Secularists who oppose faith in the public arena such as workplaces often complain that allowing Christians to bring faith to work blurs the lines between church and state. Faith is a private matter, they say. So it ought to be kept for private affairs and not allowed to influence decisions in the public square. To permit it is to travel down the road to a theocracy.

A theocracy according to Webster's dictionary is “Government of a state by the immediate direction or administration of God; hence, the exercise of political authority by priests as representing the Deity.”  Wikipedia has an article on the history of the word here.

TheocracyWatch, a project of Cornell University, documents the influence of religion in American politics. Many on the Left believe religion plays far too great a role in American public life. (See Street Prophets: When is a theocrat, not a theocrat? (w/poll!)) A number of these people have been recently published books on the subject.

Ross Douthat, a writer for The American Scene and Associate Editor for the Atlantic Monthly, writes a review of three of these books in the most recent issue of the magazine First Things.

“Most of these books aspire to be anthropologies, guides for the perplexed that lead the innocent reader through what the subtitle of American Theocracy calls “the perils and politics of radical religion.” There isn’t perfect agreement on what to call the religious radicals in question: Everyone employs theocrat, but Kingdom Coming also proposes Christian nationalist, while The Baptizing of America favors the clunky Christocrat. Others have suggested Christianist, the better to link religious conservatives to Osama bin Laden—and of course there’s the ubiquitous theocon, suggesting a deadly mixture of Oliver Cromwell and Paul Wolfowitz.

But the various authors are in agreement about the main point, which is that something has gone terribly wrong with the separation of church and state in this country, and that America is poised to fall into the hands of people only one step from the ayatollahs. Today’s battles aren’t just a matter of ordinary political factionalism, they insist. The hour is much later than that, and nothing less than the republic itself hangs in the balance.”

Douthat unpacks the complaints of the anti-theocrats well and shows their fears to be groundless. His review makes good fodder for those who would defend faith in the workplace from secular exclusionists.

Some others that have written on this topic:

Joe Carter at the evangelical outpost: Theocrats and Theophobes: Kevin Phillips and Carter’s Law of Political Rhetoric Also, the evangelical outpost: On Earth As It Is In Heaven: Americans and the “Theocracy” Canard

John at Brain Cramps for God: Toward a Definition of Theocracy

crimsonline: A moratorium on "theocracy" talk

GetReligion: Putting “theocracy” fears in their place

What's the Rumpus?: Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean the anti-theocrats aren't out to get me

Christian Alliance for Progress Blog: The Hysteria over Theocracy