"It Is Dominion We Are After. World Conquest ... And We Must Never Settle For Anything Less"
rightwingwatch.orgDamned Christian soldiers keep on a marching…
PublicEye.org - The Christian Right, Dominionism, and Theocracy
publiceye.orgWhen Michelle Goldberg wrote “A Christian Plot for Domination?” for the Daily Beast she chose her terms carefully. The subhead stated “Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry aren’t just devout—both have deep ties to a fringe fundamentalist movement known as Dominionism, which says Christians should rule the world.” Within hours both critics and supporters of Goldberg’s thesis littered the Internet with posts that drew no distinctions among the Christian Right, Dominionism, and Christian Reconstructionism. There are important differences, and this essay seeks to explain them. PRA takes no position on the 2012 elections, but we do take a position supporting the accurate use of language.
More than anyone else, it was Sara Diamond who popularized the use of the term “dominionism” to describe a growing political tendency in the Christian Right. It is a useful term that has, unfortunately, been used in a variety of ways that are neither accurate nor useful. Diamond was careful to discuss how the small Christian Reconstructionist theological movement had helped introduce “dominionism” as a concept into the larger and more diverse social/political movements called the Christian Right.
Dominionism is therefore a tendency primarily among Protestant Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists that encourages them to not only be active political participants in civic society, but also seek to dominate the political process as part of a mandate from God.
It helps to see the terms dominionism, dominion theology, and Christian Reconstructionism as distinct and not interchangeable. While all Christian Reconstructionists are dominionists, not all dominionists are Christian Reconstructionists.
A nested subset chart looks like this:
- Triumphalism
- Dominionism
- Dominion Theology
- Theonomy
- Christian Reconstructionism
The specific meanings are different in important ways, although the terms have been used in a variety of conflicting ways in popular articles, especially on the Internet.
In its generic sense, dominionism is a very broad political tendency within the Christian Right. It ranges from soft to hard versions in terms of its theocratic impulse.
Soft Dominionists are Christian nationalists. They believe that Biblically-defined immorality and sin breed chaos and anarchy. They fear that America’s greatness as God’s chosen land has been undermined by liberal secular humanists, feminists, and homosexuals. Purists want litmus tests for issues of abortion, tolerance of gays and lesbians, and prayer in schools. Their vision has elements of theocracy, but they stop short of calling for supplanting the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Hard Dominionists believe all of this, but they want the United States to be a Christian theocracy. For them the Constitution and Bill of Rights are merely addendums to Old Testament Biblical law. They claim that Christian men with specific theological beliefs are ordained by God to run society. Christians and others who do not accept their theological beliefs would be second-class citizens. This sector includes Christian Reconstructionists, but it has a growing number of adherents in the leadership of the Christian Right.
It makes more sense to reserve the term “dominion theology” to describe specific theological currents, while using the term “dominionism” in a generic sense to discuss a tendency toward aggressive political activism by Christians who claim they are mandated by God to take over society. Even then, we need to locate the subject of our criticisms on a scale that ranges from soft to hard versions of dominionism.
Christian Conservatives - They play by the rules of a democratic republic, and so our response should be to develop better ideas and carry out better grassroots organizing campaigns.
Christian Nationalists - They erode pluralism, and we must defend separation of church and state, but also engage in a discussion of the legitimate boundaries when religious beliefs intersect with participation in a secular civil society.
Christian Theocrats - They want to replace democracy with an authoritarian theocratic society run by a handful of Christian men. They seek to supersede the Constitution and Bill of Rights with Old Testament Biblical law. We must oppose them and not give an inch in our defense of democracy against theocracy.
In the Christian Right, more leaders than followers have consciously embraced dominionist ideas. The tendency toward a “dominionist impulse,” however, has continued to become more widespread since the 1970s, making a discussion of theocracy not only legitimate, but necessary. Conscious or unconscious—dominionism is a real threat to democracy.
Dominionists of all varieties can also have a complicated mix of attributes. These include the theology and style of religious practice; and the view of biblical End Times prophecy.
Theology and style of religious practice:
Christian Right: Multiple Internal Sectors:
- Christian Conservatives
- Christian Nationalists
- Christian Theocrats
- Protestant
- Mainstream Protestant denominations (Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran)
- Evangelicals
- Fundamentalists
- Charismatics
- Pentacostals
- Roman Catholic
- Orthodox
View of biblical End Times prophecy:
- Postmillennialists
- Premillennialists
- Amillennialists
The Christian Right is just one of several sectors that comprise the Political Right in the United States. The chart below shows where it fits, dividing the Christian Right into hard and soft dominionists. Christian Conservatives are the bridge between the Secular Right and the Dominionists and Theocrats, but it is a weak bridge. Christian Conservatives are listed in the Chart below as part of the Religious Right.
