1 Soldiers for Christ: the History and Future of Dominionism in America
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Soldiers for Christ: The History and Future of Dominionism in America Sarah Powell Miller Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Prerequisite for Honors in Religion April 24, 2012 2012 Sarah Powell Miller 1 Table of Contents Page Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………..3 Introduction: Dominionism in America…………………………………………………...4 Chapter One: Taking Our Cities For God………………………………………………....8 Chapter Two: Church, Sect, or Cult?…………………………………………………….36 Chapter Three: Dominionism and Evangelicalism………………………………………59 Chapter Four: Dominionism and Violence………………………………………………91 Epilogue………………………………………………………………………………...115 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….118 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank: Professor Stephen Marini, for advising me through the honors process from beginning to end. You are responsible not only for my place in the Wellesley College Religion Department, but for my future as a student of religion. I am forever grateful for your support, guidance, and friendship. Professors Sharon Elkins, Professor Barbara Gellar, and Professor Tom Burke, for their participation as committee members. Dianne Baroz for always being a friendly face. Rachel Tabachnick for leading me to new sources of information. Glenn and Carol Miller, my parents, for reading through draft after draft, and giving me the support that I needed to get through this year. You are a continual source of love and reassurance, even during times of immense doubt. Jason and Meghann Miller for just being brilliant, and for inspiring me through your hard work. My Friends, for listening to my brainstorming, my complaints, and my doubts. You provided me with endless support and encouragement, and I am forever indebted to you. Wellesley College, for giving me the education that made this thesis possible, and for remaining committed to women who will make a difference in the world. 3 Introduction: Dominionism in America An Overview “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea…and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth’.” 1 This passage from the book of Genesis forms the basis of a newly emergent strand of American Charismatic Christianity called Dominionism. Multiple groups have appropriated Dominion Theology over the course of the late 20 th and into the 21 st centuries including Christian Reconstructionism and currently, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Dominionism rests on a the foundational claim that Christians have a divinely mandated duty to take control over all areas of secular and religious life in America, and throughout the world. Dominionists maintain that these institutions are currently in the hands of demonic forces that actively oppose the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. It is the duty of Dominionists, through means of spiritual aggression, to defeat these forces and take back the world for God. Through a practice called spiritual warfare, Dominionists target demons, defeat them through prayer methods called warfare prayer, and establish Christian institutions in their place. Backed by an end-times thinking which posits that humans must establish God’s kingdom on earth before Christ can return to save the faithful, Dominionism is also inspired by an eschatological urgency. In this way, God’s call for total Christian dominion is fulfilled through this movement. 1 Coogan, Michael David., Marc Zvi. Brettler, Carol A. Newsom, and Pheme Perkins. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: with the Apocrypha . New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Gen 1:26-27. 4 In addition to the practice of spiritual warfare, and the total belief in Christian dominion, a specific organizational hierarchy backs the NAR and its claims to legitimacy. Apostles and Prophets have a divinely appointed position in the Church, and its is these men and women who must make decisions for the people. They have the ability to hear God’s word, and to translate that word into action. The most influential of these apostles is C. Peter Wagner, the founder of the NAR, and the figurehead of modern-day Dominionism. Wagner, through his leadership within the movement and through his abundant writing, speaks for the NAR and makes its practices known to those outside the movement. It is from Wagner that much of the information of Dominionism in this thesis comes. Because Wagner views himself as the personal liaison between the people and God, his word is considered by Dominionists to be practically infallible, and through him, the functions and practices of the NAR take shape. The goal of this thesis is to explore the history, theology, and methodology of Dominionism in order to establish its significance within the narrative of Evangelicalism in America. More importantly this work seeks to locate Dominionism’s use of violence in order to defend the ultimate claim that the movement has the potential to become physically violent. With such an emphasis on spiritual violence, and the exclusive mental concentration on aggression, the movement is poised to shift from rhetorical to physical violence. Perhaps increasing political pressure, or negative attention from the media will catalyze this shift. By comparing Dominionism to other millennial movements that have manifested their beliefs in the form of physical violence, the instability of Dominionism becomes clear. Dominionism shows the ideology of violence and the action of violence are interconnected, and one will ultimately lead to the other. 5 In order to prove this claim, I will engage the Dominionist movement from a variety of perspectives. My methodology is descriptive, analytical, and comparative. The first chapter will analyze the history of Dominionism, its leaders, and its most obvious practices, including that of spiritual warfare. The second chapter will locate Dominionism within different theories of religion. Church, sect, and cult theory will be discussed and then applied to the movement, followed by a comparison of more comprehensive theories of religion including Rational Choice Theory, and Salvation Theory. The third chapter will compare the specific practices and beliefs of Dominionism to mainline Evangelicalism in America, in order to contextualize Dominionism within this religious narrative and to analyze the appropriateness of the Dominionist claim to Evangelicalism. And finally, the last chapter will provide an in depth analysis of spiritual warfare, and then compare it to other examples of religious violence, including the Defensive Action Movement in the U.S, and Aum Shinrikyo in Japan. These comparisons will provide blueprints for the possible physical manifestation of Dominionist violence in the future. Certainly, Christian social activism is not a new concept in America, nor is the use of the war metaphor an anomaly. How then is Dominionism different from past usages of these concepts? This thesis will seek to describe these differences through acute methods of analysis and most importantly, through comparison. This task is a difficult one, since Dominionism’s practices as expressed in primary source material are secretive and vague. The specific methodology of spiritual warfare is almost impossible to discover, and yet I believe the available information on Dominionism is enough to contextualize it, and make predictions about its future behavior. The urgency of this task outweighs the challenges. A movement which claims to adhere to normative patterns of 6 Christian belief, but which also maintains an aggressive and violent view on society as a whole, poses a threat to Christianity and to American society. Dominionism’s practices and theology must be revealed in order to understand its place in religious and social history. 7 Chapter 1: Taking our Cities for God The History, Practice, and Theology of Dominionism I. Reconstructionism Reconstructionism is the movement that directly preceded and influenced Dominionism; it shares its desire for establishing a Christian nation by taking over secular and religious institutions. In 1981, Francis Schaeffer published a book titled, A Christian Manifesto, a short volume that would occupy a place at the center of Dominionist social and political ideology for the next decades. Schaeffer was trained as a Christian apologist but was heavily influenced by the father of Reconstructionism, Rousas John Rushdoony. Rushdoony propagated an active form of Christianity at which civil disobedience was at the center of belief. 2 In a Reconstructionist version of America, all public and private life would be guided, or rather dictated, by the principles laid out in the Bible. Here, Theocracy is the obvious goal, a form of Christian revival and reclamation that would directly counter the humanist developments of the past decades. Humanists place human progress at the center of civilization, rather than God. Schaeffer writes that Christians must, “be opposed to the false and destructive humanism, which is false to the Bible and equally false to what Man is.” 3 Here, Schaeffer not only challenges the theological foundations of humanism, but the ontological nature of man as well. This 2 Schaeffer, Francis A. A Christian Manifesto . Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1981, p.4. 3 Schaeffer 24. 8 analysis mirrors the Reconstructionist world-view; the challenge is not just rectifying religion, but the nature of man and society as a whole. The urgency and legitimation of Reconstructionism is reflected in its belief that reconstruction symbolizes the return to what religion, and what America once was.