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Template:Dominionism Christian Reconstructionism is a highly controversial religious and theological movement within Protestant Christianity. It calls for Christians to put their faith into action in all areas of life including civil government, and envisions the private and civil enforcement of the general principles of Old Testament and New Testament moral law, including those expounded in the case laws and summarized in the Old Testament Decalogue.

This movement is totally unrelated to Reconstructionist Judaism, Progressive Reconstructionism or any form of Polytheistic Reconstructionism.

Some sociologists and critics refer to Reconstructionism as a type of Dominionism. In fact, the frequent use of the word, "dominion", by Reconstructionist writers, strongly associates the critical term, Dominionism, with this movement. Some separate Christian cultural and political movements object to being described with the label, Dominionism, because in their mind the word implies attachment to Reconstructionism. As an ideological form of Dominionism, Reconstructionism is sometimes held up as the most typical form of Dominion Theology. In Reconstructionism the idea of godly dominion, subject to God, is contrasted with the autonomous dominion of mankind in rebellion against God.

The movement was founded in the United States of America, by Rousas John (R. J.) Rushdoony. Other past and present leaders include Gary North, Gary DeMar, Greg Bahnsen, David Chilton, Kenneth Gentry, and Andrew Sandlin.

Although relatively insignificant in terms of the number of self-described adherents, Christian Reconstructionism has played a role in promoting the trend toward explicitly Christian politics in the larger U.S. Christian Right (this is the wider trend which some critics refer to, generally, as Dominionism). They also allegedly have influence disproportionate to their numbers among the advocates of the growth of the Christian homeschooling and other Christian education movements that seek independence from the direct oversight or support of the civil government. Because their numbers are so small compared to their influence, their gradualist strategy, and their more radical aims (even if less influential) are anti-democratic (counterpoising God's Law against the arbitrary will of the people), they are sometimes accused of being secretive and conspiratorial, which they deny since they have published thousands of newsletters and hundreds of books.

Christian Reconstructionists describe their view of public ethics by the term, Theonomy (the Law of God governs); while their critics tend to label them theocratic (God governs). The distinction between these terms is mostly rhetorical, and reflective of the perspectives of those who use the terminology. When writers speak of "theocracy" they mean approximately the same thing that other writers mean by "theonomy".

The founders of the movement have all been Calvinists, and they believe that their view of the law is a faithful extension of the Reformed Christian view of the continuing validity of Biblical Law in a modern context. This is sometimes bitterly contested in the conservative Reformed churches where their influence first began to appear. Some Reformed denominations have crafted official statements rejecting theonomy as a heresy, but others tolerate some forms of it on the grounds that as a Biblical theology it can appeal to historical and doctrinal precedent within the Puritan and Reformed tradition.

Christian Reconstructionism was originally formulated as a practical expression of Postmillennial Christian Eschatology, though the distinctive tenets of the school of thought (generally referred to as Theonomic Ethics) are purported to be compatible with other eschatological viewpoints within conservative Christianity. The "second generation" of theonomists includes some premillennial evangelical and fundamentalist movements.

The Reconstructionist perspective

The social structure advocated by Christian Reconstructionism would have the clergy, laity and government, individually and corporately, to be in ultimate submission to the moral principles of the Bible, including the Old Testament, while retaining their separate jurisdictional spheres of authority and roles in society as inferred from principles of biblical law, both Old and New Testaments. It is the claim of Christian Reconstructionism that even as under the Davidic administration of the Israelites, the Priests (Levitical line) and Kings (Davidic line) were distinguished by their scopes of authority (e.g., the King could not offer sacrifices for others and the Priests could not pass or enforce legislation) and their roles in society (e.g., the King maintained the social welfare and the Priests maintained personal welfare), so it should be in a modern Christian Reconstructionist society.

While many Christians believe that biblical law is a guide to morality and public ethics, when interpreted in faith, Reconstructionism is unique in advocating the enforcement of the sanctions of biblical law. For example, they believe that existing laws governing sexual behavior should remain (against incest, pederasty, pedophilia and sex with animals), and support the recriminalization of abortion, homosexuality, fornication, pornography and any type of birth control. However they argue that apart from a direct appeal to biblical law, these behaviors will eventually be accepted by a society that is unwilling to punish them appropriately (possibly including the death penalty). Protection of property and life also need grounding in biblical law, according to Reconstructionism, or the state set free from the restraint of God's law will take what it wishes at a whim. Accordingly, Reconstructionists advocate biblically derived measures of restitution, a definite limit upon the powers of taxation, and a gold standard for currency.

