SCHOOL OF FEAR - The Rise of Christian Dominionism ~ JONATHON SAWYER"

Talk Beliefs

August 28, 2024

JONATHON SAWYER is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado, researching and speaking out about religious and political extremism and its effect on schools and education.  

These concerns stem from his formative years in a school associated with the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement that focuses on what it calls “spiritual warfare.”

‎MindShift Podcast on Apple Podcasts

‎MindShift Podcast on Apple Podcasts
‎Dr Clint Heacock

Reconstruction after Deconstruction, Post-Religion & Post-Cults

Bio: Dr. Clint Heacock is an ex-evangelical pastor and Bible college teacher of over 20 years and the host of the MindShift podcast. Clint grew up in the Church of Christ with parents who followed the Bill Gothard method of child-rearing. After deconstructing his former Christian faith and leaving it behind more than a decade ago, he’s used his podcast platform to educate and help those who have left religion to rebuild their lives. Recently Clint has been dedicated to speaking out about the dangers posed by the Christian Right, dominion theology, and Christian nationalism.


Here’s another good resource, I’ve created a playlist of episodes on YouTube all of which are dedicated to cult recovery, tactics, etc.

MindShift Podcast Playlist

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7OG-5i-Sjou630DSRAKLKOHunPl0tDnj&si=45xZsZbAZW4oTMTw

An American Kingdom

A new and rapidly growing Christian movement is openly political, wants a nation under God’s authority, and is central to Donald Trump’s GOP


Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post
July 11, 2021

FORT WORTH — The pastor was already pacing when he gave the first signal. Then he gave another, and another, until a giant video screen behind him was lit up with an enormous colored map of Fort Worth divided into four quadrants.

Greed, the map read over the west side. Competition, it said over the east side. Rebellion, it said over the north part of the city. Lust, it said over the south.

It was an hour and a half into the 11 a.m. service of a church that represents a rapidly growing kind of Christianity in the United States, one whose goal includes bringing under the authority of a biblical God every facet of life, from schools to city halls to Washington, where the pastor had traveled a month after the Jan. 6 insurrection and filmed himself in front of the U.S. Capitol saying quietly, “Father, we declare America is yours.”

Now he stood in front of the glowing map, a 38-year-old White man in skinny jeans telling a congregation of some 1,500 people what he said the Lord had told him: that Fort Worth was in thrall to four “high-ranking demonic forces.” That all of America was in the grip of “an anti-Christ spirit.” That the Lord had told him that 2021 was going to be the “Year of the Supernatural,” a time when believers would rise up and wage “spiritual warfare” to advance God’s Kingdom, which was one reason for the bright-red T-shirt he was wearing. It bore the name of a church elder who was running for mayor of Fort Worth. And when the pastor cued the band, the candidate, a Guatemalan American businessman, stood along with the rest of the congregation as spotlights flashed on faces that were young and old, rich and poor, White and various shades of Brown — a church that had grown so large since its founding in 2019 that there were now three services every Sunday totaling some 4,500 people, a growing Saturday service in Spanish and plans for expansion to other parts of the country.

“Say, ‘Cleanse me,’ ” the pastor continued as drums began pounding and the people repeated his words. “Say, ‘Speak, Lord, your servants are listening.’ ”

***

The church is called Mercy Culture, and it is part of a growing Christian movement that is nondenominational, openly political and has become an engine of former president Donald Trump’s Republican Party. It includes some of the largest congregations in the nation, housed in the husks of old Baptist churches, former big-box stores and sprawling multimillion-dollar buildings with private security to direct traffic on Sundays. Its most successful leaders are considered apostles and prophets, including some with followings in the hundreds of thousands, publishing empires, TV shows, vast prayer networks, podcasts, spiritual academies, and branding in the form of T-shirts, bumper stickers and even flags. It is a world in which demons are real, miracles are real, and the ultimate mission is not just transforming individual lives but also turning civilization itself into their version of God’s Kingdom: one with two genders, no abortion, a free-market economy, Bible-based education, church-based social programs and laws such as the ones curtailing LGBTQ rights now moving through statehouses around the country.

This is the world of Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula White and many more lesser-known but influential religious leaders who prophesied that Trump would win the election and helped organize nationwide prayer rallies in the days before the Jan. 6 insurrection, speaking of an imminent “heavenly strike” and “a Christian populist uprising,” leading many who stormed the Capitol to believe they were taking back the country for God.

Even as mainline Protestant and evangelical denominations continue an overall decline in numbers in a changing America, nondenominational congregations have surged from being virtually nonexistent in the 1980s to accounting for roughly 1 in 10 Americans in 2020, according to long-term academic surveys of religious affiliation. Church leaders tend to attribute the growth to the power of an uncompromised Christianity. Experts seeking a more historical understanding point to a relatively recent development called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR.

A California-based theologian coined the phrase in the 1990s to describe what he said he had seen as a missionary in Latin America — vast church growth, miracles, and modern-day prophets and apostles endowed with special powers to fight demonic forces. He and others promoted new church models using sociological principles to attract members. They also began advancing a set of beliefs called dominionism, which holds that God commands Christians to assert authority over the “seven mountains” of life — family, religion, education, economy, arts, media and government — after which time Jesus Christ will return and God will reign for eternity.

None of which is new, exactly. Strains of this thinking formed the basis of the Christian right in the 1970s and have fueled the GOP for decades.

What is new is the degree to which Trump elevated a fresh network of NAR-style leaders who in turn elevated him as God’s chosen president, a fusion that has secured the movement as a grass-roots force within the GOP just as the old Christian right is waning. Increasingly, this is the world that the term “evangelical voter” refers to — not white-haired Southern Baptists in wooden pews but the comparatively younger, more diverse, more extreme world of millions drawn to leaders who believe they are igniting a new Great Awakening in America, one whose epicenter is Texas.

That is where the pastor wearing the bright-red T-shirt, Landon Schott, had been on the third day of a 40-day fast when he said the Lord told him something he found especially interesting.

It was 2017, and he was walking the streets of downtown Fort Worth asking God to make him a “spiritual father” of the city when he heard God say no. What he needed was “spiritual authority,” he remembered God telling him, and the way to get that was to seek the blessing of a pastor named Robert Morris, an evangelical adviser to Trump, and the founder of one of the largest church networks in the nation, called Gateway, with nine branches and weekly attendance in the tens of thousands, including some of the wealthiest businessmen in Texas.

Morris blessed him. Not long after that, a bank blessed him with the funds to purchase an aging church called Calvary Cathedral International, a polygonal structure with a tall white steeple visible from Interstate 35. Soon, the old red carpet was being ripped up. The old wooden pews were being hauled out. The cross on the stage was removed, and in came a huge screen, black and white paint, speakers, lights and modern chandeliers as the new church called Mercy Culture was born.

“Mercy” for undeserved grace.

“Culture” for the world they wanted to create.


***

That world is most visible on Sundays, beginning at sunrise, when the worship team arrives to set up for services.

