The Roots of Dominionism

The Roots of Dominionism

Christian Reconstructionism is a form of theocratic dominion theology. Its leaders challenged evangelicals across a wide swath of theological beliefs to engage in a more muscular and activist form of political participation. The core theme of dominion theology is that the Bible mandates Christians to take over and "occupy" secular institutions.

A number of Christian Right leaders read what the Christian Reconstructionists were writing, and they adopted the idea of taking dominion over the secular institutions of the United States as the "central unifying ideology" of their social movement. They decided to gain political power through the Republican Party.

This does not mean most Christian Right leaders became Christian Reconstructionists. It does mean they were influenced by dominion theology. But they were influenced in a number of different ways, and some promote the theocratic aspects more militantly than others.

It helps to see the terms dominionism, dominion theology, and Christian Reconstructionism as distinct and not interchangeable. While all Christian Reconstructionists are dominionists, not all dominionists are Christian Reconstructionists.

A nested subset chart looks like this:

• Triumphalism
  • Dominionism
    • Dominion Theology
      • Theonomy
        • Christian Reconstructionism

The specific meanings are different in important ways, although the terms have been used in a variety of conflicting ways in popular articles, especially on the Internet.

A number of us who study these matters prefer to call Christian Reconstructionism a form of "Dominion Theology" while the broader tendency we call "Dominionism." Some people call Christian Reconstructionism

In its generic sense, dominionism is a very broad political tendency within the Christian Right. It ranges from soft to hard versions in terms of its theocratic impulse. It has come to include both postmillennialists and premillennialists.

Soft Dominionists are Christian nationalists. They believe that Biblically-defined immorality and sin breed chaos and anarchy. They fear that America's greatness as God's chosen land has been undermined by liberal secular humanists, feminists, and homosexuals. Purists want litmus tests for issues of abortion, tolerance of gays and lesbians, and prayer in schools. Their vision has elements of theocracy, but they stop short of calling for supplanting the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Hard Dominionists believe all of this, but they want the United States to be a Christian theocracy. For them the Constitution and Bill of Rights are merely addendums to Old Testament Biblical law. They claim that Christian men with specific theological beliefs are ordained by God to run society. Christians and others who do not accept their theological beliefs would be second-class citizens. This sector includes Christian Reconstructionists, but it has a growing number of adherents in the leadership of the Christian Right.

It makes more sense to reserve the term "dominion theology" to describe specific theological currents, while using the term "dominionism" in a generic sense to discuss a tendency toward aggressive political activism by Christians who claim they are mandated by God to take over society. Even then, we need to locate the subject of our criticisms on a scale that ranges from soft to hard versions of dominionism.

End Times Beliefs

The theological differences among a variety of forms of Christian End Times beliefs complicate matters. The Christian Reconstructionists urged a broader range of Christians to embrace "Dominonism."

Christian Reconstructionists are "postmillennialists" in terms of End Times beliefs. Generic Dominionists include both postmillennialists and premillennialists. The three major sectors of Christian End Times beliefs are:

Postmillennialists -- 

Premillennialists --

Amillennialists/Preterists

More on this later.

An excellent inventory of these beliefs put together by Christian activists who prefer one particular variety is at Ark Haven. While they consider beliefs that conflict with their own as forms of heresy, their research is excellent and they have strived to provide accurate and fair descriptions of the many different tendencies.

Different Sectors

Crafting an appropriate response depends on what sector of the Christian Right we are criticizing:

Christian Conservatives - They play by the rules of a democratic republic, and so our response should be to develop better ideas and carry out better grassroots organizing campaigns.

Christian Nationalists - They erode pluralism, and we must defend separation of church and state, but also engage in a discussion of the legitimate boundaries when religious beliefs intersect with participation in a secular civil society.

Christian Theocrats - They want to replace democracy with an authoritarian theocratic society run by a handful of Christian men. They seek to supersede the Constitution and Bill of Rights with Old Testament Biblical law. We must oppose them and not give an inch in our defense of democracy against theocracy.

In the Christian Right, more leaders than followers have consciously embraced dominionist ideas. The tendency toward a "dominionist impulse," however, has continued to become more widespread since the 1970s, making a discussion of theocracy not only legitimate, but necessary. Conscious or unconscious--dominionism is a real threat to democracy.

Generic Dominionism and Specific Dominion Theologies

Author Bruce Barron warned of a growing "dominionist impulse" among evangelicals in his 1992 book Heaven on Earth? The Social & Political Agendas of Dominion Theology. Barron, with a Ph.D. in American religious history, is also an advocate of Christian political participation, and has worked with conservative Christian evangelicals and elected officials. Barron is smart, courteous, and not someone you would debate without doing a whole boatload of homework. Disrespect him at your own risk.

Barron is worried by the aggressive, intolerant, and confrontational aspects of dominion theology; and is especially concerned that these ideas have seeped into the broader Christian evangelical community. Dominion theology is not a version of Christianity with which Barron is comfortable.

In his book, Barron looks at two theological currents: Christian Reconstructionism and Kingdom Now, and explains that "Many observers have grouped them together under the more encompassing rubric of 'dominion theology.'" Christian Reconstructionism evolved out of the writings of R.J. Rushdoony; while Kingdom Now theology emerged from the ministry of Earl Paulk.

"While differing from Reconstructionism in many ways, Kingdom Now shares the belief that Christians have a mandate to take dominion over every area of life," explains Barron. And it is just this tendency that has spread through evangelical Protestantism, resulting in the emergence of "various brands of 'dominionist' thinkers in contemporary American evangelicalism," according to Barron.

The distinction is crucial. Dominion theology (Christian Reconstructionism, Kingdom Now, and a handful of smaller theologies), has generated a variety of versions or "brands" of "dominionism" adopted by a number of leaders in the Christian Right who would not describe themselves as "dominionist;" and most certainly would reject the theological tenets promulgated by a "dominion theology" such as Christian Reconstructionism.

Beginning in the 1960s, and gathering force in the 1970s, the "dominionist impulse" rode along a wave of discontent among evangelicals and fundamentalists. They were upset with secular society, especially federal court decisions and government legislation and regulations they felt intruded too far into the personal--and religious--life. Their concern over social, cultural, and political issues involving pornography, school prayer, abortion, and homosexuality prompted participation in national elections since the 1970s.

