First Amendment Advocate, Vol. 6, No. 1, April 2005

The Newsletter of the Oklahoma Chapter of Americans United

A Political Takeover Strategy

By Dr. Bruce Prescott

The June 2001 issue of the First Amendment Advocate printed an article about Christian Reconstructionists or Dominionists who believe that democracy is heresy and want to set up a theocracy.

Recently, I found an article on the internet by Katherine Yurika of the Yurika Report that quoted from a Dominionist book that has become a “home school classic.”  Here is some of what children reading America's Providential History are learning:

"If Christians in every locality became a controlling influence in a political party after two years of serving there consistently, then every godly representative in the state legislatures and the Congress could be replaced within six years to work with a godly president."

"If we work for more godly representatives in 2/3 of the state legislatures then we can bypass Congress and call a new Constitutional Convention to clean up all of the mess we have made of it in the past 200 years! Then with godly state legislatures, the odds are good that delegates appointed by them to a new Convention will be godly and wise as well."

Being familiar with the history of the Southern Baptist Convention over the last 25 years, I saw a striking resemblance between the strategy of Dominionism and the successful Fundamentalist strategy to takeover the SBC.  Here's a summary of that strategy:

In the late 1970s two men, Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler, devised a plan to takeover the Southern Baptist Convention and change its direction. . . . Patterson and Pressler studied the SBC's constitution and bylaws and discovered that the convention was ultimately controlled by the appointment powers of the president. By electing change minded presidents for ten consecutive years and having those presidents appoint only change minded people to serve as trustees, within ten years they could replace the heads of all SBC institutions and agencies with change minded administrators. Beginning in 1979, that is what they did.

The similarities between the Dominionist strategy and the SBC Fundamentalist strategy is not surprising to some people who have been watching both Baptists and right-wing politics. The possibility of developing and implementing such a strategy was exactly what Dominionist Gary North was talking about when he interviewed Paul Pressler, the architect of the Fundamentalist takeover of the SBC, in a radio interview in 1985. That radio interview is noteworthy because it was the first time that SBC Fundamentalists publicly explained their takeover strategy.

To probe more deeply into what some home schoolers are learning, I ordered a used copy of America's Providential History.  I discovered that the book is truly a work of art.

The cover is a color picture of George Washington on his knees in the snow at Valley Forge. Drawings, diagrams, sketches and pictures are embedded on every other page.

The pictures and sketches within the chapter on "The War for the Union" are particularly striking. The first picture is of Confederate troops, followed by a picture of the Lincoln Memorial, then sketch of John Brown after his capture, then small sketches of Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun, then a picture of Stonewall Jackson and his men at prayer, followed by a sketch of Robert E. Lee, then a full page sketch of Stonewall Jackson on his knees praying for his army to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, followed by a 1/2 page picture of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, followed by another small sketch of Stonewall Jackson, then a 3/4 page picture of Pickett's charge, followed by a 1/3 page picture of Robert E. Lee, followed by a 1/2 page picture of Lee praying with his soldiers, then a 1/2 page picture of Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg address. All that artwork for 19 pages of  8 1/2 x 11 text.

The chapter following "The War for Union" is entitled "The American Apostacy and Decline." Here's the first paragraph:

Only if we correctly identify and diagnose the true cause of America's problems, can we begin to really solve them. Most Christians today place the blame on various conspiracies of men: the humanists, the ACLU, the big bankers, the Trilateral Commission, the New Age Movement, the World Council of Churches, the Homosexuals, the Feminists, the Communists, the Democrats, the Pope, etc. Information regarding such groups and their activities can be useful, yet must never be regarded as the source of our problems.

The book goes on to say that "Christians are Responsible. The church has been given authority to shape history. If our nation is in awful condition, God holds us responsible."

The next chapter is entitled "The Power for Reforming America" and lays out the takeover strategy that I quoted at the beginning of this article. That chapter is followed by the book's conclusion which delineates seven principles of "biblical" liberty.

Reading this book made it clear to me that the Old South has been rising under a new banner.  It also gave me an idea about where Lifeway Books, the Southern Baptist Convention’s publishing house, might be finding the market for its biography of Stonewall Jackson.  That biography was reviewed on the editorial page of the Daily Oklahoman twice.  The first review appeared on March 3, 2000 and was entitled “Stonewall — Romans 8:28.”  The second appeared on March 15, 2000 and was entitled “Glorified — Stonewall’s Lessons.”

The editorials appeared shortly after several black students were expelled from the High School in Wynnewood, OK for starting a fight with white students.  The fight reportedly broke out after school officials refused to let African-American students wear shirts bearing symbols of their African heritage to school while permitting white students to wear shirts bearing the Confederate flag to school. 

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