Do You Value Your Religious Freedom? (12/10/06)
by Dean T. Hartwell
While many in the United States point to extremists in the Middle East who use violence to gain power, a group of people at home intend to use more peaceful means to take over this nation. They have been called by many names, but a new book by Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: the Rise of Christian Nationalism refers to this small group as dominionists.
These dominionists, says Goldberg, want to hold dominion, or control, over those who do not believe in Christianity. They do not represent all Christians, but, if successful, they would grant privileges to fellow Christians at the expense of others. Having attended some church groups many years ago, I am concerned about these kinds of Christians, as I heard many such believers discuss a "Christian nation" at the groups.
To research, Goldberg interviewed numerous dominionists around the 2004 Presidential Election to get their views on their leading issues, such as abortion, gay marriage and the teaching of evolution. They gave their answers in such solidarity that I asked myself what produces unanimity among die-hard believers.
To an issue like gay marriage, a typical dominionist will say that it "threatens traditional marriage" without saying how that would happen. It reminds me of parents who discipline young children without going into details about why it is a bad idea to spill juice on the rug. What is amazing is that the dominionists can get the same result parents can while "disciplining" adults.
Just as parents threaten to take away television time, call for a "time out" or even spank children who misbehave, the dominionists use their threatened punishment to convert non-believers or to keep believers in line. But unlike parents, who usually have good reason to present their threats as real, the dominionists could not care less about reason.
Everything in the dominionist's dogma, or set of necessary beliefs, revolves around the concept of sin. They rely upon the story of Adam and Eve to convince us that since those two sinned (the Original Sin), their actions carry over to us. Thus, we are all sinners who must be rescued.
Never mind the Bible makes no mention of the Original Sin. Never mind that dominionists of earlier times (and even today) insisted that Adam and Eve were created by God in 4,000 B.C., a view repudiated by modern scientists who say the Earth is billions of years old. Never mind that a third generation in the Adam and Eve story requires incest or a phony wife for one of Adam and Eve's sons. The dominionists strategy does not consider facts; it only considers how the dogma maintains control over Christians.
They cannot give up on Adam and Eve because the story structures other parts of the dogma. To denounce gay marriage or gay rights, some dominionists say "It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." To promote the concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful God, they can speak of the one who kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. Even though some Christians have switched to Intelligent Design as their belief of creation, the shadow of Adam and Eve still lurks around them, anyway.
Having established that we are all sinners, they need a consequence to provoke non-believers to check their reason at the door and join them: hell. This strategy appeals to human nature - the higher the stakes, the more likely that people will take it seriously, no matter the odds of it occurring. Remember the furor over people trying to fix computers before the year 2000, even though nothing out of the ordinary took place.
Naturally, the dominionists have a solution to persuading people to join them and to avoid hell. His name is Jesus. They claim that his coming was foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament, who said that he would be a direct descendant of David and that he is divine.
Never mind that the only way to get from David to Jesus is through Joseph. Of course, that would make Jesus the son of Joseph, not God. Never mind also that many theologians have asserted that early Biblical translators confused the word "virgin" with "young woman" in reference to Mary, the mother of Jesus. [1]
These facts don't stop the dominionists from reciting from the New Testament that Jesus said he was the son of God. And they don't stop them from completing their basic dogma about the death of Jesus.
The dominionists tell us that Jesus died for our sins. But without Original Sin, there are no subsequent sinners. These dominionists are standing on thin ice trying to patch their message to pitch to us. Before they let it fall apart, they will treat us like children and threaten eternal damnation if we do not do as they say.
The moral of the story is that no one should let other people treat them like children. We all should reason our beliefs instead of reaching for dogmatism that seeks to destroy our reason.
Note:
[1] Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 2006. p. 96 fn.