Paragraphs following "From "Chapter 6 - Why Did Our Political Will Fade Away?" revised 9/12/21.

RELIGIO-POLITICAL ROME: IMPERIAL AUTOCRACY, INHERENT IMPOSTOR, SUBVERSIVE OF TRUE CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY
Rome hates the American Experiment in Liberal Democracy

• TRUMP'S COZY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE AMERICAN CARDINALS AND BISHOPS

• A HISTORY OF BRAINWASHING AND SUBVERSION

• GLOBAL IDENTITY OF ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

• THE IMPOSTOR SETS ABOUT ENSNARING THE PROTESTANT WORLD

• THE REFORMATION PAVED THE WAY FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERALISM

• FROM HOSTILITY TO ACCEPTANCE RANGING FROM FRIENDSHIP TO POLITICAL ALLIANCE

• DOMINIONISM: A SATANIC MOVEMENT EMERGING OUT OF APOSTATE PROTESTANTISM

• INTEGRALISM: ROME'S AGES-OLD VERSION OF DOMINIONISM

• A DIABOLICAL NETWORK OF EVIL

• HOPE FADES FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND CONSTITUTIONAL SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

• CONCLUSION

Of profound significance is the fact that the first ruling mentioned above was "explained" in Vatican II as follows:

"Hence there exists a close connection and communication between sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit. To the successors of the apostles, sacred Tradition hands on in its full purity God’s word, which was entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit.

Thus, by the light of the Spirit of truth, these successors can in their preaching preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same devotion and reverence."

Hence Vatican II clearly reaffirmed the anti-Protestant purpose of the Council of Trent which launched the Counter-Reformation. In his encyclical letter, Immortale Dei, Pope Leo XIII clearly had the Reformation in mind when he wrote: "Sad it is to call to mind how the harmful and lamentable rage for innovations which rose to a climax in the sixteenth century . . ." He then launched a tirade against the principles of democracy and the separation of church and state.

Through Seventh-day Adventist Evangelist-Pastor and author Christian Edwardson clear warnings were given about the determination of the Church of Rome to destroy American democracy. What he wrote about the Roman Catholic menace was supported by heavy documentation from Catholic publications. The facts are beyond dispute. The Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders were put on notice to be alert in protecting the laity from the papal anti-christ. They were not only asleep as God's watchmen (Ezekiel 33:6-7,) but their course of action was exactly the reverse of warning the people. The way was paved by Vatican Council II. The following paragraphs are excerpted from William Grotheer's manuscript STEPS TO ROME:

OTHER VATICAN II FALLOUT

Vatican Council II was convened by John XXIII on October 11, 1962, and involved four sessions during four successive years. The last three sessions were during the pontificate of Paul VI. It was at this final session that the arrangements were made for the Conversations between representatives of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and representatives of the World Council of Churches. (So Much in Common, p. 98) However, Dr. B. B. Beach was not the only Adventist at this final session. Elder M. E. Loewen, head of the Religious Liberty Department of the General Conference; Dr. R. F. Cottrell, Associate Editor of the Review and Herald; and Elder Arthur S. Maxwell, Editor of the Signs, were also present.

Upon his return late in 1965, Elder Maxwell gave his impressions of Vatican II in a report to the Loma Linda University Church. The speech of Pope Paul VI in opening the fourth and final session impressed Maxwell. He asked those in attendance - "Do you know what the subject was?" - and then answered his question "Love. " After quoting a paragraph from it, he said - "You know, that speech of the pope's could have been given at a General Conference session." (Present Truth, #3, pp. 3, 4)

Maxwell indicated that his second impression was "the apparent awesome, and I mean awesome power of the organization." (Emphasis his) Then the pageantry and elaborate ceremonial, medieval in nature, struck Maxwell's attention. But in it all, he admitted - "there is no change in doctrine." (Ibid., p. 6) Yet in discussing the schema on religious liberty adopted by the Council, Maxwell stated: This is such a tremendous change the Roman Catholic Church has embarked upon. It's so totally different from anything thousands of priests have ever thought of or contemplated, and it is possibly asking too much, that all of a sudden, every priest around the world will suddenly adopt what are really Protestant ideas. But while I've said that, I would also say this, that we shouldn't minimize what the Catholic Church has done. It's a great step forward, there's no question. It's an amazing thing that the church has done to set itself alongside Protestants in declaring that every man has the basic human right to choose his own religion and follow the dictates of his own conscience. Whether the church will stay by that forever, I don't know. No, I'm not predicting the future - I couldn't say - but it does alter the situation in the Catholic Church and should alter our attitude toward that church. (Ibid, p. 11, emphasis mine)

The afterglow of the glitter, pomp and pageantry of Rome seemed to blur Maxwel1's ability to distinguish between the individual and the system. He declared: We must rethink our approach to our Roman Catholic friends. How can we reject an outstretched hand and be Christians? How can you say that they belong to antichrist when they reveal so many beautiful Christian attitudes? Does that shock you very much? I hope it does! I hope it shocks you, because we need to be shocked into a new, more friendly, more loving attitude towards these dear people. (Ibid., p. 13)

Maxwell followed this with some advice to ministers, and telling what he had already done. He said: Now, there's one other thing. These things are going to make us think, they really are - this new situation. I think that a lot of our preachers are going to have to throw away a lot of old sermons. You and me - a lot of old sermons. I scrapped a lot them already. You know what I think is going to happen? We cannot go on preaching about these dear people like we did thirty, forty, fifty years ago. We simply can't do it. The facts are all against us. How can we go and talk about them persecuting, burning the Bible when they're not doing anything of the sort? We've just got to get some new sermons ... Sure have! (Ibid., p. 14)

To merely clothe one's self as "an angel of light" does not alter the nature of that self. This Maxwell failed to perceive having been enamored with the glitter and tinsel of Rome. Well has it been written: Many Protestants suppose that the Catholic religion is unattractive, and that its worship is a dull, meaningless round of ceremony. Here they mistake. While Romanism is based in deception, it is not a course and clumsy imposture. The religious service of the Roman Church is a most impressive ceremonial. Its gorgeous display and solemn rites fascinate the senses of the people, and silence the voice of reason and of conscience. The eye is charmed. Magnificent churches, imposing processions, golden altars, jeweled shrines, choice paintings, and exquisite sculpture appeal to the love of beauty. The ear is also captivated. The music is unsurpassed. The rich notes of the deep-toned organ, blending with the melody -- of many voices as it swells through the lofty domes and pillared aisles of her gand cathedrals, cannot fail to impress the mind with awe and reverence...

None but those who have planted their feet firmly upon the foundation of truth, and whose hearts are renewed by the Spirit of God, are proof against her influence. Great Controversy, pp. 566, 567)

These impressions, conclusions, and advice of Maxwell resulting from his attendance at the final session of Vatican II find reflection in a new study of the book of Daniel written by his son, Dr. C. Mervyn Maxwell, Chairman of the Church History Department at Andrews University. In this book - God Cares, Vol . I - Maxwell's analysis of "the little horn" of Daniel 7 is indicative of the changed attitude toward Rome as suggested by his father. Devoting considerable space to the discussion of this "little horn" of Daniel 7, Dr. Maxwell divides his discussion into two subsections - Four Principles, and Eight Identifying Marks.

