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

[HAB911]

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

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.

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

[Faux pas]

1. K N R-ed

[bobbieinok]

2. The left ignores the Religious Right way too much

In the last decades, the SBC and other Evangelicals have adopted the doctrines of extreme authoritarianism and extreme female submission.

There was always some teaching of women as followers, but the extreme view of subordination was codified in the Baptist Faith and Message statement passed at the denomination's meeting in 2000. Jimmy Carter gave the adoption of this view as his reason for leaving the SBC.

The view that the teachings of the minister and the elders (no longer chosen by the congregation but appointed by the minister) is new and directly contradicts the SBC teaching I learned growing up in the SBC in the 40s and the 50s. At that time the SBC taught 'the priesthood of all believers.' We constantly heard 'there's just God, the Bible, and me; I don't need a priest or pope to tell me what to believe.'

These 2 radical teachings have created/are creating a large goup of people opposed to the equality of woman and searching for a confident, self-assured authoritarian leader. They help account for the 80% Evangelical support of Trump and denigration of Clinton.

[guillaumeb]

3. Recommended.

Unconstitutional and with a complete disregard for original intent.

[Igel]

4. Yeah.

This article quotes Clarkson quoting somebody else who quotes somebody's interpretation of what reconstructionists say.

And that's meaningful for what the reconstructionists actually say how? I mean, they've published. They have podcasts. It's easy to find out what they intend and how they intend to do it. But this article, Clarkson, the "research associate" he relies on and the sources the research associate uses don't.

It's like writing about Darwin and never actually reading Darwin or using a quote from Darwin.

That particular wing has its own terminology. I learned it back in the '80s when I had the wonderful assignment to plow through a pile of books by Rushdoony and North. I don't recognize the terms as used by most left-of-center people or even some of the claims attributed to them. Some just plain aren't: A lot of vaguely similar ideas were floating around before Rushdoony, some are influenced by him or North, but are tangential. You can hear similar kinds of language in Civil Rights activists and liberation theology. (Christian Reconstruction's origins post-date liberation theology, and it's built in similar sorts of ways. It's a reaction. Dominionism is rather a different kind of critter, applies to reconstructionist thought, I think, mostly because people don't like sorting out what dominionism actually meant and how it would be applied. It's completely different from reconstruction, or at least was completely different using the terminology employed by its adherents and followers in the late 1980s. Think of dominion as the goal, whether it's environmental protection or making institutions sustainable, with reconstruction, bottom-up reworking of popular institutions by democratic means, if the institution's democratic in structure, being the means. This is hardly a threatening thing--if the institutions are weak, taking them over is fairly meaningless; if strong, it's hard to take them over.)

My appraisal when only "strong" forms existed was, "Eh," but that was 30 years ago. Since then, it hasn't changed. What has changed is the opposition in the culture wars renewed needs a name, so one was coopted. The underlying idea, though, is that even if a majority thinks something should be done a certain way, we should label that "religious" and immediately exclude that from the range of options. It's a clever way of trying to dispose of opposition, but not an especially democratic one.

[HAB911]

5. if the institutions are weak

taking them over is fairly meaningless; if strong, it's hard to take them over.





Give me about a week to digest that statement.