Another Example of How the Religious Right and Tea Party Are Melding into One Political Movement

Tea party activists like to argue that they simply want a small government that doesn’t intrude on the freedoms of Americans. But that’s hard to do believe when you see tea party and religious-right activists marching together with locked arms.

Consider, for example, Rick Scarborough, head of the religious-right group Vision America, which is based in the East Texas town of Lufkin. Scarborough has worked to tie the tea party and religious-right movements together. In fact, he created Tea Party Unity, a project of Vision America, “to provide services and recognition to Tea Parties across the nation, and to help build a tsunami of grassroots activism that will restore our nation to her Judeo-Christian heritage.”

Today’s Tea Party Unity e-newsletter promotes an essay by Lee Duigon, a contributing editor for the Chalcedon Foundation. Chalcedon, founded in 1965 by the late Rousas John Rushdoony, promotes Christian Reconstructionism. That radical movement advocates for a theocratic government and a society based on libertarian economics. Mother Jones has described the movement as “an obscure but increasingly potent theology whose top exponents hold that Christian crusaders must conquer and convert the world, by the sword if necessary, before Jesus will return.”

In short, Christian Reconstructionism is the religious right on steroids. Its advocates are so extreme that the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies the Chalcedon Foundation as an anti-gay hate group that advocates for executing gay people and seeks to impose Old Testament law on America. Rushdoony, the SPLC reports, also rejected interracial marriage and denied the Holocaust.

The essay Tea Party Unity is promoting today is a screed attacking what Duigon calls the two pillars of liberalism. Both pillars, Duigon writes, ” are faith statements”:

“First, liberalism is a faith, a belief, that man is perfectible by man. If only the government is made big enough, and powerful enough; if only enough money is raised by taxation; if only the right experts (the liberals themselves) are put in charge, and everyone obeys them: well, then, everything is going to be hunky-dory…. The second pillar of liberalism is that there is no God, or, at best, a God who is not involved in earthly doings and doesn’t mind if we ignore Him.”

Liberalism based on these pillars seeks the power of government coercion, Duigon argues:

“The fact that these enterprises, when pursued vigorously, always seem to end up with piles of dead bodies and miles of barbed wire fouling up the landscape makes no impression on progressives. But the uncommitted person may want to take a long, hard look at history.”

What a vile argument, especially coming from the spokesman for an organization that has advocated for government to kill gay people and was founded by someone who denied that the Nazis murdered millions of Jews. But Duigon is the kind of extremist whose ideas Rick Scarborough wants tea party activists to read.

12 thoughts on “Another Example of How the Religious Right and Tea Party Are Melding into One Political Movement

  1. So the christians think they can take the world “…by the sword, if necessary…”. If they go that far I, for one, will not be holding a mere sword. I’m certain there are many others that feel as I do.

  2. The Christian reconstructionists’ primary method of attack is to look and pretend to be regular Christianity and to dupe the millions of ignorant people who THEY KNOW are too stupid to have a single clue as to what their evil heresy is really all about. The Tea Party is perfect prey for these wolves in sheep’s clothing.

  3. In late 2015 or early 2016, I wonder if Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson will throw a big Bar-B-Q, invite over a bunch of Texas friends, and announce that they have chosen Ted Cruz as the only candidate that supports their values and the only candidate strong enough to win the Presidential election because they can assure the right-wing-nut-job vote will turn out for their candidate? It’s just a question.

  4. The polling data from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Washington Post poll indicates that the difference between Religious Values Republicans and the Tea Party Republicans is that the latter are more devout.

    1. I wouldn’t call it “more devout.” It seems to me that “zealous” or “maniacal” is a better fit—or perhaps—dare I say it—that time of year is right around the corner—yes—“fruitcakes.”

  5. Tea partiers don’t really believe that government coercion is bad; they only believe that government coercion to help or protect the poor and oppressed is bad.

  6. Just for the record — there ARE Christians who believe that science (including evolution) should be taught in science classrooms, and religion should be taught either in private schools, world religion classes or in places of worship.

    We’re not all crazed, wingnut fundagelicals, and a great many of us have no problem reconciling evolution and our faith.

  7. The Christian Reconstructionists/Dominionists
    ARE home grown terrorists to be, just listening and reading their basic concepts is all the proof you need to realize these folks are simply looking for an excuse to kill everyone that doesn’t look like them, and that their mental problems most definitely include Sociopathic tendencies, Religious Delusions and good old Homicidal Psychopathy!
    The fact the tea party has become connected to these psychotics should be GREAT worry to every American!

    And the fact that they want a Theocratic Government means they are also Seditionists and more then likely VERY GUILTY of TREASON !