Sharron Angle: Muslims have taken over American cities. DEARBORN! FRANKLIN! MUSLIMS! Taking OVER!

Sharron Angle warns that Muslims have taken over American cities

http://www.salon.com/news/tea_parties/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/10/08/angle_sharia

Friday, Oct 8, 2010 12:30 ET

By Alex Pareene

Sharron Angle said another stupid thing. This time, though, it wasn't just incoherent and incorrect -- it was also a blatantly bigoted if inept attempt at fear-mongering about American Muslims. Angle seemed to say that the sharia law had already taken hold in two American cities.

Asked by a voter whether or not Muslims were trying to take over the United States, Angle thought this was a reasonable response:



So, terrorism isn't that widespread, but the Muslims have installed their foreign laws in two American cities.

Dearborn has a large Muslim community -- the Muslim community there dates back more than a hundred years, so they really took their time installing sharia -- but, as the AP amusingly puts it, it "was not immediately clear why Angle singled out Frankford, Texas, a former town that was annexed into Dallas around 1975."

It's hard to argue against a jumble of half-remembered anti-Islam talking points and conspiracy theories, but, for the record, Muslims are not going to take over America and install sharia law.

Is Sharron Angle a Christian Reconstructionist?
A unified theory of the Nevada's Senate candidate's stranger musings.

http://www.slate.com/id/2264348

In discussing religion, Angle often edges into the prophetic. When she was confronted about her unwillingness to support exceptions to an abortion ban even in the case of rape and incest, she said straightforwardly, "God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives." She objects to laws that prevent pastors from endorsing candidates from the pulpit. Most interestingly, she claimed that entitlement programs of all sorts violate "the First Commandment," and in case her point wasn't clear, she elaborated in biblical talk: "We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We're supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government."
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Any casual observer of the Christian right might feel puzzled. Since George Bush, candidates have mastered a certain innocuous way to send a shout-out to their religious brethren, referring more vaguely to "struggles" or a "relationship" with God—the standard stuff of the average American megachurch. But Angle's way of talking picks up accents from another movement that is usually muzzled in American politics but occasionally finds voice in a Southern candidate or two. It's called the Christian Reconstructionist movement and was started in the '60s and '70s by Calvinist theologian Rousas John Rushdoony. Indeed, Angle used to be a member of the Independent American Party, an offshoot of the Constitution Party, which was started by avowed Christian Reconstructionist Howard Phillips.*

Christian Reconstructionism, on its own, is a fringe movement in the Christian right. Most of the Christian right is comprised of pre-millennial evangelicals who believe Christ will return to Earth to kick-start the 1,000 years of the Kingdom of God. Christian Reconstructionists, on the other hand, believe the world is already the Kingdom of God, and that Jesus will return after they have transformed society and government into one that follows Biblical law. Because of this, Reconstructionists prioritize reforming America into what they consider a godly country and bringing the legal structures of our country in line with Old Testament law, with a specific eye toward pushing the government out of all arenas they consider the sole province of church and family.

snip

Angle's surprising comments about how a strong federal government equals "idolatry" particularly point to the impact Christian Reconstructionism has had on her thinking, even if she doesn't directly identify with the movement or has received these ideas secondhand. That quote particularly captures Rushdoony's philosophy in a nutshell: "Trying to organize civil society in ways that violate God's clear demarcation of authority is this fundamental sin of humanism," explains Ingersoll. "It's making humans and human reason the measure of what is appropriate." Just a few years ago, a candidate who uses the word "idolatry" in a political speech might quickly become a pariah. But now, it's all the rage again.