Guest Post by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver
Yesterday, one of those intelligent souls who commented on my post about “dark clouds” said that the darkest cloud was that created by fundamentalism. I have to say I could not agree more. As a friend of mine once pointed out, the words Christian, Jew, Moslem and Hindu are all nouns. When you put the word “Fundamentalist” in front of them, they become pronouns – descriptive only of the variety of fundamentalism, which is in its world view very similar regardless of the religion it claims. When I look at Fundamentalism around the world, whatever its source, I see hubris: people declaring definitively that they “know” The Word of God, and they’re willing to strike you down if you disagree.
I wrote on this topic several months ago in the midst of the Schiavo Circus for That’s Another Fine Mess, back when we were happy to have 200 readers on a good day. What I said then is still highly relevant:
The Theocratic Right loves to claim that there is nothing in the Constitution about any “separation of church and state.” I think it’s relevant to quote the architect of the separation of church and state, President Thomas Jefferson, in his famous 1802 Letter to the Danbury Baptists:
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
Lately, Tony Perkins – director of The Family Research Council and a “leading light” of the far Theocratic Right – has advocated the death penalty for women who are “unchaste before marriage,” as well as for doctors who perform abortions and the women who undergo one.
This isn’t really surprising. Perkins’ boss is James Dobson of Focus on the Family – the largest and most important Theocratic Right organization in the country – recently stated that “Five black-robed justices on the Supreme Court can tell us how it’s gonna be. They’re not gods. They don’t do everything right. For 43 years, the court has been on a campaign to limit religious liberty.”
What Dobson is so specific about is the 1962 Supreme Court decision Engel v. Vitale, in which local New York families – some Christian, some Jewish – had objected to a prayer written by a New York education board and recited daily in public schools, claiming that mandatory state-sponsored prayer conflicted with their rights as parents to teach their children religion as they saw fit. In its decision finding the state-drafted prayer unconstitutional, the court stated:
“It is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by the government.”
Dobson, Perkins, and the rest of the Theocratic Right want government to write prayers your children will recite in school and you will recite at public gatherings. This is the biggest of all possible governments: the state as religious instructor. To them, to do otherwise is “to limit religious liberty.”
These people are Dominionists, a branch of fundamentalist Christianity you likely haven’t heard of that has grown and spread across American fundamentalism for the past 45 years, to the point it has taken control of the Southern Baptist Conference in the person of Richard S. Land. They are biblical literalists who believe God has called them to take over the U.S. government.
Dominionism was founded in 1959 by D. James Kennedy, a former Arthur Murray dance instructor, who built Coral Ridge Ministries in Florida into a $37-million-a-year empire, with a TV-and-radio audience of 3 million, by preaching it was time to save America – not by saving souls but by winning elections. A founder of the Moral Majority in 1979, Kennedy is so influential that George W. Bush sought his blessing before running for president, and he continues – with other top Dominionists – to be consulted by Bush on matters of federal policy.
In case you have any doubts what Kennedy and the Dominionists are about, here is what he says about saving America:
“Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors – in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.”
They want schoolbooks to reflect a “Christian” version of American history. They want to make it a felony punishable by death for gay men or women to have sex and for women to have abortions.
Dominionists were in the lead during the Schiavo Circus last spring. When the courts ordered Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube removed, it was Dominionists who organized the 24-hour protests and called on Governor Jeb Bush to defy the law and take Schiavo into state custody.
Unlike the End-Timers of American fundamentalism who believe the Second Coming is just around the corner, the Dominionists believe they must establish a “bible-believing” government in America that will endure for a thousand years until Christ returns. Does anyone remember who was the last one to declare a “thousand year” government?
Reverend Mel White – ghostwriter of Jerry Falwell’s autobiography before he broke with the evangelical movement and announced his sexual orientation was gay – says of the movement:
“Most people hear them talk about a ‘Christian nation’ and think, ‘Well, that sounds like a good, moral thing.’ What they don’t know – what even most conservative Christians who voted for Bush don’t know – is that ‘Christian nation’ means something else entirely to these Dominionist leaders. This movement is no more about following the example of Christ than Bush’s Clean Water Act is about clean water.”
Alan Sears, president and CEO of the Alliance Defense Fund, a team of 750 attorneys trained by the Dominionists to fight abortion and gay marriage, says “The First Amendment does not say there should be a separation of church and state.” Sears believes that the constitutional guarantee against state-sponsored religion is actually designed to “shield” the church from federal interference, allowing Christians to take their rightful place at the head of the government.
David Limbaugh, brother of Rush and author of “Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity,” claims “We have a right, indeed an obligation, to govern.”
Rick Scarborough, author of “Mixing Church and State,” says that “Activist judges have systematically deconstructed the Constitution. A God-free society is their goal!”
The Dominionists’ idea of the kind of “non-activist” judge they want to see appointed to the Supreme Court is Roy Moore, the former Alabama Chief Justice who installed a 5,300-pound granite memorial to the Ten Commandments – complete with an open Bible carved in its top – in the state judicial building, and once penned an opinion calling for the state to execute “practicing homosexuals.”
Before every meeting, the Dominionists recite an oath they dream of hearing in every classroom:
“I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior for whose kingdom it stands. One Savior, crucified, risen and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe.”
While Dominionists rely on grass-roots activists to fight political battles, they are backed by some of America’s richest entrepreneurs: Amway founder Rich DeVos has donated more than $5 million to Kennedy. Jean Case, wife of AOL founder Steve Case (whose fortune was made largely on sex-chat rooms) donated $8 million. Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza, is a major financial supporter of Dobson’s Focus on the Family. (A good reason not to buy his crappy pizzas, if you didn’t have one already.)
Unsurprisingly – back when he was House Majority Whip – Tom DeLay was a winner of Kennedy’s Distinguished Christian Statesman Award. Is it any surprise Dominionists are the major backers of DeLay in the current fight over his corrupt practices as House Majority Leader?
Sinclair Lewis once wrote in “It Can’t Happen Here,” a novel about the coming of a fascist government to America in 1935, that “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”
We worry about the danger of a nuclear-armed fundamentalist government in Iran. Thinking about a nuclear-armed fundamentalist United States is truly a scary dark cloud.
Just to remind ourselves that there are Republicans who do not buy this totalitarian fascism masquerading as religion, former Senator and UN Ambassador John C. Danforth, an Episcopal minister who the president recently described as “a man of strong convictions, unquestioned integrity, and great decency… a man of calm and judicious temperament…” wrote this past March in the New York Times:
For moderate Christians, the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws. We struggle to follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christians can be codified by legislators.
For us, living the Love Commandment may be at odds with efforts to encapsulate Christianity in a political agenda. We strongly support the separation of church and state, both because that principle is essential to holding together a diverse country, and because the policies of the state always fall short of the demands of faith. Aware that even our most passionate ventures into politics are efforts to carry the treasure of religion in the earthen vessel of government, we proceed in a spirit of humility lacking in our conservative colleagues.
Danforth concluded:
The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.
As an addendum to what was written this past Spring, a recent article in the Los Angeles Times reports that, through his Leadership Training Institute in Washington, Dominionist-founder Kennedy is working to establish a future generation of political leaders who will “follow God’s Law, not the will of the people.”