On the site of an abandoned tomato plant in rural Collier County, Fla., Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan is attempting to create a Catholic paradise. Ave Maria, an unincorporated planned town, boasts streets named after saints and is the site of Ave Maria University, a conservative Catholic institution.
According to some critics, it’s also the site of a miniature theocratic fiefdom. Religious communities aren’t exactly a new phenomenon in the United States. Since the earliest days of European colonization, members of various faith groups have regarded the United States as a potential haven from persecution and a place to carve out their own sectarian utopias.
As a consequence, many started settlements with explicitly sectarian motivations and laws that reflected those beliefs. The Puritans built their “city upon a hill” in Massachusetts; the towns of Rehoboth, Del., and Zion, Ill., also have theocratic roots. That’s true of some states, too: Pennsylvania used to be a refuge for Quakers, and Catholics had similar ambitions for Maryland.
But those mini-theocracies collapsed as outsiders moved in and religious pluralism took hold. Building theocracies is against the law – or so most Americans believe.
Despite this, there are still American towns whose governmental structures and legal systems resemble religious texts more than they do the founding document of our democracy.
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About 2,500 people now live in Ave Maria, without public schools, a police force – and even a representative form of government. That’s because Monaghan didn’t just found the town. He owns it, alongside the Barron Collier development corporation.
The Naples Daily News reports that in 2004, mere months before Ave Maria came into being, Monaghan and Barron Collier directly lobbied former Florida governor Jeb Bush for a change to the state’s laws on planned developments. Developments originally belonged to the founding corporation for 10 years; after that period, they held elections to fill town council and mayoral roles. Town government in planned developments would eventually be identical to governments in other municipalities, thus ensuring that residents enjoyed full constitutional rights and democratic government.
But that’s no longer the case. Bush acquiesced and backed a law eliminating the requirement that development owners must surrender control of their investments. Now, they can retain that control indefinitely, and that means Monaghan and Barron-Collier could own Ave Maria in perpetuity. The town is officially known as the Ave Maria Community Stewardship District and is governed by a board of residents.
A Catholic City? | Americans United
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