It's interesting to me. Some bloggers are certain that the numbers of Dominionists are falling, or that their confidence in Bush is or their influence. Others believe they are gaining more power. Just from my last 3 decades of perspective, and intimate familial association with them (people who would not even thinnk of themselves as "Dominionists") is that they are indeed gaining power and influence. They do heavily rely on what the church says, and even if they may express sometimes a question, some personal disagreement with church views, without push coming to shove they vote and support what the church says. I don't trust polls much and even if the polls are correct on diminishing support, those are still people responding on a personal level and doesn't mean they will break ranks.
The problem with the Ten Commandments being up for debate is there is no room for discussion. Southern Baptists, for example, leave no room for this any longer. Al Mohler's speech brought this up when he said that Christians understand there are people who say it's not about the text it's what is behind it, but that it is not what is behind it that instead text is the infallible word of god. All rational arguments on the weakness of this are considered weightless by them. What they're saying it is it is only the Dominionist extreme interpretation (entirely cultural) and that it is of god and thus not up for debate. And they would say if pushed to the wall on it, with some of your arguments that it isn't the ten commandments thn that are important but belief in Christ.
Well, yes, sadly I have to agree that discussions are unlikely to erupt.
I was reading something on the web the other day about discussions the Mennonites had within their own ranks about the pledge of allegiance from its inception through the 1960s, as to whether taking this pledge, and saluting the flag, was a form of idolatry and/or bearing false witness. This discussion was quite intelligent. The trouble was, the people who put the Mennonites in jail were not part of the discussion at all.
In a way, the current frantic attack by Al Mohler on the old Baptist traditions of priesthood of the believer and soul competency is an effort to put an end to the pretty interesting discussions that went on among Southern Baptists for the first 75 years of the 20th century. Harold Bloom, a professor of English and a self described "unbelieving Jew" wrote a fascinating book (to me at least) called "The American Religion" which was mainly about Baptists and Mormons, in which he maintained that both had evolved toward a characteristic American individualist gnosticism from unpromising beginnings. Unfortunately, those tendencies Bloom liked in American religiosity seem to have been reversed, at least in those two sects.
I'm aware. I think I've mentioned before my husband's father is a Southern Baptist minister and his uncle is an Assembly of God minister and president of an Assembly of God college. So I've been very close to this for decades. Was acutely aware of the shredding of the Southern Baptist Convention by these individuals. Elsewhere I was comparing them to army ants, not caring what destruction they leave in their path, simply determined to ultimately get their way. And people in these churches go along with them as they simply won't break ranks. These megachurches are their lives with the activities and also being centers for cultivating business relationships.
great idea in the abstract, but in today's world of managed events like the prez's town hall meetings we know who would be admitted to your suggested discussion and who would not.
it would present an amazing spectacle to see the various commandments tortured into support for what is explicitly banned by the text. there is much room for dark humor here.
my concern about the apparently increasing influence of the dominionists is leavened a bit by the prospect of serious infighting among the strange bedfellows.
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