Survey/Poll for current & past dominionists, please?

[MamaJunebug]

...Doesn't look like we have a "poll" option like on yuku, but that's not going to stop me. :)

I'm interested in the "age" of the Dominionist/Reconstructionist movement. Obviously, fundamentalistic Christianity has been around for ages. And there are those in the South and in the North who think that dialogue and change should continue even 150 years after the end of the War Between the States, so reconstructionism isn't new, either.

The "age" I'm interested in is this: The number of generations that families have been into P/QF.

Anecdotally, we know that Attorney & Mrs. Phillips and Mr. & Mrs. Geoffrey Botkin came from conventionally religious parents. We also have gotten the idea that at least one of the spouses among Pastor & Mrs. Serven and Pastor (or not) & Mrs. McDonald and Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell came from broken homes where religion was nominal or possibly non-existent.

So for those five couples, I think we could say that they are a conventionally educated group of Baby Boomers who chose to homeschool their own children; and that their religious convictions and values differ significantly from those of at least one of their own parents' generation.

The questions I have for those of you who are now in the fundamentalist or dominionist community, or who have come out of it, are these:

Are/were you homeschooled?

How were your parents educated?

How do your parents' religion, values and politics align with their own parents' views/beliefs?

Why do I ask? Because I want to get a sense of how old this movement (these movements) are, and how they're grounded. IF that makes any sense. If not? Ignore me. (At my age, I won't be experiencing that for the first time!)

Kthxbai for considering!

[liltwinstar]

My parents started going to Dominionist church when I was 9 - so that would have been in 1990, possibly 1989. They had started dabbling in Dominionism through a Bible study the year before that, so let's say early 1989. I was homeschooled - they started that in 1985, but we were going to the local AoG mega church at that point.

My parents both went through public school. Dad graduated early and started working right away; his dad was dead and his mom had turned to alcohol, so I think my Dad wanted out, and I don't blame him. Mom graduated from high school at the normal time. My parents met when they were 14 and started dating when they were 16. They married at 20 and 21. They both attended community college off and on, but neither finished a degree there at that point (they both eventually completed their AA degrees, and my sister and I proudly watched them graduate together, about 5 years ago!)

I think they both went to church off and on as kids/teenagers, but it wasn't a big deal in either of their families. I think they've both had some family issues - my mom because her dad is not the nicest of individuals and my dad because of his dad dying and his mom turning to alcohol. They both just really wanted a good, stable, loving family - and I think church to them was a way to get there.

Anyway, I think you can trace the development of the Dominionist movement by the books that have been published that are highly influential. I can't find a date for Rushdoony's Institutes of Biblical Law (Amazon says 1980, but that seems late to me), but his Chalcedon Foundation started in 1965. Gary North, who married one of Rushdoony's daughters, started writing and publishing Dominionist books in the mid 1970s. David Chilton's Productive Christians was originally published in 1981. So, it seems to me that the Dominionist movement started gaining traction in the mid 70s - early 80s. Frank Schaeffer has a lot to say about all of that in Crazy for God, and I think the timeline that he presents roughly matches mine.

[liltwinstar]

Missed the last question about how my parents' beliefs line up with their parents' beliefs - short answer - I don't think they did. I didn't ever get to meet my paternal grandparents, but judging from the stories my Dad has told, they enjoyed a pretty good life, were good parents, and had an active social life until my Grandfather passed away. Religion wasn't a big part of either of their lives.

My maternal Grandfather has always been very good to me, and I think he's mellowed in his old age. I don't think he was the best of fathers, though he did the best he could, I think, and did some really honorable things. My maternal Grandma was not religious at all and never had any interest in religion. She was a housewife, though, and was very talented in domestic stuff (I say "was" becuase even though she's still living, she has pretty advanced Alzheimer's and she is not the person she used to be).

[MamaJunebug]

Thank you both, and yes, I'll be checking out "Crazy For God" soon! Welcome reminder. :)

[Brainsample]

My story is going to be unique, but I think it points out well how ideological systems work and how they are enhanced by social pressure.

My husband got into it because of college. His parents were not evangelical, and mine were Pentecostal and not legalistic at all. They never liked this Dominionism stuff and were the kind of people who kept their heads down and didn't make waves anywhere. They were very unhappy and worried when I joined a professional organization and when I voted Republican for Bush in the '80s, thinking that was radical!

