In her Aug. 18 Washington Post op-ed "'Dominionism' beliefs among conservative Christians overblown," Lisa Miller wrote:
Certain journalists use "dominionist" the way some folks on Fox News use the word "sharia." Its strangeness scares people. Without history or context, the word creates a siege mentality in which "we" need to guard against "them."
By its very nature, politics is inclined toward corruption, deception and the accumulation of power. Organized religion, in many regards, is no better. So I am particularly leery of those who strive to merge politics with religion and, in the process, turn presidential elections into a test of one's religiosity, for good or ill.
I became even more apprehensive about this merger between religion and politics in the wake of George W. Bush's reign, given the extent to which his administration cozied up to the Christian right and vice versa. That uneasiness was not lessened one iota by Barack Obama's ascension to the Oval Office, which was met with ecstasy by the Christian left.
Since then, however, I have begun to notice a growing tendency on both the left and the right to demonize those with whom they disagree, either because they subscribe to politically incorrect beliefs or associate with individuals who might be the slightest bit controversial, no matter how fleeting the association. And when you add religion to the mix -- Christianity, in particular -- people who may otherwise be perfectly rational beings turn into highly intolerant conspiracy theorists.
Barack Obama's opponents used this "guilt by association" tactic to their advantage during the 2008 presidential election by attempting to tar and feather him for having attended the church pastored by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright was portrayed by the media as an unpatriotic, anti-Semitic, Christian zealot three steps removed from the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
Most recently, these McCarthyist scare tactics have been trotted out in an attempt to paint presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry as brainwashed puppets for a Christian right bent on establishing a theocracy, a government in which God's laws are supreme. As Miller notes:
The Republican primaries are six months away, and already news stories are raising fears on the left about "crazy Christians."
One piece connects Gov. Rick Perry with a previously unknown Christian group called "The New Apostolic Reformation," whose main objective is to "infiltrate government." Another highlights whacko-sounding Christian influences on Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. A third cautions readers to be afraid, very afraid, of "dominionists."
The stories raise real concerns about the world views of two prospective Republican nominees. But their echo-chamber effect reignites old anxieties among liberals about evangelical Christians. Some on the left seem suspicious that a firm belief in Jesus equals a desire to take over the world.
Indeed, while less hysterical in tone than many of his counterparts, Ryan Lizza's recent piece for The New Yorker is no less prejudiced in its view of those with Christian leanings, hopscotching over Bachman's life story while dwelling on her Christian influences in such a way as to present her as a cautionary tale to prospective voters:
Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians. Her campaign is going to be a conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American politician of her stature.
And this is where it all falls apart for Lizza, who is so bent on portraying Bachmann as a product of dominionist dogma that he paints every Christian he encounters with the same extremist brush. In the process, he wrongly ascribes the dominionist teachings of R. J. Rushdoony to Francis Schaeffer, a leading Christian theologian of the 20th century who called for Christians to be active in the world, including in politics and government, and whose impact on evangelical Christians like Bachmann was far-reaching and not necessarily a bad thing.
This distinction between Rushdoony and Schaeffer may seem like a minor point, but to rational individuals who understand, as Miller does, that "Evangelical [Christians] do not generally want to take over the world," there is a world of difference between those who subscribe to Rushdoony's Christian Reconstructionist views and those who fall more into Schaeffer's camp.
I should know. Simply because I knew Rushdoony many years ago (there's that guilt by association thing again), I've been on the receiving end of these smear tactics time and again, accused of everything from harboring Reconstructionist motives and wanting to kill homosexuals to wanting to overthrow the government and establish a theocracy. Of course, as I document in my autobiography, "Slaying Dragons," none of these far-fetched accusations are true, which my accusers would have known had they bothered to interview me or read anything that I've written.
They would also have discovered that I knew Francis Schaeffer much better than I did Rushdoony -- in fact, at one time, Schaeffer was a mentor of sorts to me. To his credit, Professor Barry Hankins, in the American Spectator, delineates exactly where Schaeffer and Rushdoony differed and where all of these conspiracy-laden articles go wrong in their "macro-indictment of all things evangelical":
Schaeffer had a brief flirtation with Rushdoony's thought in the Sixties, but not with the Reconstructionist/Dominionist vision of Old Testament civil law. Rather, like some other evangelical figures, Schaeffer was enamored with Rushdoony's analysis of where, when, and how western civilization allegedly abandoned the moral standards of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The link between Schaeffer and Rushdoony was John Whitehead--who was friends with both figures and who practically wrote Schaeffer's immensely influential book A Christian Manifesto. Lizza cites Manifesto as arguing for the overthrow of the U.S. government if Roe v. Wade is not overturned. Schaeffer actually said that once Christians had worked through legal channels then practiced civil disobedience, he wasn't sure what they should do next. He did not advocate violence, but because he referenced the founding fathers' resort to revolution after exhausting legal channels in the 1770s, Schaeffer's son Frank remarked loosely and infamously on his blog years later that his father had called for the overthrow of the government. This is just not the case, but Frank Schaeffer has made a career out of debunking his and his father's evangelical past. ...
As for Lizza's alleged link between Schaeffer and Rushdoony, Schaeffer insisted publicly and privately that there should never be a theocracy in America. The moral law of the Old Testament was normative and abiding, but the civil law of the ancient Hebrews had no place under the U.S. Constitution.
As for Whitehead, he too was influenced by Rushdoony's analysis of the history of western law, but Whitehead never took Rushdoony's remedies seriously and neither have the vast majority of evangelicals. Having observed the Reconstructionist patriarch doting on his grandchildren, the idea that Rushdoony would actually support the death penalty for incorrigible children struck Whitehead as a bit far-fetched. It was one thing for Rushdoony, like many other utopians of the Right or Left, to theorize about the ideal society off in the future somewhere, but quite another for him to actually support such a thing in the present.
As Professor Hankins noted, I was present when the Christian right in America was metastasizing into the political behemoth it is today. By the mid-1980s, because of the hypocrisy I had seen in the evangelical leadership, I recoiled from the movement. But in those early years I worked alongside Frances Schaeffer and stayed in the home of R.J. Rushdoony. I also witnessed first-hand how the teachings and writings of these two men were co-opted by leaders of the Christian sociopolitical movement, such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Tim LaHaye, co-founder of the Moral Majority and co-author of the bestselling "Left Behind" novels, among others.
Fueled by the political writings of Rushdoony and the social activism of Schaeffer and energized by the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, Falwell and LaHaye launched the Moral Majority in 1979. That same year, Beverly LaHaye started Concerned Women for America as a biblical counterpoint to the National Organization for Women. Since then, the Christian right has seldom looked back.
By the early 1980s, the Christian right had formed a voting bloc that burgeoned into a powerful movement. It effectively ushered Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush into the presidency. As the media empires of evangelical leaders and televangelists grew to encompass print, radio and television, so, too, did the reach and power of the religious right. It now boasts of representing some 30 million Christian voters, as its leaders are fond of reminding elected officials.
However, while the Christian right has made big gains politically in the past several decades, the Christian involvement in politics has produced little in terms of definable positive results spiritually. After all, political action as a cure-all is an illusion. Although it is a valued part of the process in a democracy, the ballot box is not the answer to humankind's ills. And, in fact, Christians who place their hope in a political answer to the world's ills often become nothing more than another tool in the politician's toolbox.
Francis Schaeffer understood this. As he advised in "A Christian Manifesto," Christians must avoid joining forces with the government and arguing a theocratic position. "We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country," Schaeffer writes. "To say it another way, 'We should not wrap Christianity in our national flag.'" As history makes clear, fusing Christianity with politics cheapens it, robs it of its spiritual vitality and thus destroys true Christianity.
The founder of Christianity understood this. Jesus did not seek political power, and He did not teach Christians to seek it, either. Jesus spoke truth to power, and it cost him his life. If Christians really want to follow Jesus, this will necessarily mean that they will often be forced to stand against the governmental and political establishment in speaking truth to power, as well. As Martin Luther King, Jr. did so effectively, Christians should stand outside the political establishment and criticize the political Herods of this world in advocating for peaceful, nonviolent change.
