Sunday Rising – Part 3
TimeWatch Editorial
February 10, 2017
In our last Editorial, we finished with a quote from Adam Lee’s article which was entitled “Conservatives want America to be a Christian Nation: Here is what that would actually look like.” The article was posted on the Alternet website, on October 4, 2011. We recommend that you read Sunday Rising, Part 2, if you have not yet seen it. Continuing to look at Adam Lee’s article we find some arguments used by conservatives to justify making America a “Christian Nation.” Here are some of those arguments.
“The Bible sets out a very clear picture of what its authors believed the ideal state would look like. According to the Old Testament of the Bible, after escaping Egypt and reaching the Promised Land, the twelve tribes of Israel were united into a single country under David and Solomon. After Solomon's death, there was a rebellion, and the country split into two separate kingdoms, Israel and Judah, which lasted until the Assyrian empire destroyed Israel and carried its people off into exile. Both these kingdoms survived for several hundred years and therefore there's more than enough written history to tell what the Bible's authors thought of as a good state or a bad state.” Adam Lee, “Conservatives want America to be a Christian Nation: Here is what that would actually look like.” Alternet website, October 4, 2011.
It is important that we understand that conservatives who aim to establish a “Christian Nation” are basing their dreams upon what they perceive as the best governmental system recorded in the Bible. Listen to how Adam Lee continues to present the conservative argument.
“The Bible never even mentions democracy -- that concept was completely unknown to its authors. The system of government it enshrines is divine-right monarchy -- and not just monarchy, but kingship. Under normal circumstances, the Bible is very clear that the throne passes only from father to son. (The sole exception was Athaliah, a queen of Judah who came to power in a bloody coup and whose reign lasted only six years.) Even more to the point, the Bible's ideal government is unequivocally a theocracy: a country where the church and the state are one, where there's an official religion which all citizens are required to profess, and where law is made by the priests. There was no religious freedom in the ancient Israelite kingdoms: all people were required to worship the same god in the same officially approved ways, on pain of death. For instance, when Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai and finds the Israelites worshipping a golden calf, his immediate response is to order the butchering of everyone who participated in idolatry (Exodus 32:27). Many of Israel's subsequent kings do likewise. The Bible goes so far as to say that, if pagan worshippers are discovered in any city, the entire city should be burned down and everyone who lives there should be killed (Deuteronomy 13:12-16).” Adam Lee, “Conservatives want America to be a Christian Nation: Here is what that would actually look like.” Alternet website, October 4, 2011.
It is from this kind of argument that conservatives draw their design. There is, however, another troubling and revealing element to all this that quite often is a buried and hidden portion of the objectives of those conservatives who seek to establish a theocracy in this nation and in the world. Listen to how Adam Lee describes it.
“The Bible also puts a high value on racial purity. The Israelites were the chosen people of God, and were instructed to keep themselves separate. Time and again, they were sternly warned against marrying people of another race, tribe or ethnicity. For instance, the Old Testament pronounces a perpetual curse on the neighboring Ammonite and Moabite tribes, saying that any person descended from either one, even down to the tenth generation, "shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 23:3). In one of the Old Testament's most gruesome stories, a priest named Phinehas finds an Israelite man having sex with a Midianite woman, and impales them both on the same spear (Numbers 25:6-8). For doing this, he's praised as a hero of faith, and God rewards him with "the covenant of an everlasting priesthood." When the Israelites invade and conquer neighboring lands, God instructs them to massacre all the captives, including women, so that they're not tempted to intermarry with them (Deuteronomy 7:2).” Adam Lee, “Conservatives want America to be a Christian Nation: Here is what that would actually look like.” Alternet website, October 4, 2011.
Notice here the subtlety of the transference as it relates to racial attitudes and non-Christian religions. The Good Reads Website describes an influential author this way. Rousas John Rushdoony was a Calvinist philosopher, historian, and theologian and is widely credited as the father of both Christian Reconstructionism and the modern homeschool movement. His prolific writings have exerted considerable influence on the Christian right. Rushdoony say in one of his books, “The Biblical Philosophy of History” the following:
“If Negroes are only “white men with black skins, nothing more, nothing less,” then, conversely, white men are only Negroes with white skins, nothing more, nothing less. This means that all cultural differences, hereditary predispositions, and historical traditions are irrelevant and meaningless. It means, in other words, that history is meaningless. And how can one be an historian if it is his purpose to deny history? The white man has behind him centuries of Christian culture, and the discipline and selective breeding this faith requires. Although the white man may reject this faith and subject himself instead to the requirements of humanism, he is still a product of this Christian past. The Negro is a product of a radically different past, and his heredity is governed by radically different consideration.” Rousas John Rushdoony, “The Biblical Philosophy of History” Page 88
You can therefore clearly see the connectivity between their concept of Old Testament Theocracy and their fundamentally racist view. This view continues into the institution of marriage as well. Listen to this quote from another of Rushdoony’s books.
“Unequal yoking plainly means mixed marriages between believers and unbelievers are clearly forbidden. But Deuteronomy 22:10 not only forbids unequal yoking by inference, and as a case law, but also unequal yoking generally. This means that an unequal marriage between believers or between unbelievers is wrong… The burden of the law is thus against inter-religious, inter-racial, and inter-cultural marriages, in that they normally go against the very community which marriage is designed to establish.” Rousas John Rushdoony, “Institutes of Biblical Law”
The arrival of the National Sunday Law will, based upon these philosophical positions held, bring with it some unforeseen consequences.
Cameron A. Bowen
