to bring His truth and His will to bear on every sphere of our world and our society. We are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government ... our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors - in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."

(By the way, Our Distinguished Panel of Judges always enjoys a knowing chuckle whenever Dr. Kennedy says he is not a theocrat.)  

Our Distinguished Panel of Judges was also more than a little impressed when Dr. Cass recently turned-up as a featured speaker at one of the most distinctly theocratic conferences in America. Gary Cass joined fellow theocratic Garys -- North and DeMar -- at a "Worldview Super Conference" organized by DeMar's Christian Reconstructionist think tank, American Vision.

Cass was joined in the event by leaders from the Alliance Defense Fund, Liberty University Law School, and other ostensibly non-Christian Reconstructionist groups that not long ago, might not have even been willing to appear in public, let alone cosponsor, an event with one of the most overtly theocratic organizations in America. Gary Cass is a true theocratic hero because he was willing to join, in this way, in the mainstreaming of theocratic ideas.  According to a report on the conference in Church & State magazine, Cass said:

"We need a new American vision... because we've lost our biblical heritage, our Christian birthright, which has been given to us by our founders, we have squandered for a poisonous bowl of atheistic humanism and political correctness.

"And now our culture is experiencing its deadly effects," he continued. "The putrid stench of the culture of death fills our living rooms, coming to us every night on the evening news. And this Worldview weekend, I believe, is the antidote for the culture of death."

He continued, "By God's grace you are here to reclaim our godly heritage and to reassert, without apology to the atheists and the neo-pagans of our day, that this was and is a Christian nation, built on Christian ideals."

Cass's stark call for a fundamentalist Christian takeover of America was later followed by claims that the nation is increasingly hostile to religious people. To some chuckles from the audience, he insisted that the United States is in "great need of a Christian anti-defamation league."

"Defamation," Cass argued, "is the pre­cursor to persecution." Defamation leads to marginalization, he continued, and marginalization sets the "stage for discrimination," which inevitably leads to the final stage of religious cleansing.

"Genocide being the ultimate expression," Cass declared, "the deliberate, systematic extermination of a group of people." Kind of like what is happening in Sudan's Darfur region, he added.

Cass has since started the very project he called for, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.

Our Distinguished Panel of Judges panel of judges believes in setting acheivable goals along the road to theocracy, and are wary of their opponents -- who by the nature of their democratic pluralism must of course, be hell-bent on slaughter. But they are confident that Gary Cass will succeed in heading-off Darfur-scale genocide against America's Christians (particularly the theocratic kind) -- and wish to hail his crowning acheivement in advance.

And that's why Dr. Gary Cass is our Theocrat of the Week.

Update [2007-8-28 12:15:59 by Frederick Clarkson]: Our Distinguished Panel of Judges has learned of a grievious error I made in reporting their recognition of Gary Cass as Theocrat of the Week, and I am hereby correcting the error. I originally reported that Dr. Cass is starting a Christian Anti-Defamation League (C-ADL) in an heroic effort to save America's Christians from Darfur-scale genocide. This was incorrect. Although in his Worldview Super Conference speech, he did call for the formation of a "Christian anti-defamation league," in the end the organization he founded to save America's Christians from Darfur-scale genocide is the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, (CADC). I regret the error and apologize to Dr. Cass, to our readers and to Our Distinguished Panel of Judges.