Christian Reconstructionists make no pretense of subscribing to the pluralistic ideals of religious tolerance (derided as Political Polytheism, by author Gary North, in a book of that name). They envision a future in which opponents to Jesus Christ will eventually surrender the public square to his rule. In principle they are opposed to bringing this about through martial or political means. Adherents of the movement claim to be opposed to any institutional combination of Church and State, as in Erastianism and Caesaropapism. They do not view politics as their primary, or even an important, instrument of change. Nevertheless, in political terms the ideal that they aim toward might be called "denominational tolerance", or "tolerance within the bounds of Christianity": in the predominantly Christian world they envision, this is the only kind of tolerance that will be necessary. Therefore, they use the Bible, in contrast to political documents like the Constitution of the United States, as their pattern and guide for envisioning the future. They are more in line with the theocratic Christian Commonwealths, such as that of Colonial Massachusetts under Cotton Mather, or Geneva under John Calvin . They seek to pervade society from within, through the gradual spread and perfection of Christian belief and obedience; and they believe that this influence is ultimately inexorable, having no need for or benefit from top-down coercion of any kind, because it is carried out under the already established authority of Jesus Christ.

Christian Reconstructionist leader Gary North summarized his views this way: "What I found is this: the concept of the rule of law was Mosaic, not Greek (Ex. 12:49). The concept of private property is supported in the Decalogue's laws against theft and covetousness. The Mosaic economic law as a whole was pro-market, pro-private ownership, pro-foreign trade, pro-money-lending (Deut. 28:12). The New Testament did not break with most of these laws, and the few that it did break with, such as slavery and the jubilee land law, made the resulting position even more market favorable. It is my goal in life to do what I can to persuade people to shrink the State. The messianic State is a crude imitation of a religion of redemption. It makes the State the healer and, ultimately, the savior of all mankind. This messianic religion is what the early church battled theologically and risked martyrdom to oppose. Christians refused to toss a pinch of incense onto the altar symbolizing the genius of the emperor. For that seemingly minor resistance to State power, they were thrown to the lions. Both sides knew the stakes of that contest. Christianity was a dagger pointed at the heart of the messianic State." ("Authentic Libertarianism" )

Reconstructionists seek an approach to culture and ethics that is ideally biblical. Unlike most Calvinists, they deny that non-Christians can be appealed to apart from scripture, to persuade them to adopt ideas that are approximately scriptural. They believe that where there is no faith in the Bible, there is no common-ground between people, because God is denied in whose image all people are made. This is one reason that politics is not a significant instrument of change in the Reconstructionist program, and the political involvement that they urge is explicitly Christian and biblical, not consensus-building.

Reconstructionists claim that biblical law requires equal treatment of all people regardless of their beliefs, and that it is inherently just toward all men. They argue that the social laws that might be established under biblical law would not regulate beliefs, but only actions, and more specifically, public actions (where public denotes a demonstrable corpus delicti or mens rea). It is not consistent with their goal of a severely limited role for the civil state, to seek out religious deviants. However, public actions, which are contrary to their understanding of general principles of the moral law (e.g., open hostility to God (blasphemy), propagation of idolatry, public homosexuality), would not be tolerated, because these are acts of public intolerance of God's rule. They see only two options inevitably opposed as totalities: the kingdom of God which subverts sin, against the totalitarian humanist state which subverts God's rule.

A breakaway offshoot has arisen recently, a new racial reinterpretation of Christian Reconstructionism called Kinism ("kin" as in "family" or "race"). This new movement is neo-Confederate white separatism re-tooled using Reconstructionist rhetoric, and mixed with agrarian economic principles. Harry Seabrook, Mark Godfrey, and Chad Degenhart are the proponents of this small movement. Together, they founded the Kinist Institute in 2005. Like the Reconstructionists, the Kinists claim to be indebted to Reformed apologist, Cornelius Van Til, who argued that the Bible contains a self-vindicating system of knowledge. However, they reject what they refer to as "Austrian economic principles", that is, the libertarian market economics advocated by the Reconstructionists, which is comparable to the free-market principles associated with Ludwig von Mises.

