Frederick Clarkson, senior fellow at Political Research Associates, examines a possible "ideological reorganization, or at least reconsideration, now taking place within the Christian Right" that calls for non-democratic means, possibly including martyrdom, to affect extremely conservative political change in the United States.
Clarkson begins with an essay by long-time Republican Party operative David Lane calling for religious war in the United States.
“If the American experiment with freedom is to end after 237 years,” wrote Republican campaign strategist David Lane in an essay published on a popular conservative website in 2013, “let each of us commit to brawl all the way to the end.”
Lane's essay, “Wage War to Restore a Christian Nation,” was published on World Net Daily (WND) and then removed from it. A month later, in July 2013, Lane
told conservative Iowa radio talk show host Steve Deace...that “car bombs in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa” would be merciful punishment from God for legalized abortion and for “homosexuals praying at the Inauguration [of President Obama’s second term].”
Since those comments, Lane is a man on the move, not a piraha. As Clarkson explains, in October 2013, Lane told the Dallas Morning News about an event of the Iowa Renewal Project,
one of several state-level units of the American Renewal Project—which is, in turn, a political development and mobilization project of the Mississippi-based American Family Association. Its most prominent figures are founder Don Wildmon and the abrasive radio host Bryan Fischer. Lane [said] that the goal of the event, which featured Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and U.S. Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), was the same as the others: “the mobilization of pastors and pews to restore America to our Judeo-Christian heritage and re-establish a Christian culture.” Lane said: “We’ve been in 15 states now, largely under the radar, and we’ve had 10,000 pastors plus spouses that we’ve put up overnight and fed three meals. The purpose is to get the pastors—the shepherds in America—to engage the culture through better registration and get out the vote.”
Clarkson also looks at writings of "theologian Peter Leithart, 55, a Christian Reconstructionist (hardline theocrat)", a "new Reformed Protestantism, called Federal Vision, whose leading lights include Neo-Confederate authors Wilson and Steven Wilkins",
Father C. John McCloskey, who believes that regional American strongholds of conservative Christianity may be necessary in light of the culture of religious pluralism and the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state,
and Pastor David Whitney, 56, who leads the small Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Pasadena, MD (near Washington, D.C.).
Clarkson notes:
Taken singly, the views of [these] Christian Right leaders...would not necessarily signal a trend. But taken together, the commonalities of their views take the edge off of their many differences and reveal distinct, overlapping factions of a dynamic movement towards the ideas of nullification and secession—and the possibility of violence and revolution.
These leaders are not without influence, they are not without connections within the Republican Party, and, as Clarkson shows, they are deadly serious.
The rumblings may be faint, seemingly distant, but they absolutely must not be ignored.
Articles on Clarkson's essay have on Salon.com (article by Paul Rosenberg) and Buzzflash (an article by Bill Berkowitz).