Understanding a facet of The Family theology: Joe Bageant on Christian Reconstructionism

It's ONLY a facet -- specifically, the facet that the "masses" accept, b/c what David Coe preaches in hallowed basement of the tax-exempt C Street house, is more like fascism -- the fetishism of power. But, for the rank and file who encourage their lawmakers to live the life of The Family, THIS is what they expect to see come of it:


http://dissidentvoice.org/May2004/Bageant0518.htm

Christian Reconstruction: Establishing a Savage Eden

Christian Reconstruction is blunt stuff, hard and unforgiving as a gravestone. Capital punishment, central to the Reconstructionist ideal, calls for the death penalty in a wide range of crimes, including abandonment of the faith, blasphemy, heresy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, sodomy, homosexuality, striking a parent, and ''unchastity before marriage'' (but for women only). Biblically correct methods of execution include stoning, the sword, hanging, and burning. Stoning is preferred, according to Gary North, the self-styled Reconstructionist economist, because stones are plentiful and cheap. Biblical Law would also eliminate labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Leading Reconstruction theologian David Chilton declares, "The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics..." Incidentally, said Republic of Jesus would not only be a legal hell, but an ecological one as well -- Reconstructionist doctrine calls for the scrapping of environmental protection of all kinds, because there will be no need for this planet earth once The Rapture occurs. You may not have heard of Rushdoony or Chilton or North, but taken either separately or together, they have influenced far more contemporary American minds than Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Howard Zinn combined.

A moreover covert movement, although slightly more public of late, Christian Reconstructionism has for decades exerted one hell of an influence through its scores of books, publications and classes taught in colleges and universities. Over the past 30 years, Reconstructionist doctrine has permeated not only the religious right, but mainstream churches as well, via the charismatic movement. Its impact on politics and religion in this nation have been massive, with many mainstream churches pushed rightward by pervasive Reconstructionism, without even knowing it. Clearly the Methodist church down the street from my house does not understand what it has become. Other mainstream churches with more progressive leadership, simply flinch and bow to the Reconstructionists at every turn. They have to, if they want to retain members these days. Further complicating matters is that leading Reconstruction thinkers, along with their fellow travelers, the Dominionists, are all but invisible to non-fundamentalist America. (I will spare you the agony of the endless doctrinal hair-splitting that comes with making fundamentalist distinctions of any sort -- I would not do that to a dog. But if you are disposed toward self-punishment, you can take it upon yourself to learn the differences between Dominionism, Pretribulationism, Midtribulationism, and Posttribulationism, Premillennialism, Millennialism... I recommend the writings of the British author and scholar George Monbiot, who has put the entire maddening scheme of it all together -- corporate implications, governmental and psychological meaning -- in a couple of excellent books.)

....

Christian Reconstruction strategists make clear in their writings that homeschooling and Christian academies have been and continue to create the Rightist Christian cadres of the future, enabling them to place ever-increasing numbers of believers in positions of governmental influence. The training of Christian cadres is far more sophisticated than the average liberal realizes. There now stretches a network of dozens of campuses across the nation, each with its strange cultish atmosphere of smiling Christian pod people, most of them clones of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. But how many outsiders know the depth and specificity of Reconstructionist political indoctrination in these schools? For example, Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, a college exclusively for Christian homeschoolers, offers programs in strategic government intelligence, legal training and foreign policy, all with a strict, Bible-based "Christian worldview." Patrick Henry is so heavily funded by the Christian right it can offer classes below cost. In the Bush administration, seven percent of all internships are handed out to Patrick Henry students, along with many others distributed among similar religious rightist colleges. The Bush administration also recruits from the faculties of these schools, i.e. the appointments of right-wing Christian activist Kay Coles James, former dean of the Pat Robertson School of government, as director of the U.S. office of personnel. What better position than the personnel office from which to recruit more fundamentalists? Scratch any of these supposed academics and you will find a Christian Reconstructionist. I know because I have made the mistake of inviting a few of these folks to cocktail parties. One university department head told me he is moving to rural Mississippi where he can better recreate the lifestyle of the antebellum South, and its "Confederate Christian values." It gets real strange real quick.

