Dominion Theology: The Truth About the Christian Right's Bid for Power
Sara Diamond
The Christian Right's recentrole in delivering Congress to the Republicans
raises the question of just howmuch power the movement hopes to amass. Ralph
Reed of the Christian Coalitionsays repeatedly that his organization wants
nothing more than a representativevoice in government, "a place at the
table," as he puts its. Othermovement leaders are more sweeping in their
calls to make ours a Christian nation,a Kingdom of God on earth.
As we assess the ChristianRight's future prospects, the movement's political
theology is one big piece ofthe puzzle. Included in the movement are people
with diverse viewpoints on thedegree and means through which Christians ought
to "take dominion"over every aspect of society. The motto of the
secular Heritage Foundation,taken from the title of an influential
conservative book of the 1940s, is"ideas have consequences." Yet in
the past few years, with the growthin public awareness of the Christian
Right, the movement's variant forms ofdominion theology have attracted only
scant attention.
Most of the attention has comefrom a new crop of researchers working on the
Christian Right. Most of thesepeople are political liberals who seek to shore
up the prevailing"two-party" system by portraying their
opponents--in this case, thoseof the Right--as aberrations on the U.S.
political landscape. Liberals' writingabout the Christian Right's take-over
plans has generally taken the form ofconspiracy theory. Instead of analyzing
the subtle ways in which politicalideas take hold within movements and why,
the liberal conspiracy theorists usea guilt-by-association technique that
goes like this: We know that a particularChristian Right author or activist
has advocated bad ideas, like killing queersor forming armed militias. Then
we look to see who else appears in proximity tothe offender on organizational
letterhead stationary or on the speakers list atmovement conferences. This
approach may indicate the degree of tolerance ofextremist views within a
given network of the broader Christian Right movement.But the approach
implies that ideas are somehow contagious: If someone serveson a board of
advisors with someone else, they must think similarly andtherefore be likely
to behave similarly. This is the approach the Right hasused to red-bait the
civil rights movement, the New Left and, recently, theenvironmental movement.
Conspiracy theorizing about theChristian Right's supposedly "secret&
quot; agenda involves highlightingthe hate-mongering and bizarre ideas of a
handful of Christian Right playerswhile neglecting the broad popularity of
dominion theology. There are a varietyof ideological tendencies within the
Christian Right. At the truly extreme endof the spectrum is a set of ideas
proponents call reconstructionism, associatedwith only a small number of
think tanks and book publishers. Many ChristianRight activists have never
even heard of reconstructionism, whose advocatescall for the imposition of an
Old Testament style theocracy, complete withcapital punishment for offenses
including adultery, homosexuality, and blasphemy
.
Sects and Schisms
More prevalent on the ChristianRight is the Dominionist idea, shared by
Reconstructionists, that Christiansalone are Biblically mandated to occupy
all secular institutions until Christreturns--and there is no consensus on
when that might be. Dominionist thinkingprecludes coalitions between
believers and unbelievers, which is why manyChristian rightists will have a
hard time compromising with some of the verysame Republicans they recently
helped elect. The idea of taking dominion oversecular society gained
widespread currency with the 1981 publication ofevangelical philosopher
Francis Schaeffer's book A Christian Manifesto. Thebook sold 290,000 copies
in its first year, and it remains one of themovement's most frequently cited
texts. Schaeffer, who died of cancer in 1984,was a product of the internecine
conflicts that split the Presbyterian churchduring the 1930s and 1940s.
Schaeffer was allied with the stridentanti-Communist leader Rev. Carl
McIntire who headed the fundamentalist AmericanCouncil of Christian Churches.
Later Schaeffer joined an anti-McIntire factionthat, after several name
changes, merged into the Presbyterian Church inAmerica. (A related
denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, is themilieu out of which
convicted killer Paul Hill developed his justifications forkilling
abortionists.) In the 1960s and 1970s, Schaeffer and his wife Edith rana
retreat center in Switzerland, where young American "Jesus freaks&
quot;came to study the Bible and learn how to apply Schaeffer's dominion
theology tothe political scene back home.
