When you hear a politician or preacher talk about turning the US into a Christian nation, beware. This does NOT mean keeping “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” in our money. Turning America into a Christian nation means fundamentally changing our system of law and governance.
The religious right wants America to become a Christian Theocracy – a government which bases its laws on a strict biblical interpretation of the will of God as defined in the Old Testament, specifically in the Book of Leviticus. God’s will would be interpreted for Americans by radical fundamentalist Christian authorities.
Most of us are just becoming aware of this extreme view of government, but the religious right has been building support for this concept of theocracy since the 1970s when Francis Schaeffer activated the evangelical right to take up the cause of “Christianizing the United States.”
For the last few years, we’ve heard a slew of right-wing Republicans claim direct, personal communication with God. Apparently, God is quite busy instructing his chosen politicians to run for President, Senate or Congress. Here are just a few of the folks who’ve been called just in the last two presidential-election cycles:
- In 2012, Mitt Romney, a Mormon with his own Messianic ideas, admitted that God had sent him direct instructions to run for president.
- Similar directives were handed down from the Almighty to Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain.
- Sarah Palin has been lifted up by God according to her own testimony.
- In 2016, Ted Cruz decided to run for president after six months of prayer and two hours on bended knee. According to his father, “It was as if there was a presence of the Holy spirit in the room and we all were at awe, and Ted, all that came out of this mouth, he said – “Here am I Lord, use me.”
- Scott Walker announced his intention to run for president by saying, “this is God’s plan for me.”
- Rick Santorum described his run for president as “this is what God wants.”
- Marco Rubio believes that God’s law is the ultimate law of the United States.
- Donald Trump has taken on the banner of a warrior for Christianity. He declared that when he is elected president, “Christianity will have power.”
These days in the GOP, it’s all Christian, all the time. The separation of Church and State is out.
Many of these right wingers are part of, or at least sympathetic to, the Dominionist movement-a subset of evangelical theology that envisions an America ruled by Christians and governed by biblical law as the means to bringing about God’s Kingdom on earth.
Dominionism was founded by and promulgated by Rousas John Rushdoony. This stern, rigid theocrat, who lead the Christian Reconstructionist Movement, had a close personal friendship with Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society. Rushdoony said that he admired the John Birch Society but never became a member.
“Welch always saw things in terms of conspiracy,” Rushdoony explained, “and I always see things in terms of sin. ”
In his magnum opus, Institutes of Biblical Law,’ published in 1973, Rushdoony described the Old Testament laws that would be the backbone of the new justice system in a Christian America. He wrote, “The only true order is founded on Biblical Law. All law is religious in nature, and every non-Biblical law-order represents an anti-Christian religion.” (page 11).
Capital punishment is central to imposing Biblical Law. Rushdoony called for the death penalty for crimes such as rape, kidnapping, and murder, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency, adultery, and unchastity before marriage. Crimes against faith like heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology also carried the death penalty.
Rushdoony wrote: “God’s government prevails, and His alternatives are clear-cut: either men and nations obey His laws, or God invokes the death penalty against them.”
Criminals would be burned at the stake, hanged and stoned, depending on their sins. The folks facing such punishment included gays, blasphemers, unchaste women, and incorrigible juvenile delinquents. Of course, doctors providing abortions and their patients would also be executed.
John Rushdoony understood that it would take time and hard work to bring his vision for America to fruition. He saw HOME SCHOOLING as the way to “train up a generation of people who know that this is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government.”
When you hear the term “Dominionists,” know that these are NOT just Christians; these people intend to turn the US into a replay of the Spanish Inquisition, this time run by radical evangelicals.
This fusion of radical right-wing politics and radical right-wing religion has been fueled by Robert Welch, John Rushdoony, Gary North, and Rafael Cruz (Ted’s father) and is being embraced by most of the Republican candidates running for president. They believe they are chosen by God to turn American into a Christian nation governed by biblical law.
I am terrified by these radical right-wing Christians and their radical right-wing religion.
There’s much more . . .
Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back
Jeff Sharlet, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
Max Blumenthal, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party
Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism
I’ve just finished reading Joe Bageant’s two books. He has a unique insight into, among other things, the religious right. Are you familiar with his writings?
I have “Deer Hunting with Jesus” on my to-read list. Thanks for reminding me about Joe Bageant.
Claire, I have read Deer Hunting with Jesus and it is an amazing book, hysterically funny, and a real eye opener. Too bad Joe passed away last year. He was a writer who got far too little attention for what he was due.