This social movement of conservative Christian evangelicals was mobilized by the Christian Right, who joined with ultraconservative political operatives to take over the Republican Party. In this coalition, there are a wide variety of theological tendencies and disputes that are temporarily set aside in favor of organizing to achieve a specific political agenda. This coalition also sets aside disputes over how the End Times of biblical prophecy play out. This means that the primarily "postmillennialist" Christian Reconstructionists work on projects with the primarily "premillennialist" evangelical constituency of the Christian Right.

Open advocates of dominionism declare that "America is a Christian Nation," and that therefore Christians have a God-given mandate to re-assert Christian control over political, social, and cultural institutions. Yet many dominionists stop short of staking out a position that could be called theocratic. This is the "soft" version of dominionism.

The "hard" version of dominionism is explicitly theocratic or "theonomic," as the Christian Reconstructionists prefer to be called. For America, it is a distinction without a difference. According to Barron, "Unlike the Christian Right, Reconstructionism is not simply or primarily a political movement; it is first and foremost an educational movement fearlessly proclaiming an ideology of total world transformation." Barron also "observed a discomforting triumphalism within dominion theology, especially its takeover rhetoric." In this usage, "triumphalism" simply means when it comes to religions belief, it's my way or the highway. One God, one religion, one folk, one nation--a Christian Nation--love it or leave it.

Barron notes that Christian Reconstructionism has "intellectual substance, internal coherence, and heavy dependence on Scripture," and this has helped "Reconstructionist philosophy win a hearing in many sectors of the Christian Right." For example, Barron found the "idea of Christian dominion, though with less emphasis on biblical law, has been echoed within the Charismatic movement, that segment of American Christianity identified by its free-spirited, demonstrative worship and its practice of spiritual gifts such as tongue speaking and prophecy."

One well-known Charismatic preacher is Pat Robertson, who reaches millions of viewers weekly through his "700 Club" television program. "Robertson's explicit emphasis on the need to restore Christians to leadership roles in American society mirrors what" Barron called, "a dominionist impulse in contemporary evangelicalism."

Who is a dominionist?

Barron argued that "in the context of American evangelical efforts to penetrate and transform public life, the distinguishing mark of a dominionist is a commitment to defining and carrying out an approach to building society that is self-consciously defined as exclusively Christian, and dependent specifically on the work of Christians, rather than based on a broader consensus."

Around World War II it was the sentiment of many evangelical Protestants in the United States that they needed to find a way to co-exist with an increasingly pluralistic society, and thus they began to self-identify as "evangelicals" to distinguish themselves from the more doctrinaire and intolerant wing of "fundamentalism."

Barron believes that the "all-encompassing agenda" of the dominionists "puts them at odds with those more moderate evangelicals who work for social change yet still affirm the pluralistic nature of a society in which all ideas--be they Christian or anti-Christian, derived from or opposed to biblical law--have an equal right to be heard and to compete for public acceptance."

So evangelicals can work for conservative social change without being "dominionist," and some can be our allies in building broad opposition to dominionism as an impulse in the Christian Right. This is aided in part by an intractable contradiction among practitioners of hard forms of dominion theology.

As Sara Diamond explains, ultimately, "Dominionist thinking precludes coalitions between believers and unbelievers...." This creates an irresolvable contradictory tension. "The Christian Right wants to take dominion," notes Diamond, but it also wants to work within "the existing political-economic system, at the same time." The broader the Christian Right stretches as an electoral coalition, the more obvious it becomes that some of its key leaders want a theocracy rather than a democracy. Hard-line dominionists want to overthrow the existing political-economic system and replace it with a theocracy. That's a real hard sell to most of our neighbors.

In the United States today, there is a struggle between democracy and theocracy--as Fred Clarkson so aptly puts it in the title of his book. This is obvious to many of us, perhaps, but it is largely being ignored by the mainstream media and most Christian evangelicals. This is a wedge issue that can only be effective if we learn how to distinguish among the many different theological, political,

organizational, and other aspects of Christian belief and political participation. Using terms such as "dominionism" and "theocracy" in a cautious and careful way allows us to broaden the conversation, and broaden the coalition that seeks to defend the dream of democracy against the nightmare of theocracy.

The Christian Right

Putting the Christian Right in its proper place in the political spectrum as a component of the broader U.S. Political Right is an important step in developing an effective response. This also allows us to evaluate the threat posed by domininionist and theocratic tendencies in the Christian Right. Some people see this better when presented in outline of chart form, so this entry in the series is constructed along those lines.

The Christian Right is a series of social movements with participants that have been mobilized into political participation through the Republican Party as part of a larger set of coalitions that include social conservatives, moral traditionalists, neoconservatives, militarists, etc. The Republican Party and the Christian Right, however, represent just a portion of the entire spectrum of the U.S. Political Right, so we provide a full chart of these sectors below.

The Christian Right plays multiple roles in the political system: as a social movement made up of people with shared grievances; a political movement with a specific set of electoral and legislation goals on the federal and state level; and a coalition partner in conservative politics.

Christian Right: Multiple Roles in Political System:

• Social Movement
• Political Movement
• Coalition Partner

The Christian Right itself is made up of different sectors that exist in a coalition that may seem monolithic, but which actually has fracture points where wedge issues can be developed as part of an effective counter-strategy.

Christian Right: Multiple Internal Sectors:

• Christian Conservatives
• Christian Nationalists
• Christian Theocrats

Within the Christian Right, it is primarily the Christian Nationalists and Christian Theocrats who pursue a type of dominionism that has theocratic aspects. The degree of dominionist authoritarianism varies by sector. Christian Reconstructionism is the major theopolitical ideology behind Hard Dominionism, but it is a subset of it. So there are nested subsets.

All Hard Dominionist Christian Theocrats are also Soft Dominionist Christian Nationalists, but not all Soft Dominionist Christian Nationalists are Hard Dominionist Christian Theocrats.

All Christian Reconstructionists are Hard Dominionist Christian Theocrats and Christian Nationalists, but not all Hard Dominionist Christian Theocrats are Christian Reconstructionists.

Whew!

