Rick Hiebert has a rebuttal on dominionism up. Lots of food for thought to keep me busy for a couple of days.
Let me try and see if we have our terms right. Are we using "dominionist" as a theological term or a political term? On one hand, BDBO seems to use it to describe charismatic conservative activists who have a post-millennia desire to eventually Christianize government. On the other, it is used to describe anyone who is a theologically conservative.
Would Mormon activists on Proposition 8 be dominionist? If so, we've entered into a political term, for Mormons and small-o orthodox Christians would have little in common theologically but a lot in common in the public square.
Would a conservative Catholic like Rick Santorum be dominionist? If so, how would we square his more communitarian economics with some of the more libertarian economics of fellow "dominionist" candidates Bachmann and Perry?
If we're using it in a theological sense, then we're looking at a 3% or so minority. The poster girl for dominionism on BDBO is Faytene Kryskow-Grasseschis; a Canadian charismatic activist than seems to be half Acquire the Fire's Ron Luce and half Ralph Reed; she runs a lot of youth-oriented rallies as well as being a mover-and-shaker in capital-c Conservative circles. From the coverage at BDBO, she seems a bit too authoritarian and a bit paranoid about the media and talks a good game about God moving in Canadian culture and politics; however, like a lot of charismatic preachers, she talks a bit grander than the numbers can back up.
Let me pull in a paragraph from RIck's piece of last night-
He argues that dominionists have “more bark than bite.” Well that may be the case in the US, but I can cite some Canadian examples. Dominionists were crucial in proposing a law (Roxanne’s Law) which, although it could not be passed, was at least debated and voted on. They provide foot solider support for less controversial seeming policies that they support, such as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s support of Israel, which may lead us to wonder whether a quid pro quo would ever come into play given the ways–discussed here at BDBO–that the movement seeks to remind the government that it is not going anywhere.
That might well be true. "Roxanne's law" was a Canadian bill designed to keep woman from being coerced into an abortion; it never became law since a pro-abortion-rights majority saw it as a way to throw roadblocks into the abortion process. It went down 97-178 last December with PM Harper voting against it.
American theocons have put similar laws on the books in the US; while I can't recall a good analog to Roxanne's bill in the US, there have been quite a few states put in regulations requiring parental consent and requiring a cooling-off-period before having an abortion. In addition, some more gruesome types of "partial birth" abortion have been banned on the federal level.
If we use dominionist=theocon/SoCon= conservative Christian activist, then Rick is correct that the movement isn't going anywhere. It makes up a major faction of the Conservative Party in Canada but not quite a majority; I haven't seen a good head-count, but it would seem about a third of the Tory MPs would be social conservatives.
It makes up a working majority of the Republican Party if broadly defined to include Catholics, Jews and Mormons who are social conservatives.
Mark Byron also suggests that we should pay careful attention to the small size of the dominionist movement.
Well, in Canada, I am sure that there are thousands more members of the United Church than dominionists but, rightly or wrongly, they perhaps seem to be unable to make their influence felt in the same way that the dominionist seem to be able to at some times and in some ways.
The UCC doesn't have to have its influence felt, since its politics would largely be represented by a large swath of the body politic, from most Liberals and Dippers as well as a number of moderate Tories. UCC member Jack Layton's deathbed letter carried that good-hearted communitarian spirit rather well without having it be cosigned by church leaders.
Being somewhat counter-cultural, the Faytenes have to shout a bit louder to get past the center-left inertia.
I hear talk amongst dominionists of ‘gatekeepers”, relying not only on force of numbers, but of getting the right person in the right place to effect change. Lull conservatives to sleep, and rely on them to fail, thinking that they can control the extreme elements. The example of von Papen and his friends in Germany comes to mind. Conservative Germans in 1928 probably though the Nazis were inconsequential and tiny, but given the wrong circumstances.
Lovely. I'm tempted to use the blogism-"the first person to invoke the Nazis in a debate is in the process of losing it." It is true that the Nazis were seen as useful idiots by German conservatives until the Nazis got bigger than them and pushed them under the bus after running over all the leftists.
That would require the following steps of logic
(1) Casting your dominionists as your Nazis; let's go and call them Dominionazis. A small populist group with an authoritarian streak. There are times that can fit; while they aren't political per se, the problems within the Sovereign Grace movement at present seems to flow out of an unhealthy authoritarian spirit. Other Christian conservatives can often have a God's-way-or-the-highway attitude which wouldn't translate well into secular democratic leadership.
(2) Cast secular-leaning conservatives (libertarians, big business, Tea Partiers, NRA) as the unwitting enablers.
(3) Getting our Dominionazis into a position of power as part of a coalition.
(4) Get the Dominionazis into a majority within the coalition.
(5) Throw the left out of the political game.
(6) Throw the secular right out of the game, leaving only the Dominionazis.
One could argue that we're at stage 2 in the US and stage 3 in Canada. Canada has a Conservative government with a large SoCon faction within it. However, getting a SoCon majority is aways off.
The US could well see stage 4 in 2013 if we have a GOP-controlled congress and a conservative president. However, to get to stages 5 and 6, we have to have a leadership that is willing to scrap the Constitution in order to first make liberalism illegal then make secular conservatism illegal.
Ain't
Gonna
Happen
American conservatives adore the Constitution as much as they adore the Bible. American conservatism has a near-cult of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution as originally intended. As much as they may chafe at some of the modern applications of the First Amendment in church-state issues, they are very unlikely to look to throw the Constitution out the window in order to seize power.
While Canada doesn't have that Founding Fathers cult, I'm pretty sure that conservative Christians in Canada aren't quite ready to kick the whole Charter of Rights to the curb, either. The Canadian constitution doesn't have the hallowed place that the US one does, but there is a sense of fair play and decency that would likely stop any dominionist takeover in its tracks.
What is left is a Dominionazi movement stuck at stage four, being the lead faction of a conservative coalition government. It still needs the cooperation of its secular partners and has to fight the liberal parties at the ballot box to stay in power. Both will keep any theocratic tendencies in check, as will judicial oversight making sure things stay constitutional.
That's the worst case scenario for folks fearful of religious conservatives, barring a combination of a high level of chaos and a increase in religious fervor which would throw the status quo into a cocked hat; we've seen a few movies where that happened, but a level-headed populous will head that off in all but the worse scenarios.
General Theo Cratt isn't taking over anytime soon; not in this universe, at least. More on this a bit later.
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