Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Evangelicalism Today. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Evangelicalism Today. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Brian McLaren - The Second Pandemic: Authoritarianism and Your Future



The Second Pandemic:
Authoritarianism and Your Future

by Brian McLaren

Dec 4, 2020


An unexpected political challenge we face as we journey into the third decade of the 21st century is the resurgence of authoritarianism in the United States and Europe. While many Americans and, perhaps especially, American Christians believed that we were somehow beyond or above the authoritarian impulse, a generation of politicians, religious leaders, and social commentators seem intent on disabusing us of that notion through increasingly violent nationalism and strong-man affectations. At this critical juncture, it is important for us to reflect upon how we got here, the ways in which our social structures are conducive to authoritarianism's resurgence, and how the Christian tradition itself has institutionally and ideologically contributed to authoritarianism. On December 4 at 7:30 pm, we'll be joined by best-selling author, public theologian, and activist Brian McLaren, who will lead us in an exploration of Christianity's darker actions and impulses, past and present.

Brian just published a new e-book on authoritarianism called The Second Pandemic: Authoritarianism and Your Future. You can download it here: https://brianmclaren.net/store/ 

Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. A former college English teacher and pastor, he is a passionate advocate for “a new kind of Christianity” – just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. He is a faculty member of The Living School, which is part of the Center for Action and Contemplation, and he co-leads the Common Good Messaging Team, which is part of Vote Common Good. He is also an Auburn Senior Fellow and podcaster with Learning How to See. He works closely with the Wild Goose Festival, the Fair Food Program, and Progressive Christianity. His most recent projects include an illustrated children’s book (for all ages) called Cory and the Seventh Story and The Galapagos Islands: A Spiritual Journey. Two important new releases are in process: Faith After Doubt (January 2021) and Do I Stay Christian? (Spring 2022).



more books by Brian McLaren





Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Diana Butler Bass - Understanding Christian Nationalism, Parts 1-3

Vote Common Good is trying to get Pennsylvania voters to understand the dangers of Christian nationalism. https://www.votecommongood.com/penn-live-in-billboards-evangelical-group-urges-faith-voters-to-ditch-support-of-mastriano/

Understanding Christian Nationalism

An invitation to explore the movement shaping American politics

by Diana Butler Bass
September 14, 2022

I got an email this week from a reader letting me know that his adult education group was using the recent Christian nationalism posts from The Cottage as a multi-week study leading up to the fall elections.

What a great idea! Until I read his note, however, I didn’t realize that I’d written a post each month since July on the subject. It certainly wasn’t a planned series. It just happened in conjunction with the news — and the intense interest in the subject of Christian nationalism.

He inspired me to turn the Christian nationalism essays into a three-part discussion curriculum that you can use.

Today’s post links all three of the essays in a single newsletter. I hope this will be helpful to you. Some may want to use these posts as my friend’s congregation is — for others that may be too controversial and you might want to read them in a small group. I do suggest that you engage them with others if possible.

I invite you to re-read them as a group — and with a group. I’ve enclosed some discussion questions for you to think about the ideas presented in each essay as well.

This three-part exploration of Christian nationalism involves terminology, theology, and history. It isn’t exhaustive (there’s much more that can be said), but it is provocative, thoughtful, and timely. And, since the essays are short, you needn’t read an entire book to engage important issues.

Of course, you may agree or disagree with various points and interpretations. That’s expected! Talking about a subject is often a good way toward greater understanding — and moderating fear we might have. Each of these posts comes from my own wrestling with these difficult days.


ESSAY #1: CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM EVERYWHERE?

In this essay, I explore the term “Christian nationalism” and suggest we might need to make finer distinctions in how we define political impulses in white evangelicalism.

Christian Nationalism Everywhere?



2 months ago · 60 comments · Diana Butler Bass

For discussion:
  • What do you think about the central claim of this essay? “Both of these things are true: America is not a Christian nation. And the United States was shaped by Protestantism.”
  • Why is it important to understand this paradoxical proposition? What might it mean for politics to grasp this history?