In listing the "Four Principles," Maxwell charged God with giving a one-sided picture of Rome in the prophecy - believe it or not! Here are his very words: In Daniel 7 God purposefully presented a one-sided picture of Rome as a terrible beast in order to emphasize His displeasure at persecution. (p. 127)

Then in concluding his "Eight Identifying Marks" of the "little horn," Dr Maxwell wrote: Only one entity really fits all eight of these identifying marks - the Christian church which arose to religiopolitical prominence as the Roman Empire declined and which enjoyed a special influence over the minds of men between the sixth and the eighteenth centuries.

To call this Christian church the "Roman Catholic" Church can be misleading if Protestants assume that the Roman Catholic Church of, say the sixth century was one big denomination among others, as it is today. Actually the Roman Catholic Church was virtually the Christian church in Western Europe for about a thousand years. Because of this early universality, both Protestants and Catholics may regard it as the embodiment of "our" Christian heritage, for better or for worse.

And very often it was for the better. Of course! (Ibid.)

In the revelation that God gave to Jesus, the picture is that the true Christian Church was in the "wilderness" from the sixth to the eighteenth centuries. (Rev. 12:13-14) But in taking the steps to Rome, it is no longer "good Adventism to express ... an aversion to Roman Catholicism." (See p. 10) (Italicized emphasis added.)

Notwithstanding appearances of a friendly Rome, Vatican II was a part of the continuing secretive war against democracy and the separation of church and state, and it was a part of the final offensive in the war against America's constitutional guarantee of individual freedom and religious liberty. It is incomprehensible that in the face of all of the biblical and historical evidence that the Church of Rome is inherently opposed to democracy and separation of church and state, the leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have carried their flock into her embrace.

Pope Pius XI unleashed the "Catholic Movement," described as "Rome's militant organization numbering millions all over the world," in the war against America's liberal democracy guaranteeing individual liberty and separation of church and state. He was following the unequivocal declarations of Pope Leo XIII in the late nineteenth century. In one he attributed to the sixteenth century, notably the time of the Reformation, "the tenets of unbridled license," including "the main one" [which] lays down that as all men are alike by race and nature...that each is free to think on every subject just as he may choose." His conclusion was that "In a society grounded upon such maxims, all government is nothing more nor less than the will of the people." This was a declaration against democracy. In the other he declared in two separate encyclicals against separation of church and state, and in the second of the two encyclicals he stated that "It would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for state and church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced....She would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority," leaving no room for doubt that America's democracy was his main target. Vatican II did not change this reality, and was not intended to do so. It was a part of the Counter-Reformation which has never ended and will not end until the Church of Rome has reached the pinnacle of power.

The contradictions inherent in Roman Catholicism is vividly demonstrated by a conflict within the contemporary institution. There is now raging an internal "culture war" in the Church of Rome. It is spawned on the one hand by the geopolical imperative of ecumenical unity with all "Christian" faiths and other religions, and on the other hand the militancy which is fundamental to the origin and history of Roman Catholicism. These appear to be in conflict and the dominant side in the American branch of Catholicism appears to be against peaceful ecumenism. They appear to pose a challenge to Pope Francis. They are also in an alliance with right-wing Evangelicals which the Pope's supporters have dubbed the "ecumenism of hate." The alliance has been wreaking havoc on the democratic process in America while forming the Image to the Beast, particularly since the first presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Significantly, this is not inconsistent with the Church of Rome's long-term objective to achieve supremacy in America, and this calls into question the genuineness of Pope Francis' open opposition. This paper also presents other evidence that he is not to be trusted.

THE REFORMATION PAVED THE WAY FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERALISM

Rome's perception that democracy and the separation of church and state were inevitable outgrowths of the Reformation was accurate:

How Protestants Made the Modern World

Last fall marked the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, an event with profound consequences for the development of both religion and politics across the globe. Arising in sixteenth-century Europe, migrating into seventeenth-century America, and expanding by degrees across the remainder of the planet, Protestantism has achieved a level of international influence that is difficult to fathom.

In his latest book, Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World, historian Alec Ryrie takes on a formidable challenge: how to survey the history and assess the significance of a centuries-long and worldwide religious tradition. A professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University in northeast England, Ryrie also serves as an ordained minister in the Anglican Church. He is the author of six previous books, all of which focus on British religious history since the Reformation. This latest effort was released last spring, to correspond with the Reformation’s anniversary.

Eric C. Miller spoke with Ryrie about the Protestant tradition, its victories, its failures, and its ultimate importance. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

R&P: The subtitle of your book states that Protestants “made the modern world.” How?

AR: The Protestant Reformation is a huge event in the history of the modern world. You can find its fingerprints almost everywhere. But I’m not just saying that this is a really big thing that is woven deeply into the story. I’m saying that there are some specific parts of modern life that derive directly from the Protestant Reformation. We couldn’t have these features if it hadn’t happened. In the book, I pick out three in particular.

The first is free inquiry. It’s not quite the idea of freedom of speech, but it is the idea that nobody can compel anyone else to think something. In the end, no intellectual authority can force you to think that you are wrong. There’s nobody who stands authoritatively between you as a human being and God. That’s Martin Luther’s great insight, and that refusal to accept human authority over other people’s minds is something that he established—despite himself. He was not out to create an age of intellectual freedom, but nonetheless, that’s what he produced.

The second is what I would call—and I use this term warily—democracy. Not that Luther or the early Protestant reformers were democrats in any sense. They would have been horrified by the notion. But the idea that the individual believer has a right—even a responsibility—to stand up against a tyrannical or an anti-Christian ruler is implicit in Protestantism from the beginning. It led Protestants who really wanted nothing more than to live in peace into a series of religious wars and revolutions against leaders with whom they could not live on religious terms. They developed new political theories, and carved out a theory of defiance against anti-Christian secular authority, as well as an insistence that they should be able to legitimate and even create appropriate government. You can see how that might have led to theocracies, and there are times—famously in Puritan New England—when Protestantism seemed to be moving in that direction. But in practice it tends to go another way.

Which brings me to the third feature, which is the notion of limited government. It’s the idea that a ruler, no matter how legitimate, has jurisdiction only over outward things, over practicalities, over people’s bodies but not their souls. There are certain spheres where the authority of the government simply does not apply. And it creates a sense that even the godliest government should be strictly limited in the amount of authority that it can exercise over people.
That combination of free inquiry, democracy, and limited government is pretty much what makes up liberal, market democracies. It runs the modern world. And though it seems obvious to us that liberty and equality should go together, it is not at all an obvious combination. It is that distinct heritage of Protestantism in holding those models together that is its most significant contribution to the modern world. . . (Underscored emphasis added.) [Cf. Three surprising ways the Protestant Reformation shaped our world, also by Prof. Ryrie.]

Prof. Ryrie is no inconsequential author, and his opinion is one widely held:

Enrichment Essay: The Reformation Plants Seeds of Modern Democracy & Federalism

The Protestant Reformation had many far-reaching effects. One important impact was on people’s thinking about the problems of government.

