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In a nod toward fairness and tolerance -- begging the question of whether liberals are required to tolerate the intolerant -- I will say this: Fundamentalists are "good people." In daily life, they are warm-hearted and generous to a fault. They live with feet on the ground (albeit with eyes cast heavenward) and with genuine love and concern for their neighbors. After spending 30 years in progressive western cities such as Boulder, Colorado and Eugene, Oregon, I would have to say that conservative Christians actually do what liberals usually only talk about. They visit the sick and the elderly, give generously of their time and money to help those in need, and put unimaginable amounts of love and energy into their families, even as Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh blare in the background. Their good works extend internationally -- were it not for American Christians, there would be little health care on the African continent and other similar places. OK, that's the best I can do in showing due respect for the extreme Christian Right. Now to get back to the Christian Reconstructionists...
Christian Reconstruction: Establishing a Savage Eden
Christian Reconstruction is blunt stuff, hard and unforgiving as a gravestone. Capital punishment, central to the Reconstructionist ideal, calls for the death penalty in a wide range of crimes, including abandonment of the faith, blasphemy, heresy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, sodomy, homosexuality, striking a parent, and ''unchastity before marriage'' (but for women only). Biblically correct methods of execution include stoning, the sword, hanging, and burning. Stoning is preferred, according to Gary North, the self-styled Reconstructionist economist, because stones are plentiful and cheap. Biblical Law would also eliminate labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Leading Reconstruction theologian David Chilton declares, "The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics..." Incidentally, said Republic of Jesus would not only be a legal hell, but an ecological one as well -- Reconstructionist doctrine calls for the scrapping of environmental protection of all kinds, because there will be no need for this planet earth once The Rapture occurs. You may not have heard of Rushdoony or Chilton or North, but taken either separately or together, they have influenced far more contemporary American minds than Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Howard Zinn combined.
A moreover covert movement, although slightly more public of late, Christian Reconstructionism has for decades exerted one hell of an influence through its scores of books, publications and classes taught in colleges and universities. Over the past 30 years, Reconstructionist doctrine has permeated not only the religious right, but mainstream churches as well, via the charismatic movement. Its impact on politics and religion in this nation have been massive, with many mainstream churches pushed rightward by pervasive Reconstructionism, without even knowing it. Clearly the Methodist church down the street from my house does not understand what it has become. Other mainstream churches with more progressive leadership, simply flinch and bow to the Reconstructionists at every turn. They have to, if they want to retain members these days. Further complicating matters is that leading Reconstruction thinkers, along with their fellow travelers, the Dominionists, are all but invisible to non-fundamentalist America. (I will spare you the agony of the endless doctrinal hair-splitting that comes with making fundamentalist distinctions of any sort -- I would not do that to a dog. But if you are disposed toward self-punishment, you can take it upon yourself to learn the differences between Dominionism, Pretribulationism, Midtribulationism, and Posttribulationism, Premillennialism, Millennialism... I recommend the writings of the British author and scholar George Monbiot, who has put the entire maddening scheme of it all together -- corporate implications, governmental and psychological meaning -- in a couple of excellent books.)
Fundamentalists such as my family have no idea how thoroughly they have been orchestrated by Reconstructionist driven Christian media and other innovations of the past few decades. They probably would not care now, even if they knew. Like most of their tribe (dare we say class, in a nation that so vehemently denies it has a class system?) they want to embrace some simple foundational truth that will rationalize all the conflict and confusion of a postmodern world. Some handbook that will neatly explain everything, make all their difficult decisions for them. And among these classic American citizens, prone toward religious zealotry since the Great Awakening of the 18th Century, what rock could appear more dependable upon which to cling than the infallible Holy Bible? From there it was a short step for Christian Reconstructionist leaders to conclude that such magnificent infallibility should be enforced upon all other people, in the same spirit as the Catholic Spanish Conquistadors or the Arab Muslim Moors before them. It's an old, old story, a brutal one mankind cannot seem to shake.
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