The Rise of Christian Zealots
This Gemini AI generated image I created captures the rise of radical Dominion Theology to usher the Kingdom of God in by force, if necessary. Also known as the “New Apostolic Reformation,” this ideology preys on Government, churches, schools, Healthcare, and religious freedoms in the name of a militant savior created in the image of zealots. This was the temptation Lucifer gave Jesus Christ – “It belongs to you. You earned it. Seize it and have your own kingdom now!” Christians must take care that, in believing about a future Battle of Armageddon between good and evil, they don’t create an apocalypse as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Christians must take care that, in believing about a future Battle of Armageddon between good and evil, they don’t create an apocalypse as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Pastor Jim
I’m reminded of a fanatical pastor in a Baptist church in Phoenix who seized control of his congregation, claiming superior spiritual authority. Under his leadership, the church never roofed the Sanctuary to give a clear view of rafters and the heavens. When I visited the aftermath and the closed church, pigeons also loved the open rafters. Pigeon guano piled as a stinking memorial of the only lasting impact that pastor left.
At another congregation meeting in a school building, the women sit at a table separate from men. Only men are allowed to preach and serve as deacons. “Our job is to protect women,” says the pastor in his sermon. “This divine protection flows down from God to the man, man gives protection to the women, and the children receive protection from women.” “We believe that a woman can work … as long as she works under the protection of the man’s business.” In other words, a woman’s dream of working as a microbiologist becomes studying the microbes of the kitchen sink while homeschooling her 8 children. “We don’t tolerate any woman working ‘Woke’ outside her husband’s lordship. A loving man will ensure that his wife has the weekly allowance needed for the woman to buy the crafts and beads needed to keep her mind from straying from the home and pleasing her husband.” Not long into the hour long sermon, one might ask, “Are shoes optional to keep the woman from straying from the house?”
The Zealot Jesus Loved
St. Luke named Simon as “The Zealot” – 15and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot” Luke 6:15.
”Simon the Zealot”
Simon was born in Cana of Galilee and was one of the Twelve Apostles. Tradition tells us this was the same Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine and where Simon hosted that feast (John 2:1-11). Because of that miracle, St. Simon left his home, parents and bride to follow Christ. After Pentecost, he also traveled to many places from Britain to the Black Sea, Africa, proclaiming the Gospel of Christ. He ended his missionary work in Georgia. St. Simon was tortured and crucified by the pagans in Abkhazia (See https://mannaghaziabad.com/churchCalendarEvent/16/feast-of-st-simon-the-zealot for this discussion and image).
The beauty of grace shows both Matthew, tax collector for the Romans, and Simon, the zealot who was committed to aggressive overthrow of Roman government, sitting in peace at Jesus’s feet as his disciples. Simon the Zealot remains as one of the most obscure of the Apostles, reinforcing that Jesus came as Prince of Peace and not to encourage overthrow by sword –
52But Jesus said to him, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will [j]perish by the sword. 53Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels? 54How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?”– Mathew 26:52 – 54
In the above passage, Simon Peter, not Simon the Zealot, handled the sword. Imagine if Jesus had said, “Ready your swords! It’s time.” Simon the Zealot would have charged out of obscurity hacking and slashing his way through Judas Iscariot first, then the angry crowd. But this was not the way of the cross, which Jesus described as 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” – Mark 10:45. In contrast, the Roman destruction levied against the Jewish zealots and population in AD 70 shows the fruit of zealotry, “Those who live by the sword die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).
How Dominion Theology Overthrew the United States
Dominion Theology believes in a God-given manifesto to clamp its view of religious guidelines over society and government and to establish God’s kingdom on earth, and if necessary, use force. The present reelection of Donald Trump did not occur as battle between Democrat and Republican, rather as a holy war between the religious militarized right versus the rest of the population. The goal of Dominion Theology is to raise an image of the Christian Patriot, its patron saint, in the Temple of U.S. Government.
Q: “How could you say that, Pastor Jim? Is the U.S. not a Christian nation? We are simply and humbly reclaiming what the framers created but later became corrupted by the unbelievers.”
A: The patron saint of Dominion Theology is a distorted view of Simon the Zealot, strapping the sword to his hand, encouraging the militant over the penitent. The Dominionists fight to return the United States to a militant religious utopia on earth, where white males supplant women and where people of color are returned to their rightful place as servants of their white overlords.