* * * * *


ESSAY #2: BAD BLOOOD

In recent weeks, talk of Civil War has skyrocketed. This essay looks at the connection between political conflict and theology that lends itself toward violence. This was one of the most widely read, shared, and discussed posts of the year at The Cottage.




a month ago · 90 comments · Diana Butler Bass

For discussion:
  • Do you worry that the central claim of Christianity involves blood and violence?
  • What do you make of this statement?: “Not every Christian who holds to the theory of blood-atonement is a Christian nationalist, but Christian nationalism depends on this theology and can’t survive without it.”
  • How might Christian theology, churches, and preachers address this? Where do you see these ideas in the news? Have you ever considered how bad theology might inspire political violence?


* * * * *


ESSAY #3: BAD HISTORY

Although most political commentators haven’t paid attention, white evangelical politics has been supported by and is twinned with a particular view of providential history. This essay returns to the theme of “Christian nation-ism” vs. “Christian nationalism” and explores it through history.




6 days ago · 63 likes · 58 comments · Diana Butler Bass

For discussion:
  • What do you make of the popularity of a book like The Light and the Glory?
  • And what does it mean that two best-selling histories — The Light and the Glory and A People’s History of the United States — seem to have helped create the political divisions today?
  • Why is history so often a contentious subject? Why do people fight over the past? Do you know someone who believes in this providential history?

Public Witness on Substack has been running some very good pieces about Christian nationalism. I particularly appreciated this recent post on Doug Mastriano. I recommend both their newsletter and their news and opinion website, Word and Way.

* * * * *

INSPIRATION

If you understand your own place and its intricacy and the possibility of affection and good care of it, then imaginatively you recognize that possibility for other places and other people. If you wish well to your own place and you recognize that your own place is part of the world, then this requires a well-wishing toward the whole world. In return you hope for the world's well-wishing to your place.

This is a different impulse from the impulse of nationalism. This is what I would call patriotism, the love of a home country that's usually much smaller than a nation. Nationalism always implies competition, always the wish that your nation might thrive even at the expense of other nations. Patriotism is the love of a home place or a home country that recognizes the obligation of charity toward other places and other people, and it recognizes that the prosperity of your place need not come at the expense of the prosperity of other places. There is a generosity, a charity, in what I recognize is the true patriotism, which is not necessarily implied by nationalism.

— Wendell Berry

 

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Friday, February 11, 2022

What I Learned from (Almost) Attending a Trump Rally


President Donald Trump arrives at a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., Thursday, March 28, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

What I Learned from (Almost) Attending
a Trump Rally


October 4, 2019


In January 2016, Donald Trump claimed that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and not lose supporters.

With the impeachment inquiry underway, his words ring prophetic.

With blatant corruption in full view, with the president turning to foreign powers to pursue his own personal gain, claiming that a coup is afoot, and labelling political opponents traitors, his critics are left wondering if there is anything he could do that would cause his supporters to turn from him.

I’ve wondered as much myself.

As a historian, I’ve spent the last three years examining white evangelical support for Trump. That research pointed me to the centrality of a militant white patriarchy at the heart of conservative evangelicalism that serves as a primary factor in mobilizing white evangelical support for the president. (Coming soon… Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation).

Just as I was putting the finishing touches on my book, Donald Trump descended upon my hometown of Grand Rapids. It was March 28, just days after Attorney General William Barr released his four-page letter detailing the conclusion of the Mueller Report. Then, too, the country was starkly divided. Wary of falling back on stereotypes in my own analysis, I decided to attend the rally to get a more nuanced, up-close glimpse of the president’s supporters.

Photos/Kristin DuMez

I was accompanied by my ten-year-old daughter, a political junkie in her own right. By the time we arrived downtown, the line of supporters stretched around several city blocks. We quickly found our place at the end of the line and settled in for a several-hour wait.

We had no intention of posing as supporters, but neither were we eager to out ourselves as those less-than-pleased with our sitting president. Still, it quickly became apparent that we didn’t look the part.

Although we were white (as was nearly everyone in the line), we were among the only ones not wearing Trump gear, for camo, or red-white-and-blue attire. So much for dispensing with stereotypes.