Degree of dominionist authoritarianism:

• Soft Dominionist - Christian Nationalists
  • Hard Dominionist - Christian Theocrats
    • Christian Reconstructionist

Dominionists of all varieties can also have a complicated mix of attributes. These include the theology and style of religious practice; and the view of biblical End Times prophecy.

Theology and style of religious practice:

• Protestant
  • Mainstream Protestant denominations (Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran)
  • Evangelicals
  • Fundamentalists
  • Charismatics
  • Pentacostals
• Roman Catholic
• Orthodox

View of biblical End Times prophecy:

• Postmillennialists
• Premillennialists
• Amillennialists

The Christian Right is just one of several sectors that comprise the Political Right in the United States. The chart below shows where it fits, dividing the Christian Right into hard and soft dominionists. Christian Conservatives are the bridge between the Secular Right and the Dominionists and Theocrats, but it is a weak bridge. Christian Conservatives are listed in the Chart below as part of the Religious Right.

See: Chart of Sectors of the U.S. Political Right

This all may seem overwhelming at first, but in a nation where many people have elaborate systems for tracking sports scores or soap opera plots, it is a reasonable expectation that people who want to successfully challenge dominionists and theocrats can walk up the learning curve and appreciate the view from the top.

Biblical Prophecy and the End Times

The day after Christmas, Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind Prophecy Club" sent out its daily e-mail message with a 2005 "Year in Review" summary The teaser stated: "Are we living in the End Times? Could events of today signify that the Rapture and Tribulation could occur during our generation? Five important Signs from 2005 say yes!"

• Devastating natural disasters foreshadow the coming of Christ.
• The Jewish population converges in Israel to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem.
• A union between Europe and Iraq could set the stage for the emergence of the Antichrist.
• Islamic extremists lash out with London bombings and France riots.
• Putin consolidates power in Russia, as the empire rebuilds.

In the text that follows, we learn that "events in Russia are exactly what we should expect to see if we are nearing the end times....the rule of the Antichrist may not be too far behind...[the] Bible prophesies that the city of Babylon will be rebuilt as headquarters for the antichrist. Babylon lies on the Euphrates River, just 50 miles south of Baghdad."

We also are told that "...continued tensions may make Israel ripe for a covenant with the Antichrist," and that the "ancient Sanhedrin, the official legal tribunal in Israel...issued an official call to rebuild the temple [of Solomon in Jerusalem], an act that God's Word predicts must occur before the return of the Messiah."

Meanwhile, natural disasters may be "a foreshadowing of the overwhelming chaos that is to transpire during the tribulation, prompting many to repent before it's too late."

That last piece of advice is what the Left Behind series is all about. It is future narrative devoted to encouraging current salvation through a particular premillennial reading of the Bible. It's not enough to be a Christian, you must embrace a narrow and specific version of Christianity. Otherwise, you are not just going to Hell, but you will be persecuted and maybe tortured and murdered as well.

That's the basic theme of the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The 13 volumes have sold some 70 million copies, regularly hitting best seller lists. As pop theology, the messages of the series and the Left Behind Prophecy Club are troubling, but as popular political ideology, they are dangerous.

As part of its sales pitch for a subscription service, we are told that "The Left Behind Prophecy Club has the news you need to know" about:

• Islamic Terrorism
• Middle East Peace Process
• The War in Iraq
• Europe's Power Struggle
• Natural Disasters

The way these current events are woven into a discussion of Biblical prophecy creates frames of reference that help move people toward specific political viewpoints, not just concerning U.S. policies in the Middle East, but also about domestic issues.

Central to this process is a particular way of reading the Bible's book of Revelation that establishes a timetable and sequence of events for the End Times and the Tribulations that are related to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

According to polling by Barna research, "nearly nine out of ten evangelicals who believe in the end times (88%) maintain that is it very likely that Jesus will return during the last days, and 77% of born agains who believe in the end times indicated the same."

Tim LaHaye has spent decades melding his conspiracy theory of history into the End Times beliefs of evangelicals. In his 1980 non-fiction book The Battle for the Mind, LaHaye added a conspiracist theme to the critique of secular humanism put forward by popular theologian Francis A. Schaeffer, a conservative Christian evangelical. LaHaye dedicated the book to Schaeffer.

In a chapter entitled "Is a Humanist Tribulation Necessary?" LaHaye writes that the "seven-year tribulation period will be a time that features the rule of the anti-Christ over the world." LaHaye explains that this "tribulation is predestined and will surely come to pass." LaHaye, however, describes another period of tribulations that he calls the "pre-tribulation tribulation."

LaHaye, explains that the "pre-tribulation tribulation is:

"...the tribulation that will engulf this country if liberal secular humanists are permitted to take control of our government--it is neither predestined nor necessary. But it will deluge the entire land in the next few years, unless Christians are willing to become much more assertive in defense of morality and decency than they have been during the past three decades."

According to LaHaye, adultery, pornography, and homosexuality "are rampant" and this is evidence of the warning by Schaeffer's "that humanism always leads to chaos." In the Left Behind series, LaHaye and Jenkins write about the spread of humanist moral relativism in the forms of the feminist movement, abortion, and homosexuality. The Left Behind series takes the conspiracist themes of LaHaye's non-fiction books and spreads them through a huge audience.

The apocalyptic frames and conspiracist narratives in the Left Behind series are a form of "fiction explicitly intended to teach," according to author Gershom Gorenberg, who warns:

"Inspiration is part of the appeal. Subliminally, so is the all-encompassing paradigm the books offer for understanding the world. Here's how the global economy (which may have cost me my job or halved my retirement savings) works. Here's what lies behind debate over abortion or foreign policy. Some people serve God, and some serve falsehood. Here's why a believing Christian can feel left out: Today's society is controlled by evil. And here's why cataclysmic war between the forces of good and the axis of evil is inevitable."

The LaHaye conspiracy theory about secular humanism provides a powerful theological justification for Christians to establish "dominion" over sinful secular society.

Bibliography

Ammerman, Nancy T. 1991. “North American Protestant Fundamentalism.” In Fundamentalisms Observed, The Fundamentalism Project 1, eds., Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991).

Armstrong, Karen. [2000] 2001. The Battle for God. New York: Ballantine Books.

Barron, Bruce. 1992. Heaven on Earth? The Social & Political Agendas of Dominion Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Boyer, Paul S. 1992. When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/Harvard University Press.