H/T: Public Eye.
Fringe Festival: Why We Must Take ‘Dominionists’ Seriously « The Wall of Separation
blog.au.orgTexas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent day-long prayer-and-fasting rally in Houston has led to some interesting fallout. Commentators in the media are taking an overdue look at the extreme views of the groups that sponsored “The Response.”
Unfortunately, some are reaching a strange conclusion: These groups are so out on the fringe that we don’t need to worry about them.
Many of the organizations that sponsored “The Response” are extreme, all right. They are “dominionists” – that is, they believe only Christians of their stripe have the “true” religion and they should take dominion and govern based on their (narrow) interpretation of the Bible.
Sure, it’s tempting to dismiss dominionists as a marginalized lunatic fringe. After all, many of them do tend to take positions that are, to be blunt, really out there. For example, they would not only outlaw abortion, they would execute any woman who gets the procedure or doctor who performs one. They would also execute gays, adulterers, blasphemers and those who hold to “false” religions.
Syndicated columnist Michael Gerson argues that views such as this mean we don’t have take these folks seriously. He criticizes those who are sounding the alarm and writes, “Dominionism, though possessing cosmic ambitions, is a movement that could fit in a phone booth.”
Another approach is to insist that anyone who expresses concern about dominionism is attacking all evangelicals. Washington Post columnist Lisa Miller asserted recently, “Evangelicals generally do not want to take over the world. ‘Dominionism’ is the paranoid mot du jour.”
Let’s clarify a couple of things here. No one is seriously arguing that all evangelicals are dominionists who yearn to take over the world. That is a classic straw-man argument, and it’s easy to blow down. Nor are we arguing that dominionists are going to seize power next week and send your uncle to the gulag because he’s a Unitarian.
What we’re saying is that there is a significant strain of thought in the conservative Christian community that is actively hostile to church-state separation, pluralism, secular government, modern science, women’s rights, etc. This movement has been influenced by dominionist theology. It is politically active and influential, and people need to know about it.
Consider the attacks on legal abortion and the spate of bills targeting that procedure in the states. Consider the ongoing effort to undermine the teaching of evolution in public schools. Consider the harsh attacks on gay people and the efforts to roll back the civil rights gains they have made. Consider the constant attempts to divert tax money from public schools and public services to private religious schools and “faith-based” social service agencies.
Also, remember that there was a time – not so long ago, really – when a candidate did not have to kowtow to right-wing fundamentalists to be considered a serious contender in the Republican Party.
How did all of this come about? It isn’t because dominionists took over. It’s because they laid the philosophical groundwork for Religious Right activism that energized millions of fundamentalist Christians. For a long time, these people believed politics was “worldly” and not their calling. When fundamentalist clergy decided to get political, the dominionists gave them the biblical basis for it.
Such was the birth of the Religious Right. Over the years, some Religious Right leaders have conceded that the Christian Reconstructionists, a leading school of dominionist thought, were essential to their way of thinking. They admit that movement founder Rousas J. Rushdoony and his acolytes paved the way for the merger of right-wing religion and politics that is today so common.
The results of this are being felt in school boards, county commissions, state legislatures and in Congress.
We at Americans United refuse to shut our eyes to this. We refuse to pretend that those of us who oppose the theocratic schemes of the Religious Right “just don’t get” conservative evangelicals. We are well aware that many evangelicals reject the thinking of men like Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Chuck Colson. But we are also aware that millions of others align themselves with the Religious Right agenda. They believe their crabbed interpretation of the Bible gives them the right to run other people’s lives – and we are determined to stop them.
h/t: Rob Boston at Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That's Undermining Democracy | Belief | AlterNet
alternet.orgDominionists want to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States, a concept that was dismissed as eroding freedom and democracy by the founders of our country. Dominionism has become a major influence on the right-wing populist Tea Parties as Christian Right activists have flooded into the movement at the grassroots. At the same time, legitimate questions have been raised about whether or not potential Republican presidential nominees Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, or Sarah Palin have moved from a generic form of Christian Right Dominionism toward the more totalitarian form know as Dominion Theology.
Clueless journalists and crafty Christian Right pundits have mocked the idea that Dominionism as a religiously motivated political tendency even exists. Scholars, however, have been writing about Dominionism for over a decade, some using the term directly, and others describing the tendency in other ways.
Dominionism is a broad political impulse within the Christian Right in the United States. It comes in a variety of forms that author Fred Clarkson and I call soft and hard. Fred and I probably coined the term “Dominionism” back in the 1990s, but in any case we certainly were the primary researchers who organized its use among journalists and scholars.
