The Despoiling of America

How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State

By Katherine Yurica

With Editorial and Research Assistant Laurie Hall

The First Prince of the Theocratic States of America
It happened quietly, with barely a mention in the media. Only the Washington Post dutifully reported it.[1] And only Kevin Phillips saw its significance in his new book, American Dynasty.[2] On December 24, 2001, Pat Robertson resigned his position as President of the Christian Coalition.

Behind the scenes religious conservatives were abuzz with excitement. They believed Robertson had stepped down to allow the ascendance of the President of the United States of America to take his rightful place as the head of the true American Holy Christian Church.

Robertson’s act was symbolic, but it carried a secret and solemn revelation to the faithful. It was the signal that the Bush administration was a government under God that was led by an anointed President who would be the first regent in a dynasty of regents awaiting the return of Jesus to earth. The President would now be the minister through whom God would execute His will in the nation. George W. Bush accepted his scepter and his sword with humility, grace and a sense of exultation.

As Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court explained a few months later, the Bible teaches and Christians believe “… that government …derives its moral authority from God. Government is the ‘minister of God’ with powers to ‘revenge,’ to ‘execute wrath,’ including even wrath by the sword…�[3]

George W. Bush began to wield the sword of God’s revenge with relish from the beginning of his administration, but most of us missed the sword play. I have taken the liberty to paraphrase an illustration from Leo Strauss, the father of the neo-conservative movement, which gives us a clue of how the hiding is done:
“One ought not to say to those whom one wants to kill, ‘Give me your votes, because your votes will enable me to kill you and I want to kill you,’ but merely, ‘Give me your votes,’ for once you have the power of the votes in your hand, you can satisfy your desire.�[4]

Notwithstanding the advice, the President’s foreign policy revealed a flare for saber rattling. He warned the world that “nations are either with us or they’re against us!� His speeches, often containing allusions to biblical passages, were spoken with the certainty of a man who holds the authority of God’s wrath on earth, for he not only challenged the evil nations of the world, singling out Iraq, Syria, Iran, and North Korea as the “axis of evil,� but he wielded the sword of punishment and the sword of revenge against his own people: the American poor and the middle class who according to the religious right have earned God’s wrath by their licentiousness and undisciplined lives.

To the middle class he said, “I’m going to give you clear skies clean air and clean water,� then he gutted the environmental controls that were designed to provide clean air and water. The estimated number of premature deaths that will result: 100,000.[5] He said to the poor and to the middle class: “I’m going to give you a prescription drug program, one that you truly deserve.� Then he gave the drug industry an estimated $139 billion dollars in increased profits from the Medicare funds and arranged for the poorest of seniors to be eliminated from coverage, while most elderly will pay more for drugs than they paid before his drug benefit bill passed.[6] After that he arranged for the dismantling of the Medicare program entirely, based on the method outlined by his religious mentors.[7] He said to the people of America, “I’m going to build a future for you and your children,� then he gutted their future with tax breaks to the rich and a pre-emptive war against Iraq, and the largest spending deficit in history.[8]

This article is the documented story of how a political religious movement called Dominionism gained control of the Republican Party, then took over Congress, then took over the White House, and now is sealing the conversion of America to a theocracy by taking over the American Judiciary. It’s the story of why and how “the wrath of God Almighty� will be unleashed against the middle class, against the poor, and against the elderly and sick of this nation by George W. Bush and his army of Republican Dominionist “rulers.�

How Dominionism Was Spread
The years 1982-1986 marked the period Pat Robertson and radio and televangelists urgently broadcast appeals that rallied Christian followers to accept a new political religion that would turn millions of Christians into an army of political operatives. It was the period when the militant church raised itself from centuries of sleep and once again eyed power.