Clarkson, Fred. 1997. Eternal Hostility: The Struggle between Theocracy and Democracy. Monroe, ME: Common Courage.Clarkson, Fred. 1997.

Diamond, Sara. 1989. Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right. Boston: South End Press.

Diamond, Sara. 1995. Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States. New York: Guilford Press.

Diamond, Sara. 1996. Facing the Wrath: Confronting the Right in Dangerous Times. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press.

Diamond, Sara. 1998. Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right. New York: Guilford Press.

Diamond, Sara.“Dominion Theology,” Z Magazine, February 1995, online archive.

Fuller, Robert C. 1995. Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession. New York: Oxford University Press.

Goldberg, Michelle. 2006. Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. New York: W.W. Norton.

Herman, Didi. 1997. The Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the Christian Right. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Durham, Martin. 2000. The Christian Right, the Far Right and the Boundaries of American Conservatism. Manchester: Manchester University.

Kaplan, Esther. 2004. With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush’s White House. New York: The New Press.

Martin, William. 1996. With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America. New York: Broadway Books.

Mason, Carol. 2002. Killing for Life: The Apocalyptic Narrative of Pro-Life Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Pierard, Richard V. and Robert Dean Linder. 1988. Civil Religion & the Presidency. Grand Rapids, Mich: Academie Books.

Ribuffo, Leo P. 1983. The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Sharlet, Jeff. 2008. The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. New York, NY: HarperCollins. 

Sine, Tom. 1995. Cease Fire: Searching for Sanity in America’s Culture Wars. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

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More background articles on the roots of Dominionism:

Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That's Undermining Democracy

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[editor's note:] Author Chip Berlet was co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements and a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism and the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Originally posted onAlternet.org.

Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That's Undermining Democracy

Christian Right & Theocracy When Michelle Goldberg wrote “A Christian Plot for Domination?” for the Daily Beast she chose her terms carefully. The subhead stated “Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry aren't just devout—both have deep ties to a fringe fundamentalist movement known as Dominionism, which says Christians should rule the world.” Within hours both critics and supporters of Goldberg’s thesis littered the Internet with posts that drew no distinctions among the Christian Right, Dominionism, and Christian Reconstructionism. There are important differences, and this essay seeks to explain them. PRA takes no position on the 2012 elections, but we do take a position supporting the accurate use of language. PRA's definition since 2005: Dominionism: The theocratic idea that regardless of theological view or eschatological timetable, heterosexual Christian men are called by God to exercise dominion over secular society by taking control of political and cultural institutions. Competes in Christianity with the idea of Stewardship, which suggests custodial care rather than absolute power. Used here in the broader sense, some analysts use the word only to refer to forms and offshoots of Reconstructionism. Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That's Undermining Democracy Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin have all flirted with Christian Right Dominionism, but there's lots of misinformation about just what that means. Dominionists want to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States, a concept that was dismissed as eroding freedom and democracy by the founders of our country. Dominionism has become a major influence on the right-wing populist Tea Parties as Christian Right activists have flooded into the movement at the grassroots. At the same time, legitimate questions have been raised about whether or not potential Republican presidential nominees Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, or Sarah Palin have moved from a generic form of Christian Right Dominionism toward the more totalitarian form know as Dominion Theology. Clueless journalists and crafty Christian Right pundits have mocked the idea that Dominionism as a religiously motivated political tendency even exists. Scholars, however, have been writing about Dominionism for over a decade, some using the term directly, and others describing the tendency in other ways. Many articles on Dominionism can be found on Talk to Action, especially by authors Rachel Tabachnick, Bruce Wilson, Frederick Clarkson. Several of the authors who pioneered the discussion of Dominionism have written for the Public Eye Magazine. Dominionism is a broad political impulse within the Christian Right in the United States. It comes in a variety of forms that author Fred Clarkson and I call soft and hard. Fred and I probably coined the term "Dominionism" back in the 1990s, but in any case we certainly were the primary researchers who organized its use among journalists and scholars. Clarkson noted three characteristics that bridge both the hard and the soft kind of Dominionism. Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe the United States once was, and should again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy. Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity. Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, believing that the Ten Commandments, or "biblical law," should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles. At the apex of hard Dominionism is the religious dogma of Dominion Theology, with two major branches: Christian Reconstructionism and Kingdom Now theology. It is the latter's influence on the theopolitical movement called the New Apostolic Reformation that has been linked in published reports to potential Republican presidential nominees Perry, Bachmann or Palin. All three of these right-wing political debutantes have flirted with Christian Right Dominionism, but how far they have danced toward the influence of hard-right Dominion Theology is in dispute. It would be nice if some "mainstream" journalists actually researched the question. "While differing from Reconstructionism in many ways, Kingdom Now shares the belief that Christians have a mandate to take dominion over every area of life," explains religion scholar Bruce Barron. And it is just this tendency that has spread through evangelical Protestantism, resulting in the emergence of "various brands of `dominionist' thinkers in contemporary American evangelicalism," according to Barron. The most militant Dominion Theologists would silence dissenters and execute adulterers, homosexuals and recalcitrant children. No...seriously. OK, they would only be executed for repeated offenses, explain some defenders of Christian Reconstructionism. Even most Christian Right activists view the more militant Dominion Theologists as having really creepy ideas. Much of the controversy over the issue of Dominionism is caused by writers who use the term carelessly, often conflating the broad term Dominionism with the narrow term Dominion Theology. Some on the Left have implied that every conservative Christian evangelical is part of the Christian Right political movement; and that everyone in the Christian Right is an active Dominionist. This is false. Some critics even state that the Christian Right is neofascist. Few serious scholars of fascism agree with that assessment, although several admit that if triggered by a traumatic societal event, any contemporary right-wing populist movement could descend into neofascism. Advocates of Dominion Theology go beyond the democracy eroding theocracy of Dominionism into a totalitarian form of religious power called a "theonomy," in which pluralistic democracy and religious tolerance are seen as a problem to be solved by godly men carrying out God's will. Karen Armstrong calls Christian Reconstructionism "totalitarian" because it leaves "no room for any other view or policy, no democratic tolerance for rival parties, no individual freedom." Matthew N. Lyons and I call Christian Reconstructionism a "new form of clerical fascist politics," in our book Right-Wing Populism in America, because we see it echoing the religiously based clerical fascist movements that existed during World War II in countries including Romania and Hungary. According to Fred Clarkson: Reconstructionists believe that there are three main areas of governance: family government, church government, and civil government. Under God's covenant, the nuclear family is the basic unit. The husband is the head of the family, and wife and children are "in submission" to him. In turn, the husband "submits" to Jesus and to God's laws as detailed in the Old Testament. The church has its own ecclesiastical structure and governance. Civil government exists to implement God's laws. All three institutions are under Biblical Law, the implementation of which is called "theonomy." Christian Reconstructionists believe that as more Christians adopt Dominion Theology, they will eventually convert the majority of Americans. Then the country will realize that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are merely codicils to Old Testament biblical law. Because they believe this is God's will, they scoff at criticism that what they plan is a revolutionary overthrow of the existing system of government. Over the past 20 years the leading proponents of Reconstructionism have included founder Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdoony, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen, David Chilton, Gary DeMar, and Andrew Sandlin. Kingdom Now theology emerged from the Latter Rain Pentacostal movement and the concept of Spiritual Warfare against the literal demonic forces of Satan. It has been promoted by founder Earl Paulk as well as C. Peter Wagner, founder of the New Apostolic Reformation movement. For many, President Obama and the Democratic Party are among these "demonic forces." This has real world consequences. In 2006 former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris told thousands of cheering Christian Right activists that beating the Democrats in the upcoming elections was a battle against "principalities and powers," which many in the audience would hear as a Biblical reference to the struggle with the demonic agents of Satan. Harris (who played "ballot bowling" in Florida to elect George W. Bush in 2000) told the audience at the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington DC that she had studied religion in Switzerland with the godfather of the Christian Right, theologian Francis A. Schaeffer. Her speech there, which I witnessed and wrote about, qualifies her as a Dominionist. In 2004 Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, another Dominionist, oversaw the election apparatus giving his favored candidate George W. Bush a boost into the Oval Office. Religion scholar Bruce Barron explains that "unlike the Christian Right, Reconstructionism is not simply or primarily a political movement; it is first and foremost an educational movement fearlessly proclaiming an ideology of total world transformation." According to sociologist Sara Diamond, Christian Reconstructionism spread the "concept that Christians are Biblically mandated to `occupy' all secular institutions" to the extent that it became "the central unifying ideology for the Christian Right." William Martin is the author of the 1996 tome With God on Our Side, a companion volume to the PBS series of the same name (Martin and I were both advisers to the PBS series). Martin is a sociologist and professor of religion at Rice University, and he has been critical of the way some critics of the Christian Right have tossed around the terms "dominionism" and "theocracy." According to Martin: It is difficult to assess the influence of Reconstructionist thought with any accuracy. Because it is so genuinely radical, most leaders of the Religious Right are careful to distance themselves from it. At the same time, it clearly holds some appeal for many of them. One undoubtedly spoke for others when he confessed, `Though we hide their books under the bed, we read them just the same.' Martin reveals that "several key leaders have acknowledged an intellectual debt to the theonomists." The late Christian Right leaders Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy "endorsed Reconstructionist books" for example. Before he died in 2001, the founder of Christian Reconstuctionism, R. J. Rushdoony, appeared several times on Christian Right televangelist programs such as Pat Robertson's 700 Club and the program hosted by D. James Kennedy. "Pat Robertson makes frequent use of `dominion' language," says Martin. Robertson's book, The Secret Kingdom, "has often been cited for its theonomy elements; and pluralists were made uncomfortable when, during his presidential campaign, he said he `would only bring Christians and Jews into the government,' as well as when he later wrote, `There will never be world peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world.' " Martin also pointed out that Jay Grimstead, who led the Coalition on Revival, "brought Reconstructionists together with more mainstream evangelicals." According to Martin, Grimstead explained "`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." Then Grimstead 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." So let's choose our language carefully, but let's recognize that terms such as Dominionism and Theocracy, when used cautiously and carefully, are appropriate when describing troubling tendencies in the Christian Right that are helping push the current political scene toward confrontation and intolerance. More background articles on the roots of Dominionism: The Roots of Dominionism [editor's note:] Author Chip Berlet was co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements and a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism and the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Originally posted onAlternet.org.

