Christian Reconstructionists: Death penalty for gays, sex before marriage

Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence
by Frederick Clarkson (Frederick Clarkson is an author and lecturer who has written extensively on right-wing religious groups from the Christian Coalition to the Unification Church. He is co-author of Challenging the Christian Right: The Activist's Handbook, (Institute for First Amendment Studies, 1992), and is author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Democracy and Theocracy in the United States, (Common Courage Press, 1996). This article originally appeared in the March and June 1994 issues of The Public Eye.)

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"Epitomizing the Reconstructionist idea of Biblical "warfare" is the centrality of capital punishment under Biblical Law. Doctrinal leaders (notably Rushdoony, North, and Bahnsen) call for the death penalty for a wide range of crimes in addition to such contemporary capital crimes as rape, kidnapping, and murder. Death is also the punishment for apostasy (abandonment of the faith), heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, "sodomy or homosexuality," incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, "unchastity before marriage."

According to Gary North, women who have abortions should be publicly executed, "along with those who advised them to abort their children." Rushdoony concludes: "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." Reconstructionists insist that "the death penalty is the maximum, not necessarily the mandatory penalty." However, such judgments may depend less on Biblical Principles than on which faction gains power in the theocratic republic. The potential for bloodthirsty episodes on the order of the Salem witchcraft trials or the Spanish Inquisition is inadvertently revealed by Reconstructionist theologian Rev. Ray Sutton, who claims that the Reconstructed Biblical theocracies would be "happy" places, to which people would flock because "capital punishment is one of the best evangelistic tools of a society."

The Biblically approved methods of execution include burning (at the stake for example), stoning, hanging, and "the sword." Gary North, the self-described economist of Reconstructionism, prefers stoning because, among other things, stones are cheap, plentiful, and convenient. Punishments for non-capital crimes generally involve whipping, restitution in the form of indentured servitude, or slavery. Prisons would likely be only temporary holding tanks, prior to imposition of the actual sentence.

People who sympathize with Reconstructionism often flee the label because of the severe and unpopular nature of such views. Even those who feel it appropriate that they would be the governors of God's theocracy often waffle on the particulars, like capital punishment for sinners and nonbelievers. Unflinching advocates, however, insist upon consistency. Rev. Greg Bahnsen, in his book By This Standard, writes: "We. . .endorse the justice of God's penal code, if the Bible is to be the foundation of our Christian political ethic."

http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre1.html

They're co-opting the Old Testament without understanding a word of it.

Assholes.

Nasty, mean-minded people and God dislikes them.

"....Trinity Broadcasting Network which has specialized in promoting the apocalyptic eschatology of evangelists like Oral Roberts, James Robinson and Kenneth Copeland. Kennedy was also one of the "inner circle" behind Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority group formed in 1979 and in 1984 affiliated with a group called Coalition for Religious Freedom, a "front" for Rev. Moon's Unification Church."

http://www.americanatheist.org/spr97/T2/pk2.html

wtf was Demint talking about when he says gays shouldn't teach. You know what I said to that, I said that radical fundementalists shouldnt be in politics. BTW Demint when he was in the house reprsented where Bob Jones University is, Greenville, SC.

I believe as a Catholic. These people are sick bastards, who care more about politicizing faith than what faith should be used for, what faith should be used for is helping people, after all Christ said to help the poor and less fortunate.

It's a Falwell/Robertson/Southern Baptist kind of thing.

And no offense to Southern Baptists but

"It’s not the first time the religious right has succeeded. Probably the most remarkable plan to takeover an institution began in 1967, when so called “fundamentalists” laid out the strategy to take control of the sixteen million-member Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). According to a chronology posted on the web,<5> Page Patterson a seminary doctoral student and Judge Paul Pressler met at Café du Monde in New Orleans and discussed a long term strategy for “fundamentalist domination of the SBC.”



By 1979, Patterson, Pressler “and others ran a ‘get out the vote’ campaign in fifteen states prior to the Convention, urging a defeat of the moderates in the SBC.”<6> Voters were actually bussed to the convention in mass numbers and left after the vote for the president of the organization.



That year, Adrian Rogers was elected president.



In 1980, Paul Pressler “publicly announced the strategy of the fundamentalist takeover, which was to elect the SBC president a sufficient number of times to gain a fundamentalist majority on the boards and agencies of the Convention.”<7> With a president who had the power of committee appointments, the fundamentalists could begin their reign of power. From 1979 to the present, fundamentalists “elected all presidents of the SBC.”<8>



As they consolidated their power and gained control of the six SBC seminaries, they ruthlessly purged the institutions of all moderates. According to Dr. Russell Dilday, a moderate who opposed the tactics of the fundamentalists in 1985, the fundamentalists operated like a “sophisticated political machine.” In an interview with Charlene Hunter Gault and Judge Pressler on the McNeal Lehrer Hour on June 11, 1985, Dr. Dilday said the fundamentalists used “surreptitious recording of conversations, secretly taping telephone calls, without the permission of the person being talked to, sharing that information with the press without permission. Using the kind of strategy, actually secular strategies, that are not at all consistent with one who claims to believe in biblical authority.” Dr. Dilday said, “If I agreed one hundred percent with his content, I think I would disagree with his cause, just by virtue of the strategy being used.” <9>



In the year 1993, the fundamentalists attempted to refuse to seat members from the church where President Clinton had his church membership.<10> In the year 2000, former President Jimmy Carter left the denomination.<11> In that same year, the SBC leadership forced all employees, professors and missionaries to sign a modern day “loyalty oath,” a new “Baptist Faith and Message” statement that many Baptists felt superceded the Bible and the personhood of Jesus requiring loyalty to the institution over loyalty to God. Over seventy missionaries either resigned because of the requirement to sign or were outright fired, when they refused to resign, with the loss of all their retirement.<12>



Clearly then, the “fundamentalist” takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention was not a disagreement over “religious” issues, at its heart, it was a “political” takeover because it used coercive means to achieve complete control of the organization.<13> The purging of moderate Baptists in the Southern Baptist Convention continues to this day as the denomination becomes ever more politically involved.