This brings me back to the current hysteria over the possibility that the Christian right is mobilizing to take over the country under the guise of electing Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry to office. First, I would echo Lisa Miller's plea, "given the acrimonious tone of our political discourse, for a certain amount of dispassionate care in the coverage of religion." Second, given that, according to Miller, nearly 80 percent of Americans say they're Christian and a third of Americans call themselves "evangelical," perhaps it's time for those on the left to cease their knee-jerk intolerance of all things Christian. And finally, no matter what the talking heads might say about Bachmann's so-called dominionist philosophies or Rick Perry's right-wing leanings, we would all do well to remember that at the end of the day, they, like their opponents, are first and foremost politicians -- answering to a higher call that ends at the ballot box. And as we have learned to our detriment, no matter which party takes the White House, the American people will be the ones to pay the price.
Follow John W. Whitehead on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rutherford_inst
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Portrayed?
We're dealing with a group of religious and political leaders who believe that our founding fathers set out to build a "Christian Nation;" that our founding documents are divinely inspired. Most have never heard of Rushdoony, but they believe as he did: that any education not based in God is no education at all. Ron Paul's former campaign manager, Gary North, has pushed the belief that if our country crumbles economically, the church will be there to step into government's role. Of course, not all fundamentalists believe everything these ersatz theologians have to say, but many thousands hold to some major aspect of reconstructionism, or one of its components, like Austrian-style economics.
I never thought I'd see a time when Christians were so averse to helping the poor, the disadvantaged, and the outcasts of this world. ("If we give to them, we'll make them dependent.") Those who rail the loudest against evolution have become the new social Darwinists. If this is a good thing, why are we warned so frequently in the scriptures about involving ourselves in the culture of the world system?
I have always heard that you "LEAD BY EXAMPLE". Democrats lead by example and don't HAVE to "CLAIM" to be Christian. Republicans, the right, conservatives, "CLAIM" to be Christians but do generally the opposite of what the Bible teaches. (the ones in public, politicians, and so-called leaders, that is). When you listen to their claims of Christianity, I have to wonder who they are trying to convince, me or 'them'?
I always said, if you're truly a Christian, it will show, and no words HAVE to be spoken to prove that you are.
Bachmann and Perry are politicians, truly, but to say that they're religious upbringing should be down-played in light of their commitment to the "higher calling" of political office is like saying rap lyrics should be ignored for the focus on the desire to sing. When Perry calls on the country to "come back to God" and Bachmann condemns gays as slaves to their immorality, there is no other reason for such absurdly puerile thought except by pointing to the frontal-lobe denying power of conservative fundamentalist Christianity, of which membership they both strongly point out every chance they get.
"...Miller, though, misses the boat, too, by neglecting to acknowledge and describe the infrastructure the religious right has built, driven by the idea of dominionism."
http://www.salon.com/news/2012_elections/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/08/21/posner_nar_dominionism
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Its ironic that the author is asking liberals to stop painting the Christian community with a broad brush, while doing exactly that to the progressive community.
Just cause they claim it doesn't mean they live it.
I don't why so many people want to spend eternity in Heaven if they can't stand to spend an hour in church.
But then, I'm an atheist.
Oh, please enlighten me, where were these swooning hordes of left-wing Christians when Barack Obama was running for presdient? I didn't see any. "Ascending to the oval office"? Really? All this time I thought he was elected (unlike his predecessor, who had to be installed by the Supreme Court). You conservatives still can't come to terms with the fact that he won the election, can you?.
Perhaps what Mr. Whitehead is trying to say is that 'the left' is intolerant of those things (policies) that are marketed to the right-wing as "Christian" while they embrace those things that are reflective of actual Christian (meaning emphasized by Jesus) values.
Nah, what he means is that 'real' Christians are conservatives and the Christian left (redundant?) is guilty of heresy by wanting to help other people rather than restrict the rights of others based on pre-Christian values.
Ooh, Burn! Yeah but it seems to work for some in the court if rhetoric.
It's not knee-jerk. Didn't Jerry Falwell claim that 9-11 happened because of feminism and gay rights? Didn't the people who voted for the Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in California do it solely for religious reasons (and it had to be religious reasons, because there simply aren't any rational ones -- and if anyone wants to dispute that, please provide examples with documentation of what public policy rationale banning marriage equality serves).
If evangelical Christians don't like gay marriage, then they shouldn't marry gay people in their churches. If they don't like abortion, then shouldn't have them. As soon as they stop shoving their relgious beliefs down my throat, I'll be happy to stop reacting to them -- knee-jerk or otherwise.