The battle to establish a theocracy in America is being waged right now, in our courts.

A 29-foot war memorial shaped like a cross should be allowed to remain on public land. A teacher should be able to emphasize references to God in the Declaration of Independence. Protesters should be permitted to approach women near the doors of an abortion clinic.

These courtroom fights and dozens of others pending across the country belong to the portfolio of the ambitious Alliance Defense Fund, a socially conservative legal consortium. It spends $20 million a year seeking to protect what it regards as the place of religion -- and especially Christianity -- in public life.

Considering itself the antithesis of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Scottsdale-based organization has used money and moxie to become the leading player in a movement to tug the nation to the right by challenging decades of legal precedent. By stepping into the nation's most impassioned debates about religion in the public sphere, the group aims to bring law and society into alignment with conservative Christianity.

I have said it before and I will say it again, the goal of these conservative Christians is not to protect their freedom, but to infringe on ours. They want to establish Christianity (more accurately their version of Christianity) as America's official religion. They want to gain dominance over all who live in this country, and then of course once that is done spread that dominance over the rest of the world. These people do not support the war in Iraq because they believe it's protecting America, they support it because they dream of creating a Christian state in the middle of a Muslim controlled area. This is the most aggressive missionary work imaginable.

We are in the middle of a Christian grab for power and we are going to have to get tough and fight for our rights before they are taken away from us.

And this does not just apply to those of us who are not Christians. I believe that moderate Christians are in even more peril of losing their right to worship the way they feel called to worship. How much longer before there is a Christian "litmus test" that churches will be subjected to, and once found wanting will find that they are ostracized by the other Christian faiths? Then they will find that their support is cut off and other denominations begin to actively try to recruit their members? It is absolutely within the realm of possibilities.

Isn't this what our founding fathers set off across a raging sea to avoid?

One church, one God, one America. No more freedom.