Sermon: Dominion’s
Contents
Rev. Dr. Douglas Olds
Point Reyes (CA)
Community Presbyterian Church
January 22, 2023
First Reading: Psalm 40: 1-11
I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me & heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, & set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see & fear, & put their trust in the LORD. Happy are those who make the LORD their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods. You have multiplied, O LORD my God, your wondrous deeds & your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim & tell of them, they would be more than can be counted. Sacrifice & offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering & sin offering you have not required. Then I said, “Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.” I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD. I have not hidden your saving help within my heart, I have spoken of your faithfulness & your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love & your faithfulness from the great congregation. Do not, O LORD, withhold your mercy from me; let your steadfast love & your faithfulness keep me safe forever. For evils have encompassed me without number; my iniquities have overtaken me, until I cannot see; they are more than the hairs of my head, & my heart fails me. Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me; O LORD, make haste to help me. Let all those be put to shame & confusion who seek to snatch away my life; let those be turned back & brought to dishonor who desire my hurt. Let those be appalled because of their shame who say to me, “Aha, Aha!” But may all who seek you rejoice & be glad in you; may those who love your salvation say continually, “Great is the LORD!” As for me, I am poor & needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help & my deliverer; do not delay, O my God.
NT Reading Ephesians 6:10–12
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord & in the strength of his power. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against enemies of blood & flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
We recently marked the 2 year anniversary of an insurrection
at the US Capitol. We are increasingly learning that the impetus for such did
not originate only from militant militias or radical politicians, but with reactionary
religious actors.
My sermon this morning will unpack two linked concepts held
by a core of these religious reactionaries: dominionism as a top-down
authoritarian theology that seeks political control; and Spiritual Warfare as a
church mission of so-called “power evangelism and transformation.” These
concepts and movements are harmful to the communities Christians serve. All
Christians committed to peace, virtue, and the shalom of their communities should
recognize dominionism that seeks compliance with its favored social order, that
seeks to exercise political control as a diversion from the bottom-up practice
of Gospel virtues. And to recognize that “transformation”—the rebranding of Spiritual
Warfare and Mapping-- is a radically misplaced focus on demons rather than
neighbors.
Presbyterians have traditionally been suspicious of charismatic
revival institutionalization. There has been since the 1980s a Pentecostal revival
of the idea that God is doing “something new” to lead the Church by sending new,
independent, and self-verifying prophets and apostles to bypass denominations
based on established systems of oversight and historical confessions. These self-claimed
prophets and apostles are unaccountable to denominations instead to act as charismatic
entrepreneurs, actualizing the visions and dreams they claim God is sending to
them as individuals to redirect and lead whole churches, whole societies.
This revival of charisma has been institutionalized, of
sorts, in a continually shifting alliance of obscured networks and names under
the influence of the now deceased C. Peter Wagner, a professor at Fuller Seminary
who started as an academic theorist of church growth. He concluded that the way
to church growth and opening the world to universal evangelization was through channeling
charismatic energy especially institutionalized in Pentecostal circles. While
many church growth initiatives based on charismatic leadership (too often
narcissistic leadership) flame out after a while, Wagner’s so-called New
Apostolic movement is designed to continually recruit the ambitious: new
prophets and apostles to renew the direction and outworkings of charismatic
energy. This movement, built for longevity, has rapidly moved into political
spheres, accelerating since 2000 as the contested election of Al Gore and
George W. Bush escalated simmering religious tensions over race and abortion
into more open social and political conflict. Now extending toward destabilizing
U.S. Constitutional governing institutions.
As we saw up to and including J6, some charismatic and fundamentalist
religious networks organized their followers to interfere in elections and, on
J6, the operation of Constitutional assemblies. Top NAR leaders were in the
White House on January 5th, 2021, holding secret hours-long meetings with top
White House officials. Prior they led a national campaign to whip up violent
rhetoric at NAR-aligned churches. They mobilized their followers to converge on
WDC, holding a series of rallies culminating in the march on the Capitol that
turned seditious.[1]
So WHY? why this charismatic fury: and the What? what is the
religion behind this anti-Constitutional insurrection?