In the lobby, they place straw baskets filled with earplugs.

In the sanctuary, they put boxes of tissues at the end of each row of chairs.

On the stage one recent Sunday, the band was doing its usual run-through — two guitar players, a bass player, a keyboardist and two singers, one of whom was saying through her mic to the earpiece of the drummer: “When we start, I want you to wait to build it — then I want you to do those drum rolls as we’re building it.” He nodded, and as they went over song transitions, the rest of the worship team filtered in for the pre-service prayer.

The sound technician prayed over the board controlling stacks of D&B Audiotechnik professional speakers. The lighting technician asked the Lord to guide the 24 professional-grade spotlights with colors named “good green” and “good red.” Pacing up and down the aisles were the ushers, the parking attendants, the security guards, the greeters, the camera operators, the dancers, the intercessors, all of them praying, whispering, speaking in tongues, inviting into the room what they believed to be the Holy Spirit — not in any metaphorical sense, and not in some vague sense of oneness with an incomprehensible universe. Theirs was the spirit of a knowable Christian God, a tangible force they believed could be drawn in through the brown roof, through the cement walls, along the gray-carpeted hallways and in through the double doors of the sanctuary where they could literally breathe it into their bodies. Some people spoke of tasting it. Others said they felt it — a sensation of warm hands pressing, or of knowing that someone has entered the room even when your eyes are closed. Others claimed to see it — golden auras or gold dust or feathers of angels drifting down.

That was the intent of all this, and now the first 1,500 people of the day seeking out those feelings began arriving, pulling in past fluttering white flags stamped with a small black cross over a black “MC,” in through an entrance where the words “Fear Go” were painted in huge block letters above doors that had remained open for much of the pandemic. Inside, the church smelled like fresh coffee.

“Welcome to Mercy,” the greeters said to people who could tell stories of how what happened to them here had delivered them from drug addiction, alcoholism, psychological traumas, PTSD, depression, infidelities, or what the pastor told them was the “sexual confusion” of being gay, queer or transgender. They lingered awhile in a communal area, sipping coffee on modern leather couches, taking selfies in front of a wall with a pink neon “Mercy” sign, or browsing a narrow selection of books about demonic spirits. On a wall, a large clock counted down the final five minutes as they headed into the windowless sanctuary.

Inside, the lights were dim, and the walls were bare. No paintings of parables. No stained glass, crosses, or images of Jesus. Nothing but the stage and the enormous, glowing screen where another clock was spinning down the last seconds as cymbals began playing, and people began standing and lifting their arms because they knew what was about to happen. Cameras 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 were in position. The live stream was on standby. In the front row, the 85-year-old retired pastor of the church this used to be secured his earplugs.

What happened next was 40 nonstop minutes of swelling, blasting, drum-pounding music at times so loud that chairs and walls seemed to vibrate. The huge screen became a video of swirling clouds, then a black galaxy of spinning stars. The spotlights went from blue to amber to gold to white. A camera slid back and forth on a dolly. Fog spilled onto the stage. Modern dancers raced around waving shiny flags. One song melded into the next, rising and falling and rising again into extended, mantralike choruses about surrender while people in the congregation began kneeling and bowing.

A few rows back, the pastor stood with one hand raised and the other holding a coffee cup. And when the last song faded, a worship team member walked onstage to explain what was happening in case anyone was new.

“The Holy Spirit is in this room,” he said.

Now everyone sat down and watched the glowing screen. Another video began playing — this one futuristic, techno music over flash-cut images of a nuclear blast, a spinning planet, advancing soldiers, and when it was over, the pastor was standing on the stage to deliver his sermon, the essence of which was repeated in these kinds of churches all over the nation:

America is in the midst of a great battle between the forces of God and Satan, and the forces of Satan roughly resemble the liberal, progressive agenda. Beware of the “seductive, political, demonic, power-hungry spirit that uses witchcraft to control God’s people.” Beware of “freedom that is actually just rebellion against God.” Beware of confusion. Beware of “rogue leaders.” Beware of a world that “preaches toleration of things God does not tolerate,” and on it went for a full hour, a man with a microphone in a spotlight, pacing, sweating, whispering about evil forces until he cued the band and gave instructions for eternal salvation.

“Just say, ‘Holy Spirit, would you teach me how to choose to obey you,’ ” he said, asking people to close their eyes, or kneel, or bow, and as the drums began pounding again, the reaction was the same as it was every Sunday.

People closed their eyes. They knelt. They bowed. They believed, and as they did, people with cameras roamed the congregation capturing peak moments for videos that would be posted to the church’s website and social media accounts: a man with tattooed arms crying; a whole row of people on their knees bowing; a blond woman in a flower-print dress lying all the way down on the floor, forehead to carpet.

When it was over, people streamed outside, squinting into the bright Fort Worth morning as the next 1,500 people pulled in past the fluttering white flags.

“Welcome to Mercy,” the greeters said again.



***



By late afternoon Sunday, the parking lot was empty and the rest of the work of kingdom-building could begin.

One day, this meant a meeting of the Distinct Business Ministry, whose goal was “raising up an army of influential leaders” across Fort Worth.

Another day, it meant the church hosting a meeting of a group called the Freedom Shield Foundation, a dozen or so men huddled over laptops organizing what one participant described as clandestine “operations” around Fort Worth to rescue people they said were victims of sex trafficking. This was a core issue for the church. Members were raising money to build housing for alleged victims. There were always prayer nights for the cause, including one where church members laid hands on Fort Worth’s sheriff, who sat with a Bible in his lap and said that the problem was “the demonic battle of our lifetime” and told those gathered that “you are the warriors in that battle.”

Another day, it meant the steady stream of cars inching toward the church food bank, one team loading boxes into trunks and another fanning out along the idling line offering prayers.

A man in a dented green sedan requested one for his clogged arteries.

A man trying to feed a family of seven asked in Spanish, “Please, just bless my life.”

A stone-faced woman said her mother had died of covid, then her sister, and now a volunteer reached inside and touched her shoulder: “Jesus, wrap your arms around Jasmine,” she said, and when she moved on to others who tried to politely decline, the volunteer, a young woman, gave them personal messages she said she had received from the Lord.

“God wants to tell you that you’re so beautiful,” she said into one window.

“I feel God is saying that you’ve done a good job for your family,” she said into another.

“I feel God is saying, if anything, He is proud of you,” she said in Spanish to a woman gripping the steering wheel, her elderly mother in the passenger seat. “When God sees you, He is so pleased, He is so proud,” she continued as the woman stared straight ahead. “I feel you are carrying so much regret, maybe? And pain?” she persisted, and now the woman began nodding. “And I think God wants to release you from the past. Say, ‘Jesus, I give you my shame.’ Say, ‘Jesus, I give you my regret,’ ” the volunteer said, and the woman repeated the words. “ ‘You know I tried my best, Jesus. I receive your acceptance. I receive your love,’ ” the volunteer continued, and now the woman was crying, and the food was being loaded into the back seat, and a volunteer was taking her name, saying, “Welcome to the family.”