Everyone in the line was friendly, if not giddy with excitement. “Where are you from?” was the standard greeting. Here, too, we stuck out. Although the rally was in Grand Rapids, we didn’t meet anyone else in our section of the line who was from Grand Rapids proper. Everyone else had come in from neighboring small towns and rural areas, some having traveled several hours by car. Although it was a celebratory atmosphere, one man behind us frequently warned his friends not to post pictures of him on social media. He was afraid that he might lose his job if seen at a Trump rally.

He didn’t, however, hesitate to join in the political chatter. There was plenty of that. Victory cries of “Total exoneration” in light of Barr’s synopsis of the Mueller report. Crude joking about climate change (“What a hoax!”). Confidence that “the militia” would show up to protect us if things got out of hand. The “mainstream media” was a punching bag. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was an ignorant girl who belonged back behind the bar. Hillary Clinton was a punchline. Barack Obama, however, was no joke. Ocasio-Cortez and Clinton could be laughed off, it seemed, but mention of Obama elicited anger, bitterness, and resentment.

It didn’t take a historian trained in the study of race and gender to identify the centrality of both. American flags that blended into Confederate flags were available for purchase. The militant masculinity I’d spent years charting was everywhere apparent. Vendors were hawking T-shirts boasting “God Guns Trump: Keep America Great 2020,” “Keep Calm and Carry On,” and “Trump .45 (Cause the 44 Didn’t Work the Last 8 Years).”

Photos/Kristin DuMez

One could purchase pins for “Bikers for Trump,” pins declaring support for the Second Amendment, pins insisting that “Deplorable Lives Matter” and that “Hillary Sucks! But not like Monica!” Meanwhile, “Hot Chicks for Trump” shirts could be purchased, as could hot pink “Trump Girl” t-shirts emblazoned with a star-spangled stiletto heel.

Other t-shirts gleefully promised to “Make Liberals Cry Again,” and provided assurances that Trump “Ain’t A Mistake Snowflake.” Again, so much for demolishing stereotypes.

Photos/Kristin DuMez

Photos/Kristin DuMez

Photos/Kristin DuMez

Then, three hours into our wait, as the line continued to snake between downtown buildings, the mood began to change. The scheduled start time was drawing nearer, and we peered anxiously at the distance remaining between us and the entrance gates. Late-arriving supporters started to cut in line ahead of us, and our anxiety grew. We’d waited for hours, but it wasn’t at all clear that we’d make it inside.

We were behind the arena when the motorcade pulled up. Trump emerged and the crowd went wild. Once Trump was inside, attention once again turned to the line that stretched ahead. We all sensed it would be close.

It was at this point that something strange happened. For the first time that day, my daughter and I started to feel at one with the crowds. We didn’t share in their support of the president, it’s fair to say, but we all had the common goal of making it inside those doors—even if for very different reasons.

Turning the corner in front of the arena, we came face to face with protestors. The noise was deafening, the shouting back and forth obnoxious. My daughter grabbed my arm in fear. I reminded her that many of the protestors on the other side of the barricades were, in fact, our friends. Some were co-workers, some went to our church. We both knew it, but in that moment, it didn’t seem to matter. We were, quite literally, on the other side. From our vantage point, they did seem threatening. And I began to understand.

Other adults began to lavish attention on my daughter. Didn’t she love our president? Wasn’t she proud to be there? And then, suddenly, the line started moving quickly. Crowds were rushing the door. We almost made it in, but when the doors closed, we were stranded outside.

We did, however, have a front-row view of the jumbotron. We listened to Trump rail that “The Russian Hoax Is Finally Dead”—“the collusion delusion is over.” He mocked “little pencil-neck Adam Schiff,” went after the “fake news” media, and accused Democrats of “defraud[ing] the public with ridiculous bullshit.” He was draining the swamp, and he denigrated elites in Washington (“I’m president and they’re not.”)

