Onward Christian Dominionist Soldiers, Part 2

Last week I talked about Michelle Goldberg's article in the Daily Beast about Christian Dominionists and the GOP 2012 field, specifically Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann.  It's pretty telling that this week, the Daily Beast is basically printing a retraction of the entire article with this piece by Larry Ross.

Although her well-intentioned article may resonate in the echo chambers of her fellow East Coast media elite, Goldberg misapplies a broad label that few, if any, evangelicals use or with which they identify. It reveals more about the author’s personal perspective and lack of nuanced understanding of the topic than it provides useful information about the subjects themselves.

The collateral damage in such reporting is that readers are moved one step closer to perception defining reality, reinforcing the communications axiom "It’s not that people don’t know so much, but that they know so much that isn’t so.”

I don’t know or represent either candidate, nor do I have anything to do with their campaigns. But I am a lifelong evangelical who understands the foundational tenets of belief in the doctrine of love, according to the principles of Jesus in the Great Commandment and the Sermon on the Mount.

Not only is a leader who has experienced authentic heart transformation able to live a godly life, he or she also endeavors to model counterintuitive servant leadership, rather than domination or control, and to empower the least of society instead of mounting a quest for power.

The piece goes on at some length like this, basically boiling down to "How dare you stupid secular eggheads quote the Christian leaders associated with Bachmann and Perry verbatim!" and ending with this:

Although evangelicals, admittedly, have some housekeeping to do, at the end of the day the Christian faith is not an ideology, nor are believers useful idiots for one party or another. By and large, believers and evangelical leadership are motivated by the love of Jesus, not leveraging biblical values against the culture.

Which would be funny if it wasn't the fact that "leveraging biblical values" to control America politically is exactly what the Tea Party right is doing these days, going after abortion, same-sex marriage, and at the same time using Christianity to couch the end of Social Security and Medicare as "necessary sacrifice" that Americans have to make in order to protect the favored wealthy (who are wealthy because God made them wealthy and if you ask them to pay more taxes, that's going against God's will).

Probably explains why Tea Party money man Charles Koch said this over the weekend:

"Much of what the government spends money on does more harm than good; this is particularly true over the past several years with the massive uncontrolled increase in government spending. I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington."

And Koch, being one of the richest guys on Earth, is also one of the most favored by God.  But no, Dominionism is a "myth".  Pay no attention to the use of religion to control America's political landscape.