Horror Story. Part 2
The GOP is now controlled by a Fundamentalist Christian Cult. The 2022 Supreme Court is also now controlled by this cult – consider the leaked draft on overturning Roe v Wade. The GOP is not going to stop at just banning abortions. Banning birth control, same sex marriages, interracial marriage, suppressing voter rights, the list goes on.
Christian reconstructionist advocate a government that is based upon divine law (a theonomic government) and libertarian economic principles. They maintain spheres of authority that are distinct from each other (self, family, church, and state). For example, the enforcement of moral sanctions under theonomy is carried out by the family and church government, and sanctions for moral offenses are outside the authority of civil government (which is limited to criminal matters, courts, and national defense).
However, some believe these distinctions become blurred, as the application of theonomy implies an increase in the authority of the civil government. Reconstructionist also say that the theonomic government is not an oligarchy or monarchy of man communicating with God, but rather, a national recognition of existing laws. Prominent advocates of Christian reconstructionism have written that according to their understanding, God's law approves of the death penalty not only for murder, but also for propagators of all forms of idolatry, open homosexuality, adulterers, practitioners of witchcraft, blasphemers, and perhaps even recalcitrant youth.
Christian reconstructionism's founder, Rousas Rushdoony, wrote in The Institutes of Biblical Law (the founding document of reconstructionism) that Old Testament law should be applied to modern society, and he advocates the reinstatement of the Mosaic law's penal sanctions such as stoning. Under such a system, the list of civil crimes which carried a death sentence would include murder, homosexuality, adultery, incest, lying about one's virginity, bestiality, witchcraft, idolatry or apostasy, public blasphemy, false prophesying, kidnapping, rape, and bearing false witness in a capital case.
Rushdoony provided an outline that included attacking what fundamentalists hated and feared most in society. The terms communist/communism and socialist/socialism were often applied by the cultists to what they did not like. Rushdoony's ideas went out in bits and pieces. The Christian right leaders took what they wanted and discarded what they didn't.
This idea of "interposition" comes through what's known as the doctrine of the "lesser magistrate," which is discussed below. But its significance in the post-2020 Republican Party — has recently become apparent.
The doctrine of the lesser magistrate was first popularized in a simpler form by John Calvin, who wrote that private Christians must submit to the ruling authorities, but there may be popular magistrates who have been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings. When these magistrates "connive at kings when they tyrannize and insult over the humbler of the people" they "fraudulently betray the liberty of the people" when God has appointed them guardians of that liberty.
The Presbyterian theologian Francis Schaeffer, disagreed with Rushdoony on the applicability of biblical law, but Schaeffer became a driving force behind the anti-abortion activist movement Operation Rescue. That militant Schaefferism, led activists to think: What's next, beyond political protest and stopping abortion? The Christian right has been discussing this for decades.
There's a long history of right-wing opposition to federal authority, that is grounded in the 19th-century defense of slavery and continuing in the defense of Jim Crow segregation. In his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke specifically of the governor of Alabama "having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification."
As detailed by Randall Balmer’s book Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right, the religious right wasn't initially fueled by opposition to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, but by opposition to a lesser-known decision in 1971, Green v. Connally, which threatened the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory institutions, most famously the evangelical stronghold Bob Jones University.
Because Dominonists believe they know the law or the word of God is, they are allowed — on the advice, on the interposition, of a lesser magistrate — to commit acts of violence. Murdering abortion providers, or murdering women seeking abortions — could be morally justified, with the blessing of a lesser magistrate.
Electing Democrats in the next two elections is the only way to stop Dominonits from enforcing their Dark Age beliefs on the American public.