In my understanding, this amalgam of institutionalized charismatic
fury and the insurrection impulse is grounded in 1) a profound misreading of
the Biblical idea of “dominion”; 2) a mistaken Christology—who Christ is, how
he serves, and what he intends; 3) and a wrong focus on evil spirits and
disembodied demons instead of a loving orientation toward flesh and blood
neighbors. The first error is primarily about the “what” of God, and the third
error, the focus on demonology, is practical—a mistaken knowledge of the “how”
of God. The Christological error is a blend of both: it mistakes the “what” of
Christ and the “how” of Christ.
Taking up the third point first: the movement of Spiritual
Warfare and Spiritual Mapping intensified around 1997, when C. Peter Wagner became
interested in "Spiritual Mapping" that was developing in local prayer
warfare networks nationwide and in Canada. After being culturally dormant since
the Civil War, the terms “Spiritual Warfare” and “Spiritual Mapping” began
appearing again in published literature during the Reagan Administration for
reasons we will get to later. Since then, the published frequency of
these phrases has increased 10-fold, indicating their spread and cultural
adoptions.[2]
Researcher Bruce Wilson explains
the cosmology [of Spiritual warriors
and mappers has] demon powers hold[ing] sway over the Earth, and it's the task
of believers to identify & defeat the demons. There are several dimensions
to this. Wagner & his core NAR cohort developed methods by which they could
defeat "territorial spirits"—[the] major demons that controlled large
areas, even whole regions of the world. They did this through elaborate
ceremonies, by filling a whole stadium with believe[r]s literally shouting out
their spiritual warfare; [by learning the names of the demons in order to
control them.]
You can do it on the cosmic level,
the city level, even in your neighborhood. In the Spiritual Mapping part, you
identify the demonic influences that hold sway at whatever scale you're working
at. AND you identify institutions, businesses, locales, and - crucially
*people* who are associated with the demon spirits/influences. Idea being that
the demons need to be invited in [by people] to do their evil mischief - demons
need points of intersection with "the natural".[3]
Spiritual mapping and warfare [because of adverse publicity
now being called “transformation”] is
done by walking the streets, praying, and feeding geographical data into
databases.
Businesses, mosques, or Unitarian
Church, a Masonic Lodge, a porn shop... or even, as a public school playground frequented
by high school drama students. The "spiritual mappers" from [these networks]
would pray for people too, but all the while they were compiling data - and an
ideological enemies list - which might one day be turned to uglier ends.
Transformation is the process of
how charismatic Christians, through collective acts of Spiritual
Mapping/Spiritual Warfare, have claimed to have "transformed" their
cities & towns. Crime all but vanishes, people lose their addictions,
vegetables grow to enormous size, and everyone becomes a born-again charismatic
Christian.[4]
Soon, not just businesses but individuals are located and
identified as possessed by demons. To be harassed and sometimes, in Africa, to
be evicted from their towns as witches.
It's quite a crafty method for the
mass-distribution of an eliminationist ideology - there exist evil individuals
impeding the collective progress of humanity. And, we don't … need to kill
them! Drumming them out of town will suffice. Subsequent "Transformations"
… become increasingly malevolent… We see the wholesale destruction of native
religious practice, city police forces are enlisted for the
"transformation" project.[5]
The function of these mapping and warfare exercises is to
wrest dominion that these religious warriors believe demons are exercising over
geographical areas. They claim local victories that justify expanding the war
for spiritual dominion.
Guatemala in the early 80s under Efrain Ríos Montt, a proclaimed “Born Again Evangelical,” pursued an program of “social cleansing” of Marxists.
Ríos believed that religious morality was more important than civil rights, he could dismiss people who do not subordinate themselves to his religious ideals… in December 1982, a group of North Americans interviewed [the pastor of California evangelical-supported church Ríos attended:] El Verbo…, who told them: “The Army doesn’t massacre the Indians. It massacres demons, and the Indians are demon possessed: they are communists.”[6]
After his mobilization
of death squads in the 1980s, Ríos was later convicted of genocide and crimes
against humanity. American nationals enabled by Reagan administration policy contributed the ideological foundation for such eliminationalist religion and politics.
