The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party

Introduction

This page compares the teachings of an influential Christian textbook, America's Providential History by Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell, with the Texas 2004 Republican Party Platform and Bush Administration policies. It suggests a relationship between the "dominion mandate" as described in the textbook, and Bush's economic, social, and environmental programs.

David Barton is Vice Chair of the Texas Republican Party and is on the Advisory Board of the Providence Foundation which was set up and is run by the authors of America's Providential History. He was also on the payroll of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

Dominion Mandate

Genesis 26 says,

"Let them [man] have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

America's Providential History asserts that it is "God's plan" for "Bible believing Christians" to take dominion over government.

"God … shapes history to prepare people so that they may fulfill their destiny and accomplish God's purposes in the earth," (53)

"When God brings Noah through the flood to a new earth, He re-establishes the Dominion Mandate but now delegates to man the responsibility for governing other men..."(19)

God's purpose is for the United States, as "the first truly Christian nation" (184), to complete a chain of events that will "make disciples of all nations." The book quotes the Biblical commentator, Matthew Henry

"…do your utmost to make the nations Christian nations." This" according to Beliles and McDowell, "is God's plan for the nations." (3)

The Puritans are prime representatives of this "spirit of dominion," Beliles and McDowell explain.

"They recognized the scriptural mandates requiring Godly rule, and zealously set out to establish that in all aspects of society." (84)

America's Providential History offers Biblical rationale for Bush administration policies while the Texas Republican Party Platform spells out the details. Starve the federal government, transfer its social and educational functions to churches. The end result is what the Texas GOP Platform calls a "Christian" nation:

The Republican Party of Texas affirms the United States of America is a Christian Nation ...

Christian Economics According to the Religious Right

From Let There Be Markets: The Evangelical Roots of Economics:

[Writing about the early eighteen hundreds] For [evangelicals] it was unthinkable that capitalism led to class conflict, for that would mean that God had created a world at war with itself. The evangelicals believed in a providential God, one who built a logical and orderly universe, and they saw the new industrial economy as a fulfillment of God's plan. The free market, they believed, was a perfectly designed instrument to reward good Christian behavior and to punish and humiliate the unrepentant.

At the center of this early evangelical doctrine was the idea of original sin: we were all born stained by corruption and fleshly desire, and the true purpose of earthly life was to redeem this. The trials of economic life-the sweat of hard labor, the fear of poverty, the self-denial involved in saving-were earthly tests of sinfulness and virtue. While evangelicals believed salvation was ultimately possible only through conversion and faith, they saw the pain of earthly life as means of atonement for original sin.

Moreover, they regarded poverty as part of a divine program. Evangelicals interpreted the mental anguish of poverty and debt, and the physical agony of hunger or cold, as natural spurs to prick the conscience of sinners. They believed that the suffering of the poor would provoke remorse, reflection, and ultimately the conversion that would change their fate. In other words, poor people were poor for a reason, and helping them out of poverty would endanger their mortal souls. It was the evangelicals who began to see the business mogul as an heroic figure, his wealth a triumph of righteous will. more

The God-given Right of Property Owners

"The purpose of government is to protect the life, liberty and property of all individuals, by punishing evildoers and encouraging the righteous." (America's Providential History p.20) On p. 128-129 the book discusses the "Biblical" principles of the Constitution proposed by Samuel Adams, "Father of the American Revolution." The third prinicple is the "right to property," which is one of the "rights of Colonists as Christians."

"Scripture defines God as the source of private property...Ecclesiastes 5:19 states, 'For every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, He has also empowered him to eat from them'...Also in I Chronicles 29:12, 'Both riches and honor come from Thee." (pps 187-188)

The Texas GOP Platform also espouses the absolute right of property owners which puts them in league with the Constitution in Exile movement described in a New York Times article, April 17, 2005.

Tax cuts are one of Bush's signature issues. Most taxes are unbiblical according to Beliles and McDowell in their chapter on Christian Economics. Income tax is "idolatry," property tax is "theft" and inheritance taxes are simply not allowed in the Bible. The book mentions two kind of taxes that are mentioned in the Bible: a poll tax (called a flat tax today) - which is uniform, and tithing (voluntarily paying 10% of your income to your Church.) (214-215)

As reported in the Washington Post, August 4, 2004, J. Dennis Hastert, (R-Ill.) the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives published a book that suggests abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and replacing the current tax system with either a flat tax, a national sales tax or a value-added tax. Are Hastert's taxes meeting the criteria of Biblical taxes? Curiously, they are all taxes that would favor the wealthy and burden the poor.

The New York Times,, August 13, 2004, reported on a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that concludes the President's tax cuts "heavily favor the wealthy." The Washington Post reported on that same study that the tax cuts "hurt the middle class."

The Texas Republican Party platform spells out which taxes to cut. It calls for abolishing the IRS and eliminating "income tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, capital gains, corporate income tax, payroll tax and property tax." The platform doesn't mention a sales tax which is also not cited in America's Providential History as "Unbiblical.".

Fed's Chief Gives Consumption Tax Cautious Backing, New York Times, March 6, 2005 (A consumption tax is a sales tax.)

Tax cuts are accompanied by dramatic reductions in federal programs. The Texas GOP Platform of 2004 would

Abolish the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms, the position of Surgeon General, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Education, Commerce and Labor. We also call for the de-funding or abolition of the National Endowment for the Arts, and Public Broadcasting System.

President Bush's 2,000 page budget proposal could make the above recommendations a reality.

The proposal, spelled out in three short sentences, would give the
president the power to appoint an eight-member panel called the
"Sunset Commission," which would systematically review federal
programs every ten years and decide whether they should be eliminated. (Rolling Stone, April 21, 2005)

Social Security is Unbiblical

With the propagation of socialism, people were ready for the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt. Programs such as Social Security and other welfare agencies, set up the State as provider rather than God. (America's Providential History, p.251)

Social Security tax will gradually be phased out for a system of private pensions. From the Texas GOP Platform:

The Party supports an orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax. (p.13)

The Bush Economy, New York Times, June 7, 2005

Governor Riley of Alabama, a conservative Christian offers a different perspective. He believes he has a Biblical mandate to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations in order to help the poor. "Jesus says one of our missions is to take care of the least among us," the governor told the Birmingham News after announcing his plan. "We've got to take care of the poor."

"What Bob Riley is doing is acting like a Christian," said the Rev. Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners, an Evangelical Christian magazine that focuses on social justice issues. Wallis believes his faith mandates support for progressive policies such as government services for the poor. "The Bible is full of poor people," he said. "Biblical politics has the poor at the center." more

Beliles and McDowell tell us that two kinds of taxes are allowed in the Bible: a head tax (poll tax), and tithing. A tenth of each person's income would support "the church and aspects of welfare, education and other godly social needs." (215)

Shift Education and Welfare to Churches

Beliles and McDowell tell us: "Scripture makes it clear that God is the provider, not the state, and that needy individuals are to be cared for by private acts of charity." (187) In the Texas GOP Platform a starved federal government is accompanied by a scaled-down federal government with the abolition of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Education. Welfare of the needy is shifting to churches through Bush's Faith Based Initiatives, another of his signature issues. The Bush administration's strong support of school vouchers is paving the way for government funding of religious schools.

February 10, 2005: The  Institute for America's Future released a report detailing the cuts and funding freezes to education .  The report shows that Bush fails to adequately fund essential early education and after-school programs, eliminates the Even Start literacy program, freezes work-study funding for college and kills funding for 48 education programs.  Outraged, IAF President Robert Borosage says, "If the president has his way, the poorest children will bear the largest burden - suffering cuts to education, nutrition and health care, and the bill of increased debt which they will be forced to pay throughout their lives."  SEE THE REPORT

End Government Regulation

The interest of big corporations intersect with a belief of dominionists that regulatory functions of government should be abolished. Those regulations that protect the environment, worker safety, public health and consumers are diminished as the regulatory mechanisms established over the past several decades become unraveled. Agencies such as the EPA and the Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms are abolished in the Texas GOP Platform. "A strong and vibrant private sector [should be] unencumbered by excessive government regulation," the Platform declares.

The Washington Post has featured three articles analyzing how the Bush administration is systematically dismantling the regulatory functions of government in ways that are not obvious and receive little public debate. The first article is called Bush Forces a Shift In Regulatory Thrust, August 15, 2004. The second article, 'Data Qualitiy' Law is Nemesis of Regulation, August 16, and, Appalachia Is Paying Price for White House Rule Change, August 17.

The Post approached the subject of deregulation once again, January 25, 2005 with: Report Sheds Light on Changing Role of Regulation.

Coal Miners' Slaughter, In These Times, January 25, 2006

Slapping King Coal's Wrist, New York Times, March 21, 2006

OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry, New York Times, April 25, 2007 - The issue of deregulation reflects a theocratic value of unfettered capitalism.

Increase Material Wealth, Plunder Natural Resources

The Bush administration and members of the Religious Right in Congress have waged a virtual war on the environment since taking office. Bush has packed the Environmental Protection Agency with industry lobbyists; the Texas GOP Platform calls for abolishing the agency.

Beliles and McDowell explain that a Christian's primary responsibility is to create material wealth and God will increase natural resources accordingly. Secular society, which views natural resources as limited,

"lack(s) faith in God's providence and consequently, men will find fewer resources... The Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's earth." (197)

Given this view of natural resources as infinitely renewable, it is not surprising that the top ranking leaders of the U.S. House and Senate, all who support a Religious Right agenda, have 100% ratings from Christian Coalition and 0-8% from the environmental League of Conservation Voters, a consortium of environmental groups.

With unlimited natural resources, there is no such thing as overpopulation.

"Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all the people." (197)

This belief in God's ever-expanding base of natural resources explains the Bush administration's willingness to plunder the environment and oppose funding for international family planning where abortions might be performed.

The Calvinist Origins of "Dominion" Economics

Sociologist Sara Diamond explains the Calvinist origins of the Christian Reconstruction movement in an article, Dominion Theology, published in Z magazine in 1995. She distinguishes Chritian Reconstructionists from Evangelicals.

More prevalent on the Christian Right is the Dominionist idea, shared by Reconstructionists, that Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns -- and there is no consensus on when that might be. Dominionist thinking precludes coalitions between believers and unbelievers, which is why many Christian rightists will have a hard time compromising with some of the very same Republicans they recently helped elect.

Calvinists hold a belief

that God has already preordained every single thing that happens in the world. Most importantly, even one's own salvation or condemnation to hell is already a done deal as far as God is concerned. By this philosophical scheme, human will is not involved in changing the course of history. All that is left for the "righteous" to do is to play out their pre- ordained role, including their God-given right to dominate everyone else.

Calvinism arose in Europe centuries ago in part as a reaction to Roman Catholicism's heavy emphasis on priestly authority and on salvation through acts of penance. One of the classic works of sociology, Max Weber's -- Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, links the rise of Calvinism to the needs of budding capitalists to judge their own economic success as a sign of their preordained salvation. The rising popularity of Calvinism coincided with the consolidation of the capitalist economic system. Calvinists justified their accumulation of wealth, even at the expense of others, on the grounds that they were somehow destined to prosper. (emphasis mine-jb) It is no surprise that such notions still find resonance within the Christian Right which champions capitalism and all its attendant inequalities.

The hitch comes in the Calvinists' unyielding predestinarianism, the cornerstone of Reconstructionism and something at odds with the world view of evangelical Christians.

The problem is that evangelicals (a category including pentecostal charismatics and fundamental Baptists) believe that God's will works in conjunction with free human will. They believe that salvation is not by the grace of God only but by the faith of individual believers who freely choose to surrender to Jesus. In fact, the cornerstone of the Western religions is the view that God's will and human will work together. Evangelicals believe strongly that humans freely choose sin or salvation and that those already converted have the duty to go out and offer the choice they have made to others. Calvinism, in contrast, undercuts the whole motivation for missionary work, and it is the missionary zeal to redeem sinners that motivates much of the Christian Right's political activism. Calvinism is an essentially reckless doctrine. If God has already decided what's going to happen, then the Dominionists do not have to take responsibility for their actions. (They can kill abortion doctors "knowing" it is the right thing to do.) Evangelicals, even those on the Right, still believe they as individuals are capable of error.

These [evangelicals] were middle-class reformers who wanted to reshape Protestant doctrine. For them it was unthinkable that capitalism led to class conflict, for that would mean that God had created a world at war with itself. The evangelicals believed in a providential God, one who built a logical and orderly universe, and they saw the new industrial economy as a fulfillment of God's plan. The free market, they believed, was a perfectly designed instrument to reward good Christian behavior and to punish and humiliate the unrepentant.

At the center of this early evangelical doctrine was the idea of original sin: we were all born stained by corruption and fleshly desire, and the true purpose of earthly life was to redeem this. The trials of economic life-the sweat of hard labor, the fear of poverty, the self-denial involved in saving-were earthly tests of sinfulness and virtue. While evangelicals believed salvation was ultimately possible only through conversion and faith, they saw the pain of earthly life as means of atonement for original sin.

Corporate America and Theocracy , Talk To Action, December 6, 2005

Calvin, the Free Market, and Poverty, Talk To Action, January 22, 2007