“The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk. It was not in the Constitution, it was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like what they say it does.”
— REP. LAUREN BOEBERT (R-CO)
More than 30 years ago, when President George H.W. Bush used the fall of the Soviet Union to speak of the possibility of a New World Order based less on nationalism than on common humanity, the radical right had its new raison d’etre. Forget the fact that nationalism has been the greatest causation of wars throughout human history, they were for it.
Of course nationalism metastasized when it added the second greatest reason for wars in history — religion.
According to numerous sources, there are more than 4,000 different religions on planet Earth, Many of them have one thing in common. No, not belief in God. Many of those 4,000 different religions believe that 3,999 of them are wrong. Dead wrong.
Take it down even further and there are believed to be 45,000 different Christian denominations in the world, many of which deny denominations other than theirs are Christian at all.
Christian Nationalists like Boebert, House Speaker Mike Johnson and others seem to believe in a Christianity that somehow doesn’t include the teachings of Christ.
Love your neighbor as yourself?
Yeah, sure.
Judge not that you be judged?
Yeah, sure.
Sell all that you have and give it to the poor?
No way.
No, their “Christian nation” would be much more like Gilead in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a patriarchal, white supremacist, totalitarian, theonomic state. Where men are men and everyone is nervous.
Much of what they are trying to accomplish would not stand the light of day. That’s why one of the more radical parts of the movement doesn’t even admit to existing. The New Apostolic Reformation seeks to recreate society to the ministry structure of the Bible, with apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers.
The keys are the prophets and the apostles, who run things.
The flag shown above is one used to denote followers of Christian dominionism. Fascinating that one particular member of Congress has three flags outside his office — an American flag, his state flag and this one.
His name is Mike Johnson, and as Speaker of the House he is the most powerful elected Republican official in the United States. He hasn’t been shy about saying the Bible is the basis of all his beliefs, but he doesn’t say much about the NAR. Maybe that’s because NAR believes that it is God’s will for Christians to take control of all aspects of U.S. society — including education, arts and entertainment, the media, and businesses — to create a religious nation.
In other words, a fundamentalist Christian Iran.
As horrible as it might be, imagine Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kari Lake, Marsha Blackburn, Kimberly Guilfoyle and all the others as handmaids.
A strange, strange world.