Jesus and the Constitution both separate church and state. Render unto Caesar what is Caesars’, unto God what is Gods’. Jesus spoke of the evil of hypocrisy, yet politicians who claim Christianity missed the class on feeding the hungry, given by Jesus when he fed the multitudes without caveat. He did not call them lazy liberals who want a free lunch, He fed them!!! God didn’t tell them to do anything, for He gave us all a free will. If God spoke to them, my guess is He would have told them to feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the naked, heal the sick, support the weak and study harder the teachings of my Son, for you have all become hypocrites who give glory to themselves, instead of Him, directly opposite of what Jesus taught. Jesus, Who NEVER took credit for the good things He did. So, when politicians start pounding their chests and proclaiming God told them what to do publicly drawing attention to themselves, I say they’re full of Donkey shit!
I love your comment, very well put !!!!!
You are so right Claire. The OLD Testament with many laws and bondage. The “Christian” cults use the OT laws to put the people into bondage. You know the New Testament laws are Love God, and love neighbor. Those are the two commandments that the entire Old Testament hang on.
When the testator dies the contract (old testament is finished) Jesus died and bought all humanity with his death. With his life he taught us how to treat one another, as WE would want to be treated.
People that call themselves Christians and do not want to help the poor and do what Jesus DID are not Christians at all. The TEA PARTY bunch fit this category. They say they are but are not. They do not do what Jesus taught and they have no love of neighbor in them. To test the spirits, we only need to look at the law of love in the NT and if what someone does shows love, or doesn’t, we can know the good guys from the bad guys.
Christian Cults touting the OT and preaching OT laws, control and control out of fear. There is no love. The Christian Patriots are neither Christian or Patriotic, when they want to destroy the government and country. There is a coalition of these groups blending together that are actually anti-Christian and dangerous.
Absolutely right. The fact that Rush Limbaugh attacked Pope Francis for the Pope’s concern for the poor says a lot about the legalism and hatred the GOP and self-described patriots have for the poor. It is not so much Christianity that they profess as much as a bastardized concept that marries religion and state, and it has its origins not in decrying public morals, but in the fear that the religious right had that it would lose tax exemptions for schools that were designed to get around Brown v Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The last act has now been effectively gutted.
Kathy Hughes you are exactly right when you say this is not so much christianity as a bastardized concept that marries religion and state. These people are not only harming our country, but I believe they are damaging to religion in general. Their rhetoric and beliefs are so off the chart of reality and common sense that it makes many people, including myself, really want to divorce myself from all of it.
it seems to me that the worst people in public life are the ones who bray and blather the most about “God.”
Surely we all remember the wide media coverage given to The OCCUPY Movement. Isn’t it time to bring out the “Protesters” among us? Not to sleep in tents in parks and town squares!
We should meet in Town Squares and in Public spaces every Saturday Morning from 10.00 to 12.00. It is now time to begin a movement for the 99% !! The 1% is becoming dangerously influential in every aspect of our lives !
Meetings were run very successfully following the guide lines of the Occupy Movement. This time however we should not try to be neutral ! We need to be DEMOCRATES and press the Democratic needs of this wonderful country AMERICA. Let us make this a place where everyone has a vote, an education, good health and a helping hand to a better place.
Surely we all remember the wide media coverage given to The OCCUPY Movement. Isn’t it time to bring out the “Protesters” among us? Not to sleep in tents in parks and town squares!
We should meet in Town Squares and in Public spaces every Saturday Morning from 10.00 to 12.00. It is now time to begin a movement for the 99% !! The 1% is becoming dangerously influential in every aspect of our lives !
Meetings were run very successfully following the guide lines of the Occupy Movement. This time however we should not try to be neutral ! We need to be DEMOCRATS and press the Democratic needs of this wonderful country AMERICA. Let us make this a place where everyone has a vote, an education, good health and a helping hand to a better place.
We have a voice! Each of us. Together we can fight BIG MONEY
I read somewhere that in the late Roman Empire, all of the property of the Roman Provinces of North Africa was controlled by only six Roman Senators.
Now supposedly we were to escape this outcome as our economic system of capitalism creates and destroys by the means of competition, which, though painful to those affected at the moment, is beneficial for the group over time.
Alas, how feeble my grasp.
I am afraid that this decade shall conclude with these words….
Welcome you now to the United Christian Corporate Fascist States of America. UCCFSA
Say Good Riddance to that communist infested Republic named the United States of America.
Jimmy Kimmel
what a comment
kudos!
