by Qutb » Sun Aug 20, 2006 5:43 am
From <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/40318/" target="top">AlterNet</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Public Stoning: Not Just for the Taliban Anymore</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>By John Sugg, Church and State. Posted August 15, 2006.<br><br>Two really devilish guys materialized in Toccoa, Ga., last month to harangue 600 true believers on the gospel of a thoroughly theocratic America. Along with lesser lights of the religious far right who spoke at American Vision's "Worldview Super Conference 2006," Herb Titus and Gary North called for nothing short of the overthrow of the United States of America.<br><br>Titus and North aren't household names. But Titus, former dean of TV preacher Pat Robertson's Regent University law school, has led the legal battle to plant the Ten Commandants in county courthouses across the nation. North, an apostle of the creed called Christian Reconstructionism, is one of the most influential elders of American fundamentalism.<br><br>"I don't want to capture their (mainstream Americans') system. I want to replace it," fumed North to a cheering audience. North has called for the stoning of gays and nonbelievers (rocks are cheap and plentiful, he has observed). Both friends and foes label him "Scary Gary."<br><br>(...)<br><br>Titus' and North's speeches, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>laced with conspiracy theories about the Rockefellers and the Trilateral Commission</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->, were more Leninist than Christian in the tactics proposed -- as in their vision to use freedom to destroy the freedom of others. That's not surprising -- the founder of Christian Reconstruction, the late fringe Calvinist theologian Rousas J. Rushdoony, railed against the "heresy" of democracy.<br><br>A Harvard-bred lawyer whose most famous client is Alabama's Judge Moore, Titus told the Toccoa gathering that the Second Amendment envisions the assassination of "tyrants;" that's why we have guns. Tyranny, of course, is subjective to these folks. Their imposition of a theocratic state would not, by their standards, be tyranny. Public schools, on the other hand, to them are tyrannical.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>North is best known to Internet users for his prolific auguring that a Y2K computer bug would cause the calamitous end of civilization. In the days prior to the advent of this millennium, North urged subscribers to his delusional economic newsletters to go survivalist and prepare for the end. Many did so, dumping investments and life savings, a big oops</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->.<br><br>"I lost a million and a half dollars when I sold off real estate," one of North's fans, a home-schooling advocate from Florida, told me during a lunch break between lectures touting creationism and damning secular humanism. But my lunch companion still anted more than pocket change to hear North make more prophesies in Toccoa. "I believe Gary North on Bible issues," he explained. I suggested that false prophets often pocket big profits, but I was talking to deaf ears.<br><br>Hosting the "<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Creation to Revelation... Connecting the Dots</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->" event was a Powder Springs, Ga., publishing house, American Vision, whose pontiff is Gary DeMar. The outfit touts the antebellum South as a righteous society and <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>favors the reintroduction of some forms of slavery</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> (it's sanctioned in the Bible, Reconstructionists say) -- which may explain the blindingly monochrome audience at the gathering.<br><br>(...)<br><br>Everything they need to know about the universe and the origin of man is in the first two chapters of Genesis. They know the answer before any question is asked. DeMar's spin is what he calls a clash of "worldviews." According to DeMar and his speakers, God sanctions only their worldview. And that worldview is a hash of enforcing Old Testament Mosaic law (except when it comes to chowing down on pork barbecue), rewriting American history to endorse theocracy and explaining politics by the loopy theories of the John Birch Society. (Christian Reconstructionism evolved, so to speak, from a radical variation of Calvinism, AKA Puritanism, and the Bircher politics of such men as the late Marietta, Ga., congressman, Larry McDonald.) For most of the four-day conference, DeMar turned the Bible over to others to thump. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>North blamed the Rockefellers and the Trilateral Commission for the success of secularists</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->. Titus told of Jesus making a personal appearance in the rafters of his Oregon home.<br><br>(...)<br><br>It would be easy to dismiss the Reconstructionists as the lunatic fringe, no more worrisome than the remnants of the Prohibition Party. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>But, in fact, they have rather extraordinary entrée and influence with top-tier Religious Right leaders and institutions</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->.<br><br>James Dobson's Focus on the Family is now selling DeMar's book, America's Christian Heritage. Dobson himself has a warm relationship with many in the movement, and he has admitted voting for Reconstructionist presidential candidate Howard Phillips in 1996.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>TV preacher Robertson has mentioned reading North's writings, and he has hired Reconstructionists as professors at Regent University. Jerry Falwell employs Reconstructionists to teach at Liberty University. Roger Schultz, the chair of Liberty's History Department, writes regularly for Faith for all of Life, the leading Reconstructionist journal.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Southern Baptist Bruce N. Shortt is aggressively pushing his denomination to officially repudiate public education and call on Southern Baptists to withdraw their children from public schools. Shortt's vicious book, The Harsh Truth about Public Schools, was published by the Reconstructionist Chalcedon Foundation</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->.<br><br>There are big theological differences between the Religious Right's generals and the Reconstructionists. Traditional Christian theology teaches that history will muddle along until Jesus' Second Coming. That teaching is tough to turn into a political movement. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Reconstructionists preach that the nation and the world must come under Christian "dominion" (as they define it) before Christ's return -- a wonderful theology to promote global conquest</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->.<br><br>In short, Dobson, Robertson, Falwell and the Southern Baptist Convention (the nation's largest Protestant denomination) may not agree with everything the Reconstructionists advocate, but they sure don't seem to mind hanging out with this openly theocratic, anti-democratic crowd.<br><br>It's enough for Americans who believe in personal freedom and religious liberty to get worried about -- before the first stones start flying. <br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>John Sugg is senior editor of Creative Loafing Newspapers. He was the recipient of the 2005 Society of Professional Journalists "Green Eyeshade" award for serious commentary, and he has won more than 30 other significant awards.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
