Danger in Dominionism

There is a very dangerous and heretical movement attaching itself mainstream evangelical Christianity, particularly in America: Dominionism.

Regular readers know how much I despise Aristotelian epistemology as the foundation for trying to understand the Bible. It breeds a literalist mindset just like the Pharisees, and contrasts harshly against the Ancient Near Eastern mysticism of Jesus and His Hebrew background. If you aren’t a mystic, you aren’t a follower of Christ.

Among the various heresies which arise from Aristotelian logical approach to Scripture is Dominionism. Reading the Gospels from a proper Hebrew understanding pointedly shows Jesus denying He had any interest in human politics. In fact, you could find that understanding even if you were crippled by a literalist viewpoint. He says bluntly His Kingdom is not of this world. It’s other-worldly, spiritual, mystical. Since a clear distinction between the Two Realms is rejected by most of Western Christianity a priori, they have to do a lot of verbal and mental gymnastics to avoid having to give up their political ambitions. Dominionists are a type of overtly political Christians — in other words, fake Christians.

Yes, they believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord, but a spiritual birth does not remove a lifetime of perverted cultural and intellectual bias. It makes such a renewal possible, but if everyone you encounter denies the need for it, how likely are you to seek a different answer? So while I don’t deny they are fellow believers, and that I’ll see some of them in Heaven, I am utterly certain they will be embarrassed on the Final Judgment Day.

We are told Christ will return for that Judgment Day after the Father has put all things under His feet. It’s no secret He intends to use the followers of Jesus to accomplish that. But in the frozen brains of the literalists, they can’t see how that is a spiritual accomplishment. To them, it simply has to be a literal, political subjugation of the world to Christian domination — their particular brand of Western middle class Christian dominance. They simply cannot imagine how Jesus meant for us to conquer the world in any other terms. For a Christian Mystic, such conquest is a parabolic or symbolic statement. We conquer by our ability to stomp our own individual fleshly orientation, and become so other-worldly we simply don’t much care what happens to us on this fallen plane of existence. When believers have fully embraced that principle of mortification — not clinging to this life — then we will have conquered the world in spiritual terms. So when some undetermined portion of believers reach some undetermined degree of mortification, and are able to demonstrate that power over this world by how they treat each other in particular, and how they love others in general, then perhaps it will be time for Him to return.

Dominionists take it literally. In particular, they have these seven areas of human existence they intend to take over:

1. Government
2. Business
3. Media
4. Arts
5. Education
6. Family
7. Religion

These are the folks who founded religious universities with departments in Political Science, Business, Education, and Journalism. They also have various Fine Arts programs, but only the ones they feel are improperly dominated by leftist humanists and libertines. The business of family is a matter of social policy and propaganda, and religion is already obvious. I would be the last to complain about schools offering a cloistered atmosphere for whatever brand of philosophy they espouse. I think we do have way too many atheists, Secular Humanists, and other related viewpoints running almost the entire academic system in the West. But I also think it’s a shame there are no institutions of higher learning devoted to mysticism, particularly Ancient Near Eastern mysticism. You can learn about it, but you have to glean carefully bits and pieces here and there, scooping them out of a flood of Aristotelian assumptions.

And I honestly think the Secular Humanists can have their homeschool programs, along with the Wiccans, and whatever else. I believe in real liberty and freedom. I want everyone to have a chance to pursue the best they know, because I don’t feel the least bit threatened by alternative viewpoints. What I do object to is when the Dominionist colleges operate on the dedicated plan to borg the system so they can rule us all with an iron fist. Make no mistake, these folks are willing to crush anyone who doesn’t agree with them, and I mean that in the most brutal sense of blood and gore. These are not nice people.

This tendency is seen in a lot of other movements with other names, but all of them together are the core of the so-called Christian Right. They are at least as dangerous as the Secularist Left; Hitler was a socialist, not a right-winger. Anything can be used as an excuse for tyranny. Dominionists are simply one brand of evil in politics.

These folks do proclaim a Law of God they intend to enforce, but their literalist reading of the Bible cripples their understanding of how that plays out in daily reality. For example, I have been told they take a hostile view to my assertion you can’t fulfill God’s Laws without a tribal social structure. They really do love the Treaty of Westphalia and so-called Classical Liberalism. This is all part of the intellectual failure of the Reformation, which was a reaction to the intellectual failure of Roman Scholasticism.

The twisted legacy of Western Civilization is collapsing under its own weight, but that doesn’t mean its true disciples can’t still do a lot of harm before it’s done.