At the time, most Americans were completely unaware of the militant agenda being preached on a daily basis across the breadth and width of America. Although it was called “Christianity� it can barely be recognized as Christian. It in fact was and is a wolf parading in sheep’s clothing: It was and is a political scheme to take over the government of the United States and then turn that government into an aggressor nation that will forcibly establish the United States as the ruling empire of the twenty-first century. It is subversive, seditious, secretive, and dangerous.[9]

Dominionism is a natural if unintended extension of Social Darwinism and is frequently called “Christian Reconstructionism.� Its doctrines are shocking to ordinary Christian believers and to most Americans. Journalist Frederick Clarkson, who has written extensively on the subject, warned in 1994 that Dominionism “seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of ‘Biblical Law.’� He described the ulterior motive of Dominionism is to eliminate “…labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools.� Clarkson then describes the creation of new classes of citizens:

“Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment [to] blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.�[10]
Today, Dominionists hide their agenda and have resorted to stealth; one investigator who has engaged in internet exchanges with people who identify themselves as religious conservatives said, “They cut and run if I mention the word ‘Dominionism.’�[11] Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University wrote, “In March 1986, I was on a speaking tour in Iowa and received a copy of the following memo [Pat] Robertson had distributed to the Iowa Republican County Caucus titled, “How to Participate in a Political Party.� It read:
“Rule the world for God.

“Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.
“Hide your strength.

“Don’t flaunt your Christianity.

“Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership positions whenever possible, God willing.�[12]

Dominionists have gained extensive control of the Republican Party and the apparatus of government throughout the United States; they continue to operate secretly. Their agenda to undermine all government social programs that assist the poor, the sick, and the elderly is ingeniously disguised under false labels that confuse voters. Nevertheless, as we shall see, Dominionism maintains the necessity of laissez-faire economics, requiring that people “look to God and not to government for help.�[13]

It is estimated that thirty-five million Americans who call themselves Christian, adhere to Dominionism in the United States, but most of these people appear to be ignorant of the heretical nature of their beliefs and the seditious nature of their political goals. So successfully have the televangelists and churches inculcated the idea of the existence of an outside “enemy,� which is attacking Christianity, that millions of people have perceived themselves rightfully overthrowing an imaginary evil anti-Christian conspiratorial secular society.

When one examines the progress of its agenda, one sees that Dominionism has met its time table: the complete takeover of the American government was predicted to occur by 2004.[14] Unless the American people reject the GOP’s control of the government, Americans may find themselves living in a theocracy that has already spelled out its intentions to change every aspect of American life including its cultural life, its Constitution and its laws.

Born in Christian Reconstructionism, which was founded by the late R. J. Rushdoony, the framers of the new cult included Rushdoony, his son-in-law Gary North, Pat Robertson, Herb Titus, the former Dean of Robertson’s Regent University School of Public Policy (formerly CBN University), Charles Colson, Robertson’s political strategist, Tim LaHaye, Gary Bauer, the late Francis Schaeffer, and Paul Crouch, the founder of TBN, the world’s largest television network, plus a virtual army of likeminded television and radio evangelists and news talk show hosts.

Dominionism started with the Gospels and turned the concept of the invisible and spiritual “Kingdom of God� into a literal political empire that could be taken by force, starting with the United States of America. Discarding the original message of Jesus and forgetting that Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,� the framers of Dominionism boldly presented a Gospel whose purpose was to inspire Christians to enter politics and execute world domination so that Jesus could return to an earth prepared for his earthly rule by his faithful “regents.�

How Machiavellianism, Communism, Secular Humanism and Neo-Conservatism Inspired a New Militant and Evil Anti-Christian Religion

In the fifties and sixties, right-wing Christians worried about communists and communism taking over the world. Along with communism, another enemy to Christianity was identified by ministers. In 1982, Francis Schaeffer, who was then the leading evangelical theologian, called Secular Humanism the greatest threat to Christianity the world had ever seen. Soon American fundamentalists and Pentecostals were seeing “humanists� everywhere. Appearing on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club show, Schaeffer claimed that humanism was being forced on Christians; it taught that man was the “center of all things.� Like communism, secular humanism was based on atheism, which was sufficient enough for Schaeffer to conclude that humanism was an enemy to the Kingdom of God.[15]

“The enemy is this other view of reality,� Schaeffer spoke emotionally. Citing the Declaration of Independence as his authorizing document, he said:
“Today we live in a humanist society. They control the schools. They control public television. They control the media in general. And what we have to say is we live in a humanist society….[Because] the courts are not subject to the will of the people through elections or re-election… all the great changes in the last forty years have come through the courts. And what we must get in our mind is the government as a whole, but especially the courts, has become the vehicle to force this view on the total population, even if the total population doesn’t hold the view.�[16]