My daughter was given a MAGA hat. She refused to put it on. We listened to the wild applause inside and outside the arena, but we were silent. When we finally decided we’d heard enough, we slipped through the crowd, walked down the street, and went out for Chinese take-out.

I’d gone to the rally hoping to gain a more nuanced understanding of “the other side,” hoping to realize that we shared a common ground if we only bothered to look. Instead, I left convinced that the gulf separating Americans along partisan lines was wide indeed. Perhaps insurmountable.

With news of impeachment dominating the headlines, I find myself transported back to that Trump rally, and fixated on that gulf. I’m also filled with a sense of wariness, a fear that anger—even righteous anger—may only make things worse.

*Cite: DuMez, Kristin Kobes. “What I learned from (almost) attending a Trump rally.” First published. Anxious Bench. Patheos.com. 3 October 2019.




White American evangelicalism from 1950 to the present hour





Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling author and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University. She holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today, and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, and the BBC, among other outlets. Her most recent book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling author and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University. She holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today, and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, and the BBC, among other outlets. Her most recent book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.



Jesus and John Wayne meets the Holy Post

 

Jesus and John Wayne meets the Holy Post


Thursday, February 10, 2022

The AntiChrist Doctrine of Christian Reconstruction (aka Church Dominionism)





The AntiChrist Doctrine of Christian Reconstruction
(aka Church Dominionism)

by R.E. Slater


What is Christian Reconstructionism, otherwise known as Church Dominianism, and why should the Christian follower of Jesus who is practicing the love of God to all men everywhere stand like granite against it?

Relevancy22 began largely because the form of Christianity I had learned in my fundamental, and later, conservative evangelical traditions, had become twisted under the teachings of Reformists Cornelius Van Til and Rousas Rushdoony advocating for a Christian theonomic government. Basically this means that the church is in charge of all government functions and not the people of a democratic nation-state or country. It would be similar to the religious government of Iran for instance where Islam as a spiritual doctrine has been forced to become one-and-the-same with its state leadership as it interprets the Islamic faith via wrath and judgment.

Further, this arrangement of religious theonomic government would be guided by the church's encapsulation, abrogation, and dissemination of Old Testament Mosaic Law as it understood and interpreted that ancient Semitic tribal legislation. At it's worse, the church becomes like the worst real-life examples of Middle East Jihadism. At it's best, a Davidic-Solomon-like kind of theocratic rule mediated by religious structures for good or for ill.

Jesus

For the churched Christian (I resist saying, the New Testament Christian, as this would show a significant ignorance about the Continuities & Discontinuites played out between the Old and New Testaments in typology, covenant, community, salvific history, etc) who follows Jesus, we see in our Lord's teachings and ministries his rejection of Mosaic Law for the Law of Love.

(Note: If I may, a bit of nuance here.... Jesus rejected the interpretation of the Mosaic Law of his day... which is what made Jesus so radical. But Jesus' proclamation of God's love both retained the Law while uplifting it from it's role as a harsh taskmaster to the people's faith. In Jesus the Law became a willing servant before all which God's love was meant to mean when first given to Moses. Sadly, in the finest of man's traditions, we, the church, like the religionists of Jesus' day, have idolized God's law, twisted it, and stained it with our sin. The law was meant for life to be lived to the fullest by a God of love - not for a life lived under the boot of a God of wrath and judgment.)

Paul

The hardline Rabbinic fundamentalist Paul (aka Saul) also discovered his zealotry for "truth" and his dominionist attitude towards the Mosaic Law quickly to disappear in it's argument for Jewish social compliance in the face of Jesus' act of loving atonement at the Cross on Golgotha's Hill. Paul proclaimed his religious and spiritual poverty in the face of Jesus' love on the Damascus Road and considered his spiritual dominionist training and legalized Jewish religion as a pauper for the remainder of his life as Jesus' doulas (servant) and emissary to the truth of God's love to the world.