My husband went to Virginia Tech, and he was in the military corps band there, eventually becoming the Drum Major for his class year. We were from from Pennsylvania, damn Yankees, and I really feel like is ideology was broken and reformed to fit what was acceptable at the school to be accepted by the corps which was full of military people which had a profound effect on him as well. He was raised an ELCA Lutheran, and he was unusually devout before he became evangelical. In the corps, and especially in the band, it was expected of him socially to accept the view of the Old South because of the whole Virginia thing. The students were encouraged to study with James Robertson there, THE expert on Jackson (who even gives audio commentary on the God's and Generals DVD concerning Stonewall). My husband would talk with pride about how his friends in the corp declared him an "officially domesticated" Southerner at a certain point for accepting the Southern view of the "War of Northern Aggression." Until he transitioned out of identifying himself and his identity with that college experience (which I thought was a little weird, actually, because it was such an integral part of his adult self for so long -hint hint), he spent a lot of time idealizing that time in a religious way. It was hard for him when those old connections from college started dissolving as they do when you grow up, marry, and get an adult life. I think that this Confederacy crap was a way of holding on to those old memories and old connections to people in college, but only through the ideology.

I've written about how this affected him and how it predisposed him to accept the Howard Phillips/Chalcedon version of dominionism.

http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2008 ... ry-of.html

After commenting on the thread about the elect that Soldier of One started a couple of days ago, I recalled when my husband started making a steady diet of this stuff and how it changed him in ways that really were not consistent with his character. He used to listen only to RC Sproul, Sr, and he is a gracious and kind man, even in his teachings which were not always kind (I'm not a big fan of limited atonement). There was no anger or miserable force in Sproul, and I would not really consider him a dominionist like the people typically discussed on FJ.

After a good year or two of regularly reading Chalcedon material, my husband started going on about how God hated certain people and how they merited God's hate and wrath. (We read only a few things by Doug Wilson over the years and didn't like his writing style, but what he said was miserable Doug Wilson type stuff. He always thought that Gary North was crazy, but the "anger at the non-elect" sounded just like the cold and heartless garbage that North is known for promoting.) It was stuff I never dreamed that I would ever hear come out of his mouth. It was never stated, but the pregnant feeling in the room would be that if God hated these people who deserved that hate, then we should hate those people, too. And my question to him always was, "But weren't we also at enmity with God, too? Isn't that why God's unmerited favor that is shown to sinners is so awe-inspiring? I am not really different than the non-elect, so why do I even want to take it any further than some ivory tower academic point to banter around? Is it 'walking in the Spirit' to think of people that way, whether they deserve God's wrath or not? So far as we know, all men should hear the Gospel, regardless." And he would get really furious and go into some big academic discourse that served little to no good purpose from anything that I could tell. I would have rather talked about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

There were some other mitigating factors like chronic pain and illness that didn't exactly put him in a great frame of emotion, but he had a personality change and became very cruel until he came all the way out of the system. He became hard, angry and grossly intolerant in every area of his life, and he suffered physically because of it, too. Initially, I said nothing to him about this stuff because he was ill, and I interpreted it as a function of his pain. I believe, however, that it awakened the angry part of his personality that I believed that I'd never see in him. In terms of his religious life, he became incredibly spiritually proud and miserable, and I finally started confronting him about it after he got well. As hard as he'd become, I consider his positive change and journey out of the mess a miracle.

Essentially, he turned out to be kinder than I'd ever known him to be before all this mess, but it took a long time and much patience. The scandals among these folks helped (e.g., RC 2.0's defrocking, and how Ligonier tried to sue a blogger), but I had to work at it. He didn't want to believe that Federal Vision was as wacko as it was. He didn't believe that RC 2.0 had anything to do with Doug Phillips and the religion of homeschooling stuff. I had to work at it. It also helped when Chalcedon and American Vision pretty much blew us off when we withdrew financial support because of their relationship with Phillips. Then he was ready to see and accept that there were serious problems with the whole mindset. But I spent many nights wondering "How can I be laying in bed next to this man who believes this stuff???!!!"

[Extricated]

Are/were you homeschooled? Yes.

How were your parents educated? A mix of public and private schools.

How do your parents' religion, values and politics align with their own parents' views/beliefs? One parent nearly completely and the other not at all.

One parent's family has been different brands of Christian for hundreds of years on both sides of their family. The other parent was a first generation Christian with no religious family members.