Critical views

As such authority given to one religious group contradicts the founding principles of American democracy, most Americans are critical of Reconstructionist aims.

Critics are skeptical of the pragmatic value and actual viability of the proposed Christian Reconstructionist social structure, claiming that an overly authoritarian civil society would be a very real threat if such a structure were to be adopted. They observe that Christian Reconstructionism would entail abandoning the historical interpretation of the principle of separation of religion and government as promoted by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Critics also argue that Reconstructionism would in practice result in the domination of the church by the state (or vice versa), regardless of the stated goals of Reconstructionists.

Some prominent advocates of Christian Reconstructionism have openly written that according to their understanding, God's law approves of the death penalty not only for murder, but also for active homosexuals, for adulterers, and perhaps even recalcitrant children (see the List of capital crimes in the bible). Critics have accused such a view of being rigid and cruel as well as being a violation of fundamental American principles; a point that Reconstructionists concede from an opposite perspective: that American culture has eliminated the idea of moral evil as transgression of God's law from its consciousness, so that the "evil" that the society now seeks to eliminate turns out to be God and his law.

Predictably, therefore, the debate, especially with secular critics, quickly devolves into a competition between two theories of the source of profound human evil. Reconstructionists warn that hatred of God's law has an inner logic that produces brutal totalitarian states, in which no evil is intolerable, such as the mass-killing, atheistic regimes of Stalin and Pol Pot, and quasi-religious humanistic regimes in which "the State is god walking on earth", as Hegel put it, such as in Nazi Germany.

Evangelical groups and individuals also worry about postmillennialist Dominion Theology. These include Gavin Finley and others in the free church tradition such as the Mennonites and the Amish.

Theocracy and Neofascism

However, some critics categorize the Christian Reconstructionist movement as a form of totalitarianism or theocratic neofascism. For example, Karen Armstrong sees a potential for fascism in Christian Reconstructionism, and notes that the system of dominion envisaged by Christian Reconstructionist theologians R. J. Rushdoony and Gary North "is totalitarian. There is no room for any other view or policy, no democratic tolerance for rival parties, no individual freedom," (Armstrong, Battle for God, pp. 361-362). Berlet and Lyons have written that the movement is a "new form of clerical fascist politics," ("Right-Wing Populism in America", p. 249). Many critics view that a Christian Reconstructionist state in the U.S. would much resemble the Taliban in Afghanistan or the theocratic dictatorship in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors. One of the derogatory terms often used for Reconstructionists is American Taliban, asserting that they are similar to the Taliban in ideology, differing only in their particular religious sect.

Christian Reconstructionist leader Gary North, himself has written that he favors "limited civil government and extensive self-government" and has accused American conservatives of embarking on "an ancient revolutionary program of world transformation through force of arms".

Christian critics

Within their own Reformed and Christian circles, critics have been vocal. Some have raised the criticism that the use of biblical sanctions will accomplish more evil than good, even though the law is good, because people are not good. In line with an idea like this, Michael Horton of Westminster Seminary California has warned against the seductiveness of power-religion. The Christian rhetoric of the movement is weak, he argues, against the logic of its authoritarian and legalistic program, which will always drive Reconstructionism toward sub-Christian ideas about sin, and the perfectability of human nature (such as to imagine that, if Christians are in power, they won't be inclined to do evil). On the contrary, Horton and others maintain, God's Law can, often has been, and will be put to evil uses by Christians and others, in the state, in churches, in the marketplace, and in families; and these crimes are aggravated, because to oppose a wrong committed through abuse of God's law, a critic must bear being labelled an enemy of God's law.

Professor Meredith Kline has adamantly maintained that Reconstructionism is a heresy that makes the mistake of failing to understand the special prophetic role of Biblical Israel, including the laws and sanctions, calling it "a delusive and grotesque perversion of the teachings of scripture." ("Comments on an Old-New Error," The Westminster Theological Journal 41 (Fall 1978)). Kline's student, Lee Irons furthers the charge of unorthodoxy in his essay, "The Reformed Theocrats - A Biblical Theological Response".

