Christian Dominionists: already established in the Washington hen-house
There are at least three strands of militant political Christian theology with which TPM readers should become increasingly familiar as the nation progresses towards the next two rounds of elections:
1) Dominionism
2) Christian Reconstuctionism, and
3) Theonomy
In her provocative and readable new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, Michelle Goldberg is particularly worried about a dimension of Christian activism that is probably not all that familiar to most TPM readers: Dominionism.
Her concerns are not abstract; rather, they are quite pragmatic. Michelle sees in Dominionism a force that, sooner rather than later, will pose a clear and present danger to the principles of our Republic. Christian Dominionists seek to reconstruct the laws of United States so that they parallel the legal traditions of the Old Testament (does that sound not altogether unlike the aims of some other folks we are dealing with elsewhere?).
The Dominionist's approach to implementing this objective begins by capitalizing on our traditions of religious freedom to train a generation of children in private, purpose-built “Christian” schools. The graduates of Dominionist institutions are charged with the responsibility of creating a new Bible-based American political, religious and social order. They are taught the arts of electoral politics, public debate, political journalism, and encouraged to learn the workaday tools of American governance.
Lest you imagine that this is all liberal paranoia, let me illuminate one area where the Dominionist stealth approach has already made considerable headway: the oversight of American government programs for democracy promotion.
The New Republic reported on the political implications of the appointment of Paul J. Bonicelli to oversee the U.S. Government’s foreign assistance programming to promote democracy - initiatives that, inter alia, play a central role in the administration’s efforts to transform the political landscape in Iraq and the broader Middle East.
TNR wrote: “No doubt, Bonicelli will be a welcome addition. After all, he isn't just any run-of-the-mill hack. He's an academic. Just before his appointment, Bonicelli served as dean of academic affairs at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, a fundamentalist institution whose motto is "For Christ and for liberty," and which has had notable success placing its students in White House internships. Patrick Henry College requires all its affiliates to sign a "statement of faith" indicating that they believe "Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh," "Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead," and "all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity."
One might think that, since the Muslim Middle East is the primary object of America’s democracy promotion efforts, foreign policy managers would be circumspect about assigning the oversight of those programs to someone who is formally committed to the principle that all observant Muslims shall, for their beliefs, “be confined in conscious torment for eternity."
Over the past five years, Patrick Henry University has, indeed, done exceedingly well in placing its students as White House interns and as interns in other departments of the executive branch, where they are encouraged to gain policy skills and practical savvy in the workings of the Federal bureaucracy. In their roles as government interns, PHU students tend to be bright, articulate, polite, presentable and well-motivated. Many are invited back as regular employees upon graduation.
Very recently life at PHU has been shaken-up a little by the departure of several professors who ran afoul of Christian Dominionist orthodoxy. One (now departed) professor was called on the carpet by his dean for teaching Plato and another professor was sacked for using the classical “three people in a too-small lifeboat” problem with his freshmen (in the PHU view, the problem embeds both “relativism” and “secular humanism”, ideas that should not cloud the mind of the next generation of Dominionist leaders in America’s political life.
As we move towards Congressional and then Presidential elections, this is an auspicious moment for diffident readers who instinctively shy away from arcane debates about theology to devote a couple of evenings to reading and thinking about the themes of Michelle’s lively new book.
Haven't had the chance to read "Kingdom Coming..." yet, but am in the process of reading "Journey of the Jihadist" (http://journeyofthejihadist.com/ by Fawaz Gerges. It will be interesting to compare two kinds of Manicheistic absolutist theologies, but it's also not like this human trait is anything new.
I've been thinking as I read Gerges fine and well-researched book, that we are in a world of trouble. The Jihadists he interviews have no room for compromise with the materialism of Western culture, seeing it as fundamentally soulless evil that must be opposed by any means necessary, including violence.
It seems from your description, professor, that we have our own home-grown version of this mindset gaining power and access to the levers of government, much as the jihadist would like to do -- and have done, in the case of Hamas in Palestine, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the clerics in iran.
Gerges' describes what the reviewers are calling a battle in the Muslim world for the 'soul of Islam'. Are we not in the middle of a similar battle in Western society? We are prosperous and powerful, yes, but can anyone claim with a straight face that our materialistic, consumeristic culture does not also carry with it a kind of purposeless pursuit of "happiness" in the form of more things, the very thing that the jihadist find so repellent about Western culture? And doesn't this energize the religious Right here, in similar ways to the jihadists, who are repelled by much of what they see being pumped out as popular culture and entertainment?
