American Vision

As we mentioned the other day, there have been a lot of articles lately from journalists, columnists, and Religious Right activists completely dismissing any talk of "dominionism" among the Religious Right.

Dominionism, they claim, is just some meaningless conspiracy-theory dreamed up by the Left as scare tactic because nobody within the Religious Right movement would ever embrace those ideas or associate with anyone who espoused any sort of Christian Reconstructionist views.

Really?  While searching for something else, I stumbled upon this 2007 article from Americans United about a conference organized by the Christian Reconstructionists at American Vision and co-sponsored by several "mainstream" Religious Right organizations:

The gathering, dubbed “Preparing This Generation to Capture the Future,” was hosted by American Vision, a ministry that has been toiling away since 1978 to “help Christians build a truly Biblical worldview.” In a conference handout, American Vision states that “By God’s grace, we will work together to make America a truly Chris­tian nation for our children’s children.”

Based in Powder Springs, Ga., American Vision also produces reams of material that push Christian Reconstruc­tionism, a form of fundamentalism that argues for a re-writing of American history, dismantling secular democracy and constructing an America governed by “biblical law.” Reconstructionists seek to impose the criminal code of the Old Testament, applying the death penalty for homosexuals, adulterers, fornicators, witches, incorrigible juvenile delinquents and those who spread false religions.

Despite its overtly radical theocratic agenda, American Vision is allied with some of the Religious Right’s most powerful outfits. This year’s conference was cosponsored by the Alliance Defense Fund, a well-funded Religious Right law­yers’ outfit that James Dobson and other religious broadcasters helped create; Michael Farris’s Home School Legal Defense Association; the late TV preacher Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University School of Law; and World Magazine, Marvin Olasky’s influential evangelical Christian periodical.

The event was promoted heavily by the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, and it was held in a facility owned by the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest non-Catholic denomination and a religious body closely aligned with the Bush administration.

American Vision is run by Gary DeMar, who is a self-identified Christian Reconstructionist.  Last year, DeMar's organization hosted another Worldview Super Conference.  Take a guess what it was called?

Sovereignty & Dominion: Biblical Blueprints for Victory!

The Bible tells us in Genesis 1:28 that God created us to multiply, fill the earth, and take dominion of His creation for His Glory. When Jesus came to earth, He gave his disciples the Great Commission and told them to make disciples of all nations, Baptize them, and teach them to obey all that he had commanded (Matthew 28:18-20). These two mandates form the basis for why Christ’s Church exists on this planet. Every square inch of this world belongs to King Jesus. It is our privilege to serve Him by exercising servanthood dominion in every area of life.

This conferece was co-sponsored by Liberty University Law School and among those attending the event were Janet Porter, who served as the co-chair of Mike Huckabee's Faith and Family Values Coalition during his presidential campaign and John Eidsmoe, who spoke at the event. Eidsmoe, as you may recall, was Michele Bachmann's mentor who advocates a variety of far-right views.

So Religious Right groups openly co-sponsor an event organized by Christian Reconstructionists and Michele Bachmann's mentor is a featured speaker at an event organized by these same Christian Reconstructionists which is entitled "Sovereignty & Dominion" ... but to point out the influece of Christian Reconstruction and Dominioism among the Religious Right and some GOP presidential candidates is "just another attempt to discredit opponents rather than answer them"?

Recently, I wrote about how Janet Porter has been, and Rep. Michele Bachmann will be, associating with Gary DeMar and Gary North, both of whom are unabashed Christian Reconstructionists and believe that every aspect of our society should be governed according to Biblical law.

So I recently ordered "Christian Reconstruction: What It Is, What It Isn't," a book co-written by North and DeMar. 

I just started reading it, but I want to highlight a few tidbit from the Preface, written by North, like the fact that in 1976 he "joined the Congressional staff of Dr. Ron Paul" and the fact that he says AIDS is "God's eloquent response to the myth of moral neutrality."

But mostly I just wanted to call attention to this passage:

God is plowing up the modern world. This is softening the Establishment's resistance to many new ideas and movement, among which Christian Reconstruction is barely visible at present. This is good for us now; we need the noise of contemporary events to hide us from humanist enemies who, if they fully understood the long-term threat to their civilization that our ideas post, would be wise to take steps to crush us.

We've noted before how, on a national level, the Tea Party movement has been more than happy to allow the Religious Right to participate while openly rejecting their social agenda. In essence, the Tea Party movement's position has been that if the Religious Right wants to sign on to their smaller government/fiscal responsibility agenda, they are welcome to do so, but shouldn't expect Tea Party activists to return the favor.