One of Reagan’s initiatives was to “privatize” foreign
affairs, opening up unaccountable-to-the-Constitution private missions in
overseas realms. American and foreign Spiritual Warfare networks entered into
the foreign policy domain under this aegis of “discipling nations” by
expelling/eliminating demons. While the phrase “territorial spirits” seems to
have entered published books around the end of WWII, its published frequency has
exploded nearly 8-fold from 1984 to now.[7]
An important aside here: “go and make disciples of nations” [per Matt 28:19] is of the “ethnos,” a territorial people not a government, so that “discipling nations” is about creating, by bottom-up practices of virtue, a multi-ethnic Christian worshipping and shalom-spreading, missionary community. Discipling nations is not a top-down sequence to expel demons above and install religious strong men as governing autocrats only then to purify an ethnic order through evangelization.
Theocratic private mercenaries in Guatemala became death
squads under the rubric of “low intensity conflicts” so that SWSM networks
aligned with USG policy for ongoing struggles against “Marxism.”[8]
Marxism has become a dog whistle in certain circles for post-cold war
operations domestically and abroad that private networks of SWSM have involved themselves.
Guatemala became a violently dysfunctional society with
religious reactionaries working for constituting it on terms of “Christian
citizenship.” In this way, Guatamala has been a laboratory of charismatic authoritarianism
pushing the frontiers of cultural and ethnic genocide. These are radically
contrary to Jesus’ command to disciple all ethnic peoples by leading them to
green pastures in the peace-making church.
The Reagan administration initiative to privatize foreign
affairs continues to this day to promote the private expression and export, in
deadly fashion, of popular American folk fundamentalism that translates inner
experience to the outer condition.[9]
If one is battling demons within oneself, one is tempted to universalize that
battle in American manifest destiny, the preeminent American folk ideology. Many
of us remember Reagan’s religious framing of his Dominionist political vision:
America was “a shining city on a hill,” a meme written by slaveholder and first
governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, in 1630. The
eliminationist ideology of American exceptionalism has deep roots in toxic Dominionism
powered by slaves. It’s not a huge leap from considering neighbors in bondage
to sin to making bondage a reality—making heathen bodies into corpses or into chattel
slaves to save their souls. Toxic theology has real world effects.
Dominionism undergirds an imperial, power-seeking branch of
charismatic and theocratic American religion working to “disciple the nations” by
conquering and displacing their territorial spirits. The dominionist doctrine
of American Manifest destiny and policies of anti-Marxism and “anti-terrorism”
have become in certain circles categories of demonology. The next step is to call
out witches and then eliminate them. This is where hyper-Calvinist white
nationalism fits with imperial power-seeking charismatic Pentecostalism. Spiritual
Warriors see demons controlling politics; congruently doctrines of “total
depravity” often attribute a radical Manichaean dichotomy of evil or good,
retrobate or saved to categories of political human actors. These are your
neighbors. The blend of American Manifest Destiny as dominionism with Manichaean
demonology applied to real people is the most pernicious of toxic theologies.
Toxic theology undergirding political violence and
eliminational “social cleansing” is tragically mistaken in focus, in how God
intends us to practice dominion, and in Christology—what Christ revealed to us
about God and humanity—how God is incarnated in humanity to bring shalom from the
bottom up, in virtues. Christology reveals how disciples in union in Christ are
to be in the world. And it isn’t to
cleanse our politics by demonizing and eliminating our neighbor or enslaving
them to our values. Or subverting Constitutional policy-making assemblies justified
in and by the moral will of We the People because the misled, on J6, saw We the
People corrupted by sin and demons both individual and systemic.
Up to now, my sermon has posed three questions:
·
What is biblical dominion?
·
Are we Christians directed to battle against
demons on the ground or in other nations?
·
And how does Christ—how does having an authentic
Christology—a true understanding of Christ person and ministry--direct us to
live in a political world?
First, Biblical dominion is gentling “grace pressure,” not
hard power--antagonistic domination and compliance seeking by means of pagan
imperial norms. I can’t take the time to present the voluminous Biblical
witness on this point, but suffice Torah of the King Deut 17 and the peaceful
images of Gen 1 as the world is formed and dominion granted to humanity. The domineering
cruelty of ANE monarchs, esp. when it was mimicked in Israel and Judah, was
Biblically and prophetically condemned. Dominion is gently encountering creation,
taming its beastly agonistic strife by the practice of virtues, the pattern and
grace pressure exemplified by Christ.
The pagans saw the chaos of creation exemplified in the sea.
One of its myths has the Persian emperor Xerxes whipping the tides after a
storm destroyed his fleet. Isa. 45:19 I
did not create the world to be a chaos. How does Jesus encounter and tame the waters?
