Some Quotes:
... dominion theology, which asserts that, in preparation for the second coming of Christ, godly men have the responsibility to take over every aspect of society.
Dominion theology comes out of Christian Reconstructionism, a fundamentalist creed that was propagated by the late Rousas John (R. J.) Rushdoony and his son-in-law, Gary North. Born in New York City in 1916 to Armenian immigrants who had recently fled the genocide in Turkey, [h]e was a prolific writer, churning out dense tomes advocating the abolition of public schools and social services and the replacement of civil law with biblical law. -- he called for the death penalty for gay people, blasphemers, and unchaste women, among other sinners. Democracy, he wrote, is a heresy and "the great love of the failures and cowards of life."
Reconstructionism is a postmillennial theology, meaning its followers believe Jesus won't return until after Christians establish a thousand year reign on earth. ...
Since the 1970s, though, in tandem with the rise of the religious right, premillennialism has been politicized. ... A Christian Manifesto, published in 1981, described modern history as a contest between the Christian worldview and the materialist one, saying, "These two world views stand as totals in complete antithesis to each other in content and also in their natural results -- including sociological and government results, and specifically including law."
..."It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's Law it abrogates its authority," [Robert Schaeffer, a prime leader] wrote.
Tim LaHaye, who is most famous for ...the Left Behind thrillers that he co-writes with Jerry Jenkins, was heavily influenced by Schaeffer, to whom he dedicated his book "The Battle for the Mind." That book married Schaeffer's theories to a conspiratorial view of history and politics, arguing, "Most people today do not realize what humanism really is and how it is destroying our culture, families, country -- and, one day, the entire world. Most of the evils in the world today can be traced to humanism, which has taken over our government, the UN, education, TV, and most of the other influential things of life.
"We must remove all humanists from public office and replace them with pro-moral political leaders," LaHaye wrote.
Between 1984 and 1986, [a group of bosth pre- and post millenialists] developed seventeen "worldview" documents, which elucidate the "Christian" position on most aspects of life. Just as political Islam is often called Islamism to differentiate the fascist political doctrine from the faith, the ideology laid out in these papers could be called Christianism. The documents outline a complete political program, with a "biblically correct" position on issues like taxes (God favors a flat rate), public schools (generally frowned upon), and the media and the arts ("We deny that any pornography and other blasphemy are permissible as art or 'free speech'").
Anyone raised Catholic will of course find this all absurd intellectually (The whole rapture millenialism is foreign to us) and frightening in it's uber-protestant bent. Or they should except that conservative Catholics have made common cause with these medieval thinkers.
For a more complete exerpt check out Salon.com.
The problem is of course that believers of this sort cannot be reasoned with and in no way see a diverse thinking population as acceptable, let alone good.
The effect of such black and white style-thinking is easily seen in the abomination that is the Bush Presidency. Or Iran.
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