The Harms of Dominionism

  • I've previously have described the radical Christian right in the United States as disingenuous, harming and harmful, and bearing false prophets and teachers to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
  • I have shown the paucity of Calvinism with its many ungodly creeds and confessions of God, bible, and sundry doctrines.
  • I have argued against alt-Christian movements such as Christian White Supremacy and (soft) fascist movements against the civil union and democracies of the United States.
  • I have argued for the extension and expansion of civil rights across all minority groups - especially those which alt-Christian groups would deny. Who are led by  alt-right proponents as Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Sr and his son Jerry Jr, Norman Geisler, Wayne Grudem, James Dobson, James Robinson, and such like.
  • And lastly, I have proposed a Christianity which leads out in its bible, its gospel of Christ, its ministries and works, doctrines and creeds, and in everyway possible, as testimony to the love of God for humanity and the world of nature. That the God of love is the true God we worship and who is best defined by His love in all ways, by all things, and in every aspect of our living and Spirit-held wonder.

Conclusion

Thus and thus, there is no room for self-righteous Christian hate, wrath or judgment. These ways are ungodly and un-God-like.

  • There is no room for civil insurrection as we see under the banners of Christian Trumpians' proclaiming succession from the Constitution of the United States.
  • And there is certainly no response acceptable to Black Lives, Refugees and Immigrants, or the cis-gendered oriented other than the response to love, to embrace, accept and befriend, all those whom the secular church and wicked society have abandoned, hurt, and disallowed from their civil rights and liberties in this life.

Relevancy22 is dedicated to renewing the Christian Church in its rights and prerogatives as given to it by the Lord on His Ascension Day. Herein we have sought a new foundation for the Christian Church founded on God's love and have spoken consistently for the reformation of Church Creeds and Confessions that once-and-all evidence God's love throughout the entirety of their church dogmas and sentiments.

I leave below two articles on the delineation of the history of Christian Reconstructionism, aka Church Dominionism; movements otherwise known for the bastardization of the gospel of Christ by the alt-Church of anti-Christ.

R.E. Slater
February 10, 2022

* * * * * *




CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTIONISM


The Christian reconstructionism movement became very popular outside the United States after 2000, especially in countries with large Pentecostal populations (Sub-saharan Africa,Central America and Caribbean). Christian Reconstructionism is a fundamentalist Calvinist theonomic movement.[1] It developed under the ideas of Rousas Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen and Gary North[2] and has had an important influence on the Christian right in the United States.[3][4]

In keeping with the cultural mandate, Christian reconstructionists advocate theonomy and the restoration of certain biblical laws said to have continuing applicability.[5] These include the death penalty not only for murder, but also for propagators of all forms of idolatry,[6][7] open homosexuals,[8] adulterers, practitioners of witchcraft and blasphemers.[9]

Christian reconstructionists are usually postmillennialists and followers of the presuppositional apologetics of Cornelius Van Til.[10][11]

A Christian denomination that advocated the view of Christian reconstructionism until its dissolution in 2020 was the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States.[12] Most Calvinist Christians, however, disavow Christian reconstructionism and hold to classical covenant theology, the traditional Calvinist view of the relationship between the Old Covenant and Christianity.[13]

Reconstructionist perspective
Theonomy
Main article: Theonomy

Christian reconstructionists advocate a theonomic government and libertarian economic principles. They maintain a distinction of spheres of authority between self, family, church, and state.[14][15] For example, the enforcement of moral sanctions under theonomy is carried out by the family and church government, and sanctions for moral offenses are outside the authority of civil government (which is limited to criminal matters, courts and national defense). However, some believe these distinctions become blurred, as the application of theonomy implies an increase in the authority of the civil government. Reconstructionists also say that the theonomic government is not an oligarchy or monarchy of man communicating with God, but rather, a national recognition of existing laws. Prominent advocates of Christian reconstructionism have written that according to their understanding, God's law approves of the death penalty not only for murder, but also for propagators of all forms of idolatry,[6][7] open homosexuality,[16] adulterers, practitioners of witchcraft, blasphemers,[9] and perhaps even recalcitrant youths[17] (see the List of capital crimes in the Bible).