Okay, people….I’ll remind one and all that I’ve been saying for a long while that it’s been the aim of the Conservatives of the GOP to convert our democracy into some sort of theocracy. Earlier this year, I changed the term I had used, a “Fascist Corporate Plutarchy”, to a “Fascist Christian Plutartheocracy”. The Hobby Lobby case is but a small step in that direction…..
Explanation of “Fascist Christian Plutartheocracy”…..”Fascist” and “Christian” are relatively self-explanatory. One of the defining characteristics of Fascism is the intertwining of religion and government, where the Fascist regimes “attaches” itself to the country’s “predominant” religion. That leads us to the “Christian” part, as, if you combine all of the religions that incorporate Christianity, you get that “predominant” religion.
“Plutarchy” is shorthand for “plutocratic oligarchy”. A plutocracy is a government by the wealthy…an oligarchy is a government where a very small number of people rule. We’re talking “Knights of the Round Table” small. Finally, a theocracy is a government by religion, as Claire asserts in the article above.
Those of us who possess sanity and intelligence realize that the First Amendment does not allow for the establishment of a Fascist Christian Plutartheocracy. “Congress shall pass no law respecting establishment of a religion, nor free exercise thereof”.
Now, what the Fascist Christian Plutartheocrats (FCPers, mostly, the Republican Party’s religious zealots) are aiming to do is to “chip away” at the First Amendment through legislation and court cases.
There’s a good reason for why I call the Supreme Court’s Conservative majority the “Fascist Feckless Five Con” (FFFC) majority. And, how the FFFC is going to facilitate this conversion from a democracy to an FCP is by making carefully crafted but cowardly decisions that “crack the door open” for an eventual abandonment of the Constitution, or, even worse, an amendment or amendments that facilitate such a conversion.
This is serious business, people. This country’s Founding Fathers put in checks and balances in case one branch of government got out of control. In this case, the FFFC has begun a systematic but incremental destruction of what our Founding Fathers intended…therefore, at this point, the only legal way to stop them from continuing this destruction is to give the Democrats the US House majority, so they can impeach the FFFC, and giving the Democrats at least 67 seats in the US Senate, which would allow them to remove the FFFC after they’re impeached and go through the requisite Senate trial. This underscores the importance of getting out and voting for Democrats this year. The sooner the Democrats can get the House majority and the Senate supermajority, the quicker the FFFC can be removed from the bench and replaced by justices who will interpret the Constitution correctly.
A few months ago after Reading Zealot, I’ve started reading the development of christian thought in the western world. Even in the short time of Paul the gnostics were purged as heretics, the “poors” the real keepers of Jesus’ words and traditions were the center of the new church in Jerusalem, not Rome. The destruction of Jerusalem ended it as the center of the church of Jesus.
Many of the documents written and attributed to the Apostles weren’t written down until at least 70 to 200 years after their deaths. Perhaps they were handed down via oral tradition or maybe they were embellished to strengthen the claims that Jesus was the son of god sent to save us. it doesn’t matter. The written words that made it to the new testament are the only true words of God.
St. Paul claimed he spoke to Jesus every day for the rest of his life. A man who never heard Jesus teach, met Jesus or knew his followers until many years after he began preaching. Yet he considered himself the First Apostle chosen by Jesus not the thirteenth. many of his writings were letters sent to the churches he founded to settle internal matters or clarify his preachings. Yet these written documents that survived are taken literally and out of of historic context or the issues it was written to settle.
The Council of Nicea solidified the doctrine of the new christian church. As the church solidified power, the thoughts and words of Jesus, of those closest to him and those who attributed to him and his Apostles sprang up thru the centuries The writings of the great saints of the church give us more interpetations of christian thought through the centuries. The men who broke away from the Catholic church for true religious reasons or only political reasons added more writings and more thoughts.
Now, over 2,000 years later, the bible is the inerrant word of God despite numerous translations and interpatetions of those words. The bible isn’t a science book. It is a book of history, lore, tradition and law. It was written for a time most of us wouldn’t recognize in this modern world. It was written and rewritten over many centuries.
The bible and many other holy books exist. Not one of them is the one and only true word of God. These people who say it is, who interpet without understanding the historical context, who speak directly to God and for God will bring us only destruction.
I have said many times, beginning during the theology and philosophy classes in high school… We are taught that God is infallible, the Word of God (Bible) is infallible, and yet man is flawed and full of sin. How then is the Bible not flawed as well if man was chosen to write it (inspired directly by God) and then translate it eventually into the language we use now which is not very similar to the original. Also the belief that there are many “books of the Bible” that weren’t even included! It defies logic that anyone could see the Bible as more than just a book of history (old testament) and loose behavioral guidelines for life in modern times (new testament)? The Golden Rule for the most part.
