“I want you to answer a question for me. I am going to give you two options as answers. The question is; What it a Christian’s primary responsibility? Number one option, to evangelize, number two option, to get involved in government.”

This question was asked by Peter Marshall, son of chaplain to the senate Peter Marshall and author Katherine Marshall at a Christian businessman’s banquet in Norwich, Connecticut in 1996. A rumble of discussion followed, Marshall allowing a few moments for processing purposes. “The answer,” he finally broke in, “is that a Christian’s primary duty in this world is to get involved in government!”

Toward the end of Marshall’s speech, members of the Christian Coalition scurried around a long table draped in red, white and blue with books of all sorts, including Marshall’s history books for children. In one, called The Light and the Glory, Marshall’s ideology is reiterated in language carefully fitted to young, hyper-teachable minds. Repeatedly Marshall refers to the “Covenant Way,” which leads to the uniting of church and state, which he believes the Puritans and other Forefathers intended for America. He even refers to Providence, Rhode Island founder Roger Williams as a “vine” that was “pruned” from the Bay Colony because of his belief in the separation of church and state.1

The issue made so obvious by Marshall’s opening question was prioritization. How should priorities line up for the Christian today? For Marshall, the top of the list is political and civic activism. Few Christians would argue that these are not valid pursuits, but equally few would argue that they are the most important pursuits. It should be added quickly, however, that the latter “few” may be increasing by the day due to certain growing influences affecting Christian thinking.

One of the most radical of these influences is so-called Christian Recontructionism. Gary North, one of the movement’s most vocal proponents, defines Reconstruction in this way; “A recently articulated philosophy which argues that it is the moral obligation of Christians to recapture every institution for Jesus Christ.”2 This idea, also called Dominionism, states that Christians are mandated to gradually occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns. Theonomy is an even more outrageous close cousin that would like to reinstate the Old Testament civil code, including the penal code. (Most theonomists believe the method of punishment should be adapted to the times, however. So homosexuals and gluttons would die in the electric chair rather than by stoning. What a relief!)

While during the 18th and 19th centuries many Christian thought leaders believed in one form of Dominionism or another, their hope largely faded with the industrial revolution as society grew increasingly complex and problems mounted upon one another. But the idea of Christians obtaining control of secular society again gained widespread acceptance with the 1981 Francis Schaeffer book, A Christian Manifesto. In the 1960s, Schaeffer and his wife Edith ran a retreat center in Switzerland, where young American “Jesus Freaks” studied how to apply dominion theology back home. Schaeffer espoused the idea that the United States began as a nation rooted in Biblical principles, but secular humanism eventually came to dominate the political scene. His teaching appeals to Christians to use civil disobedience to restore Biblical morality, which is why he is popular with groups like Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion organization founded by Randall Terry.

In the 1980s, some of Schaeffer’s protégés joined a group called Coalition on Revival (COR), founded by Jay Grimstead. Grimstead was a post-millennialist, meaning that he believed that Jesus would return after a 1000 year reign by believers. Most evangelicals at the time were pre-millennialist, believing that Jesus’ coming would precede the “reign of righteousness,” and that Christians could expect the world to increase in wickedness until that time. This belief has been labeled by dominionists as “pessimistic.” Perhaps due in part to the nearly omnipotent power of ridicule, much of the evangelical world has since then absorbed some of Grimstead’s teachings, especially the command to “take dominion” of all public offices. This was Reconstructionism’s debut into the Christian mainstream, but more would follow.

The difficulty Reconstructionism has had in appealing to mainstream evangelicals has been due in part to the staunch Calvinism that undergirds it. Calvinism’s unyielding predestination teaches that God determines who will be saved and who won’t. This belief has two effects upon the Reconstructionist; one is to embolden them to seize the dominion that God has “preordained” for them, and the second is to remove the incentive to evangelize. Why try to lead people to salvation when their eternal destiny is already decided? This does not fly, however, for evangelicals, whose very name indicates their determination to promulgate the gospel to volitional beings.

Another impedance to the mainstreaming of Reconstructionism has been the absence of an experiential dimension, which Reconstructionists look askance at. Calvinists like to sing staid hymns and read long, intricate theological treatises. They have historically been kind of a stoical bunch in terms of worship style. Evangelicals by contrast expect a rich emotional connection to their religion.