More than 250 years after Martin Luther began the Reformation, the American Revolution created the first modern democracy. At that time, many European monarchs still claimed an absolute right to rule. America’s founders adopted a different idea. They believed that government was based on an agreement among free people. That is why the U.S. Constitution begins with the words “We, the people.” In return for the benefits of government, the founders believed, people willingly gave up some of their natural freedom. The government’s right to rule was therefore based on the consent of the governed.

The authors of the Constitution also created modern federalism. In a federal system, smaller units of government (such as states) share power with a central government. The smaller units govern local affairs. The central government serves common needs, such as national defense. Citizens are bound to obey both the local and the central government.

The ideas behind the Constitution grew out of many influences. One of these influences was the Reformation. The beliefs and practices of early Protestants helped plant the seeds of modern democracy and federalism. Let’s look at how.

Individual Liberty and Equality

Individual liberty and equality are basic ideas in modern democracy. One source of these ideas was the Reformation.

The medieval Catholic Church was strongly hierarchical in its organization. At the bottom of the hierarchy were ordinary church members, or laypeople. Above them were priests. Priests had a special role to play in guiding believers and administering the sacraments. Bishops had authority over priests and laypeople alike. At the top of the hierarchy was the pope, who had the greatest authority of all.

The authority of church officials included the power to interpret the Bible and God’s will. The church stressed the duty of Catholics to obey its authority.

Martin Luther rebelled against this hierarchical structure. He prized the liberty of individual conscience and preached “the priesthood of all believers.” In a famous sentence, he declared, “A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.” In other words, no Christian had a special, God-given authority over others. At the same time, all Christians had a duty to love and care for one another. In place of priests, Luther called for ministers who served the church with the consent of Christian believers.

The liberty and equality of Christian believers became a basic part of Protestantism. Later these ideas would find their place in people’s thinking about government. . .

Government Based on Agreement of the Governed

The Mayflower Compact illustrates another Protestant idea that influenced democratic thinking. This was the idea that the authority of governments rests on covenants, or solemn agreements.

The idea of covenants is rooted in the Bible. In the Old Testament, God is said to form a covenant with the Hebrew (Jewish) people. Both God and the Hebrews enter this covenant by their own choosing. In turn, covenants unite the different tribes of Hebrews under God’s laws. To some Protestants--including many early Americans--the ancient Hebrew covenants were an early example of federalism.

Many Protestants, especially congregationalists, saw their churches as based on covenants that people entered into freely. From there, it is a short step to the idea that governments, too, are formed by the free choice of people to join together for their common good. And that means that a government’s right to rule is based on the consent of the governed.

In the 1600s and 1700s, some thinkers argued for similar ideas without basing them on religion. But there is no doubt that the Reformation helped plant the seeds of ideas that proved to be truly revolutionary. (Underscored emphasis added.)

(Cf. Top Ten Ways the Reformation Changed the World.)

FROM HOSTILITY TO ACCEPTANCE RANGING FROM FRIENDSHIP TO POLITICAL ALLIANCE

Historically, and justifiably, Protestants of America were hostile to Roman Catholicism, and this inevitably fostered hostility against Catholics. Seventh-day Adventists historically were opposed to the Papacy and all that it represents; but did not hate the Catholic laity per se, counting them to be souls to be won from the darkness of popery into the light of the true Christian faith. In the Protestant world at large feelings ran high against Catholic immigrants. The following article lays out the solid basis for anti-Catholicism; but regrettably fails to take into account Bible prophecy and the centuries of tyranny perpetrated by the Church of Rome in the penultimate paragraph quoted below. Roman Catholicism can never be benign, because it is ever aggressiovely pushing against freedom of conscience and the religious liberty of non-Catholics. Rome demands religious liberty exclusively for herself:

A Protestant Look At American Catholicism

The attitudes of Americans toward church-state relations depend in considerable measure on their attitude toward Roman Catholicism. The chief concern that lies back of the convictions of non-Catholics is the concern for religious liberty, and the chief threat to religious liberty is seen in the tremendous growth of Roman Catholicism as a cultural and political power in the United States.

There are two deep problems connected with Catholicism that must be emphasized at the outset of any discussion. One is the dogmatic intolerance that is itself a part of the Roman Catholic faith. This dogmatic intolerance need not lead to civil intolerance, but there is a tendency for it to do so just as was the case when it characterized the major Protestant bodies. This dogmatic intolerance becomes all the more difficult for non-Catholics when it is associated not only with distinctly religious dogma, but also with elements of natural law that are not accepted as divinely sanctioned moral demands by most non-Catholics. This is true of birth control, of some matters of medical ethics. It is true even of gambling under limited conditions, though this has to do not with a moral demand but with a moral permission! One symptom of the dogmatic intolerance that is most objectionable to non-Catholics is the strict Catholic regulation concerning the religion of the children of mixed marriages.

The other basic problem is the real tension between an authoritarian, centralized hierarchical church and the spirit of an open, pluralistic, democratic society. There is abundant evidence that Catholics in this country do sincerely believe in democracy and practice this belief, but I do not see how they themselves can deny that their polity poses a problem for democracy that is not posed by churches which make their decisions in regard to public policy by processes of open discussion in which both clergy and laymen share. The polity of the Episcopal Church does give bishops meeting separately a veto over many things, but it also gives the laity voting separately in the dioceses a veto over the choice of bishops. I mention this as an example of one of the more hierarchical forms of polity outside the Roman Catholic Church.

The Roman polity is itself a matter of faith and therefore religious liberty includes the liberty to preserve that type of polity. And if it is said that the papacy creates a problem of peculiar difficulty because it is from the point of view of the nation a "foreign power," the answer that Protestants should be able to accept is that the Church as Church is supranational and the religious liberty of all Christians includes their right to have relationships, suitable to their polity, with the universal Church.

American Protestants are troubled over far more than these abstract problems created by the Catholic faith and ecclesiastical structure. They resent much that is done by the Catholic Church in America and they fear greatly what may yet be done. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Causes of Anti-Catholicism: Popery and Despotism

By the time Irish-Catholics began arriving in the United States around 1820, Protestantism had cemented itself in the public mind as America’s religion, synonymous with civil liberties and democracy. Samuel F.B. Morse’s assertion, made in his book Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, that “Protestantism, from its very nature, favor[s] liberty,” was not unique in its message.6 Others, like Reverend John Neil McLeod, held similar views, arguing “the institutions of our own republic...are laid on Protestant principles.”7 The views held by these men were two amongst many who viewed America as a Protestant nation since Protestantism allowed for dissent, democratic change, freedom, and lacked any semblance of hierarchy.

However, as the predominately Catholic Irish migrants began to flood American ports, native Protestant Americans became exposed to and subsequently took issue with a religion they perceived as starkly antithetical to Protestantism. Catholicism, in the eyes of many, was a tyrannical European monarchy in which the Pope was king and European Catholics were his subjects. Comparing Catholicism to Protestantism, Morse argues “there is not a Protestant sect...whose creed inculcates such a barefaced idolatry of a human being.” Many writers went so far as to compare Catholics to slaves of the Pope. Morse, for example, writes that Catholics, “instead of having power or rights, are according to this catechism mere passive slaves, born for their masters, taught...to obey without murmuring, or questioning, or examination.” Just in the way that “Protestantism” and “democracy” were synonymous, so too were “popery” and “despotism.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

The Southern Baptist evangelicals were no exception to the rule of Protestant animosity towards Roman Catholicism. John F. Kennedy, the second Roman Catholic to seek election to the presidency decided to meet the issue of his religious affiliation head-on:

How John F. Kennedy Overcame Anti-Catholic Bias to Win the Presidency

"I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” JFK declared in 1960. “I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic."

