The Right Wing Envelops Us as We Sleep
In the late 1990’s, as I researched my Ph.D. dissertation, Sexes, Gods, and Southern Christians, I came across a group that was unfamiliar to me in name only. As a minister’s daughter from the Bible belt of Texas, I chose the topic of religion and the right wing in an attempt to understand my own confusing upbringing involving the intersection between professions of faith that swam around us and the pervasive behaviors of racism, discrimination and the male fascination with guns and domination of women’s bodies.
My departure from Texas was immediate upon high school graduation. I left the state for college and never looked back. I often quipped that “I left Texas to escape the Christians.” Ironically, I later found myself in Colorado Springs during the influx of the very Christians I had once left behind. Moreover, having established one of the largest relocation companies in Southern Colorado, our task became one of assisting with the movement into the city of various organizations, including the International Bible Society, Christian & Missionary Alliance, and numerous small organizations that followed. My interface with James Dobson and Focus on the Family is the topic of another installment on this blog titled “Oh, James, We Hardly Know Ye.” The experiences of those years once again baptized me into the thought system that left me spinning with the paradox it contained.
As the landscape of religion, culture, and politics in Colorado Springs began to shift like a tidal wave, we sold our companies and moved to California, where I entered graduate work in psychology, cultural mythology and religion — specializing in the intersection between the Christian Conservative movements and their impact on politics, culture and law in our country.
Seven years of graduate school led to my dissertation, where I focused on exposing the revisions of the Biblical stories and theological philosophy in order to foster dominion– specifically over women and children. During the journey toward completion of the work, the path led to a movement that was founded in the heart of my homeland, Waco, Texas. That Dominionist group was called Christian Reconstructionism.
Rousas John (R. J.) Rushdoony founded the movement in 1965, joined by his son-in-law, Gary North. Both wrote prolifically and expanded the movement through what North called “stealth tactics,” a technique later employed in the political arena by Ralph Reed as he headed James Dobson’s political arm, the Family Research Council.
Dominionists believe that Jesus Christ should be Lord in all aspects of life, including civil government and that the civil government of our nation, its laws, institutions, and practices must therefore be conformed to the principles of Biblical law as revealed in the Old and New Testaments.
Dominionist groups in their variations generally propose a radical agenda to replace our democracy with a theocratic elite who would rule by their own interpretation of “Biblical Law,” including the relegation of women back to the home to be submissive to their husbands, and requiring specific permission to go to work, in addition to numerous other injustices including capital punishment for such “crimes” as adultery and homosexuality, and denial of citizenship to those deemed to be “insufficiently Christian” — an undefined measure to be assessed by the theocrats.
During my dissertation research period, I decided that the material was so extreme and fringe-like that it would not be acceptable to my dissertation committee, and indeed I could very well be denied the Ph.D. if I dared incorporate such outrageous non-main stream material into a serious scholarly study. Therefore I chose not to include it, and packed away volumes of research, never thinking that it would be necessary to drag it out again. Little did I know that the fringe was to become wrapped in the fur of wealth, privilege and political leadership.
The year 2000 brought the election of George W. Bush, long known to me as a Born Again Fundamentalist from my background. With that unsuspecting act, we Americans ushered in a rapidly initiated shift in our government toward Dominionist philosophy — virtually scattered throughout the Bush administration. Members subscribing to the philosophy — Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (a student of the father of Neoconservatism, Leo Strauss), Attorney General John Ashcroft (who saw fit to cover the Ladies of Justice with burqa-like drapes to hide their bare breasts), and two Supreme Court Justices — Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The movement toward blurring of religion and politics marched forward in orchestrated steps throughout Bush’s tenure in the White House. Much ground was won during those years as the road to Dominionism was tenaciously paved.
We then witnessed the nomination of Sarah Palin as candidate for Vice President. I immediately recognized the language and key words that are “code” for the followers of the various Dominionist off-shoots. Prior to “annointing” Sarah Palin, New Apostolic Reformation movement apostle Thomas Muffee called for the infiltration of God into the “7 Mountains of Culture,” an initiative that is central to the movement. The 7 Mountains to be “reclaimed” in the war for God include social arenas of government, arts and entertainment, media, education, family, religion, and business. The Christian God intends to dominate them all, through the efforts of “Spiritual Warfare Networks.”
Most recently, Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry have arrived on the political stage. Both have blatant ties to the New Apostolic Reformation movement, which co-sponsored Perry’s Christian Prayer Rally on August 6. The New Apostolic Reformation is the most recent name for the same Dominionist agenda. Just another fur in this coat of many colors.
My research files are back out of storage, and I am re-joining the effort to stop the fringe from becoming the fur that provides false comfort and warmth while suffocating us as citizens of the democracy we are purporting to sell around the world as a model. All the while, we watch it vanishing in our own country.
May we not sleep through the loss.