Another day, the Kingdom looked like rows of white tents where a woman in a white dress was playing a harp as more than a thousand mostly young women were arriving for something called Marked Women’s Night.

“I feel the Lord is going to be implanting something in us tonight,” a 27-year-old named Autumn said to her friend, their silver eye shadow glowing in the setting sun.

“Every time I come here the Lord always speaks to me,” her friend said.

“Yeah, that happens to me all the time, too,” said Autumn, who described how the Lord had told her to move from Ohio to Texas, and then to attend Gateway Church, and then to enroll in a Gateway-approved school called Lifestyle Christianity University, where she said the Lord sent a stranger to pay her tuition. Not long after that, the Lord sent her into an Aldi supermarket, where she met a woman who told her about Mercy Culture, which is how she ended up sitting here on the grass on a summer evening, believing that the Lord was preparing her to go to Montana to “prophesy over the land” in anticipation of a revival.

“I don’t understand it; I just know it’s God,” Autumn said.

“So many miracles,” said her friend, and soon the drums were pounding.

They joined the crowd heading inside for another thunderous concert followed by a sermon by the pastor’s wife, during which she referred to the women as “vessels” and described “the Kingdom of Heaven growing and taking authority over our nation.”

Another day — Election Day in Fort Worth — hundreds of church members gathered at a downtown event space to find out whether their very own church elder, Steve Penate, would become the next mayor, and the sense in the room was that of a miracle unfolding.

“Supernatural,” said Penate, a first-time candidate, looking at the crowd of volunteers who’d knocked on thousands of doors around the city.

A candidate for the 2022 governor’s race stopped by. A wealthy businessman who helped lead the Republican National Hispanic Assembly drove over from Dallas. The pastor came by to declare that “this is the beginning of a righteous movement.”

“We are not just going after the mayorship — we’re going after every seat,” he said as the first batch of votes came in showing Penate in sixth place out of 10 candidates, and then fifth place, and then fourth, which was where he stayed as the last votes came in and he huddled with his campaign team to pray.

“Jesus, you just put a dent in the kingdom of darkness,” his campaign adviser said. “We stand up to the darkness. We stand up to the establishment. God, this is only the beginning.”

Another day, 100 or so young people crowded into a church conference room singing, “God, I’ll go anywhere; God, I’ll do anything,” hands raised, eyes closed, kneeling, bowing, crying, hugging. At the front of the room, a man with blond hair and a beard was talking about love.

“Everyone says they have the definition for what love is, but the Bible says, ‘By this we know love,’ ” he said. “Jesus laid down his life for us, and we are to lay down our lives for others.”

He dimmed the lights and continued in this vein for another hour, the music playing, the young people rocking back and forth mouthing, “Jesus, Jesus,” trancelike, until the blond man said, “It’s about that time.”

He turned the lights back on and soon, he sent them out on missions into the four demonic quadrants of Fort Worth.


***


One group headed east into Competition, a swath of the city that included the mirrored skyscrapers of downtown and struggling neighborhoods such as one called Stop 6, where the young people had claimed two salvations in a park the day before.

Another team headed west toward the green lawns and sprawling mansions of Greed.

Another rolled south toward Lust, where it was normal these days to see rainbow flags on bungalow porches and cafe windows including the one where a barista named Ryan Winters was behind the counter, eyeing the door.

It wasn’t the evangelicals he was worried about but the young customers who came in and were sometimes vulnerable.

“Maybe someone is struggling with their identity,” Ryan said.

He was not struggling. He was 27, a lapsed Methodist who counted himself lucky that he had never heard the voice of a God that would deem him unholy for being who he was, the pansexual lead singer of a psychedelic punk band called Alice Void.

“I never had a time when I was uncomfortable or ashamed of myself,” he said. “We all take care of each other, right, Tom?”

“Oh, yeah,” said a man with long gray hair, Tom Brunen, a Baptist turned Buddhist artist who was 62 and had witnessed the transformation of the neighborhood from a dangerous, castoff district that was a refuge for people he called “misfits” into a place that represented what much of America was becoming: more accepting, more inclined to see churches in terms of the people they had forsaken.

“It’s all mythology and fear and guilt that keeps the plutocracy and the greed in line above everybody else,” Tom said. “That’s what the universe showed me. If you want to call it God, fine. The creative force, whatever. Jesus tried to teach people that it’s all one thing. He tried and got killed for it. Christianity killed Jesus. The end. That’s my testimony.”

That was what the kingdom-builders were up against, and in the late afternoon, Nick Davenport, 24, braced himself as he arrived at his demonic battlefield, Rebellion, a noisy, crowded tourist zone of bars, souvenir shops and cobblestone streets in the north part of the city. He began walking around, searching out faces.

“The sheep will know the shepherd’s voice,” he repeated to himself to calm his nerves.

“Hey, Jesus loves y’all,” he said tentatively to a blond woman walking by.

“He does, he does,” the woman said, and he pressed on.

“Is anything bothering you?” he said to a man holding a shopping bag.

“No, I’m good,” the man said, and Nick continued down the sidewalk.

It was hot, and he passed bars and restaurants and gusts of sour-smelling air. A cacophony of music drifted out of open doors. A jacked-up truck roared by.

He moved on through the crowds, scanning the faces of people sitting at some outdoor tables. He zeroed in on a man eating a burger, a red scar visible at the top of his chest.

“Do you talk to God?” Nick asked him.

“Every day — I died twice,” the man said, explaining he had survived a car accident.


“What happened when you died?” Nick asked.


“Didn’t see any white lights,” the man said. “Nothing.”

“Well, Jesus loves you,” Nick said, and kept walking until he felt God pulling him toward a young man in plaid shorts standing outside a bar. He seemed to be alone. He was drinking a beer, his eyes red.

“Hi, I’m Nick, and I wanted to know, how are you doing?”

“Kind of you to ask,” the man said. “My uncle killed himself yesterday.”

“Oh,” said Nick, pausing for a moment. “I’m sorry. You know, God is close to the brokenhearted. I know it doesn’t feel like it all the time.”

He began telling him his own story of a troubled home life and a childhood of bullying, and how he had been close to suicide himself when he was 18 years old, and how, on a whim, he went with a friend to a massive Christian youth conference in Nashville of the sort that is increasingly common these days. A worship band called Planet Shakers was playing, he said, and deep into one of their songs, he heard what he believed to be the voice of God for the first time.

“The singer said if you’re struggling, let it go, and I halfheartedly said, ‘Okay, God, I guess I give it to you,’ and all of the sudden I felt shaky. I fell to the ground. I felt like a hand on my chest. Like, ‘I have you.’ I heard God say, ‘I love you. I made you for a purpose.’ When I heard that, I bawled like a baby. That was when I knew what I was created for. For Jesus.”


The man with red eyes listened.