On September 12, 1960, less than two months before Americans would choose the next president of the United States, Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy was in Texas giving a speech to a Houston gathering of Southern Baptist clergy.

This wasn’t a normal campaign stop. Kennedy was Catholic and, at the time, only the second Catholic presidential candidate in U.S. history after Al Smith’s unsuccessful run in 1928. And for a Catholic candidate from New England, a conference of Southern Baptist ministers was considered the “lion’s den,” ground zero for anti-Catholic political rhetoric and even outright bigotry.

“[C]ontrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” Kennedy said on live TV in his now famous address. “I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.”

In the late 1950s, Catholic politicians were viewed with open suspicion by many mainline Protestants and Evangelicals. Shaun Casey, director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University, and author of The Making of a Catholic President, says that Catholic candidates were accused of having “dual loyalties” to both the Vatican and the United States.

“The argument was, when push came to shove, a president who was Roman Catholic would ultimately be more loyal to the Vatican because the fate of his eternal soul was at stake,” says Casey. “If Kennedy was elected president, he’d criminalize birth control, he’d cut off foreign aid that helped countries invest in birth control, and he’d funnel tax money to Catholic parochial schools.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

The apprehension expressed in the last paragraph has come to pass and is intensifying; but not by the actions of Kennedy or any Roman Catholic president. The culprit is the Republican Party under the control of the right wing of the American hierarchy of Rome. In fact Roman Catholic President Biden stands in opposition to most of the hierarchy's agenda.

Pat Buchanan managed to overcome most of the vestiges of anti-catholicism among Southern Evangelicals in his campaigns for the American presidency:

Buchanan Tumbles Old Walls of Religion (Article dated March 2, 1996.)

What happened in the Evangel Cathedral here this week was something senior pastor Houston Miles could not have imagined when he opened his first church in this weathered textile town 27 years ago.

On Wednesday, about 800 people filed into this sprawling facility just off a bustling interstate to cheer the words of a Catholic: Patrick J. Buchanan. Asked if he could have anticipated the day when his independent charismatic church would be filled for a Catholic speaker, the compact, white-haired Miles shook his head.

“No, not really,” he said. “If I’d have gone back 30 years, I’d have had a strong feeling here. I came out of the Assembly of God, and they preached against two things: Communists and Catholics.”

Today it is “secular humanists” who stir Miles’ concerns--and, though he is not endorsing any candidate, it is Buchanan who seems to him “a man of deep conviction.”

Miles is hardly alone. As the Republican presidential race moves South, beginning with today’s South Carolina primary, no constituency will be more important than conservative evangelical Protestants, who constitute one-third or more of the vote in most Southern states. And the candidate poised to reap the largest share of their support here is Buchanan--a man from a faith that many Southern Protestant denominations had long viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility.

That tradition of enmity inspired John F. Kennedy’s famous address to Southern ministers in Houston in 1960, when the Massachusetts Catholic declared that as president he would resign rather than let his decisions be dictated by pressure from his church. Today, the religious tensions that necessitated Kennedy’s speech haven’t disappeared entirely, but they have been submerged by a larger tide that has allied born-again Christians and conservative Roman Catholics in common cause on cultural issues from abortion to education.

“People will say something every now and then,” about Buchanan’s religion, said Mary Kerr, a Baptist homemaker from West Columbia who supports the commentator’s presidential campaign. “But then they’ll say, ‘Well, we’re not voting for pastor.’ ” (Underscored emphasis added.)

With the degree of acceptance achieved by Buchanan it was but a short step to alliance between Evangelicals and Catholics. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was ready to give activist lay Catholics their marching orders; and they were ready to go into action in a major, final offensive. For this purpose the control of a political party was important. A Roman Catholic publication had predicted the creation of an "American Catholic Party." Instead, the Catholic bishops engineered a takeover of the Republican Party. They had an agent in Republican President Richard Nixon's White House to help them. This was well-known culture warrior Pat Buchanan. The Wikipedia article on Buchanan describes him as "an American paleoconservative political commentator, columnist, politician and broadcaster." Paleoconservatism is defined as "a political philosophy and variety of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, and traditionalist conservatism." By his Southern strategy Nixon opened the door to the takeover of the Republican Party by Roman Catholic hierarchy. Under the heading "Work for the Nixon White House" the Wikipedia article on Buchanan states "During the course of Nixon's presidency, Buchanan became a trusted on press relations, policy positions, and political strategy." Here is what the political strategy accomplished:

Richard Nixon’s Religious Right

Evangelical Protestants began and ended the decade of the 1960s by campaigning for Richard Nixon. Sixty percent of evangelicals voted for Nixon in 1960, 69 percent did so in 1968, and 84 percent did in 1972. They considered him a “man of destiny to lead the nation” and a man who was “in God’s place,” as Billy Graham told Nixon on more than one occasion. But though evangelicals’ faith in Nixon never wavered, their reasons for supporting him changed. In 1960 they viewed Nixon as a champion of Protestantism who would save the country from the dangers posed by a Catholic candidate. By the end of the decade, they began to view him not as a sectarian symbol, but as the champion of an antisecular, ecumenical coalition that was broad enough to include Catholics. Nixon’s success in positioning himself as a transdenominational moral leader who could reach out to evangelicals without losing the Catholic vote laid the groundwork for the rise of a politically influential Religious Right and transformed the Republican Party. Though Nixon was never fully conscious of the degree of his success in creating an interdenominational religious coalition, it became one of his most enduring political legacies. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The following publication emphasized the Evangelical beginnings of Nixon's Southern strategy:

God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right

Nixon’s Evangelical Strategy

Richard Nixon brought evangelicals into the Republican Party by focusing his campaigns on cultural issues and by using Billy Graham as a liaison to conservative Protestants. The growth of the heavily evangelical suburban Sunbelt increased evangelicals’ political power and induced the Nixon administration to make a special appeal for their vote. Nixon used White House church services, evangelical events, and interference in the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention to win the support of conservative Protestants. The tactics worked. Evangelicals who opposed cultural liberalism and secularism were heartened by Nixon’s culturally conservative rhetoric and his public friendship with Graham, and they gave him stronger support than they had given to any previous Republican presidential candidate. Although Watergate diminished evangelicals’ regard for Nixon, the Republican evangelical coalition that Nixon had helped to create remained politically influential. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Pat Buchanan was and is a rabid Roman Catholic. Another staffer in the Nixon White House was not a Roman Catholic; but is identified with the Southern strategy:

How the Republican Majority Emerged

Fifty years after the Republican Party hit upon a winning formula, President Trump is putting it at risk.

