Tag: Dominionists

  • Another foundation

    I have another treat for you: R J Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation. It has edu in its url, which is kind of funny. Anyway, it’s Dominionism. I chose an item almost at random – Joy as a Tool of Dominion for the Abused Woman. By Mrs. Gerald (Jennifer) W. Tritle – boy, you don’t see that much any more. Here is my article that I wrote, by Mrs Man’s Name (but you can call me Jennifer). So anyway here’s the Dominionist wisdom about what to do if you’re an abused woman, also why you are an abused woman in the first place. I bet you can guess – it’s because of feminism.

    Few greater challenges exist for the Christian woman who has experienced verbal, physical, and/or sexual abuse in her life than for her to obey God’s Word with a guilt-free and undefiled joy from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith (1 Tim. 1:5). To truly enjoy God, a Christian woman who has experienced abuse must, as every other believer, obey God’s Word and allow it to transform her mind.

    It is certain that abuses are not new under the sun. Nonetheless, this
    century has been characterized by fathers who have failed to lead and to
    discipline their families and by feminism, which has attempted to reverse God’s perfect creation order regarding male and female roles, and abuse in families is highly prevalent.

    See? That’s where abuse of women comes from – fathers who fail to boss and punish their families enough, and feminism.

    There’s Andrea Schwartz on god’s rules for women.

    God’s design for women is in a complementary and supportive role. Were men sufficient to carry out God’s dominion mandate alone, there would have been no need for a helpmeet.  The balance and insight that women provide allow men to fully step into their dominion roles. Yet, the Tempter’s plan continues to seduce women away from their God-appointed functions to arenas of life that distract them from their created design.  To remove women from their high calling in God’s basic institution of the family spells disaster.  It is noteworthy that, despite all attempts at eliminating gender designations in our culture, the method by which new people enter the world remains through a woman’s womb.

    Oh damn, she’s right! We forgot to fix that! God that was sloppy – we totally meant to, but I guess we got so hung up on explaining that no actually cooking one meal a week (and not cleaning up afterward) doesn’t count as sharing the domestic duties that it just slipped our tiny little girly minds.

    From the beginning of time, God has decreed that people be defined in
    terms     of their gender rather than apart from it. For example, rather than
    describe myself as  an offspring, sibling, adult, spouse, and parent, it is
    Biblically correct  to identify myself as  a daughter, sister, woman, wife, and
    mother. Each of these clearly identifies the fact that I am female.

    Biblically correct? Really? The bible says women aren’t allowed to say they’re adults? The bible says women have to use words that clearly identify the fact that they are female? Where does it say that?

    One wonders if she’s ever met any feminists. She apparently thinks they say things like ”I am Kate’s sibling” and “I am Henry’s spouse.” No wonder she’s terrified!

    The Bible clearly states that women are not to serve as elders in the church.
    This mandate in no way indicates that men are superior to women in character or ability. This is an organizational difference by God’s design, outlining His hierarchy of authority and responsibility, not to mention jurisdiction. A woman’s role in the immediate and extended family is of such paramount importance, that to assume roles outside these areas is wasting her as the valuable resource she is. There’s simply too much to do in this arena for her to abdicate her position to areas of lesser importance.

    Riiiiiiiiiight. Everything except family work is of lesser importance…Is that what they told her? And she believed them? That would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

    So that’s the Chalcedon Foundation. It’s some articles. Maybe I should start calling B&W a foundation – ya think?

     

  • Apostles have been raised up by God

    Via Ed Brayton, Terry Gross talks to the apostle C Peter Wagner. Be afraid.

    On demons

    “As we talk, in Oklahoma City there is an annual meeting of a professional
    society called the Apostolic — called the International Society of Deliverance
    Ministers, which my wife and I founded many years ago. … This is a society of
    a large number, a couple hundred, of Christian ministers who are in the ministry of deliverance. Their seven-day-a-week occupation is casting demons out of people. And they have professional expertise in this and they happen to meeting — to be meeting right now. My wife is one of them. She’s written a whole book called How to Cast Out Demons. And I don’t do that much. Once in a while when I get in a corner, I might. But that’s — that’s been her ministry.
    And so I’ve been very, very close to that for years. We’ve been married for 60
    years.”