What some are finding, though, is that the same emotional rush they receive at a rousing praise service can be found at a political rally. Or even a forum such as a “Steeling the Mind of America” conference where slews of Christians come to hear presentations by presenters such as David Barton, who is a modern synthesis of the Reconstructionist of yore and the conventional evangelical leader of the mainstream media. Barton’s premise is that the founding fathers, with the possible exception of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, were all evangelicals who intended to make America a Christian nation. His rapid-fire delivery sparks listeners with a sense of their Christian heritage, all harmless enough until he makes the assertion that the Constitution is worthless in the hands of unbelievers. From that point on in his presentation, one hears the overtones of Dominionism. He admonishes Christians to be like the “salt of the earth” and preserve the government by obtaining various offices. He quotes founding fathers such as William Patterson as saying, “the key to maintaining sound government in America is given us by God. . . ‘When the righteous rule, the people rejoice, when the wicked rule, the people groan.”3 Whether he would call himself a Reconstructionist or not, Barton has succeeded in mainstreaming some of what hard-line Reconstructionism was too inaccessible to impart. People leave with a sense of mission: they can run for office, or at least vote for a fellow Christian, and in so doing work toward a state of affairs that William Patterson and the other founders would approve of.

What is amiss in this movement is not the practice of running for office, but the premise under which these individuals run. They run believing that God has ordained that all political offices be occupied by Christians. They run believing they will ultimately win the “cultural war” or the “civil war of values.”And ironically enough, they support their belief system with Old and New Testament scriptures, which, if understood in context, would voice their greatest opposition.

One common example is 2 Chronicles 7:14;

“(If) My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

“Land” in this context is thought to be the nation, “my people” to be the citizens. And this was indeed the case when the words were originally spoken to Solomon, the king and visible leader of theocratic Israel. This promise was given directly after the great temple was dedicated and the visible presence of God, called the Shekinah glory, had appeared in the innermost part of the sanctuary. This Shekinah was, among other things, an ongoing evidence of the reality that God was the civil head of the nation. No mortal save the high priest could approach this glory and live, and he only once a year on Yom Kippur. But at the moment of Christ’s death, the veil that shielded the Shekinah from unconsecrated eyes was torn by an unseen hand, signifying to the Christian that God’s presence, and therefore his civil leadership, had departed from temporal Israel. And where did it go? According to the New Testament, to spiritual Israel, the Christian church.4 There is no biblical mandate whatsoever to resurrect the theocracy at any time after this transition. In fact, Jesus himself taught that the world would increase in wickedness, not righteousness, until the end, and that his followers would be persecuted!5

When a false premise such as that held by the Dominionists bears sway, the practice of Christianity is affected. Think as “pessimistically” about the moral decline of our world as Jesus did for a moment. He reported that there would be “wars. . . famines, earthquakes,” and that His followers would be “hated by all nations.” He promised that “lawlessness” would increase, and that “most people’s love will grow cold.” It sounds like the ship is sinking. Jesus then predicts that the “gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world. . . and then the end shall come.”6 But Jesus, why preach the gospel if the “culture” will never be redeemed? Because, according to the Christian message, Jesus died to save people, not cultures.

If in fact a Christian approaches this great commission with the false premise that the culture is salvageable, that Christian will act like a captain aboard a sinking ship who denies that the ship is, in fact, going down. Rather than loading people into life boats, he will spend all his time trying to repair an irreparable ship, and in so doing utterly forsake his true mission to save individual lives.

But why did God try to “save the culture” of ancient Israel? Perhaps to prove once and for all that it was impossible to save cultures without first saving people. In this way, theocracy was proven ineffective during the Old Testament era. In spite of God’s best efforts, his people continued to fall into rebellion and apostasy, not because God’s power could not sustain them, but because they as individuals were unchanged. So the question hangs over the heads of those who claim God is reinstating theocracy; if God himself couldn’t swing it, how will they?

The reason for this impossibility is simple. People can’t be forced to worship, even by God. They can be forced to go through the motions of worship, but no amount of brute force or savage fear can make the heart bow in love and adoration. If I was God, I wouldn’t want anything less than true affection, would you? Since God concurs with us on this point, I think it’s safe to say that he cast aside the theocracy gladly, reaching for better options.