In A Christian Manifesto, Schaeffer'sargument is simple. The United States
began as a nation rooted in Biblicalprinciples. But as society became more
pluralistic, with each new wave ofimmigrants, proponents of a new philosophy
of secular humanism gradually cameto dominate debate on policy issues. Since
humanists place human progress, notGod, at the center of their
considerations, they pushed American culture in allmanner of ungodly
directions, the most visible results of which includedlegalized abortion and
the secularization of the public schools. At the end ofA Christian Manifesto,
Schaeffer calls for Christians to use civil disobedienceto restore Biblical
morality, which explains Schaeffer's popularity with groupslike Operation
Rescue. Randall Terry has credited Schaeffer as a majorinfluence in his life.
In the 1980s, some of theyounger men Schaeffer influenced joined a group
called the Coalition on Revival(COR), founded by Jay Grimstead. Grimstead, a
veteran of the old Young Lifemissionary group, had decided that evangelicals
were insufficiently literalistin their reading of the Bible. Grimstead
founded COR with two purposes. One wasto unify pastors who differed on
questions of "eschatology," which isthe study of the end-times and
the question of when Christ will return. Mostevangelicals have held the
pre-millennial belief that Christ will return beforea 1,000 year reign by
believers. Grimstead and others in COR arepost-millennialists who believe
their job is establish the kingdom of God onearth now; Christ will return
only after Christians have been in charge for1,000 years. COR's second
purpose, consistent with post-millennialism, was thedevelopment of position
papers, called "world view documents," on howto apply dominion
theology to Christian Right activism in more than a dozenspheres of social
life, including education, economics, law, and evenentertainment.
Much of the liberal writing ondominion theology and Reconstructionism has
focused on COR as headquarters fora conspiracy to take over society.
Grimstead and his colleagues advocatedrunning stealth candidates in selected
counties as early as 1986. But in recentyears, COR has served as little more
than a clearinghouse for Grimstead'sposition papers. As an organization, COR
is largely inactive. Like the MoralMajority of the early 1980s, COR was a
network of pastors, all busy with theirown projects.
If COR had any effect, though,it was in reinforcing ideas about taking
dominion. The 100 or so movementleaders in COR each signed a "covenant&
quot; statement affirming theircommitment to the idea that Christians should
take dominion over all fields ofsecular society. Only a few of COR's steering
committee members were hard coreReconstructionists. Most of the
Reconstructionists are too hair-splittinglysectarian to want to associate
with COR's diverse crew of pentecostalcharismatics and fundamental Baptists.
The Reconstructionists aretheologically committed to Calvinism. They shy away
from the Baptists' loudpreaching and the Pentecostals' wild practices of
speaking in tongues, healingand delivering prophecies. To secular readers,
the minutiae of who believeswhat--or which group of characters likes to dance
on one foot--might seemtrivial. But some of the details and divisions of
Christian Right theology arepolitically relevant.
As Above, So Below
Reconstructionism is the mostintellectually grounded, though esoteric, brand
of dominion theology. Itsleading proponent has been Rousas John (R.J.)
Rushdoony, an obscure figurewithin the Christian Right. Born in 1916, the son
of Armenian immigrants to theU.S., Rushdoony looks like an Old Testament
patriarch with his white hair andbeard. At a young age Rushdoony was strongly
influenced by WestminsterTheological Seminary professor Cornelius Van Til, a
Dutch theologian whoemphasized the inerrant authority of the Bible and the
irreconcilabilitybetween believers and unbelievers. A recent issue of
Rushdoony's monthlyChalcedon Report noted his Armenian background. Since the
year 320, everygeneration of the Rushdoony family has produced a Christian
priest or minister."There was Armenian royalty in the Rushdoony blood,
and a heritage ofdefending the faith, often by sword and gun, against Godless
foes bent ondestroying a people of faith and works
With that auspicious heritage,Rushdoony founded the Chalcedon Foundation in
California in the mid-1960s. Oneof the Foundation's early associates was Gary
North who eventually married Rushdoony'sdaughter. North had been active
within secular libertarian and anti-Communistorganizations, particularly
those with an anti-statist bent.
Rushdoony and North had afalling out and ceased collaboration years ago.
North started his own thinktank, the Institute for Christian Economics in
Tyler, Texas. Rushdoony, North,and about a half dozen other reconstructionist
writers have published countlessbooks and journals advocating
post-millennialism and "theonomy" orthe application of God's law to
all spheres of everyday life. In his rhetoricalcrusades against secular
humanists and against most other Christians, North isfond of saying "You
can't beat something with nothing."