In July 1969, Kevin Phillips, a 28-year-old staffer in the Nixon White House and special assistant to Attorney General John Mitchell, published a book boldly titled The Emerging Republican Majority. For nearly four decades, the Democratic Party’s New Deal coalition had dominated American politics. But in the book, Phillips argued that the old order had come to an end, and that a new conservative era was in the offing.

Nearly 500 pages long and filled with facts, figures, and maps, The Emerging Republican Majority contended that the GOP needed to move beyond its traditional base in the Northeast and reach out to white voters in the South and Southwest—a region Phillips dubbed the “Sun Belt”—and in suburbs across the nation with polarizing appeals on racial and social issues. The book attracted significant attention, appearing in bookstore windows nationwide. Newsweek christened it “the political Bible of the Nixon Era,” while National Review called it the most important political book in the generation.

The Emerging Republican Majority has loomed large in the minds of political operatives and observers ever since, as an essential guide to the Republican “southern strategy” that gave modern conservatism the depth and durability of New Deal liberalism. For his part, Phillips always insisted this was a misreading. “The book was not and is not a ‘strategy,’—Northern, Southern or Western,” he noted in the preface to the 1970 paperback edition. “The book is a projection—and one with a high batting average to date. Read it as such.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

Phillips did not conceive the Southern strategy, but simply called attention to it as a predictor of the future of the Republican Party. In an essay published in the Washington Post dated April 2, 2006, he recognized the evolution that had occurred since his involvement with the with theNixon presidencyNixon presidency. He was clearly not happy about it:

How the GOP Became God's Own Party

Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.

We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews. . .

I have a personal concern over what has become of the Republican coalition. Forty years ago, I began a book, "The Emerging Republican Majority," which I finished in 1967 and took to the 1968 Republican presidential campaign, for which I became the chief political and voting-patterns analyst. Published in 1969, while I was still in the fledgling Nixon administration, the volume was identified by Newsweek as the "political bible of the Nixon Era."

In that book I coined the term "Sun Belt" to describe the oil, military, aerospace and retirement country stretching from Florida to California, but debate concentrated on the argument -- since fulfilled and then some -- that the South was on its way into the national Republican Party. Four decades later, this framework has produced the alliance of oil, fundamentalism and debt.

Some of that evolution was always implicit. If any region of the United States had the potential to produce a high-powered, crusading fundamentalism, it was Dixie. If any new alignment had the potential to nurture a fusion of oil interests and the military-industrial complex, it was the Sun Belt, which helped draw them into commercial and political proximity and collaboration. Wall Street, of course, has long been part of the GOP coalition. But members of the Downtown Association and the Links Club were never enthusiastic about "Joe Sixpack" and middle America, to say nothing of preachers such as Oral Roberts or the Tupelo, Miss., Assemblies of God. The new cohabitation is an unnatural one.

While studying economic geography and history in Britain, I had been intrigued by the Eurasian "heartland" theory of Sir Halford Mackinder, a prominent geographer of the early 20th century. Control of that heartland, Mackinder argued, would determine control of the world. In North America, I thought, the coming together of a heartland -- across fading Civil War lines -- would determine control of Washington.

This was the prelude to today's "red states." The American heartland, from Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico to Ohio and the Appalachian coal states, has become (along with the onetime Confederacy) an electoral hydrocarbon coalition. It cherishes sport-utility vehicles and easy carbon dioxide emissions policy, and applauds preemptive U.S. airstrikes on uncooperative, terrorist-coddling Persian Gulf countries fortuitously blessed with huge reserves of oil.

Because the United States is beginning to run out of its own oil sources, a military solution to an energy crisis is hardly lunacy. Neither Caesar nor Napoleon would have flinched. What Caesar and Napoleon did not face, but less able American presidents do, is that bungled overseas military embroilments could also boomerang economically. The United States, some $4 trillion in hock internationally, has become the world's leading debtor, increasingly nagged by worry that some nations will sell dollars in their reserves and switch their holdings to rival currencies. Washington prints bonds and dollar-green IOUs, which European and Asian bankers accumulate until for some reason they lose patience. This is the debt Achilles' heel, which stands alongside the oil Achilles' heel.

Unfortunately, more danger lurks in the responsiveness of the new GOP coalition to Christian evangelicals, fundamentalists and Pentecostals, who muster some 40 percent of the party electorate. Many millions believe that the Armageddon described in the Bible is coming soon. Chaos in the explosive Middle East, far from being a threat, actually heralds the second coming of Jesus Christ. Oil price spikes, murderous hurricanes, deadly tsunamis and melting polar ice caps lend further credence.

The potential interaction between the end-times electorate, inept pursuit of Persian Gulf oil, Washington's multiple deceptions and the financial crisis that could follow a substantial liquidation by foreign holders of U.S. bonds is the stuff of nightmares. To watch U.S. voters enable such policies -- the GOP coalition is unlikely to turn back -- is depressing to someone who spent many years researching, watching and cheering those grass roots.

Four decades ago, the new GOP coalition seemed certain to enjoy a major infusion of conservative northern Catholics and southern Protestants. This troubled me not at all. I agreed with the predominating Republican argument at the time that "secular" liberals, by badly misjudging the depth and importance of religion in the United States, had given conservatives a powerful and legitimate electoral opportunity.

Since then, my appreciation of the intensity of religion in the United States has deepened. When religion was trod upon in the 1960s and thereafter by secular advocates determined to push Christianity out of the public square, the move unleashed an evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal counterreformation, with strong theocratic pressures becoming visible in the Republican national coalition and its leadership. . .

These developments have warped the Republican Party and its electoral coalition, muted Democratic voices and become a gathering threat to America's future. No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive of the sort of biblical inerrancy that dismisses modern knowledge and science. The last parallel was in the early 17th century, when the papacy, with the agreement of inquisitional Spain, disciplined the astronomer Galileo for saying that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of our solar system. . .(Underscored emphasis added.)

It is clear that Phillips abhors the incipient theocracy into which the Republican Party has evolved, and in identifying the importance of the Southern strategy for the future of the Republican Party never envisioned achieving the theocratic governance imposed by the South and the Midwest on America.

In 1996 The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy by Stephen D. Mumford, DrPH. was published. Of Dr. Mumford's international work the following statement is made in the first document hyperlinked in this paragraph:

At the next ICPD conference, convened in Cairo in 1994, it was again Mumford who provided the research illuminating the most pressing issue of the conference. While a small group of representatives of the Vatican threatened to derail the conference with obstructions to consensus on important passages of the Program of Action, Mumford introduced research showing the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church as the principal power behind efforts to block the availability of contraceptive services world-wide.

Using church policy documents and writings of the Vatican elite, Mumford revealed an intense struggle within the church and a decision by those in power to act against the convictions of the vast majority of Catholics, whether in the laity, or part of the structure as theologians and clerics. The Pope has made his opposition to contraception the ultimate test of Papal authority. He has stated very clearly that a change in the Church's position on contraception would destroy the principal [principle] of Papal Infallibility. He has also said that it is the fundamental principal [principle] of the Church, ". . . the key to the certainty with which the faith is confessed and proclaimed." Few in the public health field have Mumford's background or the professional expertise required to measure the implications of Papal policy and the actions of Vatican activists on the lives and futures of people around the world. He has drawn his share of fire from the Catholic media network for his efforts. Of all the participants at the Cairo conference Elizabeth Liagin, a chief Vatican propagandist, has chosen only two for special condemnation, Bella Abzug and Stephen Mumford. As Madeline Weld, Ph.D., President of Global Population Concerns in Ottawa, has observed in a review of his recent work, " . . . the Vatican even now receives kid glove treatment from the media, its efforts at the suppression of information and the spread of disinformation are rarely exposed. Dr. Mumford has taken off the gloves and exposed the Vatican's ruthless agenda. . . . "(Underscored emphasis added.)

