Onward, Christian soldiers: Right-wing religious nationalists launch dramatic new power play
Onward, Christian soldiers: Right-wing religious nationalists launch dramatic new power play
Evangelical extremists mount “Project Blitz,” a covert campaign to re-create a Christian America that never existed
PAUL ROSENBERG APRIL 29, 2018 4:00PM
As researcher Frederick Clarkson reported Friday at Religion Dispatches, a coalition of Christian right groups — including the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, Wallbuilders, the National Legal Foundation and others — have organized a major legislative initiative called “Project Blitz.” Its goal is to pass an outwardly diverse but internally cohesive package of Christian-right bills at the state level, whose cumulative impact would be immense.
The agenda underlying these bills is not merely about Christian nationalism, a term that describes an Old Testament-based worldview fusing Christian and American identities, and meant to sharpen the divide between those who belong to those groups and those who are excluded.
It’s also ultimately "dominionist," meaning that it doubles down on the historically false notion of America as a “Christian nation” to insist that a a particular sectarian view of God should control every aspect of life, through all manner of human institutions. Christian nationalists are not in a position to impose their vision now, and to be fair, many involved in the movement would never go that far. But as explained by Julie Ingersoll in "Building God's Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction", dominionist ideas have had enormous influence on the religious right, even among those who overtly disavow them.
“The authors of the Project Blitz playbook are savvy purveyors of dominionism,” Clarkson told Salon. “They are in it for the long haul and try not to say things that sound too alarming. But they live an immanent theocratic vision, and they sometimes cannot help themselves, such as when they describe the resolutions as seeking to ‘define public policies of the state in favor of biblical values concerning marriage and sexuality.’
https://www.salon.com/2018/04/29/onward-christian-soldiers-right-wing-religious-nationalists-launch-dramatic-new-power-play/
