The J'Argon

Prologue

All families descended from those in the theocracy established by the United States civil war of 2045 maintained histories of the times leading up to the take-over by the fundamentalist Religious Right.  For those opposed to the dismantling of the 300-year-old North American experiment in Democracy, the stories became an oral tradition that kept the dream alive. 

In a classic reenactment of forgotten history, the U.S. election of 2032 put a charismatic, authoritarian, fanatic Christian purist in the White House.  The Christian Coalition Party danced in the streets at the inauguration–some called it the anointing–of the Coalition founder’s grandson.   It was the last free election. 

In 2040, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was repealed, allowing the president a third term.  On election day in 2044, martial law was declared when it became clear that the opposition “liberal” candidate had a good chance of winning the Electoral College despite government intimidation throughout the election campaign.  California, Nevada, Washington State, and Oregon declared themselves break-away republics; The Dakotas, Minnesota, and Northern Michigan did the same.  Millions of people poured across the borders into Canada and Mexico.  Millions more died in the attempt, as the borders were brutally closed–not by the U.S. military, but by militia privately funded by the Rev. Luke Abrahamson, Secretary of the new Cabinet-level Department of Church/State Relations.  

At the Winter Solstice 2046, on Abrahamson’s order, eleven organizers of the fledgling Liberation Underground were publicly summarily executed without trial in Rockefeller Center Plaza in a ghastly recreation of a 15th Century Auto-da-fé.  The group included the best minds in U.S. political and religious life.  Among them were the President of the Bishops’ Council of the Catholic Church in America; the Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Science Monitor; the Moderator of the Baptist Joint Committee; the Executive Director of People for the American Way; and as an example to the younger generation of would-be counter-revolutionaries, 25-year-old Michael Morgan Benedict, Campus Student Minister at Villanova.  The eleven were brought to the plaza in oxcarts, tied to seasoned oak stakes, doused with gasoline, and set afire.  Screams from the victims and the horrified, rioting crowd were dubbed out in the delayed telecast and replaced with the Metropolitan Opera’s virtuoso basso profundo Grayson Thomas, singing Handel’s aria from The Messiah: “For he is like a refiner’s fire.”  The whole world watched American Democracy and human rationality go up in flames.  After seeing the evening news, Thomas threw himself from the 22nd floor balcony of his apartment across the street from Lincoln Center.

At the Summer Solstice of 2047, a late 20th Century attempt at a global “religious United Nations” was reframed and the Covenant of the Word was born.  The Covenant became a powerful political Voice for spiritual truth in contrast to the so-called “Christian” terrorists exporting their “Revolution” from the New Confederate States of the Americas.  To emphasize the universality of mystic experience, albeit couched in sometimes esoteric language, the leader of the Covenant of the Word was ordained J’Argon.
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