Recently, the Alabama Supreme Court escalated the white Christian nationalist war on our constitutionally secular United States. They did so in a peculiar way, falsely arguing—in the decision LePage v. The Center for Reproductive Medicine—that a fertilized egg is a human being.
Really? Baby showers and college savings accounts for fertilized eggs? Baby shops and financial institutions would be ecstatic, since more than 60% of embryos never become humans!
In reality, fertilized eggs are no more human than architectural plans are houses.
Alabama Chief Justice and Christian nationalist Tom Parker, though, is working from a blueprint for theocracy. He knows his embryonic blueprint is false, but that is beside the point. He is determined to transform his far-right extremist ideas into law.
“God created government,” Parker said on a far-right, Christian nationalist podcast, voicing what would never pass a legal or historical smell test. “And the fact that we have let it [government] go into the possession of others, it’s heartbreaking for those of us who understand. And we know it is for Him. And that’s why He is calling and equipping people to step back into these mountains right now.”
What is he talking about?
In his framework, the “others” he is speaking of are the “evil liberals.”
Those who “understand” that America was founded as a Christian nation [a false belief] are Christian nationalists whose ideology is rooted in Dominionism and believe they must conquer the seven “mountains.” These include home, church, civil government, business and technology, arts and entertainment, education, and media—in short, all of American life.
George Grant, an early advocate of Dominionism, was clear about its purpose when he said “world conquest” is “what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish.”
Grant is confused because Jesus never made such a statement.
Jesus’ instructions to his followers were to love others as they loved themselves (Matthew 22:39), resist the evil of forcing God upon others and nations (Matthew 4:7-10), and instead champion and uplift persons who were poor, oppressed, discriminated against and marginalized (Matthew 5-7).
In Alabama, Christian nationalists—Jesus be damned—are leading the way in seeking dominion over women by making them subservient to fertilized eggs. Before the LePage decision, Chief Justice Parker tipped his Dominionist hand by expressing enthusiasm for “restoring the judges as in the days of old”—as in the biblical Old Testament—to rule over a future theocratic America.
What, exactly, does he have in mind?
In the 7-2 majority LePage decision, Parker first admits there is no scientific evidence or legal rationale for defining life as beginning at conception.
Turning to Alabama’s Constitution, Parker notes that a 2022 update of the state’s highest legal document added recognition and support for “the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.”
Having discarded science and the law, Parker points to his favored dictionary definition of “sanctity:” “holiness of life and character: GODLINESS.”
Ah, godliness! This is the future. Parker’s dictionary says so. Blessed be the holy text.
But there is more. In LePage, Parker points toward theocracy by quoting from the Constitution’s preamble: “We the people … invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God….”
These words are not in our United States Constitution but are the preamble to the 1861 Confederate Alabama Constitution, which has survived intact through various official revisions to the present day.
Referenced some forty times in the LePage ruling, the anti-human, anti-Christ Confederate God is also bolstered by theologians Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas and Augustine. Many of these figures had extremist, anti-semitic, violent and misogynist beliefs.
In pointing Alabama and the United States toward a theocracy, biblical references also serve as authorities.
Not surprisingly, the LePage decision fails to mention the singular biblical passage that comes close to saying something about abortion: Exodus 21:22-25, which clearly defines a fetus (much less a fertilized egg) as less than human.
In case you are wondering, the justices in LePage make no mention whatsoever of Jesus, who stands in opposition to their theocratic, dominionist agenda.
In concluding, Alabama Chief Justice Parker in LePage lectures that “God made every person in His image … each person therefore has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate,” and “all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”
Really?
In reality, Alabama’s anti-women laws include the banning of nearly all abortions –often leaving women’s lives endangered—and attempts to punish those who aid women in obtaining an abortion in another state.
Also, under Alabama’s Confederate God, doctors who perform abortions could face up to 99 years in prison—the same sentence which may be applied to rapists and murderers. A bill introduced in 2023 would, if passed, allow murder charges against some women who have an abortion.
In reality, this is the very state that still insists Black people are less than fully human and must be suppressed. The same state that “is in the forefront on attacks against transgender individuals” that at this very time is crusading to “purify” public schools by effectively erasing students who are deemed to have an inappropriate gender identity or sexual orientation. The same state is pushing legislation prohibiting universities and state agencies from teaching that all persons are equally human.
This is not the first time Alabama has insisted on destroying human life.
In 1856, an Alabama Baptist labeled slavery “as much an institution of Heaven as marriage.” Confederate Alabama’s pro-slavery “Almighty God” marched under the Confederate States’ official motto of Deo Vindice, translated “Under God, Our Vindicator” or “With God as [our] Champion.”
In 1863, a writer in the Confederate Baptist newspaper noted, in similar words that white Christian nationalists use today: “If we would have a glorious Confederacy, we must lay its foundation and build it up as god-fearing men and women. Our churches must awake to their responsibility, and employ all their energies to strengthen and consolidate the interests of truth, virtue and piety.”
The self-perceived Christian Confederate States of America (and present-day Alabama) celebrated their authoritarian God out of anger that the United States was rooted in a secular Constitution aspiring to human rights. “The [US] Constitution,” Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens observed, “rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error” which the Confederate Constitution corrected.
Stephens summarized that the flawed United States of America “were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.”
Still warring against human equality, Alabama’s Confederate God marches on.
Managing Editor for Publishing and Experiences Director at Good Faith Media. He is a historian, lecturer, public speaker, award-winning author and award-winning photographer.