As an example of their political involvement, in June of 2004, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, fought vigorously against a bill in the Senate, which added “gender, sexual orientation or disability” to the list of those protected by law from hate crimes.<14> Prior to the passage of this bill, the classes protected by hate-crimes legislation were race, color, religion and national origin. Land, speaking for the Southern Baptist Convention said, “Making sexual preference a protected right in any federal legislation will lead to litigation that will be extremely damaging to the freedoms of Americans. The senators who voted for this ought to be ashamed of themselves.”<15>

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/InfiltratingTheUSMilitaryGenBoykinsWarriors.html

I have a problem with southern baptists because of their complete intolerance to anyone who isnt one of their own, their politicizing faith. These people are sickening, they're way I suspect many DUers have a problem with christianity but I have to tell y'all, we're all not like that.

The only problem with Southern Baptists is that they don't hold them under water long enough.

good librulz. ;)

but they are still nuts :D.

...according to the article. Some of the current Southern Baptists seem to be moving in that direction, but even they might find some Reconstructionist beliefs extreme. Here's a gem: "Punishments for non-capital crimes generally involve whipping, restitution in the form of indentured servitude, or slavery. Prisons would likely be only temporary holding tanks, prior to imposition of the actual sentence."

It will be interesting to watch the various "moral" groups argue over the spoils.

I belive the Christian Reconstructionists regard the Roman Catholic church as the Whore of Babylon.

Why are they throwing their support to the theocrats?
Surely they can see what sort of people they are.
It has to have been a conscious decision.

The Catholic church has never injected itself into politics
on the side of a single party as blatantly as it did this year.
Abortion didn't just start being an issue for the Catholic church
this year.

The Catholic hierarchy wants in on the theocracy.
They would have to bury a lot of difference with the S.Baptists
to do that, but given their current discredited condition, they
may be willing to do so.

The Pope has decided that "secularism" (meaning an unwillingness
to enforce canon law in civil law w.r.t abortion and homosexuality)
is a more-pressing issue than war, terrorism or hunger, so is on
board as well.

They may figure that a theocracy will MAKE people listen to them again.

Gary North...prefers stoning because, among other things, stones are cheap, plentiful, and convenient.

proto-Fasicsts ready to bloom. This is going to be the particular "flavor" of Fascism in America. Nobody expected a Xerox of the German or Italian kind.

Fits, ey? Nice religious symbology and holy ideas to cover up the horrible, revenous beast that will call for much death, blood, torture, and suffering. Once they dehumanize the Left, then the Left is fair game.

Big joke is, they will also go for Christians who are deemed, "Not sufficiantly Christian enough!" That's going to be a surprise for many.

Get ready 'cause here it comes!

into the general media some form or another, by some liberal writer with accompanying request for explanation from the fundametalist-christian-neo-cons if this is the world they seek for us all or not. Force them to start defending some of these bizzare ideas to their lame-brained sheeple.

You know, if I had read my own posts 3 months I would call me a nut. But my total disillusionment with "liberal" CNN and the media's ties to money=GOP is complete.

right-wing politicians' ties to these groups...

Delay has ties to them, along with others. They've met with them in DC.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2613121&mesg_id=2613121&page=

Bush* is on their side, of course,
as well as three Supreme Court justices and all the new ones that will get appointed.

and the harm that they are doing to this nation is a crime. These people are determined. And they are compiling a hit list for the time when they force a theocracy down the throats of the people of this nation.

I've talked to some of these people and one went into detail about their hit list -- any women who's had an abortion, gays, most feminists anyone who has broken any of god's laws. He reeled off the list as if it was memorized and I heard the same list in nearly identical order for another person.

I used to tell "normal" people about this threat -- and they simply could not believe that this sort of "christian" existed.

What is it going to take to wake up the people of this Nation to these terrorists?

of this bullshit, they can expect an uprising the likes of which this world has never seen. Capital punishment can work both ways baby.

And they never had a "mandate" before. Just sayin'.

the popular vote for President (if you believe the election wasn't stolen). To me, that doesn't allow for much radical change by the repugs. If they were to do that, I could see massive violent protests across this nation, to take back by force what has been stolen from us. Bushco talks a big game about having a mandate, but they know that just about half this country would revolt if they try and shove it down our throat. That's bad for business, and God knows, it's business that Bushco cares the most about. The fundie crap they chatter about is all smoke and mirrors to get the conservative Christian crowd to vote Republican. When it comes down to it, Bushco will do what's best for business in this country, and that's not starting a cultural revolution.

If there's going to be capital murder for injury to a marriage, the government will have to build a few abbatoirs (slaughterhouses).

The thread title could only accommodate so many 'sins'.

;)

or those that "hate us for our freedoms" :eyes: