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Christian Reconstructionists Are Trying to Take
Dominion in America - and They Have Powerful Friends
By Jeremy Leaming
Church and State
Monday 02 July 2007
A recent conference held by American Vision, a radical
ministry that toils away to "help Christians build a truly
Biblical worldview," displayed the growing organization of
the dangerous Reconstructionist movement.
Tucked away a few miles off Interstate 40 just outside
Asheville, N.C., the LifeWay Ridgecrest Conference Center
provides Southern Baptists with a remote place to facilitate the
nurturing of "Biblical Solutions for Life."
The sprawling 1,300-acre compound in the Blue Ridge
Mountains is made up of chapels, a book store, café, guest
housing, drab-colored brick buildings, fences topped with barbed
wire and plenty of wooded grounds for religious contemplation or
recreation. It is not easily or quickly located; its address
cannot be found via a Google Maps search or traced on a Global
Positioning System (GPS).
Despite its isolated location, during the last week of
May hundreds of Religious Right activists and their families
made their way there for a four-day "Worldview Super
Conference." They came to hear fundamentalist Christian speakers
rail about the nation's moral confusion, claim the public
schools are bastions of secular humanism and warn that
Christians, especially their type of Christians, are in danger
of being persecuted by America.
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.
In an opening prayer, American Vision President Gary
DeMar set the stage for what would be a major theme running
through the gathering: restoring the sovereignty of God and
God's people - namely, folks like those at the conference.
"We know," said DeMar, "that you are a sovereign and
omniscient God.... We know that you have called us to be
responsible servants in the advancement of your kingdom through
the proclamation of the gospel and the application of your word
in every area of life."
Worldview speaker after speaker vacillated between
decrying the nation as wildly secular and ready for a radical
makeover led by fundamentalist Christians.
One of the first speakers, Gary Cass, offered a dire
picture of a country that is doomed unless it embraces a rigid
form of government led by fundamentalist Christian edicts.
"We need a new American vision," said Cass, former head
of TV preacher D. James Kennedy's now-defunct Center for
Reclaiming America for Christ, "because we've lost our biblical
heritage, our Christian birthright, which has been given to us
by our founders, we have squandered for a poisonous bowl of
atheistic humanism and political correctness.
"And now our culture is experiencing its deadly effects,"
he continued. "The putrid stench of the culture of death fills
our living rooms, coming to us every night on the evening news.
And this Worldview weekend, I believe, is the antidote for the
culture of death."
He continued, "By God's grace you are here to reclaim our
godly heritage and to reassert, without apology to the atheists
and the neo-pagans of our day, that this was and is a Christian
nation, built on Christian ideals."
Cass's stark call for a fundamentalist Christian takeover
of America was later followed by claims that the nation is
increasingly hostile to religious people. To some chuckles from
the audience, he insisted that the United States is in "great
need of a Christian anti-defamation league."
"Defamation," Cass argued, "is the precursor to
persecution." Defamation leads to marginalization, he continued,
and marginalization sets the "stage for discrimination," which
inevitably leads to the final stage of religious cleansing.
"Genocide being the ultimate expression," Cass declared,
"the deliberate, systematic extermination of a group of people."
Kind of like what is happening in Sudan's Darfur region, he
added.
Other speakers brutally attacked the public school system
and promoted home schooling and private Christian education. The
Ridgecrest bookstore was full of materials offering curriculums
for parents interested in escaping the public schools.
On the conference's first day, attendees gathered in
Ridgecrest's Spilman Auditorium were treated to a lengthy rant
against public schools by a Baptist preacher from Texas.
The Rev. Voddie Baucham Jr., pastor at Grace Family
Baptist Church in Spring, Texas and founder of Voddie Baucham
ministries, is indignant that so many "blood-washed" Christians
choose to send their children to public schools. He boasted
about his involvement in pushing a resolution before the
Southern Baptists' annual convention that calls on church
members to yank their kids from public schools.
"If we continue to send our children to Caesar for their
education, we need to stop being surprised when they come home
as Romans," Baucham said.
Baucham encouraged the gathering to do what his family
does, which is to keep children at home and immerse them in
religiosity. The towering pastor - virtually the only
African-American at the conference - noted that his son Trey
travels with him full time.
"Trey travels everywhere with me," he said. "Trey is 14
years old; I am his teacher. When our sons reach the age of 13,
they go through a rite of passage; they enter into manhood. And
when they enter into manhood, their mother closes up the books
and hands them to me."
There are things that only a man can teach a man, Baucham
said, though he did not elaborate other than to say that his son
is his assistant now.
All the railing against public schools and other
state-supported institutions has long been a focal point for
Christian Reconstructionists, whose goal is a society where
their harsh version of biblical law permeates everything. DeMar
provided a platform for some of the movement's most radical
voices.
On the second day, Doug Phillips, oldest son of long-time
right-wing activist Howard Phillips, declared that God created
the universe and the Bible is a history book for understanding
God's design.
Phillips heads up a San Antonio-based group called Vision
Forum that advocates for the "Biblical family." The organization
is also a staunch supporter of home schooling and families where
the men take precedence.
"If we encourage our daughters to pursue a careerist
philosophy," the Vision Forum's mission statement reads, "if we
fail to make our homes economically vital, hospitable centers
for love and learning, we are hypocrites."
Phillips spent the next hour railing against what he said
was a plot by secularists to write Christianity out of American
history, concluding that "those who control history define the
culture." Like other Worldview speakers, Phillips promoted
removing kids from public schools and immersing them in
fundamentalist Christian training.
Later in the day, DeMar introduced Gary North to the
attendees, lauding him as "a mentor." North is a son-in-law of
the late Rousas J. Rushdoony, who is widely touted as the
founder of Christian Reconstructionism. North has written
boatloads of books and articles about the need to establish
"Christendom."
His plentiful material has left a track record of
extremism. North has called for the death penalty, like
Rushdoony did, for youngsters who curse their parents, gays and
others who violate his interpretation of biblical law. He has
argued that stoning is the preferred means of capital
punishment, noting that it is a communal activity and "the
implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually
no cost." Writing for Reason magazine in 1998, Walter Olson
observed that Reconstructionists like North "provide the most
enthusiastic constituency for stoning since the Taliban seized
Kabul."
North skipped stoning at his Worldview appearance and
offered a strident rant against secularism. According to North,
the universe is ordered by an all-powerful God who will
ultimately dispose of all the "covenant-breakers." The so-called
"covenant-keepers," on the other hand, will inherit the riches
of the heavens.
Citing the Book of Genesis, North said, "In the
beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, that
establishes God as the absolute authority, since he is the
creator; since he is the creator, he is the owner of all of
creation. And, therefore, absolutely sovereign over that
creation."
During his lengthy discussion, North conceded that his
views have not been embraced by the public yet.
"Most of the people in this room are fringe people,"
North claimed to a hushed audience. "And not just 'kind of'
fringe people, not just 'kind of' Christian evangelicals."
He added that the Worldview audience is on the fringe
because it is in the forefront of the war against "Darwinism"
and the secular culture.
"We really are on the extreme fringe of society today,"
North continued. "And that's our curse. And if we do our work
well, and if the grace of God is on us, in retrospect that will
be our blessing."
Many of the speakers blasted civil liberties
organizations for supposedly waging an ongoing, aggressive
effort to remove religion, Christianity in particular, from the
public square.
DeMar specifically targeted the ACLU and Americans United
for Separation of Church and State, claiming that if those
groups had their way God would be excised from "everything" in
America. But thankfully, DeMar maintained, "there's a new
sheriff" in town.
"The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church
and State," DeMar said, "really have a battle on their hands
with organizations like the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF)."
DeMar praised ADF, a $25 million operation based in
Scottsdale, Ariz., for training young lawyers to fight for a
"biblical worldview." Two ADF representatives appeared before
the Worldview audience and promoted the group's work to bring
the legal system under Christian control.
Ken Fletcher, an ADF development director, insisted that
America was "started on a biblical worldview," but has been
wrenched from its religious moorings by secularists and
"activist courts."
"Our Christian liberties are under attack in our nation,"
Fletcher maintained. "I guess back in the '60s it really got
under attack, where the secular agenda really started replacing
the Christian worldview that we had in our nation."
Besides home schooling and trying to convert people to
their religious principles, Fletcher argued that the courts
"cannot be left out of the equation." "The right to abort a baby
came through the courts; prayer and the Bible taken out of the
public schools, that all came through the courts," he
maintained. "Homosexual marriage," Fletcher added also came
through the courts.
So in 1994, an array of powerful fundamentalist
broadcasters, such as James Dobson, D. James Kennedy and Bill
Bright, got together to form the ADF, he said, because "if we
don't start showing up in the courts, our religious liberty is
going to be lost in this country."
The conference also heard from Janet Folger, a former
executive director of Kennedy's disbanded Center for Reclaiming
America for Christ. Folger, who now heads a Religious Right
lobbying group dubbed "Faith2Action," was especially ticked off
at the new make-up of Congress, blasting it for supporting
hate-crimes legislation. She is also seriously convinced that
fundamentalist Christians are in danger of persecution in
America.
