Talk:Dominionism

should we be scared?
do you think these guy will get power?

i will admit that im a bit paranoid about that subject. but since you guy seem surely more rational then me can you tell me if we should be scared or feel threatened by this movement?

because i seriously don't want to live in a theocracy.Waronstupidity (talk) 02:01, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Very unlikely. -- 02:03, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I hope. 03:31, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

i may be wrong but it seem the number of religious nut is growing............. pretty scary Waronstupidity (talk) 04:01, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It always feels like they're growing. 15 years ago I was terrified of cults, the religious right, and militias.  The actual power of all 3 have waned dramatically. Researcher (talk) 14:30, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

There are more... we've got a whole troop of bible thumpers in our school, and when we got to evolution in Biology, humanity seemed undone.--Toasterstrudel64 NH3  04:47, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Inherent contradictions
Exist in the Bible (as it was devised and written over many hundreds of years).

'Thou shalt not kill' - in direct opposition to the right to bear arms.

Food laws (pig meat, shellfish etc).

M/m is disallowed, but nothing on f/f, s/m, dominatrices 'and any other combination or preference to taste.'

212.85.6.26 (talk) 15:25, 30 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The original does say "Thou shalt not murder." This allows for self-defense and defense of others, and any other legal killing. Researcher (talk) 14:31, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually that depends. I seem to recall reading that there was an assumed - another Israelite - at the end of the instruction. Which would sort of make sense when one considers the number of animals and non-Israelites killed around that time. How the non-Jewish Dominionists would get round this is another question however.--BobSpring is sprung! 18:29, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Ten commandments are the moral laws
The article talks about the Ten Commandments as "moral laws" which are apparently different from civil laws. I'm not sure that I understand this distinction. The Ten commandments includes "keep the Sabbath", "don't kill", don't "bonk your neighbours wife" and, for that matter, "don't even think about bonking your neighbours wife (or his ass). While some of these are certainly moral instructions not all of them are. I'm not sure that it is possible to keep the ten commandments separate from the rest of the laws in the OT.--BobSpring is sprung! 11:32, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I had a look at the cited websites, and they don't support this distinction either. The first one directly claims that according to Dominionists, "Civil laws must be changed to match the Bible's moral rules", which I'd say would definitely include the Commandments. The second one is a treatise supporting the death penalty that mentions the sixth one and treats it as a law. Röstigraben (talk) 13:29, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Expressions of Dominionism
This section seems a little conspiracy-theoryish to me. The "under God" thing was added to the Pledge of Allegiance to show that we weren't godless commies. It has nothing to do with implying that the US should be ruled according to religious principles. Should we take it out? Captain Lhurgoyf (talk) 17:29, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Some inaccuracies
Hullo, ladies and gents,

I am a Reformed Christian (a flavour of calvinist) who likes to frequent your site for its excellent polemics against pseudoscience. But when I stumbled into the article on dominionism, I was taken aback by its gross distortions. Both theonomy and Reconstructionism seem theologically problematic to me--I endorse neither, so I have no dog in this fight--but I suggest that we criticise them for what they are, not for what they aren't. It's not my intent here to start an edit war, so I'll share my concerns on the Talk page instead.

"Dominionism or Christian sharia ("Charia") (and sometimes used interchangeably with Christian Reconstructionism and theonomy, see below) is the desire to bring "order" to the Alpha Quadrant an ideology of Totalitarian theocracy."

This is marvellous rhetoric, but very poor information indeed. Let's first disambiguate our terms: dominionism is any theology that strives for some sort of theocracy; theonomy is a subset of dominionism that grounds this pursuit in the civil component of the Mosaic Law; and Christian Reconstructionism is the 'hard' wing of theonomy, which combines strict general equity (a literal application of Mosaic Law, as opposed to the interpretive liberty of Westminster general equity) with an emphasis on postmillennialism and presuppositional apologetics. Dominionism, theonomy, and Reconstructionism are certainly not interchangeable! The glossary further down the article does offer some clarification, but mostly just muddles the waters yet further. Worse than this is the suggestion that these movements are intrinsically totalitarian. There are doubtlessly neofascists in the ranks of dominionism, but theonomy is usually--and Reconstructionism always--libertarian. You could even say that the Reconstructionists have a voluntarist streak to them: Rushdoony, Bahnsen, and North, arguably the founders of the movement, all argued for the right to secession. Most Reconstructionists aim to peacefully secede from secular society and build their city on the hill on their own, rather than enforcing the Law on an unchristian populace that quite clearly has no use for it. The reverse applies, too. Those who find themselves in a Reconstructionists society but object to its laws, are free to secede and design their own institutions. I am, of course, not blind to the neoconfederate undercurrents within hard-line Reconstructionism, and I certainly do not wish to defend them. But the accusation of totalitarianism is simply not true.

"Christian Reconstructionism is also largely hyper-Calvinist[.]"

Hyper-calvinism is a distinct theology that denies the free offer of the Gospel and the duty to believe, not just 'calvinism but more extreme'. None of the three founders of Reconstructionism held to these tenets. The RationalWiki article on hyper-calvinism is about as accurate as it gets (except for the seemingly nonsensical link to North), so I'm rather baffled by this mistake. Did the writer just not read the article that he linked to?

"Dominionism cannot be regarded merely as a hyper-literal take on Christianity; its central tenet has been opposed by Christians from the earliest days of the Church. [...] However, as might be observed, the Dominionists have little reason for reinstituting the Mosaic civil Law besides, "It's in the Bible!""

While the theology in this section is not as bad as I was expecting by this point, it only deepens the confusion between dominionism and theonomy. Again, the theonomists are the Mosaic Law guys. Dominionism broadly has little to do with it.

There are a few more claims in this article that smell funny to me, like the kind-of-true-but-also-not-really distinction between dominion and stewardship that is offered after the introduction, but these are the main points. Looking forward to your comments.

Sincerely,

--Ubo (talk) 10:22, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Feel free to add, with adequate sources (respectable and not Hagiographies). That would be greatly appreciated.  Welcome, by the way!  17:53, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Most of the literature on dominionism, theonomy, and especially Christian Reconstruction is written by their advocates, for... well, reasons that I hope are obvious, but I'll see if I can find some critical sources. Will add later this week. Also, thanks for the welcome! --Ubo (talk) 06:57, 18 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm not particularly qualified to assess the truth, but it's worth noting we're interested in religion as it affects politics or science, not in analysing obscure theological debates just for the sake of it. Hence, if dominionism has a political wing seeking to control others, it really doesn't matter if that makes up a large or small proportion of the total number of believers, it's the political side we're interested in not the secessionistic/monastic/quietist side. Of course we want to get the terminology right and give an accurate account and have a well-written article (which doesn't often happen) but the goal isn't an overview of all aspects of Christianity, just those trying to fuck with us. --Annanoon (talk) 18:10, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem I am raising here is not that the article gives no attention to this or that obscure camp. I know that RationalWiki is not the place for theological debate. The problem is rather that the claims it does make about obscure camps are flat-out wrong. The article would be more or less OK if it did not go beyond dominionism broadly, but juggling dominionism, theonomy, Christian Reconstructionism, and hyper-calvinism in the way that it does right now is rather like conflating the politics of Joe Biden with Marxism. While their views are unquestionably extreme, most classical theonomists have no desire to enforce them on secular folk. --Ubo (talk) 06:57, 18 March 2021 (UTC)