A Nation Under God

POLITICS

→ The Right

A Nation Under God

Let others worry about the rapture: For the increasingly powerful Christian Reconstruction movement, the task is to establish the Kingdom of God right now?from the courthouse to the White House.

Illustration By: John Hersey

TRINITY CHAPEL in suburban Atlanta’s Cobb County is hardly the picture of a revolutionary outpost. It’s a stylishly modern Church of God—a denomination that, though conservative, is certainly mainstream. Parishioners are drawn from a community whose average income is a comfortable 35 percent above the national norm, whose tree-lined country roads intersect McMansion subdivisions. If Norman Rockwell were painting suburban sprawl, he’d likely pick Cobb County.

On a Friday last April, Trinity’s parking lot filled with SUVs and luxury sedans as about 400 faithful gathered inside the sanctuary. The church was host to Restore America, a rally to “celebrate faith and patriotism” sponsored by Christian publisher American Vision. In the lobby, neatly blue-blazered youths were hawking So Help Me God, Roy Moore’s account of his dethroning as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Tables were piled with textbooks for homeschoolers, tomes denouncing evolution, booklets waxing nostalgic for the antebellum South. That afternoon the congregants, who’d come to the conference from conservative churches around the region, would hear from Sadie Fields, president of Georgia’s Christian Coalition, and they’d sway in rhythm as country crooner Steve Vaus sang “We Must Take America Back.”

But the marquee pitchman of the day was Moore. Ruggedly handsome, with the military bearing he acquired at West Point, Moore has gained a rock-star following on the Christian right—a Moses to lead the chosen from a godless society. The judge has a stunning memory for long literary passages and judicial opinions, and he chants them in the singsongy, down-home style of Southern demagogues from Theo Bilbo to George Wallace—“God” is “Gawud,” with an upward lilt. When he proclaimed that “God is still sovereign, no matter what federal judges say,” the crowd tittered and applauded. When he intoned that “there is no right to sodomy in the Constitution,” they cheered. When he roared that unless judges “acknowledge God,” they “should be impeached,” the righteous noise shook the rafters.

