Senator Brian Schatz on Saturday posted a twitter clip from a November 2020 “Stop the Steal” rally in which a Virginia delegate mouths the “Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate” nonsense popular in Christian Reconstructionism, a theocratic movement brewing for several decades. (Digby posted the clip on Sunday.) Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, warned, “This is violent, fascist, revolutionary, and extreme, and I donât think our campaigns should get fancy next year coming up with some poll tested âkitchen tableâ stuff. These people cannot be trusted with the power of the people because itâs unclear they would ever give it back.”
The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice hosted a webinar last week with Rachel Tabachnick, formerly with Political Research Associates, on Christian Dominionism as an expression of Christian Reconstructionism, so the “Lesser Magistrate” stuff is fresh. For the unintitiated, the term derives from a 2013 book by Matthew J. Trewhella, “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates.” Briefly:
As he wrote, âThe lesser magistrate doctrine declares that when the superior or higher
civil authority makes unjust/immoral laws or decrees, the lesser or lower ranking civil authority has both a right and a duty to refuse obedience to that superior authority. If necessary, the lesser authorities even have the right and obligation to actively resist the superior authority.â
Violently, if necessary. Watch the clip again.
Fred Clarkson of PRA defined Dominionism in 2016:
Dominionism is the theocratic idea that regardless of theological view, means, or timetable, Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.
Analyst Chip Berlet and I have suggested that there is a dominionist spectrum running from soft to hard as a way of making some broad distinctions among dominionists without getting mired in theological minutiae.106 But we also agree that:
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- Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.
- Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.
- Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that the Ten Commandments, or âbiblical law,â should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing biblical principles.107
Of course, Christian nationalism takes a distinct form in the United States, but dominionism in all of its variants has a vision for all nations.
To use a crude shorthand, Christian ISIS mixed with Austrian-School libertarianism.
Tabachnick emphasized that when they use the word liberty, for example, they don’t use it in the Jeffersonian sense. Their concept is (in my crude understanding) liberty lies in following Jesus, Dominionist-style. Don’t be fooled by patriotic affectations. They mean to rule for Jesus while wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. Give back power? Not a chance.
This is some dangerous stuff in the hands of people wielding political power, as Schatz understands. Chauncey DeVega does not dive into the theocracy angle at Salon, but warns this morning that we seem to be facing “an interregnum, the sort of in-between historical period famously described by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci: ‘The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.'”
DeVega writes:
When a society’s landmarks are erased and its lodestars or guiding lights are plucked from the sky, a collective confusion and disorientation â even madness â can take hold. Fundamental questions of personal identity come to the fore: Who am I in this moment? How do I make sense of it all? Will I even survive? Am I obsolete? Does my life have meaning?
We are at a choice point between fascism and freedom.
Today’s Republican Party and the larger right-wing movement no longer feel any commitment to “normal politics,” with its traditional mores of compromise, consensus building and other forms of horse trading, and where each side strives to win as much as possible while maintaining some semblance of a functioning democracy.
Victory is all that matters for today’s Republican Party. Destruction, not creation, is the Republican modus operandi. When they gain control of the levers of government, “democracy” becomes an instrument used to undermine the system itself on the road to creating an autocratic one-party state, if not an all-out authoritarian regime.
One stark indicator of that trend, of that madness, is Republican Party’s “willingness to let its own voters die in the pandemic.”
There are not likely easy answers to be found, DeVega argues, and the old ones are not up to the moment. “To defeat and survive the rising fascist tide, there is only one solution: Accept that the old world is gone, and fight to create a better one.”
On that note, DeVega cites a recent conversation with Rev. William J. Barber II who observed of the volatile energies of the moment:
Now the question is, where’s the energy going to go? Because it’s going somewhere. And it is always when a nation is about to burst that moral movements are birthed. If you do not have the moral movements, then that energy can go in directions that are utterly destructive. But that bursting can also be a birthing. As has been explained to me, when a woman has a baby, it is the most critical time between life and death, and the most creative time.
Is this moment in America going to be a tomb or a womb? Is it going to be the burying of democracy, or is it going to be the birthing of a new freedom?
Hang on tight to yours. Be watchful. Stay engaged. Rough seas ahead.