By calmly walking on them: Dominion in the way of Jesus grace pressure, not
whipping. Gentling the horse, not breaking it.
Second: fundamentalist Manichaeism--Either you’re with us or
you’re evil-- is contra Ephesians 6:12.
It behooves us to recognize the combinatorial role of
evangelical/charismatic Protestants in fascist, reactionary political uprisings
in Guatemala, the U.S., and now in Brazil, and to hold them accountable.
“Our battle is not against flesh and blood.” I can say much
more, but I’ll let the Apostle Paul originate that meme for our age: “Our
battle is not against flesh and blood.” Focusing on gaining power over demons
and what is occult is both a misplaced focus from loving our neighbors, but psychically
most dangerous as well.
For Christ’s disciples: There can be NO domination in
"dominionism." "Subduing" the land (Gen. 1:28) involves
Christ's gentling presence, not control and compliance through
"breaking" as of a horse. I titled this Sermon, “Dominion’s
Contents.” Both its CON-tents and Dominion’s con-TENTS. Dominion has a content
that brings contentment to others. Dominion is messianic, at a minimum
fulfilling Deut. 17. It is pictured in the watchful and light presence of a kestrel
aloft not the soaring of eagles. By contrast, dominionism as a religion is
dis-contenting. It is a miss-content. It misses what dominion is meant to
contain.
Dominion is the fold of the lamb of God incarnated as a baby
born in a manger where outside is the howling wolf lair of imperial Rome.
Dominion is re-learning to walk with a gentling and virtuous presence in a
world of chaotic rage. “Grace pressure” is exercising dominion that subdues
chaos. Any dominion absent the centrality of the Sermon on the Mount so to hybridize
with non-Christlike strife brings about false mission, false Christology, and
toxic theology. I call it metaphysical mud (the "miry bog" from this morning's reading of Ps. 40:2): the idea that violence an forceful compulsion can bring in
the conditions of God’s peace and bottom-up order.
Unlike Sermon on the Mount theology originating from a
manger, Dominionist theology is an expedient tower to check into to plan and
launch conflict. That transient hotel tower turns into a mirrored prison of our
own violent making from which only God can release.
Dominion is walking in the way of Jesus in the world.
Bringing the divine attributes to the earth from heaven. It is not an imperial
destiny for a nation.
“Our battle is not against flesh and blood.” If something
bleeds, they are not our enemy. Let God control what is unseen, both demons and
hidden conspiracies. When you think of kingdom faith as a war to be won—religion
seeking dominion without Christian virtue-- you will focus on demons and see
people as enemies to be conquered by compulsion and strife. When you think of kingdom
faith as a world to be explored and gentled, a local community with which to
dance and paint and sup, you will see neighbors to be virtuously encountered and
loved. May Christ’s way be so for you and me:
AMEN.
NOTES
[1]Coulter, Dale M. “Neocharismatic Christianity and the Rise of the New Apostolic Reformation.” Firebrand Magazine. Last modified January 18, 2021. Accessed January 11, 2023. https://firebrandmag.com/articles/neocharismatic-christianity-and-the-rise-of-the-new-apostolic-reformation.
Taylor, Matthew D., and Bradley Onishi. “Evidence Strongly Suggests Trump Was Collaborating with Christian Nationalist Leaders Before January 6th.” Religion Dispatches, January 6, 2023. https://religiondispatches.org/evidence-strongly-suggests-trump-was-collaborating-with-christian-nationalist-leaders-before-january-6th/.
Onishi, Bradley and Daniel Miller, “Charismatic Revival Fury: Dutch Sheets and NAR Go To Battle on J6." Straight White American Jesus. Podcast, January 2, 2023.
[2]books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=spiritual+mapping%2C+&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Ibid.
[6] Egoshi,
Miho. 2018. “Evangelical Dictatorship Driving the Guatemalan Civil War:
Reconsidering Ríos Montt, the ‘Savior of La Nueva Guatemala.’” https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1780&context=cc_etds_theses.
https://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2012/julaug/spiritualwarfare.html?paging=off
[7] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=territorial+spirits&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3
[8] @brucewilson,
Twitter, 1/4/23.
[9] R.
Holvast (2008), Spiritual Mapping: The Turbulent Career of a Contested
American Missionary Paradigm, 1989-2005.
https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/29340