    On people in American politics being possessed by demons

    “We don’t like to use the word possessed because that means they don’t have any power of their own. We like to use the word afflicted or, technical term, demonized. But there are people who — yes, who are — who are directly affected by demons, not only in politics, but also in the arts, in the media and religion in the Christian church.”

    This guy is seriously terrifying. He’s not some sad Dennis Markuze, he’s got a lot of followers. When exactly will the witch-hunts start, one wonders.

    On demon identification

    “Sometimes they know. Sometimes the demon has identified itself to the person. Sometimes you can tell by manifestations of superhuman, unhuman behavior. Sometimes you can tell by skilled deliverance ministers. My wife has a five-page questionnaire that she has people fill out before she ministers to them. So she asks the kind of questions that a medical doctor would ask to find out, to diagnose an illness. So she actually does diagnostic work on people to discover not only if they have demons, but what those demons might be.”

    She actually does diagnostic work, and demons are as real as bacteria, and her diagnostic work can detect them and say what kind they are, just like a medical doctor…Yet these people aren’t some hicks who live 4o miles up Cowshit Road and can’t do much damage.

    On whether other religions and nonbelieving Christians are
    demonic

    “Well, it means they’re not part of the kingdom of heaven. It means they’re
    part of the kingdom of darkness. An apostle, a friend of mine in Nepal, once
    told me that every Christian believer in Nepal that he knows of has been
    delivered from demons. That their former Hindu religion had implanted, or the
    demons had gained access, and that in order to become Christian believers, the
    demons had to be cast out. Of course, we have many examples in the Bible of the same thing.”

    Ah well if a friend of his told him that – there’s no more to be said.

    On what it means to be an apostle

    “In terms of the role of the apostle, one of the biggest changes from traditional churches to the New Apostolic Reformation is the amount of spiritual authority delegated by the Holy Spirit to individuals. And the two key words are authority and individuals — and individuals as contrasted to groups. So now, apostles have been raised up by God who have a tremendous authority in the churches of the New Apostolic Reformation.”

    He thinks he’s been raised up by God. He thinks he has spiritual authority. He’s apparently serious.

    If only these people were just a tiny minority.

  • Some on the left

    Another intimidation piece directed at journalists and researchers who write about dominionism, back in August. It’s in the Washington Post, which is a nice gig if you’re trying to intimidate people.

    Here we go again. The Republican primaries are six months away, and already news stories are raising fears on the left about “crazy Christians.”

    One piece connects Texas Gov. Rick Perry with a previously unknown Christian group called “The New Apostolic Reformation,” whose main objective is to “infiltrate government.” Another highlights whacko-sounding Christian influences on Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. A third cautions readers to be afraid, very afraid, of “dominionists.”

    The stories raise real concerns about the world views of two prospective Republican nominees. But their echo-chamber effect reignites old anxieties among liberals about evangelical Christians. Some on the left seem suspicious that a firm belief in Jesus equals a desire to take over the world.

    Maybe some on the left do, but the authors of the articles in question do not, so it’s bloody unfair to imply that they do. It’s an intimidation move.

    This isn’t a defense of the religious beliefs of Bachmann or Perry, whatever they are. It’s a plea, given the acrimonious tone of our political discourse, for a certain amount of dispassionate care in the coverage of religion. Nearly 80 percent of Americans say they’re Christian. One-third of Americans call themselves “evangelical.” When millions of voters get lumped together and associated with the fringe views of a few, divisions will grow. Here, then, are some clarifying points.

    But the writers in question took the requisite care. They didn’t lump all evangelicals with dominionists – on the contrary: they point out that to dominionists, plain old evangelicals are way too lukewarm. And dominionists, unfortunately, are not “a few.”

    Evangelicals generally do not want to take over the world. “Dominionism” is the paranoid mot du jour. In its broadest sense, the term describes a Christian’s obligation to be active in the world, including in politics and government. More narrowly, some view it as Christian nationalism. You could argue that the 19th- and early 20th-century reformers – abolitionists, suffragists and temperance activists, for example – were dominionists, says Molly Worthen, who teaches religious history at the University of Toronto.

    Well you could, but equally you could argue that anti-abolitionists and anti-suffragists were dominionists. Just as not all evangelicals are dominionists, so not all 19th century Christians were abolitionists…to put it mildly; in fact abolitionists, Christian and otherwise, were a tiny minority, despised by almost everyone. It’s endlessly irritating the way contemporary Christians claim credit for abolitionism when it would make vastly more sense for them to admit blame for pro-slavery.