Christian reconstructionism's founder, Rousas Rushdoony, wrote in The Institutes of Biblical Law (the founding document of reconstructionism) that Old Testament law should be applied to modern society, and he advocates the reinstatement of the Mosaic law's penal sanctions. Under such a system, the list of civil crimes which carried a death sentence would include murder, homosexuality, adultery, incest, lying about one's virginity, bestiality, witchcraft, idolatry or apostasy, public blasphemy, false prophesying, kidnapping, rape, and bearing false witness in a capital case.[18] However, Greg Bahnsen points out that such a system would only be possible if the culture at large were a Christian culture, and that the force of government could not be used to impose Christianity on a culture that did not want it.[7]

Kayser points out that the Bible advocates justice, and that biblical punishments prescribed for crimes are the maximum allowable to maintain justice and not the only available option, because lesser punishments are authorized as well.[19]

Views on pluralism

Rousas Rushdoony wrote in The Institutes of Biblical Law: "The heresy of democracy has since [the days of colonial New England] worked havoc in church and state" and: "Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies", and he said elsewhere that "Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic; it is committed to spiritual aristocracy," and characterized democracy as "the great love of the failures and cowards of life".[20] He nevertheless repeatedly expressed his opposition to any sort of violent revolution and advocated instead the gradual reformation (often termed "regeneration" in his writings) of society from the bottom up, beginning with the individual and the family and from there gradually reforming other spheres of authority, including the church and the state.[21]

Rushdoony believed that a republic is a better form of civil government than a democracy. According to Rushdoony, a republic avoided mob rule and the rule of the "51%" of society; in other words "might does not make right" in a republic.[22] Rushdoony wrote that America's separation of powers between 3 branches of government is a far more neutral and better method of civil government than a direct democracy, stating "[t]he [American] Constitution was designed to perpetuate a Christian order". Rushdoony argues that the Constitution's purpose was to protect religion from the federal government and to preserve "states' rights."[23]

Douglas W. Kennard, a Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the Houston Graduate School of Theology, wrote with regard to Christian reconstructionism, that Christians of non-Calvinist traditions, such as some "Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, [and] Orthodox", would be "under threat of capital punishment as fostered by the extreme Theonomist."[24] On the other hand, Ligon Duncan has stated that "Roman Catholics to Episcopalians to Presbyterians to Pentecostals", as well as "Arminian and Calvinist, charismatic and non-charismatic, high Church and low Church traditions are all represented in the broader umbrella of Reconstructionism (often in the form of the "Christian America" movement)."[25]

Influence on the Christian right in general
See also: Dominionism

Although it has a relatively small number of self-described adherents, Christian reconstructionism has played a role in promoting the trend toward explicitly Christian politics in the larger American Christian right.[26][page needed] This is the wider trend to which some critics refer, generally, as dominionism. Also, they allegedly have an amount of influence which is disproportionate to their numbers among advocates of the growth of the Christian homeschooling movement and other Christian education movements that seek independence from the direct oversight or support of the civil government. Because their numbers are so small compared to their influence, they are sometimes accused of being secretive and conspiratorial.[27][28]

In Matthew 28:18, Jesus says, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." This verse is seen as an announcement by Jesus that he has assumed authority over all earthly authority. In that light, some theologians interpret the Great Commission as a command to exercise that authority in his name, bringing all things (including societies and cultures) into subjection under his commands. Rousas Rushdoony, for example, interpreted the Great Commission as a republication of the "creation mandate",[29] referring to Genesis 1:28

Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing...

For Rushdoony, the idea of dominion implied a form of Christian theocracy or, more accurately, a theonomy. For example, he wrote that:

The purpose of Christ's coming was in terms of the creation mandate… The redeemed are called to the original purpose of man, to exercise dominion under God, to be covenant-keepers, and to fulfil "the righteousness of the law" (Rom. 8:4)… Man is summoned to create the society God requires.[30]

Elsewhere he wrote:

The man who is being progressively sanctified will inescapably sanctify his home, school, politics, economics, science, and all things else by understanding and interpreting all things in terms of the word of God.[31]

