Vice-regents and vicegerents

Long-time readers of this journal will know that two of my pet hates are religious fundamentalists and people who mangle the English language. Of course, the two aren't really comparable: I would much rather live in a country run by people who use words like "irregardless" and can't use an apostrophe correctly than one where you can be stoned for adultery.

Frequently, though, the two groups coincide. Rolling Stone recently featured an article entitled "The Crusaders" which contained the following line from arch-Dominionist D. James Kennedy:

"As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."

The content of this is worrying enough, but "vice regents"? A vice-regent is someone who assists a regent (without the hyphen it probably means someone who assists in the promotion of vice). This would imply that God is currently incapable of ruling the universe directly and must do so via a regent (how Gnostic!), who has in turn appointed a bunch of nutty right-wingers to assist him in this task. Presumably the word Kennedy was looking for was "vicegerent". In politics, this is a person appointed by a king to act in his stead, and is similar in meaning to "plenipotentiary" (which happens to be one of my favourite words). In theology, it refers either to humans' position as custodians of Creation, or to a particular person (pope, caliph or whoever) who acts as God's representative on Earth. Trust a theocon not to know his theology.


[Thanks to ginmar for the link.]