    Extremist dominionists do exist, as theocrats who hope to transform our democracy into something that looks like ancient Israel, complete with stoning as punishment. But “it’s a pretty small world,” says Worthen, who studies these groups.

    Mark DeMoss, whose Atlanta-based public relations firm represents several Christian groups, put it this way: “You would be hard-pressed to find one in 1,000 Christians in America who could even wager a guess at what dominionism is.”

    Seriously?! She quotes a PR guy on the subject as if his views were disinterested scholarship?

    Washington Post, where are your editors?

  • Talk2Action talks back

    More on Jim Wallis and Mark Pinsky, at Talk2Action, which was the object of much of their criticism/bullying.

    It was bad enough when Mark I. Pinsky recently took to the op-ed page of USA Today to smear four Jewish writers who have had the temerity to write critically and well about dominionism and related matters — comparingtheir work to historic anti-Semitic smears including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Then Jim Wallis chimed in last week, accusing unnamed liberal writers of engaging in thought crimes against evangelicals.  His charges were as unsubstantiated as Pinsky’s, whose essay he praised and linked to.

    Some of us who figured to be among the unnamed decided it was time to speak, perchance to be heard.  So we wrote an Open Letter to Jim Wallis asking that he please stop mischaracterizing our work and that he rethink and renounce his endorsement of Pinsky’s outrageous smears.  I am pleased to report that our modest effort has helped spark some discussion in the greater blogosphere.

    Pinsky comments.

     I stand by the point of the piece. The exigencies of politics/academics/journalism/fundraising notwithstanding, this is about a need for a boogeyman, particularly in an election year.  I maintain these theological doctrines are numerically marginal and their influence on any serious GOP presidential candidates tenuous. I seriously doubt that more than five percent of the suburban evangelicals who form the bedrock of the demographic would recognize the bizarre tenets of the New Apostolic Reformation; that figure might bump to the 10-15 percent range for Dominionism.

    Glib, isn’t it – who cares what he “doubts,” even seriously? Maybe he should have found out before writing that article, instead of just going by his hunch.

    Chip Berlet retorted:

    Having just spent two days at the 2011 Values Voter Summit in DC I assure you that Christian Nationalism in the form of Dominionism is hardly marginal. Major Republican Presidential hopefuls pitched to the audience of over 2000 committed conservative activists. Jews are given revocable full citizenship in the Christian nation they envision. You still owe us an apology.

    Stay tuned.

  • Training dominion-oriented daughters

    Libby Anne spotted another deeply sinister picture of a female human being on a Vision Forum DVD.

    Will you look at that?

    It’s all the more sinister because it’s so effective – the colors and patterns are pretty, and they pull us in.

    Libby Anne is scathing.

    It appears from the cover of this DVD that daughters take dominion by doing laundry. Nice. I mean seriously, thought goes into cover images like these (we hope), and someone really truly honestly decided that the best image to represent dominion-oriented daughters is a little girl doing laundry. Because, you know, that’s how women take dominion. By doing laundry. Interesting.

    This made me wonder. What pictures do they put on DVDs on raising sons?

    No laundry.

    And there’s something else. Take a good look at that picture. That little girl has no mouth – it’s been covered up by her stack of laundry. Vision Forum has given her a niqab made out of a pile of clean clothes. No wicked feminist back-talk coming out of her, you can be sure.

  • When they are in PR mode

    I no sooner say that thing about the pretty picture out front and the kicks and blows behind the curtain when I read another example via Ed Brayton. The Reconstructionists are saying why the Dominionists are so scary while they (the Recons) are thoroughly reassuring.

    There is no doubt, however, that the 7MDs do have a goal of top-down control of society. This is explicit in their literature in many places. The exception to this is when they are in PR mode: then they downplay and even completely deny that they believe in dominion….

    Riiiiight – as so many control freaks do when they are in PR mode. The pope do, theocracies that sign up to CEDAW do, Michele Bachmann do. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Reconstructionists do.

    Meanwhile, as Ed says, there’s a good deal of hilarity in one bunch of theocrats calling another bunch of theocrats “theocrats.” Back here on planet earth they all look like dangerous lunatics who would make life hell if they could.