North has geared his writingfor popular audiences; some of his books are
available in Christian bookstores. Rushdoony's writing is more turgid and
also more controversial. It wasRushdoony's seminal 1973 tome The Institutes
of Biblical Law that articulatedReconstructionists' vision of a theocracy in
which Old Testament law would bereinstated in modern society. Old Testament
law classified a wide range of sinsas punishable by death; these included not
only murder and rape but alsoadultery, incest, homosexuality, witchcraft,
incorrigible delinquency by youth,and even blasphemy. In the
Reconstructionists' vision of a millennial or"kingdom" society,
there would be only local governments; there wouldbe no central
administrative state to collect property taxes, nor to provideeducation or
other welfare services.
Aside from Rushdoony and North,Reconstructionism boasts only a few other
prolific writers. These include Dr.Greg Bahnsen, Rev. Joseph Morecraft, David
Chilton, Gary DeMar, and KennethGentry, none of whom are major figures within
the Christian Right. They arequoted more often in liberal reports than in the
Christian Right's own literature.
The unabashed advocacy of aChristian theocracy has insured a limited
following for the most explicit ofthe Reconstructionists, who have also been
sectarian in their sharp criticismof evangelicals. North, for example, has
published a series of attacks onbelievers in the pre-millennial version of
when Christ will come back.
Perhaps even more than thepunitive legal code they propose, it is the
Reconstructionists' religion ofCalvinism that makes them unlikely to appeal
to most evangelicals. Calvinism isthe by now almost archaic belief that God
has already preordained every singlething that happens in the world. Most
importantly, even one's own salvation orcondemnation to hell is already a
done deal as far as God is concerned. By thisphilosophical scheme, human will
is not involved in changing the course ofhistory. All that is left for the &
quot;righteous" to do is to play outtheir pre- ordained role, including
their God-given right to dominate everyone else.
Calvinism arose in Europecenturies ago in part as a reaction to Roman
Catholicism's heavy emphasis onpriestly authority and on salvation through
acts of penance. One of the classicworks of sociology, Max Weber's Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,links the rise of Calvinism to the needs
of budding capitalists to judge theirown economic success as a sign of their
preordained salvation. The risingpopularity of Calvinism coincided with the
consolidation of the capitalisteconomic system. Calvinists justified their
accumulation of wealth, even at theexpense of others, on the grounds that
they were somehow destined to prosper.It is no surprise that such notions
still find resonance within the ChristianRight which champions capitalism and
all its attendant inequalities.
The hitch comes in theCalvinists' unyielding predestinarianism, the
cornerstone of Reconstructionismand something at odds with the world view of
evangelical Christians. Last fallin Sacramento some of the local
Reconstructionists held their annualReformation Bible Conference,
co-sponsored by the Covenant Reformed Church andthe Chalcedon Foundation. The
theme of the weekend was Christian"apologetics," meaning defense of
the faith against heretical enemiesof all stripes.
The problem is thatevangelicals (a category including pentecostal
charismatics and fundamentalBaptists) believe that God's will works in
conjunction with free human will.They believe that salvation is not by the
grace of God only but by the faith ofindividual believers who freely choose
to surrender to Jesus. In fact, thecornerstone of the Western religions is
the view that God's will and human willwork together. Evangelicals believe
strongly that humans freely choose sin or salvationand that those already
converted have the duty to go out and offer the choicethey have made to
others. Calvinism, in contrast, undercuts the wholemotivation for missionary
work, and it is the missionary zeal to redeem sinnersthat motivates much of
the Christian Right's political activism. Calvinism isan essentially reckless
doctrine. If God has already decided what's going tohappen, then the
Dominionists do not have to take responsibility for theiractions. (They can
kill abortion doctors "knowing" it is the rightthing to do.)
Evangelicals, even those on the Right, still believe they asindividuals are
capable of error. Furthermore, the Calvinist Reconstructionistslook askance
at the other key draw of evangelical churches, the experiential dimension.The
Calvinists sing staid songs, read the Bible and weighty theologicaltreatises.
What's going on, especially in the charismatic churche, is somethingelse.
