"The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant - baptism and holy communion - must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel."
Gary North
A leader in the Reconstructionist Movement
The Christian reconstructionist movement seeks to gain total control of the United States and to rule under Old Testament law. Under such law, adulterers, gays and Sunday workers would be stoned to death. Anybody who did not publically take communion or be baptized would be denied citizenship under a reconstructionist theocracy. Even then, you had better be the right type of Christian.
All of this means the first 22 presidents of the United States would be denied citizenship in a right-wing theocracy. Number 23, Benjamin Harrison, was the first president to unquestionably be a communicant in a mainstream church at the time he was elected in 1888, according to Franklin Steiner, in his book "The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents."
Harrison's predecessor 100 years earlier, George Washington, is not known to have ever been a communicant. Washington was known to regularly leave church before communion at the same time with the non-communicants. When an Episcopalian minister preached during a sermon that it set a bad example for role models to leave before communion, Washington responded by ceasing to attend church services on communion Sunday. Washington did not ask for any clergy even on his deathbed. Washington appears to have been a Deist, or someone who believes that God can only be known by reason and not through revelation or organized religion. Deists believed in the strict unity of God and not in the trinity; that Jesus was subordinate to God; and that salvation was earned by character.
Then there were the presidents who did not have any formal association with any church or denomination:
Martin Van Buren
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses S. Grant
Rutherford B. Hayes
When critics accused Johnson of being an infidel, he said: "As for my religion, it is the doctrine of the Bible, as taught and practiced by Jesus Christ."
Hayes said "I am not a subscriber to any creed. I belong to no Church. But in a sense satisfactory to myself, and believed by me to be important, I try to be a Christian and to help do Christian work."
Lincoln was said to have not believed in the deity of Christ. Washington reportedly never publically or privately in correspondence ever once invoked the name of Jesus. Washington and Lincoln couldn't be citizens in reconstructionist America.
Nor could the disciples and apostles be. None of them were ever baptized by Jesus. There's not a single recorded incident of Jesus ever baptizing anyone. Then there is the matter of Jesus himself. Jesus would be violating God's law if he tried to stop someone from casting the first stone to kill a wayward woman or gay. As such, not even Jesus could be an American citizen if the reconstructionists get their way. But at least it will all be done in the name of Jesus, patriotism and freedom.
Tags: Reconstructionists, Fundamentalism, Founding Fathers, Separation of Church and State, Liberal Christianity, Progressive Christianity, Liberalism
from Jesus was a Liberal
