Just over three hours ago, I blogged that I was busy busy busy with essay writing and don’t have time to blog at the moment and threw a music clip at you — anything to keep the non-existent hounds at bay.
But then something happened. I was reading stuff on the internets (I WAS HAVING A COFFEE BREAK FROM ESSAY WRITING GET OFF MY BACK OKAY). It seems one of the latest tricks that the political Christian Right are doing is denying they know what dominionism is. I first learnt of dominionism a few years ago when I read the excellent book by Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. In the first several pages of her book, Goldberg paints a very chilling portrait of the dominionist movement. Here’s a sample:
The United States has always been a pious country, given to bursts of spiritual fervor, but Christian nationalism is qualitatively different from earlier religious revivals. Like America’s past Great Awakenings, the Christian nationalist movement claims that the Bible is absolutely and literally true. But it goes much further, extrapolating a total political program from that truth, and yoking that program to a political party. It is a conflation of scripture and politics that sees America’s triumphs as confirmation of the truth of the Christian religion, and America’s struggles as part of a cosmic contest between God and the devil. It claims supernatural sanction for its campaign of national renewal and speaks rapturously about vanquishing the millions of Americans who would stand in its way.
The motivating dream of the movement is the restoration of an imagined Christian nation. With a revisionist history that claims the founders never intended to create a secular country and that separation of church and state is a lie fostered by conniving leftists, Christian nationalism rejects the idea of government religious neutrality. The movement argues that the absence of religion in public is itself a religion — the malign faith of secular humanism — that must, in the interest of fairness, be balanced with equal deference to the Bible.
. . . [T]he ultimate goal of Christian nationalist leaders isn’t fairness. It’s dominion.
I was chilled right through all 234 pages of that book.
Anyway, on my coffee break, I was reading this post on Right Wing Watch in which the author notes that “it seems as if the entire Religious Right movement has developed collective amnesia when it comes to the concept of dominionism, claiming never to have heard of it and to have no idea what it means.”
He also notes that Matt Barber, the Associate Dean for Career and Professional Development and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law at Liberty University, asked in a tweet:
Can someone tell me what a “dominionist” is? Best I can tell it’s some kinda scary Christian monster that lives under liberals’ beds #silly
Right Wing Watch go on to point out that Barber’s employer sponsored conferences dedicated to the spread of dominionism and also highlights prominent Christian Right figures talking about the need for dominionism.
Meanwhile, at this juncture I was spluttering inwardly, agog at the fundies’ blatant denials (and not for the first time this past week), and burning with indignation that they could be so fucking ingeniously full of shit!
Then I thought, it’s not even ingenious, they’re just fucking full of shit! And I decided to fire off an email to Matt Barber (I was still on my coffee break, shut up). I asked him if he really thought it was a liberal fiction and was he aware that his own employer believed in dominionism? I appealed to him to be open-minded, you know, ’cause he’s a law professor and all, that’s what professors should be: open-minded, right? And I included the link to the Right Wing Watch post and hit send.
Then I went to make another coffee, since I was still on my coffee break (yes, really), and when I came back 10 minutes later, I saw that I had a reply from Barber! OMG OMG OMG HE’S REPLIED ALREADY! With a heavy heart, I told my barely commenced essay that it just had to wait a little bit longer before I could give it my love and devotion, and opened Barber’s email.
I will be out of the office returning Monday, August 29 and will have limited access to email. If the matter is urgent, please contact my asst. Kelsey LeBel at klebel@liberty.edu or call my mobile phone at [555 1234].
YOU BASTARD! How fucking convenient for you! How fucking inconvenient for me! Now I have no more excuses to procrastinate from doing my essay!
![procat](http://web.archive.org./web/20110913231730im_/http://everyoneisamoon.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/procat.jpg?w=392&h=278)
Recent Comments