Many evangelical Christians of all types have embraced Christian Reconstructionism in part or in whole. Evangelical leaders who endorsed it explicitly or implicitly include Jerry Falwell Sr., Bill Gothard, Jay Grimstead, D. James Kennedy, Tim LaHaye, Doug Phillips, Howard Phillips, Pat Robertson, Francis Schaeffer, and Wayne Whitehead. Gothard and the two Phillipses, for example, used Christian Reconstructionism to build the evangelical homeschooling community of the 1970s and 1980s. Robertson and Kennedy hosted Rushdoony on their television programs, and Robertson also used dominionist language in his book, The Secret Kingdom, and in his 1988 presidential campaign.[32]

Grimstead, of the Coalition on Revival, summarized the position of many evangelical leaders: "'I don't call myself [a Reconstructionist],' but 'A lot of us are coming to realize that the Bible is God's standard of morality … in all points of history … and for all societies, Christian and non-Christian alike… It so happens that Rushdoony, Bahnsen, and North understood that sooner.' He added, 'There are a lot of us floating around in Christian leadership—James Kennedy is one of them—who don't go all the way with the theonomy thing, but who want to rebuild America based on the Bible.'"[33]

Christian critics

Michael Horton of Westminster Seminary California has warned against the seductiveness of power-religion. The Christian rhetoric of the movement is weak, he argues, against the logic of its authoritarian and legalistic program, which will always drive reconstructionism toward sub-Christian ideas about sin, and the perfectibility of human nature (such as to imagine that, if Christians are in power, they won't be inclined to do evil). On the contrary, Horton and others maintain, God's Law can, often has been, and will beput to evil uses by Christians and others, in the state, in churches, in the marketplace, and in families; and these crimes are aggravated, because to oppose a wrong committed through abuse of God's law, a critic must bear being labeled an enemy of God's law.[34]

J. Ligon Duncan of the Department of Systematic Theology of Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, warns that "Theonomy, in gross violation of biblical patterns and common sense, ignores the context of the giving of the law to the redemptive community of the Old Testament. This constitutes an approach to the nature of the civil law very different from Calvin and the rest of the Reformed tradition, which sees the civil law as God's application of his eternal standards to the particular exigencies of his people." Duncan rejects the reconstructionists' insistence that "the Old Testament civil case law is normative for the civil magistrate and government in the New Covenant era". He views their denial of the threefold distinction between moral, civil, and ceremonial law as representing one of the severe flaws in the reconstructionist hermeneutic.[35]

Professor Meredith Kline, whose own theology has influenced the method of several reconstructionist theologians, has adamantly maintained that reconstructionism makes the mistake of failing to understand the special prophetic role of biblical Israel, including the laws and sanctions, calling it "a delusive and grotesque perversion of the teachings of scripture."[36] Kline's student, Lee Irons, furthers the critique:

According to the Reformed theocrats apparently… the only satisfactory goal is that America become a Christian nation. Ironically... it is the wholesale rejection (not revival) of theocratic principles that is desperately needed today if the church is to be faithful to the task of gospel witness entrusted to her in the present age… It is only as the church… puts aside the lust for worldly influence and power – that she will be a positive presence in society.[37]

Rodney Clapp wrote that reconstructionism is an anti-democratic movement.[38][39]

In an April 2009 article in Christianity Today about theologian and writer Douglas Wilson, the magazine described reconstructionism as outside the 'mainstream' views of evangelical Christians. It also stated that it "borders on a call for outright theocracy".[40]

George M. Marsden, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, has remarked in Christianity Today that "Reconstructionism in its pure form is a radical movement". He also wrote, "[t]he positive proposals of Reconstructionists are so far out of line with American evangelical commitments to American republican ideals such as religious freedom that the number of true believers in the movement is small."[41]

Popular religious author, feminist, and former Roman Catholic nun, Karen Armstrong sees a potential for "fascism" in Christian reconstructionism, and sees the eventual Dominion envisioned by theologians R. J. Rushdoony and Gary North as "totalitarian. There is no room for any other view or policy, no democratic tolerance for rival parties, no individual freedom."[42]