But Dominionism tells us otherwise. It infers that for the last two centuries this nation has increasingly frustrated God’s thirst for control, leaving him out of schools, legislative halls, football games. Every effort must now be made, according to this teaching, to regain what has been lost. For some, the goal of dominion is so all-consuming that even Christian principles are subservient to “Christian” power. Consider the words of Gary North, “We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality. . . Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God”7 (italics supplied). The problem with this thinking is that one who “uses” the wall of separation appears to be holding it up, thus deceiving others who take refuge in it’s shadow. Then when separation becomes obsolete to the user, down the wall comes, leaving others unprotected. This is blatant dishonesty and exploitation, but then for those who embrace North’s thinking, the end apparently justifies the means.

Yet many, if not most, high-profile Christian leaders would deny the accusation that they vie for total control of the secular political scene. Back in 1994 Ralph Reed wrote, “What do religious conservatives really want? They want a place at the table in the conversation we call democracy. Their commitment to pluralism includes a place for faith among the many other competing interests in society.”8 Is this “commitment to pluralism” waning among conservative Christian leaders? There is more and more evidence that Dominionist-born intolerance is making serious inroads into the Christian Right. The insidious thing about this evolving change is that the vehicles bearing this intolerance are innocuous and even noble, while their passenger is not.

Consider, for example, the Adams County, Ohio saga. In 1997, four new high school buildings in Adams County were completed, and a granite monument of the Ten Commandments was placed in each of the four school yards next to the flagpole. This project was initiated by the Adams County Ministerial Association and permitted by the Adams County School Board. About a year later, a local man wrote several letters to the superintendent of the district proposing the placement of monuments alongside the Ten Commandments which he said represented his religious group, “The Center for Phallic Worship.” You can imagine what kind of monuments he was hoping to place. The request was ignored. Half a year later the ACLU filed a suit demanding the removal of the Ten Commandment monuments. The suit named the entire school board as well as the superintendent, by name, as defendants. The plaintiff was Barry Baker, the Interim Director for the Center for Phallic Worship.

A rally was held two days later at a local Church in Peebles, Ohio, where Barry Baker also lived, with 600 in attendance and standing room only. Supporters at the rally said it was, “smalltown America at it’s best: a grassroots movement that is part patriotic rally, part revival.”9 This was the beginning of what has become a protracted battle during which a citizens group called the ACTC (Adam’s County for the Ten Commandments) has been formed. The ACTC has ordered 50,000 blue and white yard signs that display the Ten Commandments and the legend “We Stand for the Ten Commandments” at the top. These signs have been posted in yards in 29 U.S. states, Japan and Switzerland. They have held numerous rallies and meetings, featuring such speakers as— you guessed it— Peter Marshall and David Barton. The ACTC web page reported that Marshall, “emphasized the fallacy of the so-called ‘separation of church and state’ that has guided Supreme Court rulings for the past fifty years.”10

The ACTC story has become one of the many symbolic battles in the cultural war between the religious right and secular humanism. Such stories seep into the corporate consciousness of Christiandom through voices such as James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, and they cannot fail to evoke a sense of the increasingly rabid opposition to Judeo-Christian mores that has impacted this culture. But we wonder if the concerned citizens of Adams County will be satisfied with the Ten Commandments in the school yard, or will they go on from there to “reconstruct” a theocracy that by their own Bible’s decree is obsolete?

Caution is in order here. One must not indulge in the temptation to assign guilt by association. We can’t assume that the hard-line Dominionism of Gary North is shared by all conservative Christian leaders. But we must ask, where is this all leading? There must be a line between radical Recontructionist thinking that would insist on capital punishment for homosexuals and the more palatable conservative Christian thinking that would prefer the Ten Commandments to a phallus in the school yard. Yes, yes, there is a line, but the question is, do we know where it is?

1 Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and the Glory, (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 1992) p. 89.

2 Gary North, Backward Christian Soldiers? An Action Manuel for Christian Reconstruction, (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984) Glossary.

3 Sound file from Steeling the Mind of America web site, <http://www.audiocentral.com/conferences/steeling/barton96.html> Text quoted is Proverbs 29:2

4 See Galatians 3:14

5 See Matthew 24:1-28, Mark 13:1-23, Luke 21:10-24, John 16:1-4

6 Matthew 24:7, 9, 12, and 14

7 Gary North, Institute for Christian Economics, quoted in Bill Moyer’s “God and Politics,” PBS, 1987

8 Ralph Reed, Politically Incorrect, (Dallas, TX; Word Publishing, 1994) p. 24

9 ACTC web page, <www.4the10.net/10commandments/saga.html> p. 2

10 Ibid., p. 4