It could have been nothing more than a half-hour rebel yell—except that Moore is more than the latest prophet of the religious right. He stands a good chance of being the next governor of Alabama; he’s also arguably the single most significant politician to owe his ascendancy to Christian Reconstruction—an obscure but increasingly potent theology whose top exponents hold that Christian crusaders must conquer and convert the world, by the sword if necessary, before Jesus will return.

Moore has never declared himself a Reconstructionist. But he is a frequent orator at gatherings whose organizers are part of the movement. The primary theologians, activists, and websites of Reconstruction laud him as a hero. Moore’s lawyer in the Ten Commandments fight, Herb Titus, is a Reconstructionist, as are many of his most vocal supporters, including Gary DeMar, the organizer of the Restore America rally and the head of American Vision, one of the most prolific publishers of the movement.

Reconstruction is the spark plug behind much of the battle over religion in politics today. The movement’s founder, theologian Rousas John Rushdoony, claimed 20 million followers—a number that includes many who embrace the Reconstruction tenets without having joined any organization. Card-carrying Reconstructionists are few, but their influence is magnified by their leadership in Christian right crusades, from abortion to homeschooling.

Reconstructionists also exert significant clout through front organizations and coalitions with other religious fundamentalists; Baptists, Anglicans, and others have deep theological differences with the movement, but they have made common cause with its leaders in groups such as the National Coalition for Revival. Reconstruction has slowly absorbed, congregation by congregation, the conservative Presbyterian Church in America (not to be confused with the progressive Presbyterian Church [USA]) and has heavily influenced others, notably the Southern Baptists.

George W. Bush has called Reconstruction-influenced theoretician Marvin Olasky “compassionate conservatism’s leading thinker,” and Olasky served as one of the president’s key advisers on the creation of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Bush also invited Reconstructionist Jack Hayford, a key figure in the Promise Keepers men’s group, to give the benediction at his first inaugural. Deposed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, though his office won’t comment on his religious views, governs with what he calls a “biblical worldview”—one of Reconstruction’s signature phrases. And, for conspiracy buffs, two heavy contributors to the Chalcedon Foundation—Reconstruction’s main think tank—are Howard Ahmanson and Nelson Bunker Hunt, both of whose families played key roles in financing electronic voting machine manufacturer Election Systems & Software. Ahmanson is also a major sponsor of ultraconservative politicians, including California state legislator and 2003 gubernatorial candidate Tom McClintock.

Yet for all its influence, Reconstruction is almost invisible to the media and secular society. Atlanta is ground zero for most Reconstruction activity—home office to DeMar’s publishing house and home district to movement prophet Larry McDonald, who served four terms in Congress in the 1970s and 1980s—but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has done only one major article on the movement. The entire Lexis-Nexis database includes only 43 articles from all of the U.S. media that make reference to Reconstruction, and only a handful of those explore the movement. “A hundred years ago, newspapers published the sermons preachers preached on Sunday,” notes Ed Larson, a University of Georgia historian. “Everyone knew what the Baptists believed, or the Lutherans or the Presbyterians. That’s no longer the case. And it has worked to the benefit of Reconstructionists as they doggedly pursued their goal.”

Reconstructionists aren’t shy about what exactly it is they are pursuing: “The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise,” Gary North, a top Reconstruction theorist, wrote in his 1989 book, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism. “Those who refuse to submit publicly…must be denied citizenship.”

WITH HIS KHAKI PANTS and checkered shirts, Gary DeMar could be one of a million guys meeting weekly in men’s groups at churches around the country. Bright and articulate, he’s soft-spoken until he gets in front of a crowd. His publishing house distributes hundreds of tracts, more than 20 of them written by DeMar himself, with titles such as The Politically Incorrect Guides to Islam (and the Crusades), which promises “all the disturbing facts about Islam and its murderous hostility to the West,” and The Marketing of Evil, which covers everything “from easy divorce and unrestricted abortion-on-demand to extreme body piercing and teaching homosexuality to grade-schoolers.”

I first met DeMar 18 months ago at his church, Midway Presbyterian, in the Atlanta suburb of Powder Springs, where he was teaching a class on government. During the session, a teenage homeschooler talked about how he had tried in a paper to prove that the family is a form of “Christian government.” “You don’t have to prove that,” DeMar gently chided, and then added, with more heat: “That’s established—established by God!” DeMar’s lecture focused on the “three governments”—family, church, and state—all of which, he told me, should be ruled by God-fearing men.

The Old Testament—with its 600 or so Mosaic laws—is the inflexible guide for the society DeMar and other Reconstructionists envision. Government posts would be reserved for the righteous, as long as they are male. There would be thousands of executions a year, with stoning a preferred method because it would turn the deaths into “community projects,” as movement theologian North has noted. Sinners in line for the death penalty would include women who commit adultery or lie about their virginity, blasphemers, witches, children who strike their parents, and gay men (lesbians, however, would be spared because no specific reference to them can be found in the Books of Moses). DeMar told me that among Reconstructionists he is considered something of a liberal, because he’d execute gays only if they were caught indulging in sodomy. “I’m happy to just drive them back into the closet,” he said.

In introducing Moore at the Trinity Chapel rally, DeMar told the crowd that he supports a “jurisdictional separation of church and state.” But he was not mounting a defense of the First Amendment so much as outlining an organizational distinction. In his book Liberty at Risk, DeMar writes that “the State cannot be neutral towards the Christian faith. Any obstacle that would jeopardize the preaching of the Word of God…must be opposed by civil government.”

Besides facilitating evangelism, Reconstructionists believe, government should largely be limited to building and maintaining roads, enforcing land-use contracts, and ensuring just weights and measures. Unions would not exist, and neither would unemployment benefits, Social Security, and environmental protection laws. Public schools would disappear; one of the movement’s great successes has been promoting homeschooling programs and publishing texts used by tens of thousands of homeschooling families. And, perhaps most importantly, the state is “God’s minister,” as DeMar puts it in Liberty at Risk, “taking vengeance out on those who do evil.” A major task for the government key Reconstructionists envision is fielding armies for conquest in the name of Jesus.

