Christian Frat Boys & Dominionism

I’m sorry, God but I don’t believe you support Christians controlling the world. The theocracy of Dominionism is to position Christians in influential places within society. There is a strategic and concerted effort to intertwine politics and Christianity. It rests easily on the right wing of politics accompanied by evangelical religion. Simply put, dominionism believes Christian values should underpin the fabric of society: politics; religion; business; media; arts and entertainment; education; and culture. A dominionist Christian’s beliefs is that they’re religiously superior to all others.

Recently I received an invitation to attend a meeting which was extended to me as a result of being an office-bearer of a charity. The invitation appeared to be religious in nature so I declined to attend as the charity is not a religious entity. I did, however, receive a comprehensive brochure on what I have now known to be called Movement Day Australia. For a brief moment, I thought I’d stumbled onto the reason for the recent stockpiling of toilet paper but it was not that kind of movement. On page 4 of the Movement Day Australia brochure I was surprised to find a message of support from Scott Morrison on Prime Minister letterhead. I was not too happy to find the Prime Minister’s letterhead endorsing any type of religion regardless of the religious persuasion of the person in that role.

The Movement Day Australia brochure is written in typical evangelical lingo interspersed with an overwhelming number of bible verses. It tells of a Movement beginning in 2010 in New York City and claims to have been involved in 400 cities. “God is sweeping the globe with a fresh sense of expectation as Christian leaders unite across differences for the sake of their cities” and “The sun never sets on the Movement the Son began at Pentecost.” Despite my immature chortling imagining a pile of Jesus’ poop set against a beautiful sunset, I determined this 28-page brochure to be a Pentecostal manifesto that calls Christians to commence a “city gospel movement” in their community. It provides strategies, aims, resources, stories to ask the reader a question, “What would happen if a unified body of Christ in your city worked together to engage the many needs of your city?” Now, I’ll spare you the expletives I used to personally answer this question. After what I’d read, I became further concerned as one of the ministers wrote of the Movement, “Therefore, there is no one church, no one organisation, no one leader in charge of it all. It’s bigger than that. It’s the Holy Spirit moving across the whole city and as a result, the overall body of Christ grows faster than the population. This impact made for Christ occurs across the whole city. The Holy Spirit empowers unity across and within the body of Christ, which is the key to discipling a whole city.” I’ve formerly been a Christian and I have no intention of allowing some new organisation to peddle their beliefs to everyone in town. I definitely do not abide by a Christian conversion en masse if Scott Morrison is a public example of Christianity. Movement Day Australia appears to be a deliberate and orchestrated attempt to broaden an already expanding Christian fraternity across Australia using churches, business leaders, and not-for-profit organisations: Dominionism.

There wasn’t much reference to politics in the brochure except, of course, for the glowing endorsement from the highest politician in our nation. There’s always that. Once they’ve got the Prime Minister on their side, what other reference to politics do they need? Being somewhat flummoxed at all I’d read in the very long brochure, I realised I hadn’t looked at the names of the writers. I was flabbergasted to realise a surname was familiar to me: Shelton. No, surely not. Surely not related to the Shelton of Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) fame/infamy. The Movement Day Australia website quickly confirmed that ACL was indeed a supporter and, yes, Ian Shelton of Movement Day Australia was the father of Lyle Shelton. Oh no! Ian Shelton is also a member of an organisation called One Heart Australia who has as one of its commitments, “The good news of Jesus is for the whole of society including the spheres of government, business, health, media, education, judiciary and family.” So, I think it would be reasonable to claim these organisations are rather comfortable in their pursuit of dominionism.

Ian Shelton is a Pentecostal minister at the Toowoomba City Church. If would seem prior to this, Pastor Shelton was second-in-command to Howard Carter of the Logos Foundation. That might mean nothing to many people, but it was a curious organisation very much focused on dominionism and reconstructionism in the 70s and 80s. Reconstructionism believes the Bible, New and Old Testament, is the highest form of governance and must be applied to all human life. The Logos Foundation, headed up by Howard Carter, made a convoy trek with all its members from Western Australia to the central NSW town of Dubbo. They were known there as the Hebron Church. I had two school friends who attended the Hebron Church; one of whom had actually made the passage across the country. The Logos Foundation left Dubbo after some years making a trek to the Blue Mountains before eventually ending up in Toowoomba. They became vocal about their reconstructionist views and had a highly political agenda. Leading up to a Queensland election during the 80s they placed newspaper ads and ran campaign surveys while supporting Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen as they believed he represented the traditional values of Christianity. As rumour has it, there were even calls for the death penalty to be applied for homosexuality. The Logos Foundation came crashing down when it was found Howard Carter had some rather unorthodox counselling techniques: having sex with those being counselled. There was plenty of bed-hopping going on and exorbitant expenditure by Carter who was stood down in public disgrace leaving Ian Shelton to take over the Logos Foundation and rebrand as the Toowoomba City Church.

There’s also the Australian Federation for the Family whose aim is, “ AFF is dedicated to upholding Biblical family values, promoting a Biblical Christian worldview, and educating and mobilising concerned individuals to positively affect their homes, communities, country and world.” Let’s not forget the Christian Democrats CDP who “supports Special Religious Education (SRE) and Scripture classes as a mainstream option in our schools, and a basic right for children to explore the faith of their family”. Our government is subjected to frequently lobbying by groups such as this. When the Prime Minister is a Pentecostal “born again” Christian, can we be sure he is acting in the wellbeing of all constituents or just those subscribing to the same belief system as his? I find it disconcerting that there is prayer group being carried on inside parliament house. Are they waiting for God to answer their prayers and that’s how they form legislation? Who knows? I want a secular government that treats all religions equally, including the non-religious people. I don’t want calls for prayer by the Prime Minister. In my opinion prayers are simply wishes spoken to the cosmos and if wishes were horses, fools would ride.

Christianity aims to convert people to their way thinking rather than tolerating the religious beliefs or lack of beliefs in a person. That’s why they support missionary work around the globe. Christianity is only one of many religious beliefs so forcing the interconnection of one specific religion with politics can be very dangerous. This was modelled by Islamic author Sayyid Qutb in Egypt in the middle of the last century. Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood supported the coup d’etat in 1952 and was an adviser to the man installed as leader until Qutb felt the government was too secular and he wanted Sharia Law to govern. It has had a great effect on the instability of politics in Egypt to this day. His religious writings were read in schools and universities and he is thought to be the inspiration for al-Qaeda. It doesn’t exactly read for a shining example of the effects of dominionism. And I have concerns that Christianity has already positioned itself to influence government.

Dominionism doesn’t accommodate multiple religions to coexist on a similar level as its own. Christians tend to support each other over and above other religions. Many times over the years I attended church, I heard endorsements for businesses because of their religious beliefs, “He’s a good guy. He goes to my church”. As many others would also agree politics and religion make very poor bedfellows. Sadly, our current political landscape seems to incorporate a working Christian fraternity. The Prime Minister is holding a prayer group amongst those who have the same religion; is that not creating an exclusive club even amongst the politicians? The Prime Minister is officially endorsing a group, Movement Day Australia, who outline a strategy for dominionism. Christian Dominionism would create significant exclusivity to Christians in a multicultural society such as Australia. Additionally, I’ve seen no evidence that Lyle Shelton’s nor Scott Morrison’s religious beliefs employ the Christian characteristics of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness or self-control. “Against these things there are no law”[1] yet they are not practiced by this government. I would stand in the way of such religion choosing to extend their superficial beliefs across our society.

[1] Galations 5:22-23