Anyone who says God told him to run should, should be barred from running.
Coming from Sweden I’m having big difficulties to understand how these ultra rightwing “christians” can roam free i USA, without any really big opposition from the intellectuals in your country. Isn’t there a secular humanist movement in USA that can make themselves heard?
!) People who have direct contact with God, should be treated as mentally ill. Something must be terribly wrong with them, and they should not be allowed to be out here with the rest of us. Just think of what woulld have happened if someone claimed that they have direct contact with the Devil!
2) Sometimes it’s hard to see the difference between these republicans and the terrorists in ISIS.
3) Always remember that the Bible is a book written thousands of years ago, by rather ignorant people, and changed by popes and emperors during the years to for their own reasons.
@Anders:
You have to understand that the United States is deeply rooted in religion. It’s also not a homogeneous population. There are large swathes of the country that represent very different social, intellectual, and religious traditions. The country is still culturally divided along the lines drawn during the Civil War.
The problem with the republican party is they have “sold their soul” to the beliefs of ultra radical religious persons in order to consolidate those people as a large voting block. Republicans, backed by money from corporations, have used their political power to take fringe zealots and put them on national stage. They’ve built a media machine designed to terrify religious people and spread the idea that the apocalypse is coming. And only America can stop it, if America becomes a purely religious state. Combined with the way public education in America has been sabotaged for decades – resulting in a low information population incapable of critical thinking – and you have the perfect recipe for disaster.
Essentially, lack of education has resulted in a large number of citizens whose world view is informed purely by the religious tradition of Christianity. And frequently the flavor of Christianity is a uniquely American variant which combines biblical literalism, a hateful, revenge-oriented old testament god, and militant aggression towards the “enemies of God”. It is, pretty much, the American Taliban.
I suspect that a large majority of the political stars in the group pushing so hard for “Biblical law” to be pushed on the masses would actually make it very long under those laws themselves. How often do we see these “Christian men” giving public apologies for getting caught doing what they said they were so staunchly against……. hypocrisy at it’s ugliest. Pharisees.
If Jesus actually existed, he was one of many end-time prophet of the era. To build your life and society on the ramblings of a minor figure from an obscure and ignorant period in the human timeline is the height of foolishness.
As an Atheist, I can’t help but laugh at the contortions self-avowed Christians go through to try and make their beliefs conform to reality. What some possibly disturbed and deranged stone-age Rabbi said matters less than what we say and do today.
I refuse to live my life by some book that was written when mankind knew nothing and demands complete and utter submission of one’s mental faculties in order to have faith.
Religion will be the end of mankind unless mankind ends religion first.
Wish Christopher Hitchens was still alive, he’d be having a fun time dissecting this!
I figured out why God spoke to so many to run for the presidency and any other office…He’s hedging His bets…knows what kind of flakes they are…not too sure why He’s chosen them, but maybe it’s His way to let us learn to make smart, thinking decisions for ourselves….hope it works, otherwise we’re doomed for quite some smh….time!!
Hey, it works for the Taliban and many Eastern countries. They indoctrinate their populace into a dogma that stands against their perceived enemies. Gives the power broker’s willing idiots to use as cannon fodder to achieve their own agenda’s (regardless of the guiding dogma or principles).
Welcome to the new American Taliban, brought to you by the “Christian” “conservatives”…(I use both terms very loosely)
Read Margaret Attwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” to see what a Christian USA would be like.
I’ve read it several times. It’s shocking, appalling, horrifying and all too possible if the radical right-wing Christians have their way. Thanks for reminding all of us to read it again.
I call the Christian Dominionists the “Fascist Christian Plutartheocracy” (FCP). FCPers (Fascist Christian Plutartheocrats) all happen to be Republicans, despite the Fascist propaganda of the GOP to the contrary.
Understand this: the GOP’s conversion into an FCP was no accident; it was engineered long, long ago and had been in the works from 1920 until the late 1960’s, when the FCPers/GOPers began to get traction using the Republican Party. Nixon, Reagan and the Bushies facilitated the conversion, which saw the conclusion of that conversion in 2001, early in the Bush 43 administration.
Spare me the cognitive dissonance, false equivalency and projection arguments, GOP….YOUR party is the problem and will continue to be even if you continue to stay home from the polls in “protest” of them, as more than 30 million of you have done in the past three elections .