US Policy and Christianity: 2 Articles

[Twain Shakespeare]

The first article explains how Christian Fascism plans to complete its take over of "God's Country"

Dominionism Hits the Big Time
Politics and the Prayer Warriors
by LAWRENCE SWAIM
Dominionism is a totalitarian movement within Christian evangelicalism that aims at taking over the centers of power—law, culture, government and the like—and establishing a dictatorship. Once having gotten power, Christian Dominionists would then impose their religious practices on the rest of America. Two leading Republican candidates for the American presidency either embrace Dominionism, or have made alliances with it. Michelle Bachmann, a leading Republican candidate for President, is a lifelong adherent of this movement; and Rick Perry, presidential candidate from Texas, has formed a working alliance with a particularly fervent network of Dominionists as he seeks the Republican nomination.

Michelle Bachmann studied at the Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University, which teaches law based not on the Constitution but on an extreme rightwing interpretation of evangelical Christianity. She cites Dominionist thinkers as influences, such as John Eidsmore, David A. Neobel and Francis Schaefer, who once advocated the violent overthrow of the government if abortion is not made illegal. Francis Schaefer’s son, Franklin, has recently gone public with a series of extremely insightful articles warning of Dominionist influence in the Bachmann campaign.

Rick Perry, presidential candidate from Texas, is making common cause with the New Apostolic Reformation, an extremist group with a background in Pentecostalism, whose “prayer warriors” are also fanatical Dominionists. According to public statements of people in this group, Sarah Palin’s Assembly of God church in Wasilla, Alaska, is part of this network; Palin herself was “anointed” by Kenyan Apostle Thomas Muthee.

At an August 5th “prayer and fasting event” in Houston, Texas, leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation appeared standing next to Rick Perry, and the event was broadcast on the NAR station “God TV,” located in Jerusalem. Although the Apostles package their Dominionism as “transformational” rather than totalitarian, the NAR literature makes it clear that non-Christians and Christians that don’t conform to their fundamentalist brand of Christianity will be suppressed as Satanic.

Few Americans know much about Dominionism, and Perry might figure he can detach from them if they become too much of a focus of media attention. In the meantime, Perry’s friends in the NAR are a single-minded cadre who believe that God is using them to eradicate evil. Such disciplined troops can help Perry in the primaries, especially in South Carolina, where the New Apostolic Reformation network is strong, and where Perry is likely to face his toughest competition from Bachmann.

Although their numbers are relatively small, Dominionists have profoundly influenced Christian evangelicalism in the last three decades. The Religious Right arose partly because of simple opportunism, as such figures as Pat Roberts and Jerry Falwell realized that they could ride the new popularity of Christian evangelicalism to fame and fortune. But a second and more important reason was the influence of Dominionism—the idea that conservative evangelicals should seek political power, and once in power impose their beliefs on others.

The use of coercion has marked Michelle Bachmann’s public life. Since she believes public education is “godless,” Bachmann once started a charter school in which she tried to impose her beliefs on non-Christian students. (She was forced off the school’s board of directors by other parents.) Likewise, she wishes to impose her anti-choice approach to reproductive rights not by winning people over with moral and religious arguments, but by using government to dictate her ideas. Early in her legislative career, she sought to publicly display the Ten Commandments, not by building consensus for them, but by simply trying to pass laws to make such display mandatory.

Bachmann has adopted many secular beliefs in order to win power. One dirty little secret of today’s Dominionist-influenced Religious Right is that they have adopted the extreme economic ideas of Ayn Rand, a hedonistic atheist who believed in replacing religious symbols with the dollar sign. (Indeed, Rand demanded that her followers put a dollar sign on her grave.) Furthermore, the Religious Right has tapped into a very old—if heretical—Puritan idea that profit is a sign of God’s grace. But for many Bachmann supporters, money seems to be less about God than an idolatrous substitute—like Ayn Rand, they seem less inclined to worship the Almighty than the Almighty Dollar.

Above all, Bachmann knows she can’t compete without money from the corporate upper class.

Bachmann and other Dominionists—and increasingly, the entire Religious Right—use anti-government rhetoric to attract economic conservatives. But they attack only that part of government that administers the safety net—Social Security and Medicare—along with health and public education. The military and police powers of government they rarely mention, partly because they would need them to establish their evangelical dictatorship. Behind Bachmann’s libertarian, anti-government rhetoric—like that of the Tea Party generally—is a determination to use government to dictate conservative beliefs to America, and ultimately to institute their brand of rightwing Christian fundamentalism as America’s state religion.