Lest the Christian Reconstructionists be underestimated, remember that it was Reconstructionist strategists whose "stealth ideology" managed the takeover of the Republican Party in the early 1990s. That takeover now looks mild in light of today's neocon Christian implantations in the White House, the Pentagon and the Supreme Court and other federal entities. As much as liberals screech in protest, few understand the depth and breadth of the Rightist Christian takeover underway. They catch the scent but never behold the beast itself. Yesterday I heard a liberal Washington-based political pundit on NPR say the Radical Christian right's local and regional political action peak was a past fixture of the Reagan era. I laughed out loud (it was a bitter laugh) and wondered if he had ever driven 20 miles eastward on U.S. Route 50 into the suburbs of Maryland, Virginia or West Virginia. The fellow on NPR was a perfect example of the need for liberal pundits to get their heads out of their asses, get outside the city, quit cruising the Internet and meet some Americans who do not mirror their own humanist educations and backgrounds. If they did, they would grasp the importance The Rapture has taken on in American national and international politics. Despite the media's shallow interpretation of The Rapture's significance, it is a hell of a lot more than just a couple hundred million Left Behind books sold. The most significant thing about the Left Behind series is that, although they are classified as "fiction," most fundamentalist readers I know accept the series as an absolute reality soon coming to a godless planet near you. It helps to understand that everything is literal in the Fundamentalist voter universe.

thanks

that's a keeper.

as is noted in the article.

Reconstructionists look to 'reconstruct' Western Civ. according to theonomic principles (God's Law) precisely because CR's are postmillennial - Jesus returns to a Christianized world, perhaps thousands upon thousands of years in the making. So, Jesus returns after a 'millennium' of 1000's of years of a Christianized earth (governments acknowledge Jesus as Messiah and frame laws based on the Law of Moses, etc.).

The dispensational premillennialists who affirm the rapture are dangerous insofar as they cheerlead nuclear war and ecological degradation as conditions prior to or consequent upon the rapture and tribulation prior to a 1000 year earthly kingdom ruled by Jesus. Jesus returns prior to (pre) a millennium ushered in by war, ecological collapse, the rapture, etc.

The postmillennialists - many of whom are Christian Reconstructionists and theonomists - are dangerous, perhaps moreso than premillennialists, because they think and strategize long-term. The postmillennial Christian Reconstructionists harbor no expectation of being 'raptured' away. They intend on influencing culture, taking over institutions and enforcing their view of Biblical law.

Postmills have a shadow culture in Christian schools and colleges and seminaries. They are infiltrating denominations like the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Reformed Baptists, etc. and - as is apparent from revelations about 'The Family' have had more of an impact in the government that some may have previously thought. It is power religion; it is ideology, not spirituality.

Between Reconstructionists and Dominionists in the military and military chaplaincy, in 'The Family' and so forth, there is quite an enemy to be battled by secularists for the soul of our republic.

"I'm not one of the 144,000, so I can do whatever I like."

when the 'Rapture' doesn't occur.

Even without their 'Rapture'.

I worked for the Department of Energy for quite a few years and toward the end (retired early in '05) I ran into about a half dozen of what I called the "born agains". They were young guys, engineers mostly in this case, who indeed did call themselves born agains and had some of the most absurd views one can immagine. Very nice and polite young men, very intelligent, enjoyable in some ways to have conversations with, which I did frequently with one of them. These guys got together most days at lunch time for bible study together in alternating cubicles or unused meeting rooms. Creepy. Here was a guy who just amazed me with his biblical knowledge (very much like a Star Treck finatic knows all about the ship and fictional planets visited and such) and the boy was, and is, a very talented engineer, and then tell you he believes the earth is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs and men walked together. It was just insane. You could have a perfectly rational argument with him (not an angry argument, I mean arguing a point by bring facts to the stage) for days and he would agree with each of your points and then disagree with the conclusion. If the Bible said it then that's how it was, is and will be, period!

principle. it's unnerving when people bring faith into the workplace like that. i've known sales managers who ask their team to do prayer breakfasts and 5a.m. bible studies, as fuel and networking for their business.

:scared:

We need to understand this. It's a very real threat to everything we value.