“Thanks for saying that,” he said, and Nick continued walking the sidewalks into the early evening, his confidence bolstered, feeling more certain than ever that he would soon be leaving his roofing job to do something else for the Lord, something big. He had been preparing, absorbing the lessons of a church that taught him his cause was righteous, and that in the great spiritual battle for America, the time was coming when he might be called upon to face the ultimate test.


“If I have any choice, I want to die like the disciples,” said Nick. “John the Baptist was beheaded. One or two were boiled alive. Peter, I believe he was crucified upside down. If it goes that way? I’m ready. If people want to stone me, shoot me, cut my fingers off — it doesn’t matter what you do to me. We will give anything for the gospel. We are open. We are ready.”

***

Ready for what, though, is the lingering question.

Those inside the movement have heard all the criticisms. That their churches are cults that prey on human frailties. That what their churches are preaching about LGTBQ people is a lie that is costing lives in the form of suicides. That the language of spiritual warfare, demonic forces, good and evil is creating exactly the sort of radical worldview that could turn politics into holy war. That the U.S. Constitution does not allow laws privileging a religion. That America does not exist to advance some Christian Kingdom of God or to usher in the second coming of Jesus.

To which Penate, the former mayoral candidate, said, “There’s a big misconception when it comes to separation of church and state. It never meant that Christians shouldn’t be involved in politics. It’s just loving the city. Being engaged. Our children are in public schools. Our cars are on public streets. The reality is that people who don’t align with the church have hijacked everything. If I ever get elected, my only allegiance will be to the Lord.”

Or as a member of Mercy Culture who campaigned for Penate said: “Can you imagine if every church took a more active role in society? If teachers were preachers? If church took a more active role in health? In business? If every church took ownership over their communities? There would be no homeless. No widows. No orphans. It would look like a society that has a value system. A Christian value system.”

That was the American Kingdom they were working to advance, and as another Sunday arrived, thousands of believers streamed past the fluttering white flags and into the sanctuary to bathe in the Holy Spirit for the righteous battles and glories to come.

The drums began pounding. The screen began spinning. The band began blasting, and when it was time, the pastor stood on the stage to introduce a topic he knew was controversial, and to deliver a very specific word. He leaned in.

“Submission,” he said.

“We’ve been taught obedience to man instead of obedience to God,” he continued.

“God makes an army out of people who will learn to submit themselves,” he continued.

“When you submit, God fights for you,” he concluded.

He cued the band. The drums began to pound again, and he told people to “breathe in the presence of God,” and they breathed. He told them to close their eyes, and they closed their eyes. He gave them words to repeat, and the people repeated them.

“I declare beautiful, supernatural submission,” they said.

Stephanie McCrummen is a national enterprise reporter covering an array of subjects for The Washington Post. Previously, she was the paper's East Africa bureau chief based in Nairobi. She has also reported from Egypt, Iraq and Mexico, among other places. She joined The Post as a Metro reporter in 2004.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/11/mercy-culture-church/

The Church of QAnon: Will conspiracy theories form the basis of a new religious movement?

Marc-André Argentino

PhD candidate Individualized Program, 2020-2021 Public Scholar, Concordia University
The Conversation
May 18, 2020

Disclosure statement: Marc-André Argentino receives funding from Concordia University. Marc-André Argentino is affiliated with the Global Network on Extremism & Technology

Partners:

• Universitié Concordia provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA-FR.
• Concordia University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.

Followers of the QAnon movement believe in wild and dangerous conspiracy theories about U.S. President Donald Trump. Now a faction within the movement has been interpreting the Bible through QAnon conspiracies.

I have been studying the growth of the QAnon movement as part of my research into how extremist religious and political organizations create propaganda and recruit new members to ideological causes.

On Feb. 23, I logged onto Zoom to observe the first public service of what is essentially a QAnon church operating out of the Omega Kingdom Ministry (OKM). I’ve spent 12 weeks attending this two-hour Sunday morning service.

What I’ve witnessed is an existing model of neo-charismatic home churches — the neo-charismatic movement is an offshoot of evangelical Protestant Christianity and is made up of thousands of independent organizations — where QAnon conspiracy theories are reinterpreted through the Bible. In turn, QAnon conspiracy theories serve as a lens to interpret the Bible itself.

Trump vs. the ‘deep state’

The QAnon movement began in 2017 after someone known only as Q posted a series of conspiracy theories about Trump on the internet forum 4chan. QAnon followers believe global elites are seeking to bring down Trump, whom they see as the world’s only hope to defeat the “deep state.”

OKM is part of a network of independent congregations (or ekklesia) called Home Congregations Worldwide (HCW). The organization’s spiritual adviser is Mark Taylor, a self-proclaimed “Trump Prophet” and QAnon influencer with a large social media following on Twitter and YouTube.

The resource page of the HCW website only links to QAnon propaganda — including the documentary Fall Cabal by Dutch conspiracy theorist Janet Ossebaard, which is used to formally indoctrinate e-congregants into QAnon. This 10-part YouTube series was the core material for the weekly Bible study during QAnon church sessions I observed.

The Sunday service is led by Russ Wagner, leader of the Indiana-based OKM, and Kevin Bushey, a retired colonel running for election to the Maine House of Representatives.

Bible and QAnon narratives

The service begins with an opening prayer from Wagner that he says will protect the Zoom room from Satan. This is followed by an hour-long Bible study where Wagner might explain the Fall Cabal video that attendees had just watched or offer his observations on socio-political events from the previous week.

Everything is explained though the lens of the Bible and QAnon narratives. Bushey then does 45 minutes of decoding items that have appeared recently on the app called QMap that is used to share conspiracy theories. The last 15 minutes are dedicated to communion and prayer.

At a service held on April 26, Wagner and Bushey spoke about a QAnon theory, called Project Looking Glass, that the U.S. military has secretly developed a form of time-travel technology. Wagner suggested to e-congregants that time travel can be explained by certain passages in the Bible.

On May 3, the theme of the QAnon portion of the service was about COVID-19. Bushey spoke about a popular QAnon theory that the pandemic was planned. (There is no evidence of this.) And when an anti-vax conspiracy theory documentary called “Plandemic” went viral , the video was shared on the HCW websites as a way for e-congregants to consume the latest in a series of false theories about the coronavirus.

Leveraging authority

What is clear is that Wagner and Bushey are leveraging religious beliefs and their “authority” as a pastor and ex-military officer to indoctrinate attendees into the QAnon church. Their objective is to train congregants to form their own home congregations in the future and grow the movement.

OKM’s ministry is rooted in Taylor’s prophecies. Wagner regularly mentions that if it wasn’t for Taylor, he would have never started this ministry.

On its website, OKM references the Seven Mountains of Societal Influence. Seven Mountains utilizes the language of Dominionism — a theology that believes countries, including the United States, should be governed by Christian biblical law. Its goal is to attain sociopolitical and economic transformation through the gospel of Jesus in what it calls the seven mountains or spheres of society: religion, family, education, government, media, entertainment and business. 

