Practicing For Theocracy
by digby
One of the hallmarks of the arguments against using hyperbolic terms against our fellow American theocrats is that they aren’t actually doing the crazy things that other pre-modern theocrats do, so it’s unfair to compare them. Except — they are. They just let their repressive, destructive flag fly in other countries:
Throughout Africa — mainly in Christian countries — vast numbers of children have been abandoned by their parents, or worse, often maimed or tortured, on suspicion of being “witches.” Aggressive crusades against alleged malevolent “witches” are encouraged by the “spiritual warfare” doctrines of some major leaders of one of the world’s fastest-growing international religious movements, the “apostolic and prophetic” wing of Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity.
One well-known adherent of this movement is Sarah Palin, about whom see Sarah Palin’s ‘Witchcraft Problem’ Is Bigger Than Christine O’Donnell’s ‘Witchcraft Problem’ by Bruce Wilson, September 21, 2010, on Talk To Action — the blog which first broke the story of how, when Sarah Palin first went into politics, she was “anointed” by Thomas Muthee, an internationally recognized (within at least one sector of the Pentecostal/charismatic world) “apostle” who gave her a blessing to protect her against “witches.” Other, even more explosive aspects of this story have not yet reached the mass media, though they are well-documented here on Talk To Action. Among other things, Thomas Muthee has acted as a witch hunter in Africa. Traditionally, to most Christians, the term “spiritual warfare” has usually referred to an internal moral struggle. However, to growing numbers of “apostolic and prophetic” leaders such as C. Peter Wagner and Ed Silvoso, “spiritual warfare” means things like exorcism, witch hunts (a.k.a. “spiritual mapping”), burning non-Christian religious artifacts, and “discipling” whole nations — including their governments, not just individual citizens. A leading network within this movement, the New Apostolic Reformation, has an explicitly theocratic goal, the “seven mountains mandate”: they explicitly desire to take over seven spheres of power in society including government. And they aim to eradicate what they see as demonic influences, including gays and all non-Christian religions. Their successes in some countries, such as Uganda, have had dire consequences such as Uganda’s kill-the-gays bill.
You’ll recall that Rick Warren had to be dragged kicking and screaming into publicly denouncing “the first purpose driven country” Uganda’s gay death penalty law last year. These African countries are serving as laboratories for Christian Reconstructionism:
Transforming Uganda is a new 20 minute documentary, by Bruce E. Wilson, that exposes immense influence that an evangelizing effort called the International Transformation Network, and the globally distributed videos of its media partner, the Sentinel Group, exert in Uganda. The ITN is one of several global efforts, operating under the “transformation” brand, that are re-engineering along theocratic lines cities and even entire nations. For the Transformation movement, which claims homosexuals are possessed by demons and that prayer and faith healing have cured thousands of HIV and AIDS cases in the nation, Uganda is a prototype. For over a year ITN representatives have been at work to setting up a training network spanning approximately 14,000 evangelical churches in Uganda, and ITN’s head Africa representative states, as shown in the video, that the Transformation Network Uganda is “basically an ITN chapter.” The International Transformation Network has active efforts underway across Africa but also in the United States, in Newark, New Jersey, Hawaii, Jacksonville, Florida, and elsewhere. ITN representatives have enjoyed official state dinners hosted by Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni and his wife Janet Museveni, and video propagandists for the movement have enjoyed direct personal access to the Musevenis since the late 1990’s. Even more striking are Janet Museveni’s extremely close ties to the International Transformation Network. Museveni attended her first ITN conference, in Kampala, in 2004. In 2006, Museveni and her daughter Patience traveled to ITN’s yearly world conference, held in Argentina that year. Unable to attend in 2008, Janet Museveni sent the head of Uganda’s tax authority to speak on her behalf at the ITN’s 18th world conference. Janet Museveni is personally supervising the Transformation process, which emphasizes the need to fuse church and business sectors, in one of Uganda’s poorest districts. Museveni’s daughter Patience runs a church whose members are being trained by ITN to transform Kampala. One of the attendees has been David Bahati, who drafted Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Both Bahati, and Benson Obua-Ogwal, the Ugandan MP’s who who introduced the internationally notorious Anti-Homosexuality bill in parliament, are closely linked, as the documentary shows, to the International Transformations effort and are members of the College of Prayer Uganda – headed by a leading Transformation movement advocate, Julius Oyet. Oyet starred in one of the globally distributed Transformations videos, by Sentinel Group founder George Otis, Jr., which have spread the Transformation movement’s eliminationalist, witch and demon-haunted ideology. College of Prayer Uganda, which played a significant role organizing and inspiring legislators who have backed the Anti Homosexuality Bill, is a chapter of the International College of Prayer, whose top leaders are Americans who operate out of a church in a suburb of Atlanta. Another American in the documentary, evangelist and Transformation advocate Os Hillman, also lives in an Atlanta suburb. Left unexplored in the documentary, to preserve clarity and minimize length, is the wider nature of the Transformation movement, which is part of the international apostolic and prophetic movement under church growth specialist C. Peter Wagner, founder of the New Apostolic Reformation. Most of the leading figures in the video are leaders in Wagner’s movement, which in turn is arising within the rapidly growing neocharismatic segment of Christianity that was estimated, by 2000, to encompass 295 million Christians worldwide.
I understand that complacent Americans think these people aren’t dangerous and don’t have any real influence in America. They are often referred to as “a joke” among the cogoscenti. And it’s true that in everyday American life their influence is still constrained by our constitution (which a large majority of Tea Partiers believe is a sacred Christian text written to affirm Biblical law) and long history of secular culture and rule of law. At the moment they are confined to burning African witches and influencing African nations to criminalize homosexuality and abortion and require adherence to Christian beliefs.
It’s hard to know what will happen if these people begin to exert even stronger influence over the Republican party in a time of great stress and transition in this country. Obviously, it’s unlikely they will be able to turn the US into a nation that believes its children are possessed by witches. But I think it’s fair to say they are people who will exert their influence in ways that are pernicious and regressive. I also think it’s fairly foolish to be sanguine about that.
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