To bring it back to electoral politics, I wonder that, if Democrats can't formulate a vision of the nation's path that addresses the built-in flaws and hypocracies of our corporate consumerism-based economy, and simultaneously has an answer for those who, on religious or moral grounds, want to toss it ALL into the trash heap and replace it with some kind of theological-based system, then it's a bigger problem than whether Al or Hillary can lead. I suspect that in the question above, basic liberal democracy as we know it is on its last legs. The battle is between the fundamentalists who are driving us all toward Armageddon, we're caught in the middle, and our pop culture doesn't have the answers.
May 22, 2006 8:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, but all this paranoid fuss and furor over far out extremist movements reminds me of the huge over-reaction rightwingers had to the phenomenon of American Communism in the 1950s. Yes, there were American Reds, and yes some of them were nasty folks, but they weren't hiding under every bed, infiltrating the army and the government and plotting a soon-to-be-successful takeover the US. And we certainly did not need McCartheyism to root them out. The Left seems to be indulging in the same overreaction today in regards to these nutso religious sects, whose chances of ever taking over the government about equal to mine (non-Catholic gay guy here) becominmg pope.
May 22, 2006 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
You should read a little more about the history of American communism. The more relevant reference point would be to American communism in the '30s, when the Stalinist wing was in fact a viable movement, recruiting actively and maneuvering in scary lockstep to take over labor unions and win influence across other socialist and leftist parties and organizations (or to infiltrate and destroy them). The marginalization of American communism by the '50s didn't just happen and wasn't inevitable; it happened because American liberals reacted to the Stalinist style with instinctive revulsion, and worked hard to defeat it within the left. We should react to the Stalinist tactics and structure of contemporary Christian nationalism in exactly the same way.
"When God ariseth, and when he visiteth, what shall we answer!" - Rev. Benjamin Hancock
May 22, 2006 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting article on Christian Dominionists. I'm not sure there's any advantage to knowing the minutae of how nutcases disagree with each other, but perhaps there is.
I mean, look at me. I'm not only a Transhumanist, I'm a "radical Transhumanist." Most people don't know what "Transhumanism" is (and most don't care to know.) Most Transhumanists don't know what "radical Transhumanism" is (and probably don't care to know.)
Everybody is just gonna LOVE "radical Transhumanism"...if you don't like "Manichean movements", that is.
However, you needn't worry about "Transhumans under every bed" - there are far too few - especially the radical brand. So it's hardly a "movement" (except maybe in a bowel sense.)
However, you should worry - one of these decades anyway - about Transhuman mechanisms in your cellular structure.
It might come as a surprise otherwise.
Certainly the Christians had better worry - because we intend their "Rapture" to be more like a "Rupture"...
May 23, 2006 3:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
"We should react to the Stalinist tactics and structure of contemporary Christian nationalism in exactly the same way."
Perhaps - but I see a problem there.
The liberals were, to some degree, on the same "left" spectrum as the Stalinists.
Here, the liberals are totally across the aisle from the Christian Nationalists - who also, by the way, run the Republican Party.
So I suspect the tactical advantages that allowed the liberal movement to disengage from Communism "WITHIN the left" won't necessarily operate in this conflict.
It may be that the liberals needs to make common cause with the "Old Right" secular conservatives of the Republican Party to defeat the Christian Nationalists.
The "Old Right" is starting to reject the policies of the Republican Party, even to the point of starting to call for a third independent movement within the Party, if the article I read today is true.
Perhaps the Democrats and the liberals and the leftists need to sound out areas where they can work with the "Old Right" to ameliorate the Christian Nationalists influence on the Republican Party.
This would seem difficult to me, since the Old Right Republicans might reasonably be suspicious that the purpose is merely to damage the Republicans for the benefit of the Democrats. Not sure how you could convince them of Democratic "sincerity" - even assuming there was any.
Just a thought.
May 23, 2006 3:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
An important distinction between the religious wing and the communists of the 20th century is that the first enjoys a special respect enshrined in the Constitution. This makes it difficult to attack the movement as subversive, which was the way communist sympathizers were attacked.
At best, those of us that resist religious encroachment can only hope to maintain separation. There is little hope of simply railing against it leading to its retreat.
