Christian extreme represents danger
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As a young Christian, I traveled in some weird circles for more years than I'd care to admit. People who knew me in the late '70s and early '80s will recall that I couldn't get through a day without marveling at the gullibility of my fellow believers.
Those were heady times in the Christian circles I traveled in. A lot of sincere Christians I knew believed that humans and dinosaurs once coexisted in a world that was no more than 7,000 years old.
Because my politics and belief in the legitimacy of science hadn't changed with my spiritual orientation, I rejected the Young Earth hypothesis. From what I could see, the sincerity of my fellow Christians' faith didn't insulate them from incredibly stupid ideas.
I also rejected the conservative politics and preoccupation with the End Times that many in my Southern California Bible study considered an essential part of the Christian cultural mandate.
Still, that was all kid stuff compared to what I encountered a few years later back in Pennsylvania. The first time I ever heard of the Christian Reconstruction movement, now known as Dominionism, I thought it was a gag.
Who in their right mind wanted to live in a world where the Old Testament civil and ceremonial laws would become the template for local and national politics? It was a profoundly dark theology even by the standards of the dour Calvinism I considered reasonable at the time.
According to the tenets of Christian Reconstruction, it was up to Christians to bring the whole world into submission to Jesus Christ. Once that was accomplished (with God's help, of course), the Old Testament laws that guided ancient Israel would be dusted off and applied to civil societies across the globe, including America.
The motivating idea behind Christian Reconstruction was that Christ would never consider returning to an Earth consumed by spiritual decadence. The world needed to be "cleansed" to attract a procrastinating Jesus who was already 2,000 years overdue. It was up to Christians to take over and make him feel welcome.
In a world made more acceptable to Jesus, homosexuality could not exist and all non-Christian religions would be outlawed. Women would be restricted to managing the home and raising children, leaving millions of jobs to be filled by once-unemployed men.
First Published August 16, 2011 12:00 am