Clarkson noted three characteristics that bridge both the hard and the soft kind of Dominionism.
- Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe the United States once was, and should again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.
- Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.
- Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, believing that the Ten Commandments, or “biblical law,” should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles.
At the apex of hard Dominionism is the religious dogma of Dominion Theology, with two major branches: Christian Reconstructionism and Kingdom Now theology. It is the latter’s influence on the theopolitical movement called the New Apostolic Reformation that has been linked in published reports to potential Republican presidential nominees Perry, Bachmann or Palin. All three of these right-wing political debutantes have flirted with Christian Right Dominionism, but how far they have danced toward the influence of hard-right Dominion Theology is in dispute. It would be nice if some “mainstream” journalists actually researched the question.
The most militant Dominion Theologists would silence dissenters and execute adulterers, homosexuals and recalcitrant children. No…seriously. OK, they would only be executed for repeated offenses, explain some defenders of Christian Reconstructionism. Even most Christian Right activists view the more militant Dominion Theologists as having really creepy ideas.
Advocates of Dominion Theology go beyond the democracy eroding theocracy of Dominionism into a totalitarian form of religious power called a “theonomy,” in which pluralistic democracy and religious tolerance are seen as a problem to be solved by godly men carrying out God’s will. Karen Armstrong calls Christian Reconstructionism “totalitarian” because it leaves “no room for any other view or policy, no democratic tolerance for rival parties, no individual freedom.” Matthew N. Lyons and I call Christian Reconstructionism a “new form of clerical fascist politics,” in our book Right-Wing Populism in America, because we see it echoing the religiously based clerical fascist movements that existed during World War II in countries including Romania and Hungary.
According to Fred Clarkson:
Reconstructionists believe that there are three main areas of governance: family government, church government, and civil government. Under God’s covenant, the nuclear family is the basic unit. The husband is the head of the family, and wife and children are “in submission” to him. In turn, the husband “submits” to Jesus and to God’s laws as detailed in the Old Testament. The church has its own ecclesiastical structure and governance. Civil government exists to implement God’s laws. All three institutions are under Biblical Law, the implementation of which is called “theonomy.”
Christian Reconstructionists believe that as more Christians adopt Dominion Theology, they will eventually convert the majority of Americans. Then the country will realize that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are merely codicils to Old Testament biblical law. Because they believe this is God’s will, they scoff at criticism that what they plan is a revolutionary overthrow of the existing system of government. Over the past 20 years the leading proponents of Reconstructionism have included founder Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdoony, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen, David Chilton, Gary DeMar, and Andrew Sandlin. Kingdom Now theology emerged from the Latter Rain Pentacostal movement and the concept of Spiritual Warfare against the literal demonic forces of Satan. It has been promoted by founder Earl Paulk as well as C. Peter Wagner, founder of the New Apostolic Reformation movement.
For many, President Obama and the Democratic Party are among these “demonic forces.” This has real world consequences.
Martin reveals that “several key leaders have acknowledged an intellectual debt to the theonomists.” The late Christian Right leaders Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy “endorsed Reconstructionist books” for example. Before he died in 2001, the founder of Christian Reconstuctionism, R. J. Rushdoony, appeared several times on Christian Right televangelist programs such as Pat Robertson’s 700 Club and the program hosted by D. James Kennedy.
h/t: AlterNet
C. Peter Wagner, A Leading Figure In The New Apostolic Reformation : NPR
npr.orgNational Public Radio’s Fresh Air released a full-length Terry Gross interview with New Apostolic Reformation pioneer C. Peter Wagner, who mentioned his attendance at Texas governor Rick Perry’s The Response prayer rally, last August 6th.
Israel’s New Strategy: Downgrading Iranian Threat and Peace with Palestine?
Mofaz has publicly contradicted the whole thrust of Netanyahu’s strategy by downgrading the threat from Iran and suggesting that a peace settlement with the Palestinians is actually more important.
Do you think they are actually supportive of a two-state solution- or is this just an attempt to pacify critics by going through the motions of due process?
Read more: Israel’s New Strategy: Downgrading Iranian Threat and Peace with Palestine?
Israel’s New Strategy: Downgrading Iranian Threat and Peace with Palestine?
Mofaz has publicly contradicted the whole thrust of Netanyahu’s strategy by downgrading the threat from Iran and suggesting that a peace settlement with the Palestinians is actually more important.
Do you think they are actually supportive of a two-state solution- or is this just an attempt to pacify critics by going through the motions of due process?
Read more: Israel’s New Strategy: Downgrading Iranian Threat and Peace with Palestine?