It's pretty hard to hold a sensible political conversation with some true believers. It scares me more than a little to know that, prior to invading Iraq, Bush immersed himself in the sermons of a Scottish preacher that were delivered to British soldiers advancing on Jerusalem (in WWI), since the preacher viewed the fight as a Crusade.
The above is from the Kevin Phillips "American Theocracy", which offers much supporting evidence for significant encroachment into politics by Christian Dominionism or Reconstructionism. He lists numerous examples of important code phrases employed by Bush which could be viewed as cynical manipulation but are more likely Bush's actual beliefs.
Policy is already deeply affected by this belief structure. Its effects include Iraq but extend to medical policy, in the refusal by FDA to sanction over the counter Plan B contraception. It is displayed in the EPA refusing to enforce law on polluters, and in decisions on social safety net programs, on taxation, and education.
May 23, 2006 6:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Its effects include Iraq…
Iraq can be handily explained by a three-letter word—and I don’t mean “God”, I mean “Oil”. If religion were in the drivers seat I would expect the US to be charging into Sudan where Christians are under severe persecution—but then, there’s no oil in Darfur.
Re: …but extend to medical policy
I don’t see anything inherently sinister about an attempt to apply ethics to medical and scientific decisions. One may disagree about the nature and conclusions of the ethics, but surely not the attempt itself.
Re: and in decisions on social safety net programs, on taxation, and education.
In regards to social safety net programs we ought be quite happy to see Christian influence as the religion has some rather hard things to say about the sort of Social Darwinism that informs much of the Right. There is moreover a barely suppressed economic populism bubbling just under the surface of the Religious Right—suppressed only because the leadership are themselves members of the economic elite and because they know they would cease to be welcome at the GOP table if they gave into those impulses. And even so occasionally this does show its face, as when Pat Robertson called for a “Biblical” debt amnesty or when Gary Bauer dissed Social Security ”reform”.
May 23, 2006 6:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, but...
Various factions in power had various reasons for their desire to invade Iraq, and oil dominates. But oil alone is insufficient since there were alternatives to military action. Some actors in the administration may exploit Bush's religiosity, but he's the nominal Boss.
Ethics is fundamental to societal decisions, but not to FDA decisions. That body is only supposed to determine safety and effectiveness. They should be making a value-neutral analysis. The legislature takes care of values.
Some religous feel a stewardship responsibility for the planet, but Phillips documents a different view that eschews governmental involvement in anything that should be solely between the individual and God. This apparently includes resource management, education, health care and many other areas of governance.
Obviously not all religion is pushing the Dominionism discussed here.
May 23, 2006 7:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
True Dominionists seek a tyranny of Biblical law. No ifs, ands, or buts. Whether to bring about the Rapture or just to make the US a "better" place.
Dominionism is seen a transformational movement to utopia. It is no different than communism in that regard and is just as dangerous.
It must resisted without resorting to hypocrisy and oppression, otherwise its opponents are no better than they what they propose.
May 23, 2006 2:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Various factions in power had various reasons for their desire to invade Iraq, and oil dominates. But oil alone is insufficient since there were alternatives to military action.
You may see that, and I may see that, but the myopic Bush administration did not see that (and did not even try). Basically these guys came to power with a desire to finish what Bush the First started, and were looking for any pretext to do so. But Iraq is a Neocon venture, not a Christianist one: do you really think guys like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have any sincere religious convictions that do not involve their stock portfolios and bank accounts? Sure, there may be some people out there who support the Iraq War for oddball Christianists reasons, but the movers and shakers are every bit the cynical manipulators we suppose them to be.
May 24, 2006 8:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: True Dominionists seek a tyranny of Biblical law. No ifs, ands, or buts. Whether to bring about the Rapture or just to make the US a "better" place.
The Christian Reconstructionist movement at least does not even believe in a rapture. It is Calvinist in its roots and its interpretation of the End Times prophesies varies greatly from the Darbyist view current in most Evangelical circles. For these folks there wioll be no rapture: Christians shall remain on earth until the very end, acting as kings and rulers over everyone else.
May 24, 2006 8:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I pretty much agree. I feel the old hands around Bush just play to his passions.
Nonetheless, without Bush saying "Yes" Iraq would not have happened. So discussions of the motivations of some actors are important, but not the issue when assigning responsibility. When that is done, Bush's motivations become the issue. His cousin says something like "I laugh when I hear people say George is pandering to the religious right; he IS the religious right." (From "Bush on the Couch".)
