Christian reconstructionism

Yeah, what do you think? Well...

It's always been part of the overall plan, desire, vision of society from the Christian Reconstructionists, who are part of the core base that forms up Christian nationalism.

They've always believed in public executions.

They always thought, I mean, I was a little surprised when they announced, because Pete Hegseth is in the part of Christian nationalism that's very influenced by this.

And the old Christian Reconstructionist idea is that you would have public executions, but you would stone people.

You

got to

Yeah.

Ugh.

Several have expressed hostility to Muslims of Islam, with one calling Allah a demon god, which means, I think, what they're kind of implying is, hey, are we too clo- too far away from them saying, "Hey, we're gonna start executing people who we disagree with religiously"? There was a consensus among the early Christians, Reconstructionists, that the death penalty for, for certain crime...

Now, early Christian Reconstructionists.

No, no, you're going back Old Testament.

That's before Christians.

His latest book is The World That Wasn't, Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century, And he has an article at Project Syndicate we will discuss, Fukuyama, Teal, and the Revenge of the Last Man.

Then finally we will look into the Christian nationalist religious cult Hegseth belongs to, and the extent to which its Crusader theology is behind the live stream public execution by firing squad Hegseth plans for the murderer of US soldiers.

Joining us is Julie Ingersoll, a scholar of religion and politics specializing in evangelical movements and their influence on American public life, including Christian reconstructionism, gender and abuse in evangelicalism, and religion and violence.

She's a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida.

And her books include Evangelical Christian Women, War Stories in the Gender Battles, Building God's Kingdom, Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction, and Baptists

and Methodists in America.

And before we begin, for over a decade we have warned that Trump is both a criminal and likely a traitor, not to mention he's mentally unstable, egomaniacal, woefully ignorant, wildly incompetent, insatiably greedy, and spectacularly corrupt.

And he has an article at Project Syndicate, Fukuyama, Teal, and the Revenge of the Last

And, and most people-

Christian Reconstructionism as well

... don't realize...

Yeah.

And it was really an eye-opening conversation for me, so enjoy it, and thanks for listening.

So talk to me about these three groups then, Christian Reconstructionists, Reactionary Catholics, Silicon Valley.

You know, talk to me about those three groups and the role that they play, what they each want.

You know, what I, what I noticed running up to 2024 election was, uh, we'd really gone from Make America Great Again to what I was hearing in 2024 was, among other things, "We need to save Western civilization." And, and I was like, "Okay, well, that's different.

And, and I wanted to know what was behind that.

And what I found is there's three groups saying we need to save Western civilization.

You, you've got Protestant Reconstructionists, who of course trace back to RJ Rushdoony and have their, their current figurehead in Doug Wilson.

But there's a lot of other sort of r- uh, reconstruction-ish pastors and theologians out there.

Your main thesis is that there's been this demographic change, cultural progress, global crises, and you name three groups who are really appealing for this sort of King Jesus sort of thing.

And you mentioned Christian Reconstructionists, reactionary Catholics and Silicon Valley magnates and the Silicon Valley piece is one I've always wanted to study and I haven't gotten to it yet so that's why I'm really appreciative of your book diving into this and I want to get to a couple of those people in a minute but one one group that you left out and you mentioned them in chapter seven but I just want to see how your thinking works you know you know I brought up Jake Lang yeah well there's a similar guy who's part of the new apostolic reformation sean foyt yep who goes to he was just in the twin cities i was in chicago so i couldn't go protest him this past weekend but um he was in twin cities stirring up trouble he's part of that new apostolic reformation and matthew taylor would lump them in on one level what do you see different about the new apostolic reformation

Yeah, so I think I want to say there would be no Jake Lang without Sean Foyt.

Sean Foyt in the pandemic really pioneered this idea of, hey, we're not going to go into the public square and ask people individually, hey, how are you? Have you met Jesus? Do you know where you'll spend? You know what we're going to do? We're going to go into the public square and yell as loud as we can.

It's funny you brought that up sarcastically, but the fact is that sort of mindset, y- you ... is correlated to a p- im- an improper understanding of Romans 13.

If you really think that God ordained American government, and therefore we've gotta dominate our culture through the government in order to be obedient to God and do what God says relative to government, well, then yeah, I could see how you might, uh, uh, be attracted to a movement, uh, such as, uh, the New Apostolic Reformation and, and Christian Reconstructionism and stuff like that.

Yeah.

No, obviously I was being a little bit sarcastic there.

Or so says our guest today.

In his book, American Caesar: How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America into a Monarchy, our guest, Bradley B. Onishi, argues that a powerful contingent of Christian reconstructionists, reactionary Catholics, and Silicon Valley magnates are on a mission to replace American democracy with an authoritarian ruler who doesn't have to worry about all those pesky checks and balances.

Christian reconstructionists in the kinda Doug Wilson vein, radical traditional Catholics in the kind of JD Vance vein, and technocrats all agree democracy is the problem.

It is not the solution.

Too many woke people, too many women who want control over their lives, too many queer people, too many quote, unquote, "invaders" from Muslim countries.

We are gonna lose, quote unquote, 'our country' due to demographics, due to falling religious participation." So the idea that we would just go about business as usual, winning elections, democratic processes, wooing voters, it's not gonna cut it.

And so that leads us to Donald Trump in 2016.

And then if we just fast-forward another decade, we have a situation where, and this is what I argue in the book, is that Christian Reconstructionists in the kinda Doug Wilson vein, radical traditional Catholics in the kind of J.D. Vance vein and, and Kevin Roberts vein, and technocrats, who we can get into, all agree democracy is the problem.