The Dominionists will never succeed in imposing their unholy theology on America, but they are, sadly, in a position to create an enormous amount of trouble. For one thing, most of them want a religious war against Islam in the Middle East, and will join with the neo-cons in supporting virtually any military adventure contemplated by the Israelis; and since their beliefs are the antithesis of democracy, they are usually quite secretive about their true intentions. In any case, it is hard not to see this movement as one more indication of a precipitous decline of American Christianity. A majority of American Protestants could now properly be called evangelicals, and as such, they are too often exposed to the fanatical Dominionist-oriented Religious Right in their churches and denominational media. The central idea of the Religious Right, that they are justified in using the state to impose their ideas, is Dominionism writ large.

The result is an obsession with Jesus’ death instead of his teachings, a hatred of science and critical thought, and an addiction to masochistic conspiracy theories in which evangelicals are always the victims. Above all there is an insistence on coercive political power to regain the cultural influence rightwing Christians are losing. So instead of the Sermon on the Mount, we are now confronted by well-funded conservative evangelicals promoting a sinister vision of America as a corporate autocracy, with Dominionists as Gauleiters of a totalitarian state religion.

This recalls the prescient words of novelist Sinclair Lewis: “When fascism comes to America,” he wrote in 1935, “it will come wrapped in the flag, and carrying a cross.”

Lawrence Swaim is the Executive Director of the Interfaith Freedom Foundation.



Politics and the Prayer Warriors » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

....and the 2nd tells how the US is fighting "real Christians".

In the Lion's Den
US and Colombia Escalate Attacks on Liberation Church
by DAN KOVALIK
When I was 12 years old – at the time a devout Catholic and Reaganite – I saw something on television which had a profound effect on my life. It was a 60 Minutes piece about El Salvador, and it focused on the murder of Archbishop Romero and the four Churchwomen, some of them American, brutally raped and murdered there. What was striking to me about the piece was its suggestion that the forces behind these atrocities may well have been those being sponsored by the United States. As we know now, this was indeed the case. And, it was this realization — that the U.S. was behind the persecution of the Church in El Salvador, and as I came to know later, throughout Latin America — which changed how I viewed the world and the U.S.’s role in it.

Of course, Noam Chomsky, with his partner in crime, Edward Herman, has been analyzing the U.S. war on the Liberation Church in Latin America, and the media’s almost utter failure to cover it, for years. Chomsky, whose lone poster in his MIT office is one with Archbishop Romero along with the four Jesuits killed in El Salvador in 1989, has pointed out quite recently that the murder of these four Jesuits (as we know now with U.S. bullets) took place very shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. That is, the murders took place as the Cold War – the ostensible struggle between Capitalism and Communism – was ending, leading to the conclusion that the assault on the Church, and in particular Liberation Theology, had little or nothing to do with the U.S.’s proffered goal to eradicate Communism. Rather, the goal was deeper and more sinister – to wipe out the seeds of social justice itself in Latin America by wiping out radical Christianity (that is, Christianity in a form closer to its early roots before it became the official, state religion of Rome). In other words, while the U.S. tried to justify its war against Communism as a war against anti-Christian atheists, it was in fact the U.S. that posed more of a threat to true Christianity.

And, the U.S. has carried out this battle with the sword — while the Vatican, which strayed from the roots of Christianity long ago, has carried it out through ex-communications and censure — sponsoring forces which have carried out the murder of literally hundreds of religious (including priests, brothers and sisters) throughout Latin America. (I will leave to a later day the discussion of the U.S. support for Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor which claimed the lives of between 500,000 and 1 million civilians, mostly Roman Catholic). And, while one would not know it from the U.S. press, this struggle continues.

Thus, as Colombia’s paper of record, El Tiempo, explained yesterday, six (6) Catholic priests have been killed in Colombia so far this year. AsEl Tiempo explained, between 1984 and September of 2011, two bishops, 79 priests, eight men and women religious, and three seminarians have been killed in Colombia alone. And, for the most part, these victims have been advocates for the poor and have been killed by right-wing paramilitaries aligned with the Colombian state and military – the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the region by far.

The most recent priest killed in Colombia was Father Gualberto Arrieta Oviedo, pastor of Our Lady of Carmen Capurgana (Choco), who was killed with a machete to the head. Father Arrieta Oviedo, as El Tiempo explains, “was known for his committed work with the poorest communities.” The Colombian Bishops Conference reacted to this latest murder by decrying the murder of Catholic priests in Colombia, and stressing “the courageous commitment of our priests with the prophetic denunciation of injustice and the cause of the poorest in the country.” Meanwhile, the Vatican remains silent about these killings.

Of course, it is the “prophetic denunciation of injustice and the cause of the poorest” of the poor which both the U.S. and Colombia would like to see wiped out. And, it is this goal which is the real impetus for the U.S.’s support of the Colombian military to the tune of over $7 billion since 2000, and for the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which President Obama is threatening to have passed this Fall. Those dedicated to mission of justice must oppose both these policies with the fervor of those priests who risk their lives every day in the lion’s den which the U.S. and Colombia have created for them.

Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer living in Pittsburgh.


US and Colombia Escalate Attacks on Liberation Church » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names