May 24, 2006 8:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bush’s religiosity impresses me as a mile wide, and an inch deep. In fact, I rather doubt he is sufficiently profound to be capable of the being “the Religious Right”. His few pronouncements on matters theological show an extraordinary degree of muddled thought (even for evangelical Protestantism which is already famous for its patchwork and undeveloped theology). Bush’s personal religious faith appears to begin and end with a couple simple ideas: the Lord God helped him get sober (Jesus as a twelve step coach) and God Bless America. Of course this means that he can be easily led and misled by anyone who gets his ear. If a Catholic cleric is bending his ear (as, for example, during the stem cell debate back in 2001) he suddenly starts sounding like a Natural Law theorist. Or if it’s an evangelist like Franklin Graham then we hear him mouthing rightwing Protestant shibboleths. And sometimes we even get secularist thinking as when the Neocons (who are mostly agnostic intellectuals) have had a go at him on foreign policy.
May 24, 2006 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I find the comparison that JPF311 drew with American communism and McCarthyism superbly thought-provoking and I'd like to thank him for making it. I would like to point out a simplistic reminder on that front: that there is still an entirely legal Communist Party USA (along with other Marxist-Leninist political groups) and that however one believes it happened, no one seems to be afraid of them anymore.
May 24, 2006 10:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Prof. Blackton: Would like to harp at length a bit on a small point: don't make the mistake of underestimating the American melting pots' ability to marginalize cultural radicalism.
I am not ignorant of the recent more sophisticated Dominionist developments education-wise, such as the attempts to train home-schooled innocents at a university level in the culture of their own damn country, in order for them to go forth and do covert ops as it were. But somehow, I just can't see someone who has, say, grown up without watching some network TV, but has only heard about it from a professor in a single course, getting very far in political operations in this culture.
There is a reason the Branch Davidians felt a need to live in a compound. One can easily argue that politicians in New York City manipulate the Hasidic vote much more easily than one can argue that Hasidic vote manipulates the politicians. Mormon missionaries and Jehovah's Witnesses have gone door-to-door across the U.S.A. for decades, just like a pol, without making much headway, more often becoming the butt of jokes. (Maybe unrelated, but I read once that Sikhs have a lot of Homeland Security related contracts...seems to have gotten them zilch so far. :-))
On radical Islam in particular, I think Ms. Kayyem's May 9 post on "why no attacks since 9/11" where she argues "The debate about Jihad is a debate being waged not here in America, but in Europe" is worth a re-read in this regard, along with the comments on it. In my first comment there, I recall something that sticks in my mind, and I think it's related to the current topic:
Also, in academia, there is an attempt to give all views an equal hearing, hence the nut cases loom larger, can seem, and in the system itself sometimes are, more powerful than they really are in the culture at large. (Hence part of reason of the constant anger at academia from ideologues of various stripes.) Finally, anyone who has attempted it knows, specialization in the study of sub-cultures wreaks havoc on a balanced perspective.
May 24, 2006 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
More thoughts that I find related, others maybe won't, but I'll throw it out there. I'm a big fan of this 2005 statement by Juan Cole, he brought up in context of the London tube bombings, but which I found to have much much broader implications, way beyond the issue of terrorism:
democratic societies, especially those with complete freedom of speech & assembly, do indeed have a problem dealing with "cults," it's just a fact. It's a great way to frame it, and the citation of RICO is a great clarifier of the problems involved. This really does relate to the McCarthyism issue, there has to be a balance between stepping in and stopping activities that threaten the society and persecution.
May 24, 2006 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your point may be valid. Certainly radicals get marginalized in this country. Co-opted, even - and the latter might be dangerous as well.
One of the things I learned today while burrowing through that Web site on the history of the Founding Fathers and religion is that many of them believed the Constitution needed no specific amendment about religion because first, they had one saying the government was to completely stay out of religion, and second, there were SO MANY SECTS in the US even in THEIR day that the sects would keep each other in line, so they weren't that worried about it as long as the government stayed out of it.
The problem, I think, is that they didn't anticipate mass communications which enables a cult to develop much faster and bigger due to being able to reach many more people. In the Founding Fathers day, to get a cult going, you had to talk to everybody involved. Nowadays, you just need a Web site or a radio show or a TV station, and you can bring in the suckers for three thousand miles.