Traditional Calvinist Christians have argued that Christian reconstructionists have "significantly misunderstood the positions of Calvin, other Reformed teachers and the Westminster Confession concerning the relationship between the Sinai covenant's ethical stipulations and the Christian obligation to the Mosaic judicial laws today."[13]

Relationship to dominionism

Some sociologists and critics refer to reconstructionism as a type of dominionism. These critics claim that the frequent use of the word dominion by reconstructionist writers, strongly associates the critical term dominionism with this movement. As an ideological form of dominionism, reconstructionism is sometimes held up as the most typical form of dominion theology.[26][page needed][27][43][page needed][28][44][page needed][45][page needed]

The Protestant theologian Francis Schaeffer is linked with the movement by some critics, but some reconstructionist thinkers are highly critical of his positions. Schaeffer himself disavowed any connection or affiliation with reconstructionism, though he did cordially correspond with Rushdoony on occasion.[46] Authors Sara Diamond and Fred Clarkson suggest that Schaeffer shared with reconstructionism the tendency toward dominionism.[27][43][page needed]

Christian reconstructionists[who?] object to the dominionism and the dominion theology labels, which they say misrepresent their views. Some separate Christian cultural and political movements object to being described with the label dominionism, because in their mind the word implies attachment to reconstructionism. In reconstructionism the idea of godly dominion, subject to God, is contrasted with the autonomous dominion of mankind in rebellion against God.

See also



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ADDENDUM
 by R.E. Slater
I could probably have red-highlighted the entire article below which I came across when looking for a fairly complete history of Christian Dominionism. As I read it I was appalled by how much was going on underneath the church's skirts hidden away from unwelcomed inquiry through the 1980s and 90s.

And yet, to the reading public held within the sanctums of Christian bookstores, at Christian colleges, and across Christian home schooling organizations, each-and-all were buying into the errant ideologies of the Christian Right hand-over-fist. All in plain sight, whether on the Christian book shelf, at the Christian pulpit, and across Christian media airwaves. A supplanting ideology of anathema being promoted by Pharisaical Wolves dressed up in sheep's clothing.
And where was my generation when all this was happening? Certainly not where we should have been on the front lines speaking up and defending the OT/NT faith of a God of love. Myself, I was actively ministering; serving the business community in the work-a-day-world; running youth  recreational teams and adult sport programs; serving our local school district - and later, serving area political, economic, and ecological organizations; raising a family; and overall, simply too busy to notice the evil which was seeping into my good faith gone bad by surreptitious "bible" scholars with sanctioned "Christian" Ph.D's written behind their names.
Such protagonists to the Church of God have shown themselves to be iron-hearted religionists working feverishly under their many secretive guises to raze God's church for a church unto-their-own-image. Idolatrous images not unlike what their historic Christian brethren have wrought through Christian ages past who willfully ruled Christian districts and states in shaming harm and unnecessary human suffering across both the church and society all in the name of Christ. Legislating, preaching, and writing severe legalistic dogmas supplanting God's church of love-and-ministry to the world with their own idea of what an anti-church should look like under their cruel ministerial rule in the name of a God of wrath and violence.
As the article below will show in stunning detail, Christian Dominionists (aka, Kingdom Reconstructionists) were actively building today's Trumpian Churches aligned with alt-Christian Supremacy groups and the anti-democratic Radical Right as seen in the present Republican party. But to those like myself, these wayward Christian "scholars" were wrong-headed right-from-the-start, having taken good biblical themes like "redemptive covenants formed by God with man to the salvation and healing of all" back upon themselves unto the bitter ends of a Christian-like Jihadism pretending love and peace yet all the while formenting evil across family, community, and democratic institutions of America.

These false prophets and teachers are the ones we are to oppose and stand against. We, who follow Jesus, do testify to the Jesus faith of love in every way possible across every structure of mankind. We testify to a God of love whose love cannot be forced, coerced or legislated from anywhere except a Cross and upon the selfless sacrificial service of God's children. Amen? Yea, Verily, Amen!

R.E. Slater
February 10, 2022





CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTIONISM

Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence

by Frederick Clarkson
March 1, 1994