This blends QAnon’s apocalyptic desire to destroy society “controlled” by the deep state with the need for the Kingdom of God on Earth.

Wagner and Bushey have taught their congregation to stop listening to any media —even Fox News — because they’re are all “Luciferian.” What they provide instead is a road map to QAnon radicalization comprised of QAnon YouTube channels for the congregation’s daily media diet, the Qmap website that lists new QAnon conspiracy theories and Twitter influencers.

‘Deep state church’

They further insist that as Trump continues to “drain the swamp” in Washington, it’s “our” responsibility to drain the deep state church swamp. They believe the same deep state that controls the world has also infiltrated traditional churches. As Wagner stated in his April 12 service: “I am here to focus on the deep state church. This goes beyond our church and involves our culture and our politics. Kevin is here to talk about QAnon and the military operation to save the world.”

Like any church, they also run outreach ministries. OKM is currently raising funds for something called Reclamation Ranch, which Wagner describes as a safe place for children rescued after being held underground by the deep state. Children at risk is an ongoing theme in many QAnon conspiracy theories, including the famous fake “Pizzagate” theory.

As of May, OKM moved from Zoom to YouTube to accommodate the growth in attendees. At last count, approximately 300 accounts participated in the recent services.

While that’s not a lot of followers, we should be concerned about these latest developments. OKM provides formalized religious indoctrination into QAnon, a conspiracy movement that is both a public health threat by spreading false information about the coronavirus pandemic and a national security concern.



https://theconversation.com/the-church-of-qanon-will-conspiracy-theories-form-the-basis-of-a-new-religious-movement-137859

The Radical Theology That Could Make Religious Freedom a Thing of the Past

Even devout Christians should fear these influential leaders' refusal to separate church and state.

THE TEXAS OBSERVER
David R. Brockman @drdrbrockman
June 2, 2016

Though it’s seldom mentioned by name, it’s one of the major forces in Texas politics today: dominion theology, or dominionism. What began as a fringe evangelical sect in the 1970s has seen its influence mushroom — so much so that sociologist Sara Diamond has called dominionism “the central unifying ideology for the Christian Right.” (Italics hers.) That’s especially true here in Texas, where dominionist beliefs have, over the last decade, become part and parcel of right-wing politics at the highest levels of government.

So, what is it? Dominionism fundamentally opposes America’s venerable tradition of church-state separation — in fact, dominionists deny the Founders ever intended that separation in the first place. According to Frederick Clarkson, senior fellow for religious liberty at the non-profit social justice think tank Political Research Associates, dominionists believe that Christians “have a biblical mandate to control all earthly institutions — including government — until the second coming of Jesus.” And that should worry all Texans — Christians and non-Christians alike.

Dominionism comes in “soft” and “hard” varieties. “Hard” dominionism (sometimes called Christian Reconstructionism), as Clarkson describes it, explicitly seeks to replace secular government, and the U.S. Constitution, with a system based on Old Testament law.

The father of hard dominionism, the late Presbyterian theologian R.J. Rushdoony, called for his followers to “take back government … and put it in the hands of Christians.”

Rushdoony’s legacy has been carried on by his son-in-law, Tyler-based economist Gary North, an unapologetic theocrat who in 1982 called for Christians to “get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” (North, founder of the Institute for Christian Economics, did not respond to my request for comment.)

Mainstream Texas political figures don’t go quite that far. Instead they trade in “soft” dominionism. While soft dominionists do not advocate replacing the Constitution with biblical law, they do believe that Christians need to regain the control over political and cultural institutions that they (supposedly) lost after the Founding period.

Top Texas political figures have had links to dominionism for years. In 2011, the Observer covered then-Governor Rick Perry’s ties to a branch of the movement, the New Apostolic Reformation. Since then, the relationship between dominionism and right-wing politics has become even cozier.

Case in point: Ted Cruz. Although Cruz is too politically savvy to openly endorse dominionism, key figures on his team are explicit dominionists.

The most important may be his father, evangelist Rafael Cruz, a frequent surrogate for Cruz on the political stage.

Cruz père espouses Seven Mountains Dominionism, which holds that Christians must take control of seven “mountains,” or areas of life: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government. Speaking at the Texas GOP Convention in Dallas in May, Rafael Cruz claimed that God inspired the Founders to produce the Constitution, and declared that “biblical values” have made America the greatest country on earth. He encouraged Christian pastors to run for public office at every level, and called upon all Christians to exercise their “sacred responsibility” to vote for candidates who uphold biblical values.

As for what Thomas Jefferson famously called America’s “wall of separation between Church & State,” Cruz claimed in a 2016 sermon that it was meant to be a “one-way wall” — preventing government from interfering in religion but allowing the Church to exercise dominion over government. (I have to wonder whether a “one-way wall” is really a wall at all.…)

Another Seven Mountains Dominionist active in Cruz’s failed presidential bid was David Barton, who managed one of Cruz’s super PACs. On a 2011 radio program Barton said that Christians need to “be able to influence and control” the “mountains” in order to “establish God’s kingdom.” An amateur historian, outspoken Christian Americanist, and long-time Texas GOP activist, Barton runs WallBuilders, an Aledo group that seeks to “exert a direct and positive influence in government” and to assist public officials in developing “policies which reflect Biblical values.” (Barton also played a key role in incorporating Christian Americanism into the Texas curriculum standards.)

Perhaps the most powerful dominionist in Texas politics is Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. In a 2012 sermon and again at the 2015 Texas Tribune Festival, he said that the United States was founded on the Bible. Patrick has also made it clear he believes the Bible should determine public policy. In 2014, Patrick said that elected officials must look to Scripture when they make policy, “because every problem we have in America has a solution in the Bible.” (Where the Bible addresses problems like greenhouse gas emissions or cybersecurity, I’m at a loss to explain, even with 20 years of biblical study behind me.) His call for a “biblically-based” policy mindset “doesn’t mean we want a theocracy,” he insisted. “But it does mean we can’t walk away from what we believe.” For Patrick, not “walking away” seems to mean basing policy on his own religious beliefs — as he showed when he opposed same-sex marriage on biblical grounds. (Patrick also did not respond to my request for comment.)

Another dominionist active in Texas politics is conservative firebrand-slash-medical-doctor Steven Hotze. Hotze is linked to Gary DeMar, a dominionist writer and lecturer. DeMar has called for the United States to be governed by Old Testament law, including instituting the death penalty for gay/lesbian sex. As recently as 2013, Hotze was an officer of DeMar’s dominionist think tank American Vision; its mission is “to Restore America to its Biblical Foundation.”

Hotze also heads the influential (and hate-group certified) Conservative Republicans of Texas (CRT). In a promotional video, Hotze explains that CRT “is committed to electing Republicans” who will “defend the constitutional liberties that arose from the Christian heritage of our Founding Fathers.” (Hotze did not respond to my requests for comment.)

In short, dominionism has risen from an obscure fringe movement to the highest reaches of government here in Texas. No doubt Rushdoony would be pleased. The rest of us, however, have good reason to be troubled.



The dominionist goal of having Christianity shape law and policy amounts to the very governmental establishment of religion that the First Amendment explicitly prohibits. It would also appear to violate the Texas Bill of Rights, which states that “no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious society or mode of worship.”

Of course, dominionists insist that none of this matters, because the Founders intended to create a “Christian nation.”

Even if some of the Founders did mean for Christianity to be normative for law and policy, the question today is: Which Christianity? Christians disagree sharply on a whole host of issues, and dominionists simply don’t speak for many Texas Christians. For example, Hotze’s CRT supports capital punishment and wants to eliminate entitlement programs, and would deny marriage to same-sex couples, while Patrick would deny Texans reproductive choice and transgender people access to appropriate public restrooms. Those positions directly oppose the gospel as many Christians, myself included, understand it. And in seeking to make law and policy conform to the Bible, dominionists don’t speak for the growing number of non-Christians and religious “nones” — those who are religiously unaffiliated, including atheists and agnostics.

To be clear, I’m not saying that religion has no place in the public square. Far from it: religious persons have just as much right as anyone else to advocate laws and policies that line up with their beliefs and values. Government officials, however, are in a different position. No, they don’t have to “walk away from what they believe,” as Patrick puts it. Their religious beliefs can inform their personal morality in office — don’t lie, don’t steal, and so on — and give them comfort and hope or motivate them to serve others. But they can’t make policy based on those beliefs. Government officials have a duty to uphold the Constitution, not to enact their personal religious convictions. They are obliged to serve all of the people, not just members of the officials’ own religious community.

Ironically, for all their talk about what those Founders intended, it seems that dominionists have failed to heed the wisdom of two of the most prominent, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Madison warned that when government prefers one religion over others, religion suffers. A government that can make Christianity the official religion, he observed, can just as easily prefer one form of Christianity over others — for instance, Catholicism over evangelicalism.

For his part, Jefferson appealed to history. Whenever government officials “have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible” (my emphasis), he wrote, they have ended up creating “false religions.”

Christians who seek political domination would do well to heed those wise words.


David R. Brockman, Ph.D., a religious studies scholar and Christian theologian, is an adjunct lecturer in religion at Texas Christian University. He is the author of Dialectical Democracy through Christian Thought: Individualism, Relationalism, and American Politics.


https://www.texasobserver.org/dominion-theology/

The Rise of Dominionism

Frederick Clarkson
Political Research Associates
December 5, 2005

When Roy Moore, the Chief Justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court, installed a two-and-one-half-ton granite monument to the Ten Commandments in the Alabama state courthouse in Montgomery in June of 2001, he knew it was a deeply symbolic act. He was saying that God’s laws are the foundation of the nation; and of all our laws. Or at least, they ought to be.1 The monument (wags call it “Roy’s rock”) was installed under cover of night – but Moore had a camera crew from Rev. D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries on hand to record the historic event. Kennedy then sold videos of the installation as a fundraiser for Moore’s legal defense.

They knew he would need it.

The story of Roy’s rock epitomizes the rise of what many are calling “dominionism.” It is a story of how notions of “Biblical law” as an alternative to traditional, secular ideas of constitutional law are edging into mainstream American politics.

As readers of The Public Eye know, dominionism—in its “softest” form the belief that “America is a Christian Nation,” and that Christians need to re-assert control over political and cultural institutions—has been on the rise for a long time. Since The Public Eye first began writing about dominionism ten years ago, the movement, broadly defined, has gained considerable power. Recently however, the term has become fashionable with some lumping every form of evangelical Christianity and every faction in the Bush White House into one big, single-minded imperial dominionist plot. Dominionism is narrower and more profound than that. It is the driving ideology of the Christian Right.

It comes in “hard” and “soft” varieties, with the “hard” or theocratic dominionists “a religious trend that arose in the 1970s as a series of small Christian movements that seek to establish a theocratic form of government,” according Political Research Associates Senior Analyst Chip Berlet. The seminal form of Hard Dominionism is Christian Reconstructionism, which seeks to replace secular governance, and subsequently the U.S. Constitution, with a political and judicial system based on Old Testament Law, or Mosaic Law (see box). Not all dominionists embrace this view, though most dominionists look back to the early years of the American colonies to argue that before the Constitution, “the United States was originally envisioned as a society based on Biblical law.”2

Berlet’s distinction between hard and soft dominionists is clear and broad enough to describe the two main wings of the movement. But these viewpoints, like the terms “theocrat” and “theocracy,” are openly embraced by few. They are terms used by outside observers to understand a complex yet vitally important trend. So for people trying to figure out if a conservative politician, organization, or religious leader is “dominionist,” I notice three characteristics that bridge both the hard and the soft kind.

Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once 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, insofar as they believe 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.

Pieces of dominionism spill out in the day-to-day words and activities of our nation’s leaders all the time. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) routinely hosts tours of the Capitol for constituents, Congressmembers and their staffs by Christian nationalist propagandist David Barton. President George W. Bush claimed during one of his presidential campaign debates with John Kerry that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has said the United States should be governed under Biblical law.

And a dominionist— Sen. Sam Brownback (RKS) —is a hopeful for the Republican presidential nomination for 2008, while other dominionists are challenging the GOP through the Constitution Party, the third largest party in the nation. Moore himself is challenging a business-oriented incumbent in the GOP gubernatorial primary in Alabama for 2006.

Hard dominionists like Moore take these ideas to their extremes. They want to rewrite or replace or supplement the Constitution and Bill of Rights to codify specific elements of Biblical law. This would create a society that would be a theocracy. Soft dominionists like Brownback, on the other hand, propose a form of Christian nationalism that stops short of a codified legal theocracy. They may embrace a flat tax of 10% whose origins they place in the Bible. They are comfortable with little or no separation of church and state, seeing the secular state as eroding the place of the church in society.

Dominionism is therefore a broad political tendency—consisting of both hard and soft branches—organized through religiously based social movements that seeks power primarily through the electoral system. Dominionists work in coalitions with other religious and secular groups that primarily are active inside the Republican Party. They seek to build the kingdom of God in the here and now.

The three-shared Dominionist characteristics of religious supremacy, Christian nationalism, and theocratic visions are on vivid display in the politics of Moore’s ally, Rev. D. James Kennedy, the prominent televangelist. In early 2005, Kennedy displayed Roy’s rock at his annual political conference, “Reclaiming America for Christ” in Ft. Lauderdale. “For more than 900 other Christians from across the United States,” reported the Christian Science Monitor, “the monument stood as a potent symbol of their hopes for changing the course of the nation.”

“In material given to conference attendees, [Kennedy] wrote: ‘As the vice-regents of God, we are to bring His truth and His will to bear on every sphere of our world and our society. We are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government … our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors—in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.”

Kennedy, the Monitor noted, “regularly calls the United States a Christian nation that should be governed by Christians. He has created a Center for Christian Statesmanship in Washington that seeks to evangelize members of Congress and their staffs, and to counsel conservative Christian officeholders.”