According to the Reformed theocrats apparently ... the only satisfactory goal is that America become a Christian nation.

Ironically ... it is the wholesale rejection (not revival) of theocratic principles that is desperately needed today if the church is to be faithful to the task of gospel witness entrusted to her in the present age ... It is only as the church ... puts aside the lust for worldly influence and power - that she will be a positive presence in society.

Rodney Clapp, in a piece for the Evangelical magazine, Christianity Today (Vol. 31, No. 3 (February 20, 1987), pp. 17-23), entitled "Democracy as Heresy", wrote that Reconstructionism is an anti-democratic movement.

Reconstructionist Dr. Greg Bahnsen writes in the Foreword to The Debate Over Christian Reconstruction by Gary DeMar (Atlanta, GA: American Vision Press, 1988), that Christian criticisms tend to be of such poor quality, that they discredit Christian scholarship as a whole:

"It is difficult enough for us to gain a hearing in the unbelieving world because of its hostility to the Lord Jesus Christ and its preconception of the lowly intelligence of His followers. The difficulty is magnified many times over when believers offer public, obvious evidence of their inability to treat each other’s opinions with careful accuracy."

Quotes

"Christianity and Democracy are inevitably enemies" Rousas John Rushdoony

See also

• Dominion Theology
• Dominionism
• Theonomy
• Reconstructionist Postmillennialism VS Revivalist Postmillennialism
• Summary of Christian eschatological differences

External links

Informational and pro-Christian reconstruction sites

• Christian Reconstructionism - The Foundation of Modern Conservatism
• An Historical Survey of Theonomy in Calvinist Christianity
• The Creed of Christian Reconstructionism
• Christian Reconstruction: A Call for Reformation and Revival
• Example of a Proposed Theocratic Constitution (Cotton Mather)
• The Chalcedon Foundation
• Religious Movements: Christian Reconstructionism
• The Five Points of Christian Reconstruction
• The National Reform Association - Explicitly Christian Politics
• The Institutes of Biblical Law - excerpts from Rushdoony's book
• John Frame's 1976 Review of The Institutes of Biblical Law

Critical sites

• Theocracy Watch
• ReligiousRightWatch Blog
• Notes on Reconstructionism: Roots of a New "Christian" Inquisition?, a critical view from a fundamentalist Christian perspective.

References

• Rushdoony, Rousas John. 1973. The Institutes of Biblical Law. Nutley, NJ: P & R Publishing (Craig Press). ISBN 0875524109.
• North, Gary & DeMar, Gary. 1991. Christian Reconstruction: What It Is, What It Isn't. Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics. ISBN 0930464532.
• Barron, Bruce. 1992. Heaven on Earth? The Social & Political Agendas of Dominion Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan. ISBN 0310536111
• DeMar, Gary. 1988. The Debate Over Christian Reconstruction. Tyler, Tx: Institute for Christian Economics. ISBN 0930462335
• DeMar, Gary. 1988. The Reduction of Christianity. Tyler, Tx: Institute for Christian Economics. ISBN 0930462637
• Bahnsen, Greg. 1977 . Theonomy in Christian Ethics . Nacogdoches, Tx: Covenant Media Press.
• Gentry, Kenneth. 1992. He Shall Have Dominion: A Postmillennial Eschatology. Tyler, Tx: Institute for Christian Economics. ISBN 0930464621
• Gentry, Kenneth. 1989. House Divided: The Breakup of Dispensational Theology. Tyler, Tx: Institute for Christian Economics. ISBN 0930464273
• Clarkson, Frederick. 1997. Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage. ISBN 1567510884
• Berlet, Chip and Matthew N. Lyons. 2000. Right–Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press. ISBN 1572305622
• Kline, Meredith G. "Comments on an Old-New Error," Westminster Theological Journal 41 (Fall 1978): 172-89.
• Bahnsen, Greg. "M. G. Kline on Theonomic Politics: An Evaluation of His Reply" Journal of Christian Reconstruction (Winter 1979) Or available online for free

• Dominionism
• Christian eschatology