The Dominionists fight to return the United States to a militant religious utopia on earth, where white males supplant women and where people of color are returned to their rightful place as servants of their white overlords.
In the religious utopia of a Dominionist United States, there are no human or civil rights afforded to immigrants, the LGBTQ community, or people of color, as the right to life has morphed into living under the condition established by the dominion of male white elders.
The Dominion movement recognized that for a majority of Americans their politics consist mainly of reposting clever memes while waiting for their iced lattes, hypnotized by the streaming news channels. Politicians’ opinions sway in rhythm with those few with the most money exchanged for influence. The Dominionists struck straight at the U.S.’s jugular of influence and money, promising to give politicians the “crack cocaine” of oligarch money in exchange for influence and the establishment of an earthly kingdom. Thus the Dominionists realized they didn’t need to move an entire nation, rather strike a key political pressure point to create a cascade of change, like a pit viper striking a big toe.
MAGAchurch: A Revival of Wealth and Power
While some have compared MAGA to Hitler’s rise or to a cult, they miss that which was hidden in plain sight … MAGA is a religion that used the political machinery that combined the elements like that of Billy Graham Stadium Crusades with those of Prosperity Gospel Preachers to fervently call converts down the sawdust trail * to surrender their hearts and minds to their MAGA Prophet while tapping the Prosperity Preacher techniques to empty the followers’ wallets. The difference is that while Rev. Billy Graham called the U.S. to surrender to Jesus Christ, MAGA’s political evangelist Prophet beckoned his followers to surrender to him, as evidenced by entering into ecstatic states of conspiracy theories and launching economic crusades against the infidels who are non-MAGA. While Jesus spoke the Sermon on the Mount, the MAGA’s Prophet in Chief declares a gospel of hate and chaos, as the MAGA Prophet said, “MAGA is very unforgiving.” The apostles of MAGA are sent with a commission to condemn and to destroy, in contrast with the words of Jesus, “10The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). It is not without irony that some of those closest to the MAGA Prophet today once sat in stadiums of evangelism crusades and led Bible lectures but who now have traded the gospel of Jesus Christ for the tin idols of power and wealth of an earthly kingdom, with the unholy trinity of the MAGA Prophet, the Businessman, and the King’s Court, with MAGA Congress commissioned as MAGApostles, given the sign of speaking conspiracy theories as evidence of their anointing. The beauty of the U.S. is that one can choose to worship in his religion of choice, even if it is MAGA. The problem with MAGAchurch is its quest to force its tenets on all by using the U.S. Government to prefer MAGA over other faiths.
In the above scenario, Evangelical and Charismatic Fundamentalists entered into a Faustian Bargain, like the German legend of Dr. Faustus, who agreed to surrender his soul, after a period of 24 years, to demon Mephistopheles in exchange for knowledge, power, and riches. In the end, Dr. Faustus realized that what he surrendered was far more valuable than what he obtained. Below is Dr. Faustus’s offer to surrender his soul to the devil in exchange for 24 years of getting whatever he wanted and demanded. For a politician, this could be shortened to 4 years:
FAUSTUS. What, is great Mephistophilis so passionate
For being deprived of the joys of Heaven?
Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,
And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.(90)
Go bear these tidings to great Lucifer:
Seeing Faustus hath incurred eternal death
By desperate thoughts against Jove’s deity,
Say he surrenders up to him his soul,
So he will spare him four and twenty years,(95)
Letting him live in all voluptuousness;
Having thee ever to attend on me;
To give me whatsoever I shall ask,
To tell me whatsoever I demand,
To slay mine enemies, and aid my friends,(100)
And always be obedient to my will.
Go and return to mighty Lucifer,
And meet me in my study at midnight,
And then resolve me of thy master’s mind.MEPHISTOPHILIS. I will, Faustus.
From https://www.owleyes.org/text/faustus/read/scene-3#root-74442-15-15
(*Tent preachers in the U.S. once poured sawdust in the isles inside their tents that were erected in open fields, which were often muddy. Walking the “sawdust trail” to the altar was declaring evidence of their commitment.)
