Here Come The Dominionists!
I've spent some time the last couple of weeks in this space delivering paranoid warnings about Dominionism, the far-right Christian cult that has taken over the Republican Party and seeks to establish a political system in the United States based on its interpretation of Biblical law.
This is really happening, right now. In our country. And it's not a fringe movement. Tom DeLay, The Speaker Of The House Of Representatives, has said that God is "training" him to "stand up for a Biblical worldview." By "Biblical worldview," he means dismantling the foundations of civil society by any means necessary. No tactic is unethical, because it's all for God.
For the last 25 years, the Dominionists, and I call them that because "Christian right" seems too mild a term, have gone about the quiet business of taking over the Republican Party. This isn't exactly news, but now the other shoe has dropped. It's no accident that 11 states passed laws prohibiting gay marriage this year. Homosexuality is illegal according to Dominionist theology. It's no accident that schoolboards around the country, not just in the South, are starting to make it difficult to teach evolution, which never happened, according to Dominionist theology. All this talk about "activist judges" stems directly from the writing of Gary North, a Dominionist philosopher. And I quote:
"So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."
Again, let me reiterate. This isn't the writing of a lunatic from the edge. Well, it is, but that edge is the leading edge. According to Dominionism, Christians are mandated to occupy all secular institutions, dismantle them, and ready the world for Christ's return.
All this goes back to the work of the late R.J. Rushdoony, a clearly unhinged man whose seminal text, The Institutes Of Biblical Law, is a guidebook for Dominionism. And I quote: "Man is thus primarily and essentially a religious creature who is truly understood only by reference to his Creator and his ordained destiny under God. Man's destiny, to bring all things under the dominion of God's law-word, confronted man from the beginning of his creation."
You still think this talk is loony? Go to Theocracy Watch, a website that specifically, exhaustively, and legitimately catalogs the encroachment of Dominionism onto American life. It's freaking everywhere, and dominant at the highest levels of government.
This is not about Christianity. It's not even about evangelicalism. If you want to believe that Jesus Christ will return and lift his followers up to heaven, leaving the rest of us to claw one another's eyes out on Earth, that's your business and your right.
I'm telling you, people. Our country is being run by the equivalent of the disciples of L. Ron Hubbard. Their America is a cult.
More to come. This is my quest, and you must fight with me. As Julie Newmar said today about her neighborly conflict with Jim Belushi, "A truce is not done in a superficial manner. There are some folks who must go through a ring of fire to understand life's rules. There are a few of us — very few — who are already there."
You go, Catwoman!