Let's dig into Rick's dominionism essay some more. Now that I got that Nazi analogy reaction out of my system, let's look at things some more-
Am I seeking to say that dominionists are like Nazis or communists? Certainly not, but I do want to say that there are historical examples of “small” proving deadly.
And if dominionism were to be become a mass movement, wouldn’t it be prudent to have been looking at them already so that the “mainstream” members of Christianity could refute what they have to say?
One thing that came to mind is that a narrow definition of dominionism would likely require a postmillennial worldview. If it were to become a mass movement, or at least the dominant view in evangelical thought, it would have to supplant premillennial thought.
Modern premillennial thought is not much more than a century old; dispensationalists came to the fore in the late 1800s and the premillennial paradigm that came with it became the default eschatology for evangelicals by the turn of the 21st century. If premillennialism gave us The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind books in the late 20th century, might postmillennial authors be having best-sellers envisioning a post-millennial future in the late 21st century?
There is a lot of emphasis on what has been called Kingdom theology, of the Church looking to expand the Kingdom of God in the world. That leans towards a charismatic theology, but doesn't need to be accompanied by healings and tongues. Since the Pentecostal/charismatic church is the main player in Latin American and African church growth, a growing southern Church might be the first wave of that if evangelicals supplant Catholics as the majority religion in those countries a half-century or so out.
Ideas do migrate north; it was an Argentine revival that helped spawn the Toronto Blessing and the over-experiential flavor of charismatic thought that spread out from there in the 90s and 00s. If a variant of Kingdom theology takes a dominionist twist, it could take root in Hispanic-American populations as well as in the global melting pot in Canada.
As Mark writes “I’m not sure if they are harmless”, perhaps he may concede that someone could share of my objections to the lack of Christlikeness that I sometimes have seen in dominionism. The militaristic rhetoric and actions.
Shouldn’t Christians ask dominionists not to speak and act like they are thugs?
Your thugs are their prophets. In a lot of cases, they wind up acting like God is speaking clearly to them and heaven help the person who thinks otherwise. That "prophetic voice" can wind up shutting down opposition; "how dare you speak against the Lord's anointed."
What seems to be the problem here is people being too aggressive, too sure of their faith and too quick to anathematize any alternative views. The problem with that is that the alternative pole is a passive, doubting and doctrinally sloppy believer.
That is a problem not just with Christians; a lot of people of any pedology will tend to be sure they're right and assume that their foes are either evil or stupid or at best misguided, since if they were smart, good and well-reasoned, they'd agree with you. When devoutness, theology and ideology blend, the good-versus-evil theology turns foes into agents of the Devil.
You don't want to squelch their faith, but you do need to give it a sense of proportion, a sense of love of one's fellow man (even when they disagree with you) and a sense of humility in that you may be wrong now and then, even if you're following God as best you can.
Isn’t intemperate religious rhetoric a bad witness?
A steady diet of it is. There are times where a good jeremiad is called for, but being in prophet-mode 24/7 is like going squirrel-hunting with a cluster bomb.
The problem with a lot of religious-political rhetoric is that it focuses more on what its against rather than what it's for. Christianity doesn't boil down to being anti-abortion and anti-same-sex-marriage; the former doesn't show up in the Bible at all, while anti-homosexual behavior passages can be counted on two hands at best. That's not to say that those aren't important political issues, but they are a fraction of a percent of the Christian message and tangential to the Gospel.
We wind up presenting a warped view of the Gospel as it intersects with politics, but that is largely because the eternal parts of the Gospel are largely outside the scope of government. Government can be helpful in defending the weak, helping the needy and encouraging moral behavior, but the relationship between God and the individual is one that can't be easily legislated for or against.
While most of the Christians that Mark Byron cites don’t want to “take over the world”, I fear that they do a poor job of making distinctions and explaining why the dominionists are incorrect in their theology. Like William F. Buckley trying to get people to forsake the John Birch Society in the best interest of the conservative movement in the 1950s and 1960s, the church may need to take out it’s own trash.
There are quite a few folks who do so. I'd put the AFA in that bucket, and I've called them out for bearing false witness against the left more than once. James Dobson has gotten mostly negative comment here for over-the-top rhetoric. Todd Bentley was treated with a lot of skepticism for his bad theology ahead of a lot of the Blogosphere.
A lot of the problem is that of bad praxis. In many cases, people's theology is fairly sound, but they fall prey to being too harsh, unloving and inflexible in how they live it out. In other cases, it is theology that is the problem; a lot of the Word of Faith flavor of charismatic thought makes poverty a problem of faithlessness, which can then belittle efforts to help the poor in spirit and in cash.
One thing I want to warn against is to not spend too much time taking out that trash; if we focus on all the things that are wrong with the church, we can forget to focus on the things that God wants us to be for, like sharing God's love, God's holiness and God's sending his Son to die for our sins.
To be continued...
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