Christian Dominionism – A Term You Need to Know in 2012

Be Aware, Be Informed…

By Chad Nance

August 17, 2011

Many WLN readers are quite aware of the influence of Christian Fundamentalism on the modern Republican/Tea Party.  Since the 1950's there has been a concerted political effort in America toward aggressively forwarding the goal of many fundamentalist to turn America into a Christian theocracy.  One term, however, you may not have heard is Christian Dominionism.  Even many people who would consider themselves main-line evangelicals have little idea about Dominionism, although they will tell you that they most certainly are familiar with some of Dominionism's  ideas and goals.

Put simply, Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. Originating among some of America’s most radical theocrats, it’s long had an influence on religious-right education and political organizing. But because it seems so outré, getting ordinary people to take it seriously can be difficult. Most writers, myself included, who explore it have been called paranoid. In a contemptuous 2006 First Things review of several books, including Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, and my own Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote, “the fear of theocracy has become a defining panic of the Bush era.”

 

Now, however, we have the most theocratic Republican field in American history, and suddenly, the concept of Dominionism is reaching mainstream audiences. Writing about Bachmann in The New Yorker this month, Ryan Lizza spent several paragraphs explaining how the premise fit into the Minnesota congresswoman’s intellectual and theological development. And a recent Texas Observer cover story on Rick Perry examined his relationship with the New Apostolic Reformation, a Dominionist variant of Pentecostalism that coalesced about a decade ago. “[W]hat makes the New Apostolic Reformation movement so potent is its growing fascination with infiltrating politics and government,” wrote Forrest Wilder. Its members “believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take ‘dominion’ over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the ‘Seven Mountains’ of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world.”

 

In many ways, Dominionism is more a political phenomenon than a theological one. It cuts across Christian denominations, from stern, austere sects to the signs-and-wonders culture of modern megachurches. Think of it like political Islamism, which shapes the activism of a number of antagonistic fundamentalist movements, from Sunni Wahabis in the Arab world to Shiite fundamentalists in Iran.

 

Dominionism derives from a small fringe sect called Christian Reconstructionism, founded by a Calvinist theologian named R. J. Rushdoony in the 1960s. Christian Reconstructionism openly advocates replacing American law with the strictures of the Old Testament, replete with the death penalty for homosexuality, abortion, and even apostasy. 

Who in their right mind wanted to live in a world where the Old Testament civil and ceremonial laws would become the template for local and national politics? It was a profoundly dark theology even by the standards of the dour Calvinism I considered reasonable at the time.

 

According to the tenets of Christian Reconstruction, it was up to Christians to bring the whole world into submission to Jesus Christ. Once that was accomplished (with God's help, of course), the Old Testament laws that guided ancient Israel would be dusted off and applied to civil societies across the globe, including America.

 

The motivating idea behind Christian Reconstruction was that Christ would never consider returning to an Earth consumed by spiritual decadence. The world needed to be "cleansed" to attract a procrastinating Jesus who was already 2,000 years overdue. It was up to Christians to take over and make him feel welcome.

 

In a world made more acceptable to Jesus, homosexuality could not exist and all non-Christian religions would be outlawed. Women would be restricted to managing the home and raising children, leaving millions of jobs to be filled by once-unemployed men.

 

Disobedient children would be subject to execution if they didn't repent, taxes would be light and slavery would be allowed as long as safeguards were included so that it didn't become an abusive or racist institution again. A stint in slavery would be limited to seven years.

 

All legal disputes would be settled by consulting the Ten 

Commandments or the Pentateuch. The irony is that many of the people who advocated this nonsense are some of the most vociferous critics of Shariah law in America today.

 

As a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church at the time, I was used to meeting folks who held all sorts of strange ideas about religion and politics, but this goofiness was beyond the pale.

 

I didn't take Christian Reconstruction as a political philosophy seriously until I met an actual Theonomist (follower of God's Law) in the real world.

 

"Oscar" was in his early 20s, as was I, when we met. He was a Jewish convert to Christianity, so he was always on the defensive. As a young believer, he fell in with a mob of Theonomists in San Diego before moving to Pennsylvania for college. The primacy of the Old Testament in Christian Reconstructionist thought appealed to his sense of cultural identification.

 

Since I knew he was from a family of Holocaust survivors, I asked him what he thought of the mandate that all non-Christians would have to convert or die. Oscar said that if his relatives refused to become Christians or submit to forced exile, then they would suffer the civil penalty for practicing idolatry. He would carry out the execution himself if called upon to do so by the Christian state.

 

Oscar was the first self-consciously Christian fascist I ever met, but he wasn't the last. Eventually, the movement, which was scorned by many leaders of the Religious Right for being "too crazy," went underground as its leaders died or fought among themselves.