But on a local level, it has been someone of a different story, as Religious Right activists have been regularly participating in Tea Party rallies, which is creating a weird dynamic whereby Tea Party rallies are starting to look more and more like Religious Right rallies:

It was a different kind of venue for the South Atlanta Tea Party. The grassroots group sponsored its first pastors breakfast May 12 at the Tyrone Depot. Speakers at the breakfast included Ken Fletcher of the Alliance Defense Fund and Gary DeMar of American Vision.

Topics at the prayer breakfast included the threats to religious freedom and the persecution of the church, restoring the church to its Biblical foundations and America’s Christian heritage.

“We felt like we should do a breakfast, though we didn’t know what would come of it,” organizer Claudia Eisenberg said. “But it was a great thing and it was successful. We invited 100 pastors and 54 showed up.”

Eisenberg commenting later said she felt such a venue was appropriate for the pro-American, pro-freedom, pro-Constitution tea party movement.

“I feel like there is a sleeping giant in our country. And it’s the church. The church was silent when prayer was removed from our schools. The white churches were silent during the civil rights movement. And the church has been largely silent for much of the time on abortion and gay marriage. I think the government has silenced the churches by making them file as tax-exempt organizations,” Eisenberg said.

“So today, either the churches don’t want to speak out or can’t speak out. My hope was that the speakers could help awaken the sleeping giant. (Fletcher and DeMar) let us know that you don’t have to live in fear when speaking out,” Eisenberg said.

Fellow South Atlanta Tea Party organizer Cindy Fallon after the meeting agreed that inviting Fletcher and DeMar to speak to ministers was appropriate for the grassroots organization.

“We wanted to alert churches and pastors about the slide to socialism,” said Fallon. “The speeches were informative and the feedback was positive. Hopefully, events like this will get people in churches more involved so they can be more knowledgeable. We need to promote churches and the Bible in the affairs of this nation.”

We are very familiar with this sort of talk ... just not coming from so-called Tea Party activists.

Ben Stein’s anti-evolution attack film, “Expelled,” has finally arrived, grossing $3 million over the weekend, thanks to a church-based roll-out by the marketers that brought you “The Passion of the Christ.” Critics have savaged the documentary—which claims widespread persecution of creationists in academia and warns of a direct link between the theory of evolution and the Holocaust—as a dishonest work of propaganda, but, not surprisingly, the movie has a lot of fans among the Religious Right.

“Expelled” has been promoted heavily in right-wing media this month. Stein appeared on Focus on the Family radio, where the movie received the “enthusiastic” endorsement of James Dobson. Producer Mark Mathis appeared on WallBuilders Live, the radio show of premier church-state integrationist David Barton, to discuss “the persecution of the many by an elite few.” Rush Limbaugh exuberantly promoted it on his show; apparently, the movie taught him that “Darwinism, of course, does not permit for the existence of a supreme being, a higher power, or a God.”

Stein was also interviewed by the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow, while executive producer Logan Craft hit WorldNetDaily. Baptist Press, the official outlet of the Southern Baptist Convention, featured an op-ed by Stein and a series of articles pushing the film. The producers gave a private screening to Brent Bozell of the far-right Media Research Center. (He loved it.)

“Expelled” is also featured by the late D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries, which offers its own product line equating Darwin and Hitler. While some “Expelled” cheerleaders express sympathy for the “Intelligent Design” advocates who have been “persecuted” supposedly (the National Center for Science Education has their realistic back-stories here), most on the Right seem to be especially enchanted by the film’s reliance on a half-baked linking of evolution to Nazism and Stalinism.

“Expelled,” wrote World magazine editor and faith-based initiatives architect Marvin Olasky, “rightly equates Darwinian stifling of free speech with the Communist attempt to enslave millions behind the Berlin Wall.”

The real question is: Did Darwinism bulwark Hitlerian hatred by providing a scientific rationale for killing those considered less fit in the struggle for survival?

The answer to that question is an unambiguous yes.

Richard Weikart of the “Intelligent Design” group, the Discovery Institute, defended the Darwin-Hitler connection as critical: “[W]hat is most objectionable about the Nazis' worldview? Isn't it that they had no respect for human life?” Weikart, who wrote a book entitled “From Darwin to Hitler,” added, “the Nazis' devaluing of human life derived from Darwinian ideology....”

Gary DeMar of American Vision was so inspired he branched out on his own, linking evolution to the fundamentalist polygamist cult that’s been in the news recently.

Given the worldview shift that has taken place in America, none of this is of any consequence. Evolutionary and atheistic assumptions are standard worldview thinking in every public school classroom in America. So then, why is it wrong with having forced sex with young girls? It’s evolution in action. …

The secularists should be proud of what these polygamists are doing. They are confirming the evolutionary thesis of Dawkins and his selfish gene hypothesis.