Schaeffer claimed that the major “titanic changes� to America occurred since 1942:
“If you don’t revolt against tyranny and this is what I call the bottom line, is that not only do you have the privilege but [you have] the duty to revolt. When people force upon you and society that which is absolutely contrary to the Word of God, and which really is tyranny…we have a right to stand against it as a matter of principle. And this was the basis upon which the founding fathers built this country.�

The appeal to evangelicals went further. On April 29, 1985, Billy Graham, the respected and world famous evangelist, told Pat Robertson’s audience on the 700 Club show that:
“[T]he time has come when evangelicals are going to have to think about getting organized corporately….I’m for evangelicals running for public office and winning if possible and getting control of the Congress, getting control of the bureaucracy, getting control of the executive branch of government. I think if we leave it to the other side we’re going to be lost. I would like to see every true believer involved in politics in some way shape or form.�

According to Schaeffer, Robertson, and Billy Graham, then arguably the three most famous and influential leaders in the American protestant church world, “God’s people� had a moral duty to change the government of the United States.[17]

Significantly, at the time, many other fundamentalist ministers were identifying communism and secular humanism as religions. However, the equating of a political ideology on the one hand, and a philosophy that rejects supernaturalism on the other hand, with religions was not accidental.[18] It allowed the preachers to revile an economic-political system as well as a philosophy as false religions, even demonic religions, which Christians should reject at any cost.[19]

Underneath the pejoratives, however, there was a grudging admiration on the part of Pat Robertson and the other politically astute Dominionists, for they saw that a political agenda that wrapped itself in religious robes had the innate power to explode exponentially into the most politically dynamic movement in American and world history.

The result of the new religion was that by the year 2000, thirty-five million Americans would declare war on the remaining 245 million. Karl Rove, President Bush’s political advisor, told the Family Research Council in 2002, “We need to find ways to win the war.�[20] One is tempted to respond, “Wait a minute, they’re in power so why do they need to continue the war?� That is the salient question. The answer is frightening.

Starting with a simple idea, Robertson perceived the enormous advantage of placing an otherwise unacceptable political theory into a religious context. By doing so it would stand Christianity up-side-down and end American democracy.

A Machiavellian Religion Was Born
American Christianity had already seen extremes. For Dominionists, perhaps the single most important event in the last half of the twentieth century occurred when the Reverend Jim Jones proved that the religious would follow their leader to Guyana and even further, to their deaths. That fact could hardly have escaped the notice of even the dullest of politically minded preachers.

Indeed, Jim Jones’ surreal power over his congregants leaps out from the grave even today. If a man desired to change the laws in America—to undo Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal for instance, and allow corporations the unbridled freedom they enjoyed prior to the Great Depression (which included the freedom to defraud, pillage, and to destroy the land with impunity on the way to gathering great fortunes), what better way to proceed than to cloak the corruption within a religion? If a few men wanted to establish an American empire and control the entire world, what better vehicle to carry them to their goal than to place their agenda within the context of a religion? Jim Jones proved religious people would support even immoral political deeds if their leaders found a way to frame those deeds as “God’s Will.� The idea was brilliant. Its framers knew they could glorify greed, hate, nationalism and even a Christian empire with ease.[21]
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Notes to The Despoiling of America
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Katherine Yurica was educated at East Los Angeles College, U.S.C. and the USC school of law. She worked as a consultant for Los Angeles County and as a news correspondent for Christianity Today plus as a freelance investigative reporter. She is the author of three books. She is also the publisher of the Yurica Report.

Katherine Yurica recorded and transcribed 1,300 pages of Pat Robertson’s television show, The 700 Club covering several years in the mid 1980’s. In 1987 she conducted a study in response to informal inquiries from the staff of the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representives, which was investigating whether television and radio ministries were violating their tax-exempt status by conducting grass roots political appeals, endorsing candidates, and making political expenditures as defined under Section 527 of the IRS code. The Subcommittee on Oversight published Katherine's study in Federal Tax Rules Applicable to Tax-Exempt Organizations Involving Television Ministries on October 6, 1987, Serial 100-43. (Published in 1988.)

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