Charismatics and Calvinist Transformation

https://theconversation.com/how-a-christian-movement-is-growing-rapidly-in-the-midst-of-religious-decline-73507

Thank you Abraham Kuyper and in particular Francis Schaeffer. The latter laid this foundation and planted this seed... which has now produced the rottenest of fruits.

Just recently I was reading a Theonomist blog and he attacked the notion that any of them ever said 'politics' would save the Church. And yet that is exactly what they preach. They do so using other words. They speak of culture and transformation. They speak of dominion and bringing God's Word to bear on society. They speak of the Cultural Mandate as being wed to the Great Commission. In fact that latter is transformed from an imperative to evangelise and convert people of all nations to... Cultural Christianisation.

How is this accomplished? Through many means to be sure but primarily through...politics. Their obsession with regard to political struggle is not hard to fathom.

This is why the political figures like Rick Perry who embrace this thinking become immediate super-celebrities. They are the heart and the hope of this movement.

The so-called Seven Mountains is just a boiled down Charismatic version of Reformed Dominionism a la Kuyper, Rushdoony and Schaeffer.

There's a million and one ways their adherents can claim plausible deniability and wiggle out of the charge. There are nuances and factions within this movement and they can always find a refuge to disassociate themselves with these Charismatic cousins.

And yet so clearly they're on the same page. As I've mentioned before D James Kennedy who died in 2007 probably did more than anyone else to bridge the gap.

Once again the irony here is that the majority of these Charismatics would by default be Dispensational in their eschatology. They embrace the idea of a rebuilt Temple in a restored Israel, the Jews as God's people, the Pre-Parousia 'secret' Rapture and so forth.

And yet in schizophrenic fashion they've embraced a practical theology that is Postmillennial, that seeks to 'Christianise' society through victory and power-wielding in the realm of politics, media, the academy etc.

This is a disavowal of the old antithesis posited by Fundamentalism... which truly generated and lived a Premillennial ethic. As an Amillennialist I find far more affinity with J Vernon McGee in terms of practical Christianity and our expectation for this age than I would Gary DeMar or Tim Keller.

And as I've said before Dominionism is the new Ecumenical movement. Theologically liberal Christians like DeVos and cultists like Ben Carson, let alone a host of Roman Catholics can be incorporated within the Dominionist Big Tent.

The foundations of American Evangelical apostasy were laid a generation ago.

They're now bearing fruit and we are in a dark time... and it's getting darker.

The last line of the article is right. This movement will likely fail. God help Christians like me if they succeed. I will preach against them and oppose them from mountaintop to alleyway. And I can assure you, with history as a precedent there is no one they hate more than a Christian, Bible in hand that opposes them.

But I do believe they will fail. The 'V for Vendetta' scenario of a Christian fascist state is unlikely. Blind, led by blind guides they do not realise that is exactly what they would produce. And yet what will their failure mean for the Church?

Either way the big picture is not a good one.

I remain hopeful that some kind of opposition, a movement, a new/old way of thinking can be revitalised during this epochal decline.

http://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2017/02/american-dominionism-and-europes.html