America the Theocracy 

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While mainstream pre-millennial churches recoil from the word "theocracy," with its echoes of Islamic fundamentalism, conservative clergy are quite willing to advance programs that in incremental stages can lead to a religious dictatorship.

Rushdoony claimed to have 20 million followers -- but Reconstructionists say many of their followers don't know they've enlisted.

Although a nationwide movement with its nominal base in California, many of Reconstruction's early adherents were based in affluent Atlanta suburbs. Pastor Joe Morecraft for three decades has led the Chalcedon Presbyterian Church in Cumming. ("Chalcedon," which stems from an ecclesiastical council held in 451 A.D., is synonymous with the movement. The Rushdoony-founded Chalcedon Foundation in Vallecito, Calif., is the Holy See for Reconstruction.)

As a political movement, Reconstructionists often cite as their starting date a 1984 speech by DeMar. Others claim Aug. 10, 1993, as the day the movement kicked off. That's when the Cobb County Commission voted to condemn homosexuals -- and made itself an international pariah during Atlanta's 1996 Olympic Games.

Also, one of the most prominent early Reconstructionists -- and its first martyr -- was Larry McDonald, the hyper-conservative Marietta congressman who was killed in 1983 by trigger-happy Russians who downed a commercial jetliner.

The core faith of Reconstruction is Calvinism -- which during its early European history and in America's Puritan colony, had got a taste of governing. Two conservative denominations, the Presbyterian Church in America (both the Midway and Chalcedon churches in Cobb County are affiliates) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church are Reconstruction-occupied territory.

Those denominations deny that they foster extremists, and they say they abhor violence. It's a matter of interpretation. North, for example, has vented, "How long do we expect God to withhold His wrath, if by crushing the humanists who promote mass abortion ... He might spare the lives of literally millions of innocents?" From there, it's not a great distance to Paul Hill, executed last September for the 1994 murders of abortion clinic workers in Pensacola, Fla. Hill had been a minister for both ultra-Calvinist Presbyterian sects. (The Reconstruction movement shouldn't be confused with mainstream Calvinist groups, such as the Presbyterian Church USA.)

A number of cross-denominational groups, including the Promise Keepers men's movement and the militantly anti-abortion Operation Rescue (now called Operation Save America), were founded by Reconstruction disciples, although the groups seldom identified themselves as such.

Reconstruction isn't shy about its motives and beliefs. But its tactics for growth are stealthy -- aligning with and then recruiting people and groups who share concerns over, say, abortion or evolution.

How far has the doctrine spread? "The Reconstructionists have taken over the Southern Baptist Convention's national leadership," says Eternal Hostility author Clarkson. "And they've made great inroads into denominations such as the Assemblies of God, which in the past have been radically apolitical."

Southern Baptist spokesman John Revell acknowledged that Reconstructionists and Baptists agree on many issues -- from biblical infallibility to abortion to the primacy of men in the family and in church governance. But he denied the denomination is hell-bent on a dictatorship of the preachers.

Revell said, "Christian Reconstruction would be, in practical terms, a theocracy. People who agree with that would be a small minority" in his denomination. "The church should not resort to assuming civil power."

Clarkson commented that Revell is "technically correct, but at the same time very wrong. Groups like the Southern Baptists won't use the word "theocracy.' What they do support is religious majoritarianism. They push a religious political agenda they believe is best for everyone. And when the litmus test for political office is a list of religious issues, that's a problem for a society organized around religious pluralism. In the end, you end up with a society that is indistinguishable from the theocracy advocated by Reconstruction."

Recruits to Reconstruction's adopted causes soon find the movement has a blunt distaste for pluralism and democracy. North wrote in 1982 -- in an effort to reach Baptists -- "We must use the doctrine of religious liberty ... until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

Freedom, then, will be no freedom.

Proverbs 3
Charlotte is a town that takes its godliness seriously, naming one of its main thoroughfares after native son Billy Graham, and boasting a number of giant congregations that rival many of the city's businesses in revenues.Those mega-churches would seem fertile ground for Reconstruction and dominion theology. After all, the preachers shepherd congregations whose numbers could swing elections. But being conservative doesn't always equate with favoring a religious dictatorship.