Reconstruction’s premises may fly in the face of mainstream Christianity, and some of its leaders’ beliefs would probably surprise even the movement’s own foot soldiers. But what has made the theology such an explosive addition to public life is not its dogma on individual issues so much as its trumpet call to action. This is a faith in which religion is not an influence on politics; it is politics.

FOR DECADES AFTER the 1925 Scopes monkey trial, Christian fundamentalists were almost invisible in civic discourse. Then, in 1981, a book by scholar Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, heralded a counterattack. America, Schaeffer argued, was careening into the abyss of humanistic secularism. Christians needed to take bold action to restore biblical principles and erase divisions between religion and civic life. To ignite the movement, Schaeffer mapped out a battle campaign—a crusade against abortion, which, he said, “would be worth spending much of our lifetimes to fight against.”

For years, the antiabortion movement had been mostly Catholic. Schaeffer understood that the cause had the potential to galvanize broad masses of Protestants. “Schaeffer made abortion an issue for Christians more than anyone else, and he commanded Christian soldiers to start marching,” says the University of Georgia’s Larson. Manifesto sold almost 250,000 copies the year after Ronald Reagan became president—a period when the nation was veering to the right after becoming exhausted from the social movements of the previous two decades.

If Schaeffer was Reconstruction’s John the Baptist, Rushdoony was its pope. Born in 1916 to Armenian immigrants, Rushdoony graduated from the University of California-Berkeley before becoming an ardent foe of secular education and the author of a series of texts that redefined conservative theology.

Rushdoony, who died in 2001, articulated a doctrine called “presuppositionalism.” All issues are religious in nature, he posited, and people don’t have the right or the ability to define for themselves what’s true; for that they must turn to a literal reading of the Bible. His defining tome, the 800-page Institutes of Biblical Law, was published in 1973. But because of its extremism and overt racism—Rushdoony denied the Holocaust and defended segregation and slavery—Institutes and its author were largely ignored in mainstream circles until the movement launched by Schaeffer found its intellectual grounding in Rushdoony’s writings.

At the heart of Rushdoony’s argument were two biblical passages. Genesis 1:28 commands men to have “dominion” over “every living thing.” And in Matthew 28:18-20, the “Great Commission,” Jesus commands his followers to proselytize to the world. Thus was born dominion theology. (Not all dominionists are Reconstruction apostles—but the differences are a matter of theological finesse, and political strategies are largely indistinguishable.) Adam and Eve broke their covenant with God, and Satan seized dominion. Christian Reconstruction claims it has a reconstituted covenant with God and the right to a new dominion in his name.

In this worldview, the mandate for Christians is not just to live right or to help their neighbors: They are called upon to take over or eliminate the institutions of secular government.

This is what sets Reconstruction apart from the conventional Christian right and gives it a key advantage in organizing.

Traditionally, groups like Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority were “premillennial”: They believed that humanity was inevitably headed for Armageddon, which would most likely arrive with a nuclear blast, whereupon Christ would appear in the Second Coming and set things right. “The debate was over whether Brezhnev was the Antichrist,” says the University of Georgia’s Larson.

Reconstruction’s alternative was “postmillennialism”: Christ would not return until the church had claimed dominion over government, and most of the world’s population had accepted the Reconstruction brand of Christianity. The postmillennial twist offered hope to the pious that they could change things—as long as they got organized. (Reconstructionists angrily denounce end-times visions like those of Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series: If these are the Last Days, American Vision’s website points out, “then why bother trying to fix a broken world that is about to be thrown on the ash heap of history? Why concern ourselves with education, healthcare, the economy, or peace in the Mideast? Why polish brass on a sinking ship?”)

For premillennialists, Reconstruction’s revolutionary philosophy offered an opportunity to turbocharge the religious right. Most conservative churches opposed abortion, for example, but Reconstruction-influenced groups such as Randall Terry’s Operation Rescue were willing to field soldiers and take the fight to the enemy. This not only emboldened activists, it gave Reconstructionists a chance to spread their organizing message: If you want to do God’s work, this needs to be God’s nation.

Similarly, Baptist morality focused on personal choices, such as avoiding drinking. But Reconstructionists didn’t tell believers to shun sin. They said to conquer it, even if the price was jail or martyrdom. Paul Hill, the antiabortion activist executed two years ago for the 1994 murders of abortion clinic workers in Pensacola, Florida, had been a minister in the Reconstruction-dominated Presbyterian Church in America.

The old left—the Communist Party and its many splinters—used organizing tactics called popular fronts, in which people were recruited through specific causes into a

movement tacitly guided by the Party. Reconstruction has married those Leninist tactics to the causes of the right—abortion, evolution, gay marriage, school prayer. Gary North wrote in 1982, in an effort to reach Baptists,“We must use the doctrine of religious liberty…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 constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” Nowhere at the Restore America rally did anyone hoist a banner for Reconstruction; those attending came to develop a united front supporting such things as displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings. But they were also introduced—and recruited—to the broader program.

Reconstruction’s major impact has been through helping to found and guide cross-denominational and secular political organ-izations. The Council for National Policy—a group that holds meetings for right-wing leaders, once dubbed “the most powerful conservative group you’ve never heard of”—was founded in 1981 as a project of top John Birch Society figures (see “The Fountainhead”). Its members included Rushdoony, Gary North, Tim LaHaye, former Reagan aide Gary Bauer, and activist Paul Weyrich, who famously aimed to “overturn the present power structure of this country.”

Another group, the Coalition on Revival, brings together influential evangelicals to produce joint statements and theological white papers. North and DeMar are among the coalition’s most influential members; one of its founding documents is signed by 116 Christian right activists, including Rushdoony, mega-evangelist D. James Kennedy, and Roy Jones, a top staffer at the Republican Senatorial Committee.

When I last saw Gary DeMar, he was shepherding Roy Moore through a crowd of true believers at the Restore America rally. As they walked by, I asked Moore, “Do you favor a theocracy?” The judge turned and looked at me, shook his head, frowned, and walked away. But DeMar, in our interview, had already answered the question.

“All governments are theocracies,” he said. “We now live in a secular humanist theocracy. I want to change that to a government with God at its head.”

Why You Need to Understand Evangelical Christianity's Outrageous and Influential Far-Right Fringe

BELIEF

Why You Need to Understand Evangelical Christianity's Outrageous and Influential Far-Right Fringe

Its followers believe the Bible, and the laws contained within it, should rule over every aspect of life.

By Bill Berkowitz / AlterNet

September 1, 2015

Here's a simple question: Have you ever heard of Christian Reconstruction, Rousas J. Rushdoony, or one of his most influential works, The Institutes of Biblical Law? Probably not! Christian Reconstruction, is a religious belief system, set out by the late Rushdoony, which maintains that every aspect of society – church, state, family, economy -- should be based on Biblical law. It is evangelical Christianity's right-wing fringe, yet its tentacles reach deep into the Clown Car that is the Republican Party's field of presidential candidates. Is Christian Reconstruction so fringed out that it is not worthy of attention? Not according to Julie J. Ingersoll, author of the new book, Building God's Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction, who posits that Reconstructionists' "biblical worldview" played, and continues to play, a highly influential role, although subtle and often hidden, in contemporary right-wing politics.

When Christian Reconstructionists say God's law -- as it is revealed in the Old and New Testaments -- should control every aspect of life, they mean every aspect, interpreting the Bible as mandating a challenge to the legitimacy of democracy, justifying slavery, and advocating the stoning to death of homosexuals, adulterers, and Sabbath-breakers. If any of this sounds familiar, you might be thinking Taliban and/or ISIS.

As investigative reporter John F. Sugg pointed out in a 2004 extensive piece in Tampa, Florida's Weekly Planet, "Most churchgoers have never heard of Christian Reconstruction or theonomy. Believers would be hard-pressed to define 'dominion theology,' 'covenant theology,' 'pre-millennial,' [or] 'post- millennial.' ... Nor would most Americans reflexively embrace a 'theology' that denounced all government social programs, public schools, environmental protections -- a religion that promoted mass executions for sins as minor as swearing at parents, ..."

While a number of investigative reporters, researchers and writers such as John Sugg, and Chip Berlet, author of Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash, and Frederick Clarkson, author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, have delved deeply into this movement over the years, perhaps no one has been as immersed in it as Ingersoll.

In the Preface to Building God's Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 2015), Ingersoll, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Florida, writes that she first encountered Christian Reconstruction in the early 1980s during and after her days at Rutgers University.

Steeped in the conservative movement, Ingersoll worked as a volunteer, intern, writer and researcher for several of the more significant New Right political organizations of that period, including the National Conservative Political Action Committee, Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation, and the American Life Lobby. She attended campaign schools run by the National Conservative Foundation, the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, and the College Republican National Committee Feldman School.

"In 1983," Ingersoll writes, she "married a member of one of the Reconstructionist families," and was divorced in the early 1990s. Although she had differences with many in the movement, mostly over issues related to the treatment of women – she was a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment – she worked with a number of right-to-life groups, including Operation Rescue, and was the California chapter president of Feminists for Life.

Building God's Kingdom is the result of nearly thirty years of research, writing, reflection, re-thinking, involvement with and detachment from evangelical Christian conservative movements. Ingersoll acknowledges that it is difficult to quantify the influence of Christian Reconstruction on mainstream politics as they have their own institutions and do not readily share their data, therefore leaving "the strategy of trying to trace the[ir] influence in more subtle, nuanced, and admittedly interpretive ways."

Rushdoony: New Right intellectual "godfather"

According to Ingersoll, Rushdoony never received his props: He was one of the religious right's "intellectual godfathers," but he was "often treated like a crazy uncle." Nevertheless, while Recostructionism never attracted "much [grassroots] support ... the movement's ideas became a driving force in American politics," as Reconstructionists "found a home in Washington-based political organizations, such as the Moral Majority and Christian Voice."

Howard Phillips, a major figure in the early development of the religious right called Rousas John Rushdoony the "most influential man of the 21st century" whose work brought about "historic changes in the thinking of countless leaders." Phillips told Ingersoll that Rushdoony was "early and often on all the big issues, and he was a pioneer in the homeschool movement."

On the occasion of Rushdoony's death in February 2001, Gary North, a movement leader and Rushdoony's son-in-law, credited him with "being the source of many of the core ideas of the New Christian Right," and maintained that "the mainstream media" never understood the scope of his influence.

Ruashdoony's appeal to religious right leaders was that he put the Bible at the center of everything. Rushdoony's work permeated "arguments made by conservative Christians about biblical government that focus on the character and structure of families, free-market economics, the legal status of religion, the critique of public education, care for the poor, the right to own guns, the funding of health care."

Ingersoll's Building God's Freedom "address[es] one aspect of the story of the contemporary conservative Christian subculture and the rise of the religious right: the impact of a small group of fundamentalists known as Christian Reconstructionists."

"Well before the establishment of the Washington-based political organizations designed to harness the growing dissatisfaction among conservative Christians," Ingersoll writes, "Reconstructionists were laying the intellectual foundation that would shape the twenty-first century conservative Christian subculture, developing what would become the religious right's critique of the American social order, and plotting strategies to bring about change."

While adherents of the religious right do not make up a majority of this country'spopulation, nevertheless, a substantial number of people believe – as Christian Reconstructionists do -- that America is Christian nation, separation of church and state is a liberal-initiated shibboleth, patriarchy is the God-ordained structure for families, that the Bible, and the laws contained within it, should rule over every aspect of life.

Christian Reconstruction is playing the long game, and Ingersoll meticulously explores its "strategy" of "mak[ing] meaningful the mundane details of day-to-day life by situating them in a sweeping narrative framed as the fundamental purpose of God and his creation." Building God's Kingdom traces the origins of the New Christian Right back to the Old Christian Right; describes how Reconstructionists "helped the movement take root in the conservative Protestant subculture"; and, details how Reconstructionist ideas were planted in evangelical culture, even amongst those that didn't identify with Reconstructionism.

Cyclically, mainstream media's pundits and prognosticators bury the religious right. And while it is worthwhile pointing out that the religious right's influence has ebbed and flowed over the past two decades, some of its issues -- now most famously being played out under the meme of "religious freedom" -- remains at center stage. While Reconstructionists are not responsible for totally birthing the religious right, and have rarely been in the spotlight, nevertheless its "influence continues, although often until recently unacknowledged and sometimes denied."

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement.