{"id":34937,"date":"2016-04-20T00:30:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T03:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/?p=34937"},"modified":"2016-11-24T21:43:08","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T00:43:08","slug":"article-stop-calling-ted-cruz-a-dominionist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/20\/article-stop-calling-ted-cruz-a-dominionist\/","title":{"rendered":"Article: Stop Calling Ted Cruz a Dominionist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Gagnon and Edith Humphrey at Christianity Today wrote an interesting article entitled “Stop Calling Ted Cruz a Dominionist<\/a>.” In essence, it takes critics of Ted Cruz to task for using a label that clearly doesn’t make sense.<\/p>\n

They summarize some of those accusing Cruz of being a “dominionist,” including John Fea, professor of American history at Messiah College, and Warren Throckmorton, professor of psychology at Grove City College (think Chris Rodda with credibility).<\/p>\n

They then explain where the term and accusations are coming from:<\/p>\n

The term has become elastic, encompassing Christians who believe the United States was once a predominantly Christian nation as well as those who hold \u201cright-wing\u201d views. But as many writers have noted, this elastic sense has become a bogeyman.<\/p>\n

Jewish journalist Stanley Kurtz called it \u201cconspiratorial nonsense,\u201d while Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson declared: \u201cThin charges of dominionism are just another attempt to discredit opponents rather than answer them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the liberal journalist Lisa Miller called the loose accusation of dominionism \u201cthe paranoid mot du jour.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The two authors then give examples from Ted Cruz’s life that seem to demonstrate the complete opposite of a “dominionist,” including his demonstrated zeal for the US Constitution, his disagreement with Ben Carson’s expressed opposition to a Muslim becoming President, and his support for the religious rights “of everyone.”<\/p>\n

In short, if he’s a “dominionist,” he’s doing a really bad job of advocating for a theocracy. (To be fair, some would simply say Cruz’s behavior is all part of the Master PlanTM<\/sup>. To that point, see the quote above about “conspiratorial nonsense.”)<\/p>\n

The fact that all of this is said about Ted Cruz is actually irrelevant. The academic explanations about dominionism by Gagnon and Humphrey are<\/em> relevant.<\/p>\n

For many years, Michael “Mikey” Weinstein has tried to claim that “dominionists” are trying to take over the world, that they will do so to institute a second Holocaust, and that they are actually executing that plan right now\u00a0<\/em>— by first taking over the US military. In fact, Weinstein used to use the “long, complicated” term of “premillenial, dispensational, reconstructionist, dominionist, evangelical, fundamentalist Christians<\/a>” as those with whom he was “at war.” Weinstein was aided in his attempts to “out” these military “dominionists” by Chris Rodda, his research assistant and self-appointed expert on dominionism.<\/p>\n

In the past couple of years, though, Weinstein has largely dropped the 6-adjective phrase and he has even throttled back on accusations of “dominionism” (though it still pops up every now and then<\/a>). His problems were two-fold: First, in this soundbite world, the public-relations savvy Weinstein finally realized his wild accusations just wouldn’t stick, no matter how hard he tried.<\/p>\n

Second, with his claims that Christians were seeking violent world domination — apparently led by\u00a0Dick Cheney and Col Sanders —\u00a0he was frequently accused of being a conspiracy nut — accusations that were<\/em> beginning to stick (and which might also be affecting his bottom line).<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Gagnon and Humphrey’s summation of the dominionist moniker remains equally\u00a0correct for Weinstein and his ilk who use it today to malign Christians in the US military:<\/p>\n