The Monitor story shows Kennedy manifesting all three characteristic of a dominionist: he is a Christian nationalist; he is a religious supremacist; and his politics are decidedly theocratic.3 But of the three characteristics, Kennedy would embrace the first, but deny the second and third.

MOORE AND THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

The notion we often hear in public these days—of the supposed suppression of Christian expression by an alleged secular humanist conspiracy—stems largely from the works of Reconstructionist R.J. Rushdoony and those of the Reconstructionist- influenced writer, Francis Schaefer. Tim LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson also echo these claims.

The charge can be heard across the decades in Christian Right claims that “secular humanism” is being taught in the public schools and that Christians are “persecuted” in America. A recent variation of this claim was made by soft dominionist, Dr. Richard Land, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention. “The greatest threat to religious freedom in America,” Land declared, “are secular fundamentalists who want to ghetto-ize religious faith and make the wall of separation between church and state a prison wall keeping religious voices out of political discourse.”4

Virginia Reconstructionist Rev. Byron Snapp maintains, “religious pluralism is a myth. At no point in Scripture do we read that God teaches, supports, or condones pluralism. To support pluralism is to recognize all religions as equal.”5 This is, of course, exactly what the U.S. Constitution requires.6 It is because this is so, in part, that there is such a desperate push for what Rushdoony called “Christian revisionism” of history.

Arguably, Moore is emerging as the leading Christian Reconstructionist politician in America. So let’s return to the story of Roy’s rock.

A few years ago, Moore was an obscure Alabama county judge. He gained notoriety when the American Civil Liberties Union sued because he insisted on hanging a hand-carved Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom and opening the proceedings with a prayer. While the case was ultimately dismissed because the plaintiff lacked standing to sue, Roy Moore became a nationally known as the “Ten Commandments Judge.” Moore, 58, turned his notoriety into election as chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court in November 2000. Six months after his inauguration, he installed the now-famous monument. The ruling by Federal District Court Judge Myron H. Thompson in the inevitable lawsuit declared that the display constituted “a religious sanctuary, within the walls of a courthouse.” He ordered Moore to remove it; Moore refused, and he was ultimately removed from the bench.

Judge Thompson was additionally troubled by Moore’s partnership with Rev. Kennedy. He wrote that it “can be viewed as a joint venture between the Chief Justice and Coral Ridge, as both parties have a direct interest in its continued presence in the rotunda…. In a very real way, then, it could be argued that Coral Ridge’s religious activity is being sponsored and financially supported by the Chief Justice’s installation of the monument as a government official.”

Moore became a cause celebre and a popular speaker at major gatherings of such organizations as the Christian Coalition and Eagle Forum. He was publicly courted to head the national ticket of the overtly theocratic Constitution Party in 2004 and he appeared at numerous state party conventions while being publicly coy about his intentions.7 (Founded in 1994, it was originally called the U.S. Taxpayers Party.) The GOP was rightfully concerned that Moore might divide Bush’s conservative Christian constituency and threaten his reelection.

But he was able to use this leverage to move elements of the GOP in his direction. Moore and his attorney Herb Titus (vice-presidential candidate of the Constitution Party in 1996) drafted the Constitution Restoration Act, which would allow local, state and federal officials to acknowledge “God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government” and prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from gagging them. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), and Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) signed on as the bill’s main sponsors, and announced its introduction at a press conference in Montgomery, Ala., in February 2004.

That same day, a conference sponsored by Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law drew a who’s who of dominionists and dominionist-influenced Christian rightists, including Howard Philips, Herb Titus, John Eidsmoe, Phyllis Schlafly, Alan Keyes and representatives from such leading Christian Right organization as Coral Ridge Ministries, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and Eagle Forum. One of the featured speakers was Rev. Joseph Morecraft, a leader of the theocratic Christian Reconstructionist movement.8

Both the House and Senate held hearings on the bill in 2004, and Sen. Shelby reintroduced it in 2005 (S.520). As of September, it had eight GOP cosponsors. In the House (H.R.1070) Rep. Aderholt had 43 cosponsors. It is a classic and pioneering “court stripping” bill, stripping the Supreme Court of its power of oversight. The clear presumption of the bill is that God’s law is, once was, and should always have been the cornerstone of law and jurisprudence in the United States. While at this writing, the bill has not, and may never progress out of committee, the depth of support for a bill of such profound consequence is one fair measure of how far the most overt dominionist agenda has come.

The rhetoric of Roy Moore, David Barton and other Christian Right leaders not withstanding, the framers of the U.S. Constitution explicitly rejected the idea of a Christian Nation. The framers, seeking to inoculate the new nation against the religious persecution and warfare that had wracked Europe for a millennium, made America the first nation in the history of the world founded without the blessing of an official god, church or religion. They were leaving behind local theocracies that had governed the colonies for the previous 150 years in which only white propertied men who were members of the correct, established sect were able to vote and hold public office. One of the formative experiences of the young James Madison was witnessing the beating and jailing of Baptist preacher who preached—it was against the law in Anglican Virginia.

Madison went on to become the principal author of both the Constitution and the First Amendment. Among the many historical issues faced by dominionists who embrace Christian nationalism and seek to revise history in support of their contemporary political aims, one is so clear and insurmountable that it is routinely ignored: Article 6 of the Constitution bans religious tests for holding public office—no more swearing of Christian oaths. By extension, this meant that one’s religious orientation became irrelevant to one’s status as a citizen. It was this right to believe differently, that set in motion the disestablishment of the state churches—and set the stage for every advance in civil and human rights that followed.

GRANITE ROCK BEGETS A SLATE OF CANDIDATES

Moore has taken his show on the road, speaking about his alternative view of American history at major and minor Christian Right conventions, and displaying the monument. It is typically cordoned off with velvet ropes and viewed with reverence, awe and rubber necking.

Moore leveraged this notoriety beyond the lecture tour into a campaign for governor of Alabama. Not only is he given a (long)shot at winning the June 2006 GOP primary against the incumbent business oriented GOP governor Bob Riley, The Atlantic Monthly reports Moore is assembling “an entire slate of candidates to run under his auspices in the Republican primary… Moore has, in effect established a splinter sect of religious conservatives bent on taking over the Republican Party, and his reach extends to every corner of the state.” This has establishment types in both parties worried. “In style in if not in substance,” the article concludes, “Moore’s religious populism is a lineal descendant of the race-baiting that propelled Wallace to the statehouse a generation ago.”9

Moore evidently set out to provoke a confrontation with the federal courts over the Ten Commandments monument—one he was destined to lose, much as Alabama Governor George Wallace lost in his defense of legal segregation 40 years before.