Dress Rehearsal for Takeover by Religious Fundamentalists: The Fall of the Southern Baptist Convention
Like a thief who first drops metal slugs into a soda machine before moving on to counterfeiting bills, so the Baptist Fundamentalists moved on from the takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention to the political toppling of the United States and its agencies. I graduated from Southwestern Baptist Seminary with a Master of Divinity (1984) and a Doctor of Ministry (1990). I observed the takeover of the 14 million member denomination by Baptist extremists, whose trajectory mirrors that of the Christian extremists to arbitraged the politics of the United States to seize control of the country for the Trump terms in office.
Q: “Pastor Jim, you are telling tall tales here. Isn’t this quite a stretch?”
A: Like a safecracker who has perfected his art, there are skills and strategies that simply shift in scale to apply to a nation. To support the basis for this I submit two sources:
- See The Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention: A Cautionary Tale, an editorial by Pat Anderson at https://christianethicstoday.com/wp/the-takeover-of-the-southern-baptist-convention-a-cautionary-tale/
The architects, enablers and advocates of the takeover of the SBC created a road map of tactics and strategies which have been adopted by far-right zealots. A few decades ago, they too represented a small minority of Americans; yet they have managed to take over the Republican Party in America and are relentlessly advancing their own unpopular and erroneous beliefs about the founding ideas of America, the Bible, the Constitution, and democracy. Today, that campaign appears far-too-likely to take over the entire American government in 2024. -Pat Anderson
Pat Anderson gave the following panorama of the takeover. Considering I had a front row seat both as a seminarian and as a pastor, I concur with Mr. Baugh and Mr. Anderson’s observations. Mr. Anderson detailed strategy in the takeover warrants an unbroken description below with yellow highlights mine:
The SBC Takeover strategists understood that only a very small number of SBC church members participated in the governing processes of the denomination which took place at annual meetings of the SBC in various cities. A denomination that claimed 14,000,000 members normally saw 12-20,000 persons attend the annual meetings. If even a small number of gullible and frightened church members and pastors could be herded to the annual SBC Convention meetings each year and vote as directed by the fundamentalist leaders, they could remove the existing officers and executives, change the traditional statements of Baptist beliefs about the separation of church and state, diminish women’s roles in the church, and refute local church autonomy, They could replace the existing type of administrative leadership that so far had thwarted the ambitions of the fundamentalists with zealots who would follow the dictates of fundamentalism. When I attended the annual SBC Convention meeting for the first time in 1985, there were 45,000 registered voters in attendance.
By the time the final break in the denomination occurred at the annual meeting of the SBC in New Orleans in 1990, the SBC was totally and publicly dominated by fundamentalists who had already made much progress in removing agency executives, seminary presidents and professors, unsupportive board members, and anyone associated with the resistance to the Fundamentalist Takeover.
-Patrick Anderson, The Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention: A Cautionary Tale
Pause for a moment and consider which boards, agencies, military, and legal positions of U.S. Government have been decapitated and replaced with ideological soldiers of the new administration.
2. Second source – For a detailed perspective, read The Battle for Baptist Integrity by John F. Baugh.
Borrowing from yet another source, I ask the reader to reflect upon this Fundamentalist group’s strategy applied to the United states:
To gain this control, Southern Baptist fundamentalists needed to elect fundamentalist convention presidents who would appoint fundamentalist committee members who would choose fundamentalist trustees for these institutions. Thus, in a very direct way, control of the presidency = control of the institutions. Despite being ostensibly congregationalist in their polity, Southern Baptists actually have very centralized denominational authority structures. This was a fight about gaining the reins of that legitimized central authority.
– See https://um-insight.net/general-conference/a-way-forward/why-the-umc-is-not-the-sbc/ , by David W. Scott
Caution: Political Snakes in the Grass
How does the above yellow highlighted material match today, considering how key U.S. Government agencies, boards, military, and academies have been stripped of key personnel and replaced with Fundamentalists or those supporting these ideologies, including the Speaker of the House who is a Southern Baptist and who has held leadership position with them? While there no foul with being a member of any faith and serving in Congress, it remains a significant question whether the Fundamentalists upped their game from the takeover of the largest Protestant denomination in the United States to a launch a successful coup of the United States. This ideological coup was done on collaboration with sympathetic Charismatic leaders, wealthy oligarchs, and politicians who became willing deacons to pursue this doctrine of dollars. I do not raise these questions lightly but in concern and in for the plurality of faiths that makeup the United States and dialogue needed between divergent views to reach a healthy, democratic consensus in a free United States.