Folger, author of a book titled The Criminalization of
Christianity, repeatedly attacked the "homosexual agenda" as one
of the main driving forces against fundamentalist Christianity.
Aping comments from Kennedy, she tagged gays as plotting to
criminalize the Christian religion.
Folger said gays want to use hate-crimes legislation to
"do away" with terms applied to homosexuality such as
"abomination," which she noted is a word from Leviticus. The
gays want to ban the Bible, according to Folger.
"If they can silence the truth," Folger said referring to
gay lobbying groups like the Human Rights Campaign, "make no
mistake, they will silence the gospel."
She then claimed that Canada, Sweden, England and France
are already persecuting Christians who cite Bible passages in
demonizing gays. America, she claimed, is following those
nations' lead. (In fact, the hate-crimes legislation pending in
Congress specifically protects speech and penalizes only
hate-motivated violence.)
During her afternoon appearance, Folger said she sobbed
and felt almost defeated when the U.S. House of Representatives
passed hate-crimes legislation earlier this year.
We just need to bring "God back into this debate," Folger
maintained. She argued that when large numbers of fundamentalist
Christians get to the voting booth, good things will transpire
and pointed to the election and re-election of President George
W. Bush as evidence.
Folger urged attendees to be especially politically
active in 2008, saying that they should not be lulled into
believing that a "values voter" candidate cannot retain control
of the White House.
Lauding the U.S. Supreme Court for upholding a federal
ban on so-called "partial-birth" abortion, Folger maintained
that Christians are "so close to winning this thing, of
overturning Roe v. Wade."
"We are one judge away," she said.
Concluding her afternoon talk with a prayer for President
Bush and for God to assert dominion over the land, she started
to weep.
"I'm asking You how to take this land," she prayed, "and
how to keep it until You come."
ADF Senior Vice President Jeff Ventrella trumpeted the
work of his organization as one of the ways the nation can be
returned to a biblical foundation. Ventrella bemoaned the
secularization of society, claimed Christian children from coast
to coast face harassment from public school teachers and
officials and that the legal system must be used to fight back.
For over an hour, Ventrella blathered on about the
Apostle Paul and other characters from the Bible, declaring that
"truth in the public square has stumbled." At one point in his
rambling, angry talk, he warned that any "spies" amongst the
Worldview gathering had better not misquote him.
The ADF attorney claimed that his organization exists, in
part, to "do damage to evil. We must do damage to evil."
Ventrella also asked the afternoon gathering whether they wanted
to "win the world for Christ. We can't be on the sidelines," he
said.
The evening featured one of the conference's oddest
presentations. Gary Bates, head of Creation Ministries
International, spoke for well over an hour about his recent book
Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection.
In a nutshell, Bates contends that the UFOs some
Americans claim to see are not space aliens, but rather angels.
Some of those angels are good, he indicated, and some of them
are bad. He said that Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, and
the Muslim prophet Mohammed had both been visited by fallen
angels.
The evening's biggest draw, however, was the debate
between Americans United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn and
Herb Titus, a former dean at TV preacher Pat Robertson's Regent
University and former attorney for disgraced Alabama Chief
Justice Roy Moore. The two advocates sparred over whether the
First Amendment prevents "a Bibically-Based Public Policy."
The ADF's Ventrella served as moderator of the exchange
and told the audience that his role was to "be invisible." He
apparently could not contain himself, however. Throughout, he
chided Lynn for not asking a question of Titus quickly enough,
said Lynn, not Titus, carried the burden in the debate and gave
his own opinion of the question at the debate's conclusion.
Lynn told the 800 conferees what they didn't particularly
want to hear.
"American public policy cannot be based," he said,
"solely on the Bible, any more than it could be based solely on
the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita.
"The laws that govern our daily lives," Lynn continued,
"need to be based on commonly shared secular values, including
those found in the Bill of Rights. Lawmakers take an oath,
sometimes on a holy book even, to uphold the Constitution. They
do not put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold
the Bible.
"Political leaders represent all Americans, Christian and
otherwise," he said, "so yes, to base public policy on one
constituency's religious text and, moreover, a particular
interpretation of that text, would fly directly in the face of
the First Amendment's guarantee that there will be no laws
respecting, touching upon an establishment of religion."
Lynn's comments were the only words in a four-day
talk-a-thon that promoted a free society.
The major theme of this year's Worldview conference was a
call for an ongoing push by Christian fundamentalists to tear
down democracy and replace it with theocracy. Far from being
super, it was rather scary.
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