Conservative Christianity and the Republican Party:
I read a really good history of the Southern Baptist Convention, a couple of years ago (sadly, I forget both author and title) that documented the conscious decision by which the national leadership of the SBC, during the Reconstruction, made a conscious decision to be the voice of moral authority on the Confederate revisionist side, to embrace and defend the religious and social complaints of the former slave-holding class in the old Confederacy. So by the time of the rise of the Religious Right as we know it, the Southern Baptist Church had already invested nearly 100 years in raising, training, and providing volunteers for pro-segregation candidates in both political parties. After Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, that put the Southern Baptist Church firmly on the Republican side.
Also in 1964, at the presidential nominating convention (per the speeches and writings of Goldwater delegate and best-sellling conspiracy theory author John Stormer), was the meeting of the Republican Anti-Communist Caucus at which the leader of the top fundamentalist seminary in America, Dallas Theological Seminary, committed to revising the curriculum to persuade all future fundamentalist ministers that fighting Communism was Christian cause number one, and to teach that it was therefore a religious duty of all Christians to support politicians from what they saw as the only reliable anti-socialist, anti-communist party, the Republicans.
In 1968, the Pope of the Catholic Church issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which, among other things, banned the practice of contraception or abortion. By 1968, feminism was already seen as a left-wing political cause for long enough that it was being paid lip-service by even center-left politicians in the Democratic Party, which fairly rapidly coalesced into the current situation where observant Catholics feel forced into supporting the only anti-feminist political party, the Republicans.
In the second volume of his auto-biography, Francis Schaeffer, Jr., the son of the famous evangelist (and founder of the modern fundamentalist movement) Francis Schaeffer, documents that it was his personal revulsion to the idea of legal abortion, after 1973 Roe v Wade, that persuaded him to argue his father into telling wealthy Protestant fundamentalists that opposition to abortion was the most important Christian cause, and that they needed to donate money that funded the founding of Moral Majority. Schaeffer Junior says that he approached politicians in both parties, offering them the support of Moral Majority if they would denounce legal abortion, making the argument to Democrats that the traditional Catholic origins of organized labor and their traditional embrace of government regulation made anti-abortion a Democratic cause, only to find himself out-maneuvered by feminists on the platform committees and organizing committees. So, he says, he had no choice but, as their lead fund-raiser, to encourage early Moral Majority leaders to embrace Republicans, and their embrace of traditional rural values (see neo-Confederacy, above), as the only hope of seeing legal abortion overturned. (A decision he now says he regrets, but feels that the feminists left him with no alternative.)
(*Post-1964, the Southern Baptist Church embraced the Republican Party for segregationist reasons; post-1973, Moral Majority and the Catholic bishops both embraced the Republican Party for anti-feminism reasons.)
Münster Rebellion
How an end-of-the-world prophecy caused the creation of a polygamistic, proto-Communist city-state in Münster during the 1530s; or, the story of the Münster Rebellion.
This image of Erhard Schoen shows the first major attack on the city Pentecost 1534.
In 1534, a group of Anabaptists took control of the city of Münster and created a theocratic Anabaptist state. It is also my favourite ‘end of the world prophecy’ event in history.
Anabaptists, whose main theological similarity is a belief in adult baptism (as a child cannot enter a covenant), generally predate the ‘typical’ start date for the Protestant Reformation: Luther nailing his 95 Theses up to a door in 1520. However, Melchior Hoffman, leader of the Melchiorites that took over Münster, was directly inspired by Luther to take up preaching. He was notable for his decidedly metaphorical interpretation of the Eucharist, and officially became an Anabaptist sometime in the early 1530s (although he later renounced his Anabaptism). He proclaimed in 1526 that 1533 would be the year of the return of Jesus Christ, in his commentary on the Book of Daniel (Das XII Capitel des propheten Danielis aussgelegt). Unsurprisingly, this caused not insignificant social unrest, even in the extremely radical city of Strassbourg, and he was imprisoned.
Hoffman’s eschatology involved a few components that are key for understanding the Rebellion (all derived from Finger’s A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology, page 528ff:
- The battle would be a decidedly Earthly one, with certain rulers acting for the ‘true’ Church and protecting them, and others attempting to destroy them
- That Strassbourg, the site of Hoffman’s 1533 arrest, would be the seat of the ‘good’ side of the Battle.
- That specific cities (following Hans Hut) would align on different sides, not specific regions
- That Hoffman was himself Elijah, the announcer of Jesus’ return
- That there would be a 3.5 year period of tribulation or battle between these forces
- That two holy rulers (Joseph and Solomon) would work together to create a holy theocracy
- Beginning in 1530, he believed that during the 3.5 year period of war, the Christians would no longer be passive victims, but powerful actors in the end days.
Jan Matthys
With this in mind, a Melchiorite named Jan Matthys decided to take control of Münster, deciding it was clearly part of Hoffman’s theology of the end times. However, he was quickly killed, as having decided that God was on his side, he went forth on a sally with only 30 other men and was immediately killed by besieging forces. He was replaced as ruler by John (Jan) of Leiden. Münster’s main theologian, Bernard Rothmann, decided two very important things:
- That Jesus’ reign would not come to pass until David (John of Leiden) created an early Kingdom;
- The 3.5 years of grace (not Hoffman’s war) had ended, and it was time to conquer the unfaithful.
Cages of the leaders of the Münster Rebellion at the steeple of St. Lambert’s Church
John of Leiden, thus empowered, created a polygamist theocracy, complete with book-burning and forced redistributed of communal property. However, Münster fell shortly thereafter, and John of Leiden and his compatriots were executed and their bodies were hung, in cages, from a church steeple.
These cages are still visible, but the bones have been removed.
(Source)
I hope to be remembered for my atrocities! 