On our ranch in Rimrock, Arizona, we became accustomed to dwelling in the habitat of enormous Blacktailed Rattlesnakes. We learned some lessons dwelling among then that apply to Dominionists:
- Be aware of where you step. Rattlesnakes typically lie terrifically camouflaged with their surroundings. You would be tempted to tromp around and announce, “There are no snakes here. We are free of the problem. What is the issue?”
- Don’t get bitten. Usually one is bitten by sticking a hand in their hiding place or stepping on them. Could you identify some Dominionists in the news who have reacted with a vicious strike when their view is “stepped on”? “We will primary you!,” “This will be your last Sunday as pastor!”, “You are fired as professor!” “Quit or or be fired if you won’t sign our creed!”, reflect Dominion stake burning leadership.
Crotallus Molossus – Black-tailed Rattlesnake
Q: “I think you are fabricating things. What makes you think that there are Dominionists in U.S. Government?”
A: Jesus taught, 15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 5:7:16). St. Paul wrote, “22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 [g]gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23). Paul’s greatest test was groups of legalists who followed him, known as “Judaizers,” who attempted to follow Paul and replace his teaching of being saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ with a religious extremism of following the strict law. Where have you seen someone calling for forms of government devoid of the fruit of the Spirit? Consider someone who spouts “the right to life” but who shouts to drop-ship an immigrant teen to a third-world where she is jailed and stripped of human rights. Is that the spirit of love and grace?
A First Aid for a Wounded Nation
Sadly many readers have experienced the phrase “he is meaner than a cut snake,” which portrays how we are unprepared to deal with the onslaught given by Dominionists who apply a new Crusade style savagery to their religious conquests, whether it is a local church or government office. We have seen local churches, denominations, and now a U.S. political party conquered by this movement, resulting in utopia built on law and shame versus love and grace.
As Jesus taught, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,” we will need to steel ourselves to sweep the snakes out of the room. While we do not need to respond with the same savagery, we can with firmness and love reclaim balanced boundaries and dwell in respectful cohabitation. The New Testament calls us to be a Simon, who once was a Zealot, versus a Simon, who became a Zealot, to force the establishment of an earthly kingdom. Even as there was room for us to dwell safely in the habitat of Arizona vipers, so we can live with the Dominionists, appreciating their strong faith. There is room at the Christian table for Dominionists, without their chopping up the table to convert it into an altar for an earthly utopian king.
DISCUSSION:
For discussion study: https://politicalresearch.org/2005/12/05/the-rise-of-dominionismremaking-america-as-a-christian-nation
Also read “The Quiet Rise of Christian Dominionism”: https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/quiet-rise-christian-dominionism
Read and listen to this article regarding the “New Apostolic Reformation”:
How does one reconcile “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven“(Matthew 5:3) with-
https://www.newsweek.com/paula-white-pastor-trump-white-house-faith-office-2028007
- Describe how you have encountered religious extremists in your life, church, and community?
- How can you safeguard your church or school board without becoming an extremist yourself?
- What could you do if your church faced an extremist takeover?
- Compare the Dominionists to the Judaizers who plagued St. Paul. How has grace set us free from legalism? Read Galatians 2 and discussion how legalism infiltrated their ranks to “make them slaves” again.
- How does the final Battle of Armageddon of Revelation differ from a human created apocalypse (See Revelation 14 and 16)? How can you tell the difference?
- How could community leaders restore balance to U.S. Government, living out the phrase, “The heresy of the extreme and the orthodoxy of the balanced”?
- What does “salt of the earth” mean in Matthew 5:13?
- How does extremism transform us from “salt of the earth” to “salt cakes” that force feed society? How do you remain “salt of the earth” if you are a minority in a batch of “salt cakes”?
- Read Genesis 3 and Luke 4. Compare the temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve with the temptation of Jesus. What are common themes? What are the pros and cons of trading faith for access, power, and money? How can Christians be deceived in thinking wealth is synonymous with God’s blessing? How did Dominionists deceive themselves when they learned their twin they exalted into Government control is the “Prosperity Gospel,” with its high priestess of wealth in the image of one like a god?
- How do we deceive ourselves that money, power, and politics will advance the Kingdom of God? What are the unintended consequences?
Hold My Latte,
Pastor Jim