Plus, the cults have had two hundred years to raise money for their operations, especially in the 20th Century.
And once you have a certain level of financing, your operations can expand enormously, Compare the Branch Davidians with Scientology. Hubbard was hauling in millions a WEEK in his heyday. I don't know what their current income is, but I bet it's significant.
But compared with the Christian Nationalists, it's probably a drop in the bucket. Because the Christian Nationalists are not actually recognized as being a brainwashing cult - they're still operating under the camouflage of being "just Christians."
Finally, again, I warn that just because a religion or organization is small percentagewise compared to the vast bulk of the population, if it is also fanatical, it can still cause a lot of trouble - particularly if it can put persons in power while the public sleeps.
Which is the focus of this week's discussion.
May 25, 2006 4:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
And how does freaking out about this differ much from McCarthyism--worrying about Communists infiltrating the government in order to change it, worrying about Communist scriptwriters influencing the public...? Once again, I think it's a great provocative comparison. You even had the accused claiming they weren't "real" Communists, not true believers, not brainwashees, they just went to a meeting or two, etc. I'm really starting to see a lot of this in these threads as some on the left trying to whip the rest of the left into McCarthyite fervor to fight this nascent "infiltration" of these few people. If the district that includes Madison, WI sends a member of the Communist Party USA to the House in 2006, will it be ok then for all the righties to get all freaked out, too?
Everyone should take a breather from blog reality and do something like take a look at the consumption of porn in this country, get a grip on the real chances of these people gaining a lot of power.
May 25, 2006 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
"real chances of these people gaining a lot of power."
Your President is one of "these people" - to some degree at least. As someone said, Bush isn't "pandering" to the religious right, he IS the religious right.
Of course, since the religious right is full of hypocrites - and by the way, a hypocrite isn't just someone who professes something and does the opposite - it's also someone who actually does believe what he says - and still does the opposite - that doesn't stop Bush from carrying out wars for his oil company friends and the like.
The fact that Jimmy Swaggert gets a blowjob from a hooker doesn't mean he doesn't believe in his crap - or that he isn't an influence on those who DON'T get blowjobs from hookers.
As someone else here pointed out, the Communist Party DID function in the United States - the reason it was never a threat is because it was operating on the left, and the left in America repudiated it.
That is not the case with the Republicans - they have embraced the religious right.
So the situations are completely different than "McCarthyism." (Not that I approve of McCarthy, anyway, obviously.)
May 25, 2006 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wouldn't have bothered to reply had you not said this:
I find the tinge of condescension towards me there laughable so I'll condescend right back. Bush a Christian Dominionist? Ridiculous! Ridiculous to anyone who is well-read on Bush and his religion, his faith-based initiative blather, and especially to anyone who knows his political modus operandi towards the Christian far right--a ridiculousness that comes from the fevered imaginations of some paranoid lefty pundits and bloggers desperately trying to erase any shades of grey whenever they pop up here and there, thereby ironically buying into the same old "us v. them" that the Christian right would so love to see continue. Looking at your comment again, you yourself seem to be moving in a fevered McCarthyite direction, if not that, certainly as non-reality based as several in his administration, or else one of those narrative creator types he likes to employ in the sciences.
Two things I find very interesting is that people on the left who think a certain paranoid way about Bush, constantly looking for connections to prove that he's purposely trying to cause armaggedon by pulling one over on the American public, or some other genius plot or another, are also often people who: 1) seem to forget he's dropped to incredibly low approval levels 2) forget he's proven he lacks a lot of competence 3) forget he can't even keep the base that got him elected happy 4) make up reality as they go along just like he does and only read and listen to what they want to hear like he does, cherry-picking and stove-piping included.
A final off-topic note: after reading your recent comments on some other threads I hope you realize that many in this forum have the opinion that one kind of troll is someone who constantly calls others who are commenting in good faith "trolls." I have also noted that members that constantly imply one way or another that other commenters are stupid have been relieved of membership.
May 27, 2006 3:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: The problem, I think, is that they didn't anticipate mass communications which enables a cult to develop much faster and bigger due to being able to reach many more people
To what extent do today’s religious movements grow through mass communication? Seems to me they still bring in converts the old fashioned way: by direct person to person contact. The Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses go door to door after all, and we’ve all seen those little religious tracts that people leave in public places. The televangelists? But they are reaching to the converted. Who watches those broadcasts other than those already in the movement?
May 27, 2006 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink