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On Rev. Hiatt's statements about Francis Schaeffer, author of the Christian Manifesto, I was attempting to put into context the origins of dominion theology and Christian Reconstruction. I've read the Manifesto twice -- once when it came out in the early 1980s and again earlier this year. My conclusion now, as it was two decades ago, is that the society Schaeffer envisions is one thin on pluralism. It would be the "Christian majoritarianism" I mentioned in the article, a nation in which the litmus test for politics would be adherence to narrow religious views. The word "theocracy" doesn't play well in America (thank God!). Thus, people find euphemisms and deny what is the obvious conclusion to their arguments.
In any event, I didn't say Schaeffer was a Christian Reconstructionist. He was a progenitor of the movement, much as, say, Hegel was a progenitor of Marxism. It took R.J. Rushdoony and his followers to cobble together Christian Reconstruction. Were they influenced by Schaeffer and other theologians, such as Cornelius Van Til? Absolutely.
More often than not, when there has been, as Schaeffer recommends, an "interrelationship of church and state," there has been oppression against those who oppose the orthodoxy du jour. It's such "interrelationship" that gave us the Inquisition, the Crusades and the Salem witch trials.
I visited numerous churches in my research, including Presbyterian Church in America and similar congregations. Two of the most prominent Presbyterian churches in the Atlanta area -- Chalcedon and Midway -- for example, are heavily influenced by Christian Reconstruction. Midway is PCA, and Chalcedon is affiliated with the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States (in my article I erred in stating that Chalcedon was PCA). I found Reconstruction literature available in many other congregations.
Do all of the congregations and denominations, as well as their members, march in lockstep? No way. But the concepts of post-millenialism (establishing God's kingdom on earth before Christ's Second Coming), theonomy (the application of Old Testament laws to today's society), and dominion (the right and obligation of Christians to dominate the world, by force if persuasion won't work) are found in varying degrees in many churches. The ultimate logical conclusion of those concepts is theocracy.
While we're at it, here are two corrections to my story I'd like to make: Mark Rushdoony is Christian Reconstruction founder R.J. Rushdoony's son, not his brother. And, as we have been reminded a few times by readers, Zebulon, NC, is close to Raleigh, not Charlotte.