There, Christians by the thousands are flocking to wild faith
healingextravaganzas where people shout and cry and fall on the floor because
they are"slain in the spirit." The latest trend is called &
quot;holylaughter" whereby the Holy Spirit supposedly leads crowds to
roll on thefloor laughing uncontrollably, sometimes for hours. This kind of
stuff ishappening in churches all over the country--often televised for the
ChristianTV networks--with the backing of prominent evangelical leaders. Some
criticshave condemned the eccentric antics but they miss the point that
people go tochurch not to read books but to experience something
extraordinary. Many get asimilar high from joining a political crusade. Large
numbers of politicallyactive evangelicals are not going to want to sit still
for boring philosophicallectures on how their personal experiences don't
matter in the face ofpre-ordained reality.
The Founding Fathers Said So
They do sit still, by thethousands, for David Barton of WallBuilders, Inc.
From a place called Aledo,Texas, Barton has successfully mass marketed a
version of dominion theologythat has made his lectures, books, and tapes
among the hottest properties inthe born-again business. With titles like The
Myth of Separation and America:to Pray or Not to Pray, Barton's pitch is
that, with the possible exception ofBenjamin Franklin, the Founding Fathers
were all evangelicals who intended tomake this a Christian nation.
Crowds of home schoolers andthe Christian Coalition go wild with applause for
Barton's performances. Withan overhead projector, he flashes slides of the
Founding Fathers and reels offselected quotes from them saying things like &
quot;only the righteous shallrule." For the years following the Supreme
Court's 1962 and 1963 decisionsagainst public school prayer, his charts and
graphs show statistical declines in SAT scores and rising rates of teenage
promiscuity, drug abuse, and other badbehavior. Apparently no one has ever
explained to Barton that a sequence ofunrelated events does not add up to a
cause and effect relationship.
Barton's bottom line is that only"the righteous" should occupy
public office. This is music to theears of Christian Right audiences. To
grasp Barton's brand of dominiontheology, unlike reconstructionism, one does
not need a seminary degree.Barton's pseudo history fills a need most
Americans have, to know more aboutour country's past. His direct linkage of
the deified Founding Fathers withcontemporary social problems cuts through
the evangelicals' theologicalsectarianism and unites them in a feasible
project. They may not be able totake dominion over the whole earth or even
agree about when Jesus will return,but they sure can go home and back a godly
candidate for city council, or runthemselves. Barton tells his audiences that
they personally have an importantrole to play in history, and that is what
makes his dominion theology popular.
To Rule and Reign
But Barton's message flies inthe face of the Christian Coalition's public
claims about wanting only its fairshare of political power. In his new book
Politically Incorrect, Coalitiondirector Ralph Reed writes: "What do
religious conservatives really want?They want a place at the table in the
conversation we call democracy. Theircommitment to pluralism includes a place
for faith among the many othercompeting interests in society." Yet the
Coalition's own nationalconvention last September opened with a plenary
speech by Rev. D. James Kennedywho echoed the Reconstructionist line when he
said that "true Christiancitizenship" includes a cultural mandate
to "take dominion over allthings as vice-regents of God."
Who is telling the truth aboutthe Christian Right's bid for power, Ralph
Reed, or the popular Dominionistswho speak at Christian Coalition gatherings?
Liberal critics of the ChristianRight would have us believe that Reed and Pat
Robertson are just plain lyingwhen they say they want to work hand-in-hand,
like good pluralists, withnon-Christians in government. To bolster the &
quot;stealth" thesis,liberals have to resort to conspiracy theory:
Barton and Kennedy spoke at theconference, so Reed must secretly agree with
them.
A better explanation is that the Christian Right, likeother mass movements,
is a bundle of internal contradictions which workthemselves out in the course
of real political activism. Ideas have consequences,but ideas also have
causes, rooted in interests and desires. The ChristianRight is in a state of
tension and flux over its own mission. Part movement toresist and roll back
even moderate change, part reactionary wing of prevailingRepublicanism. The
Christian Right wants to take dominion and collaborate withthe existing
political-economic system, at the same time. Liberal critics, whoalso endorse
the ruling system, can recognize only the Christian Right'stakeover
dimension. Radicals can see that the dominion project is dangerousbecause it
is, in part, business as usual.