Some GOP strategists fear that if Moore wins, he may set up a confrontation with the federal government by once again installing the Ten Commandments somewhere the federal courts are likely to rule violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.10

CONCLUSION

The sudden rise of a Christian Right agenda in many states and the federal government has taken many by surprise. It may be tempting to see Roy Moore as an exception, but his rise is reviving old coalitions. In 2004, his former spokesman and legal advisor, Tom Parker, was elected as an Associate Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. At Parker’s request, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made the trek to Montgomery to swear him in. Ex-judge Moore then also swore him in. “The Chief’s courage to stand for principle over personal position inspired me and animated voters during my campaign for the Alabama Supreme Court” said Parker. “So, I have been doubly blessed to have been sworn into office by two heroes of the judiciary.”11 But Parker’s politics has additional roots in the politics of the Wallace era. He has longstanding ties to neoconfederate organizations such as the Council of Conservative Citizens and the white supremacist League of the South and calls his home “Ft. Dixie.”12

While Alabama has its distinctive politics, we can also see dominionist politics in the mix of the aggressive efforts to restrict access to abortion and to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians—and in the efforts to teach creationism and its variant “intelligent design” in the public schools.

Naturally, people look for explanations for how it has come to this. There are many factors for this trend, just like any other important trend in history. But many Americans, regardless of their political orientation, seem genuinely baffled and obsessed about one or another factor in the rise to power of the Christian Right: they look to issues of funding, mass media, megachurches, dominionism, and so on. It is all of these and more. However, following the logic of Occam’s Razor, that the best explanation is usually the simplest, I offer this: the Christian Right social movement, fueled by the growing influence of dominionist ideology, gained political influence because it was sufficiently well organized and willing to struggle for power. And now they are exercising it.

While most dominionists would say they favor the U.S. Constitution, and merely seek to restore it to the original intentions of the founders, in fact, their views are profoundly anti-democratic. The dominionist worldview is not one based on the rights of the individual as we have come to know them, but on notions of biblical law. Among the political models admired by the likes of D. James Kennedy, Pat Robertson and Reconstructionist writer Gary North is the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a government ruled by the intensely Calvinist Protestant sect, Puritanism. In the dominionist worldview, the biblically incorrect (and those of other religious views) are second-class citizens at best. While few would admit to the clear implications of Christian nationalism, dominionism in the short run necessarily means, as a matter of theocratic public policy, reducing or eliminating the legal standing of those who do not share their views.

Indeed the dominionist movement and its allies in Congress are actively seeking to eviscerate the capacity of the federal courts to protect the rights of all citizens. Developing a coherent understanding of the ongoing role of dominionism in the dynamic growth of the Christian Right movement will be integral to any effective counter strategy in this, one of the central struggles of our time.

WHAT IS CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTIONISM?

While Rev. D. James Kennedy of the Coral Ridge teleministry appears to represent “soft dominionism,” he is a borderline case. Some of the political agenda he, Moore and their allies pursue strikes me as hard dominionist. And by this I mean rooted in Christian Reconstructionism, a theology that arose out of conservative Presbyterianism in the 1970’s. It asserts that contemporary application of the laws of Old Testament Israel should be the basis for reconstructing society towards the Kingdom of God on earth.

Led by the movement’s seminal thinker, the late Rev. R. J. Rushdoony, Reconstructionism argues that the Bible is to be the governing text for all areas of life, art, education, health care, government, family life, law and so on. They have formulated a “biblical worldview” and “biblical principles” to inform and govern their lives and their politics. Reconstructionist theologian David Chilton succinctly described this view: “The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God’s Law.”13

It has been difficult for many Americans to accept the idea that a theocratic movement could be afoot, let along gain much influence in 20th century America, but Robert Billings, one of the founders of the Moral Majority once said, “if it weren’t for [Rushdoony’s] books, none of us would be here.” This does not, of course, mean that everyone influenced by Rushdoony’s work is a Reconstructionist. Rather, as Billings indicated, it provided a catalyst and an ideological center of gravity for the wider movement of ideas that have percolated throughout evangelical Christianity, and parts of mainline Protestantism and Catholicism for the past three decades.

The original and defining text of Reconstructionism, is Rushdoony’s 1973 opus, The Institutes of Biblical Law – an 800-page explanation of the Ten Commandments, the Biblical “case law” that derives from them and their application today. “The only true order,” he wrote, “is founded on Biblical Law. All law is religious in nature, and every non-Biblical law-order represents an anti-Christian religion.” In brief, he continues, “every law-order is a state of war against the enemies of that order, and all law is a form of warfare.”14

The Chalcedon Foundation, a Reconstructionist think tank under whose auspices Rushdoony did most of his writing, recently celebrated its 40th anniversary with a conference on the life and work of Rushdoony.

Interestingly, the Chalcedon Report, the journal of the Chalcedon Foundation, recently reported that Roy Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law is preparing “to hold seminars that will teach judges, lawyers, and law students about Biblical Law as the basis of America’s laws and Constitution.” “There is a lot more being written and said about this than there was a few years ago,” Moore told Chalcedon Report. “The truth that’s been cut off for so long is being brought out into the open, and it will prevail.”15

Frederick Clarkson, “On Ten Commandments bill, Christian Right has it wrong,” Christian Science Monitor, April 21, 2004.Chip Berlet. 2004. “Mapping the Political Right: Gender and Race Oppression in Right-Wing Movements.” In Abby Ferber, ed, Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism. New York: Routledge.Jane Lampman, For evangelicals, a bid to ‘reclaim America,’ The Christian Science Monitor, March 16, 2005.Brent Thompson, “Baptist idea of religious liberty affirmed at doctrinal conference,” Baptist Press, September15, 2005.David Cantor, The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America, Anti-Defamation League, 1994.For a detailed discussion, see Frederick Clarkson, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, Common Courage Press, 1997.Fred Clarkson, “Will Roy Moore Crack the Bush base?” Salon, May 4, 2004.Joe Morecraft III, “Restoring the Foundations,” Counsel of Chalcedon, June 2004. This speech is “An Exposition and application of Psalm 11 given at Judge Roy Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law conference in Montgomery, Alabama, February 13, 2004.”Joshua Green, “Roy and His Rock,” The Atlantic Monthly, October 2005.Nina Easton, “Conservative’s popularity may be problem for GOP,” The Boston Globe, June 14, 2005.Tom Parker for Justice, http://www.parkerforjustice.comHeidi Beirich and Mark Potok, “Honoring the Confederacy: In Alabama, a well-known Supreme Court candidate lauds an antebellum slave trader and appears with hate group leaders,” Intelligence Report, Fall 2004.Frederick Clarkson, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, Common Courage Press, 1997, pg 78.Ibid, pg, 79.Lee Duigon, “Is There Hope for Our Judiciary? Yes, Says Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore,” Chalcedon Report, October 6, 2005.







Frederick Clarkson is a senior fellow at Political Research Associates. He co-founded the group blog Talk To Action and authored Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. Follow him on Twitter at @FredClarkson.

http://www.politicalresearch.org/2005/12/05/the-rise-of-dominionismremaking-america-as-a-christian-nation/#sthash.WH7PgunH.JKL9bZNN.dpbs