From "Chapter 6 - Why Did Our Political Will Fade Away? . . to the final CONCLUSIONS Chapter 17,  Dr. Mumford has documented in devastating detail the work of the Church of Rome in destroying American democracy in the process of protecting the dogma of papal infallibility from every perceived threat. In dealing with the question of contraception Dr. Mumford does make the error of thinking that this will lead to the collapse of the papal institution. It is true that it brought about dissension within the institution; but collapse could never be envisioned in the light of Bible prophecy. The deadly wound of Rev. 13:3 has been healed as predicted.

In the section of Chapter 17 titled WHY IS THIS A PREDICAMENT? Mumford states, ""In this battle, the Vatican has no qualms about destroying American institutions, including democracy itself. The liberties we hold dear have been rightly recognized as gravely threatening to the Papacy at least since the 1830s. One needs only to read the teachings of the popes themselves to prove this point." This has been completely borne out by history.

It is obvious that this study paper cannot do more than seek to stimulate an interest in reading the entire history. It is surprising and shocking. "Chapter 9 - Implications of the Pastoral Plan is a treasure-trove of critically important information which provides an understanding of why a tangled web of secret conspiratorial organizations have sprung into action since the publication of the USCCB's "Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities" in 1975. Dr. Mumford's introduction states:

In Chapter 6, I wrote that the Vatican recognized that if the new threat to papal security-survival posed by the population movement in the U.S. were to be neutralized, American political will would have to be undermined. The purpose of the Pastoral Plan was to accomplish this goal.

Jesuit priest Virgil Blum, founder and first President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, proposed this strategy in a 1971 America magazine article titled, "Public Policy Making: Why the Churches Strike Out."54 "If a group is to be politically effective, issues rather than institutions must be at stake," Blum acknowledged. Abortion was simply the issue chosen to galvanize the movement created to achieve this effectiveness.

Blum's article set the stage for the creation of the Pastoral Plan, offering the bishops a set of well thought out guidelines which capitalized on centuries of experience of Jesuit manipulation of governments. Blum's own words make clear the true motivations of the bishops and their plan. An analysis of Blum's article was published earlier.55 Additional comments from it appear later in this Chapter and in the next. Analysis of the Pastoral Plan makes the intentions of the bishops evident. . .

The first section, "Plan of Action for Constitutional Amendment," describes a mustering of literally millions of people into a political machine completely controlled by the bishops for the purpose of protecting papal security interests -- at the expense of U.S. security interests. This mobilization includes virtually all Catholic institutions and agencies in the United States. From their list in the draft, I will discuss only a few. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The headings of the list: 1. Catholic Press Association, 2. Catholic Physicians Guilds, 3. Catholic Lawyers Associations, 4. Catholic Hospital Association, 5. Lay organizations. The following is quoted from No. 5 Lay organizations:

The lay organizations the reader sees listed by the bishops in their plan collectively have a membership nearly 10 million strong. Members have been asked through their organizations to take whatever steps they can against prochoice individuals and institutions and to promote the advancement of anti-abortionists into positions of power, in their careers, and socially and politically as well. . .

The Pastoral Plan specifically states that the bishops will assist each Catholic organization and agency in marshalling political power, and power to manipulate professional groups, in order to advance the objectives of the Vatican. (Underscored emphasis added.)

A section of Chapter 9 titled "ECUMENICAL ACTIVITY" states the following:

The importance of ecumenism to the bishops' Pastoral Plan is made evident by the position it occupies in the description of the plan, second only to the section on the mobilization of the troops.

In another of his guidelines, Blum concluded that if the Catholic leadership is to succeed, it must make their efforts look non-Catholic.57 Blum also concluded that to accomplish this goal, the bishops must create a strong ecumenical movement.

Before the Vatican's need of ecumenism came along, the small fledgling ecumenical movement of the 1960s was going nowhere. Blum's article was published in 1971. Then, suddenly, ecumenical activity exploded. Most of the Catholic activity in the Christian ecumenical movement has taken place since that time. A leading motivation for the involvement of Catholic leadership in ecumenism has been the Catholic Church's need for wide-scale public participation by Protestant churches in the anti-abortion movement. Blum recognized early on that "ecumenism" would be an essential weapon to counter the criticism certain to come with the blatant involvement of the bishops in making public policy. He saw that constant defense of the Catholic bishops by Protestant leaders, in the name of "ecumenism," was critical. In hindsight, he was obviously correct. Protestant leaders have served as tools of the Catholic bishops to blunt criticism, by branding such criticism as anti-Catholic or anti-freedom of religion and thus un-American. Protestants with good intentions were used like pawns to advance papal security interests at the expense of our country's.(Underscored emphasis added.)

Another section of Chapter 9 titled "THE PLAN CREATED THE `NEW RIGHT" states the following:

The Pastoral Plan specifically directed the creation of "grass-roots" organizations for the purposes of advancing the papal agenda. During the period 1976-1980, nearly all of the organizations that became known as the "New Right Movement" or the "Religious New Right" were organized. Examples are: The Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, the Free Congress Foundation, the Eagle Forum, American Life Lobby, Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Life Amendment Political Action Committee, the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, National Right to Life Committee, Religious Roundtable, Right to Life Party, and the Right to Life Political Action Committee. There are many others. Catholics were key players in the creation of all of these organizations and in their leadership. This assessment of the creation of this movement and its control by the bishops is well documented.68-[70]

The creation of these "grassroots" organizations by the bishops had far reaching consequences for the governing of America. Many of these consequences are widely known. Others are not. (Underscored emphasis added.)

As thorough as Dr. Mumford's research for his book was, he still missed among the organizations named above the following two deadly dangerous entities: Council for National Policy (CNP) and the American Legislative Exchange (ALEC.)

The foregoing excerpts from The Life and Death of NSSM 200, constituting an infinitesimal fraction of the treatise, present an account of the mind-boggling Roman Catholic power in America. Why is almost all of this information hidden from the public? Under the heading "Catholic Press Association" the following is stated:

The Catholic Press Association has played a crucial role in the implementation of the Pastoral Plan. The suppression of information about the Pastoral Plan and its implications for American women, about the plan's relationship to our constitutional democratic government, and about the differences between papal security-survival and U.S. security as defined by NSSM 200, has been a great success of Catholic journalists in the secular print and broadcast media and the Catholic Press Association. Largely through one kind of intimidation or another, or simply by blocking publication of this kind of information, Catholic journalists -- including reporters, editors, publishers and producers -- have successfully sought to "protect the faith" as directed by their clerical leadership. Less than 0.01 percent of Americans have ever heard of the Pastoral Plan much less seen an analysis of it implications. The same is true of NSSM 200 which was made available briefly in 1976 before being reclassified and then not declassified until 1989.

The bishops determined the rules of the abortion engagement and defined the terms of the debate. This was in response to another of Blum's guidelines: "Crucial to influencing public opinion is getting the people to define the issue your way. Since language not only defines the situation but also shapes attitudes, a group's cause has an almost insurmountable handicap if it permits opposing forces to define the terms of the discussion. `He who defines the terms of the controversy has the controversy half won,' said a wise politician."

Enforcing these rules set forth by the bishops required the unwavering support of Catholic journalists in both the print and broadcast media. . .

The Catholic journalists organized by the bishops as a part of their Pastoral Plan insure that all tow the line. Without this cadre, the bishops' plan would have failed miserably.

The pope has a keen awareness of the importance of the media to his agenda. In a letter to the world's Catholic journalists appearing in the February 27, 1992 issue of The Wanderer, titled "Mass Media Need Catholic Presence," the pope states: "It is in this connection that on World Communications Day I recall the activities of Catholics, individually and in a myriad of institutions, in this field. In particular I mention the three great Catholic media organizations: the International Catholic Office for Film and Cinema(OCIC), The International Catholic Press Union (UCIP), and the International Catholic Association for Radio and Television (Unda). It is to them in particular and to the vast resources of professional knowledge, skill, and zeal among their extensive international membership that the Church turns hopefully and confidently....The great body of Catholic media professionals, lay men and women for the most part, must be reminded on this special day of the awesome responsibility which rests upon them...to foster the Church's presence in the media and to work for greater coordination among the Catholic agencies involved." (Underscored emphasis added.)

This was an echo in 1996 of the unheeded warnings of Evangelist-Pastor Christian Edwardson in the mid-1940s. The Seventh-day Adventist Church should have been relied on to heed the warnings. Instead the leadership has cast aside the sword of defence against the Roman Catholic hierarchy, to the historical trash heap.

With the vast and complex plan activated by the USCCB as exposed in The Life and Death of NSSM 200 the latest Catholic Action war was unleashed on America with a new combination of the old legions of Rome vastly expanded in power by deluded apostate Protestant militants.

DOMINIONISM: A SATANIC MOVEMENT EMERGING OUT OF APOSTATE PROTESTANTISM

At this point attention must be drawn to a Protestant militant movement that existed before it allied itself with the Roman Catholic hierarchy to enable consolidation of Rome's power. The movement is basically called Dominionism; but it has various versions. Dominionism is said to have started with Christian reconstructionism, which originated with the teachings of R. J. Rushdoony in the 1960s and 1970s:

Dominion theology

Dominion theology (also known as dominionism) is a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians based on their understandings of biblical law. Extents of rule and ways of achieving governing authority are varied. For example, dominion theology can include theonomy, but does not necessarily involve advocating Mosaic law as the basis of government. The label is applied primarily toward groups of Christians in the United States.

Prominent adherents of these ideologies are Calvinist Christian reconstructionism, Roman Catholic Integralism, Charismatic and Pentecostal Kingdom Now theology, New Apostolic Reformation, and perhaps others not identified.[1][2] Most of the contemporary movements labeled dominion theology arose in the 1970s from religious movements asserting aspects of Christian nationalism. . .

An example of dominionism in reformed theology is Christian reconstructionism, which originated with the teachings of R. J. Rushdoony in the 1960s and 1970s.[9] Rushdoony's theology focuses on theonomy (the rule of the Law of God), a belief that all of society should be ordered according to the laws that governed the Israelites in the Old Testament. His system is strongly Calvinistic, emphasizing the sovereignty of God over human freedom and action, and denying the operation of charismatic gifts in the present day (cessationism); both of these aspects are in direct opposition to Kingdom Now Theology. . .

Dominionism and the Christian right

In the late 1980s, sociologist Sara Diamond[32][33] began writing about the intersection of dominion theology with the political activists of the Christian right. Diamond argued that "the primary importance of the [Christian reconstructionist] ideology is its role as a catalyst for what is loosely called 'dominion theology'". According to Diamond, "Largely through the impact of Rushdoony's and North's writings, the concept that Christians are Biblically mandated to 'occupy' all secular institutions has become the central unifying ideology for the Christian Right"[32]:138 ([italic] emphasis in original) in the United States.

While acknowledging the small number of actual adherents, authors such as Diamond and Frederick Clarkson have argued that postmillennial Christian reconstructionism played a major role in pushing the primarily premillennial Christian right to adopt a more aggressive dominionist stance. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Frederick Clarkson, one of the leading voices seeking for decades to alert the American nation to the deadly danger of Dominionism, has defined it as follows:

Dominionism Rising

A Theocratic Movement Hiding in Plain Sight

Dominionism Defined

Dominionism is the theocratic idea that regardless of theological view, means, or timetable, Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.

Analyst Chip Berlet and I have suggested that there is a dominionist spectrum running from soft to hard as a way of making some broad distinctions among dominionists without getting mired in theological minutiae.106 But we also agree that:

Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.

Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.

Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that the Ten Commandments, or “biblical law,” should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing biblical principles.107

Of course, Christian nationalism takes a distinct form in the United States, but dominionism in all of its variants has a vision for all nations. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The turning point in this theological struggle was the 1973 publication of Rushdoony’s 800-page Institutes of Biblical Law, which offered what he believed was a “foundation” for a future biblically based society, and his vision of generations of “dominion men” advancing the “dominion mandate” described in the biblical book of Genesis.32 The Institutes sought to describe what a biblically-based Christian society would look like. It included a legal code based on the Ten Commandments, and the laws of Old Testament Israel. This included a long list of capital offences—mostly religious or sexual crimes.33 But Rushdoony and other leading Reconstructionists did not believe that “Biblical Law” could be imposed in a top down fashion by a national theocracy. They thought the biblical kingdom would emerge from the gradual conversion of people who would embrace what they consider to be the whole word of God, and that this could take hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of years. Rushdoony and many Reconstructionists also believed strongly in a vastly decentralized form of government. Theorist Gary North writes, for example, that, “It isn’t possible to ramrod God’s blessings from the top down, unless you’re God. Only humanists think that man is God.” . . .

An additional strain of dominionist thought has also been deeply influential in the wider evangelical community. The popular 20th century theologian Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) sold some three million books, some of which are still in print. Together with his son Frank, he also made a series of influential films. Schaeffer’s 1981 book, A Christian Manifesto, published at the dawn of the Reagan era, famously served as a catalyst for the evangelical wing of the antiabortion movement, the broader Christian Right, and the creeping theocratization of the Republican Party.41

Schaeffer advocated massive resistance to what he saw as a looming anti-Christian society. His work inspired dominionist political action even though he claimed to support religious pluralism and oppose overt theocracy. One major difference between Schaeffer and the Reconstructionists is that while they agreed about the threat to Christianity, Schaeffer did not believe in the contemporary applicability of Old Testament laws and Rushdoony’s slow motion approach to dominion. Instead, Schaeffer emphasized the need for militant Christian resistance to what he called “tyranny.”

Schaeffer argued that “the common people had the right and duty to disobedience and rebellion if state officials ruled contrary to the Bible. To do otherwise would be rebellion against God.”42

According to historian John Fea, “Schaeffer played an important role in shaping the Christian Right’s belief in a Christian America,” drawing an ideological plumb line from the Bible to the Declaration of Independence, via the theologians of the Protestant Reformation.43 Schaeffer said that the situations that justified revolution against tyranny in the past are “exactly what we are facing today.” The whole structure of our society, Schaeffer concluded, “is being attacked and destroyed.”44

To fight that trend, Schaeffer advocated what he called “co-belligerency”: strategic partnerships that set aside theological differences in order to cooperate on a shared political agenda. (Thirty years later, the best expression of co-belligerency may be the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, a three-part platform declaring “life, marriage and religious liberty” as conservative believers’ defining concerns. This agenda is now shared by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, much of the evangelical Christian Right, and allied politicians in the Republican Party.45) . . . (Underscored emphasis and Manhattan Declaration hyperlink added)

Note the heavy representation of Roman Catholic Cardinals, and others in the hierarchical order, in the National Catholic Reporter's article on the Manhattan Declaration. It can reasonably be concluded that they were the prime movers of the Declaration, which is totally in harmony with the USCCB's Action Plan.

The American Protestant dominionist movement has had its own action plan throughout the decades of its existence. The following article by Katherine Yurica, another prominent voice in warning about the danger posed by Dominionism, has been described as "The No. 1 Article on the web on Christian Dominionism." Every segment of the article is of critical significance. However the following quotation is confined to the section titled "How Dominionism Was Spread." What it reveals is startling:

The Despoiling of America

How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State . . .

How Dominionism Was Spread

The years 1982-1986 marked the period Pat Robertson and radio and televangelists urgently broadcast appeals that rallied Christian followers to accept a new political religion that would turn millions of Christians into an army of political operatives. It was the period when the militant church raised itself from centuries of sleep and once again eyed power.

At the time, most Americans were completely unaware of the militant agenda being preached on a daily basis across the breadth and width of America. Although it was called “Christianity” it can barely be recognized as Christian. It in fact was and is a wolf parading in sheep’s clothing: It was and is a political scheme to take over the government of the United States and then turn that government into an aggressor nation that will forcibly establish the United States as the ruling empire of the twenty-first century. It is subversive, seditious, secretive, and dangerous.[9]
Dominionism is a natural if unintended extension of Social Darwinism and is frequently called “Christian Reconstructionism.” Its doctrines are shocking to ordinary Christian believers and to most Americans. Journalist Frederick Clarkson, who has written extensively on the subject, warned in 1994 that Dominionism “seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of ‘Biblical Law.’” He described the ulterior motive of Dominionism is to eliminate “…labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools.” Clarkson then describes the creation of new classes of citizens:

“Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment [to] blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.”[10]

Today, Dominionists hide their agenda and have resorted to stealth; one investigator who has engaged in internet exchanges with people who identify themselves as religious conservatives said, “They cut and run if I mention the word ‘Dominionism.’”[11] Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University wrote, “In March 1986, I was on a speaking tour in Iowa and received a copy of the following memo [Pat] Robertson had distributed to the Iowa Republican County Caucus titled, “How to Participate in a Political Party.” It read:

“Rule the world for God.

“Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.

“Hide your strength.

“Don’t flaunt your Christianity.

“Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership positions whenever possible, God willing.”[12]

Dominionists have gained extensive control of the Republican Party and the apparatus of government throughout the United States; they continue to operate secretly. Their agenda to undermine all government social programs that assist the poor, the sick, and the elderly is ingeniously disguised under false labels that confuse voters. Nevertheless, as we shall see, Dominionism maintains the necessity of laissez-faire economics, requiring that people “look to God and not to government for help.”[13]

It is estimated that thirty-five million Americans who call themselves Christian, adhere to Dominionism in the United States, but most of these people appear to be ignorant of the heretical nature of their beliefs and the seditious nature of their political goals. So successfully have the televangelists and churches inculcated the idea of the existence of an outside “enemy,” which is attacking Christianity, that millions of people have perceived themselves rightfully overthrowing an imaginary evil anti-Christian conspiratorial secular society. . .

Unless the American people reject the GOP’s control of the government, Americans may find themselves living in a theocracy that has already spelled out its intentions to change every aspect of American life including its cultural life, its Constitution and its laws. . .

Dominionism started with the Gospels and turned the concept of the invisible and spiritual “Kingdom of God” into a literal political empire that could be taken by force, starting with the United States of America. Discarding the original message of Jesus and forgetting that Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” the framers of Dominionism boldly presented a Gospel whose purpose was to inspire Christians to enter politics and execute world domination so that Jesus could return to an earth prepared for his earthly rule by his faithful “regents.”

As Frederick Clarkson and Chip Berlet are agreed, Dominionists "celebrate" Christian nationalism. The ideological components of Christian nationalism do not leave room for moderation, tolerance, peaceful dialogue, or the liberal democracy which alone has guaranteed individual liberty, and above all the freedom of conscience which is the only true religious liberty. These are among the many evidences that the movement is of the devil. Of profound significance is the fact that the Schaeffer agenda "is shared by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops." This is wholly consistent with the fact that Roman Catholicism is inherently dominionist:

Opus Dei & Christian Dominion

The American founders clearly recognized the history and danger of any ‘Christian Dominion’ as eloquently stated by James Madison:

Experience witnesses that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and virtue of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

Also, there was no sense of certainty, on the American founders’ part, there would be an infallible institution of government born of the American revolutionary experiment. When emerging from the Constitutional Convention, the waiting-shouting crowd demanded an answer of Benjamin Franklin, on the form of a new government to be given them. His answer?

“A republic, if you can keep it.”

We couldn’t. The founders were well aware of centuries of Vatican intrigue in relation to manipulating geopolitics, governments and related demands of submission, examples now include condemning the Magna Charta, causing a civil war, to demanding authority over the divorce of Henry the VIII, to the modern church support of Francisco Franco:

Franco’s concordat gave state funding to the Church and legally enforced Church teaching. In return, the Vatican … granted him the full version of “royal patronage” (patronato real). This was the ancient privilege of Spanish kings to name bishops and veto appointments down to the level of the parish priest.

The Catholic Church is dominionist by deed. ‘Christian Dominion’ is perhaps most easily described as the ‘rule of God’s law’ trumps the ‘rule of secular law’, Jesus' commandment to ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s’ notwithstanding. (Underscored emphasis added; italics in the original.)

Note the statement that "the Catholic Church is dominionist by deed." This signifies the inescapable authoritarian character of the papacy.

INTEGRALISM: ROME'S AGES-OLD VERSION OF DOMINIONISM

There is conclusive proof that Rome in fact has a declared ideology of Dominionism. It is called "Integralism":

Dominion theology

Dominion theology (also known as dominionism) is a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians based on their understandings of biblical law. Extents of rule and ways of achieving governing authority are varied. For example, dominion theology can include theonomy, but does not necessarily involve advocating Mosaic law as the basis of government. The label is applied primarily toward groups of Christians in the United States.

Prominent adherents of these ideologies are Calvinist Christian reconstructionism, Roman Catholic Integralism, Charismatic and Pentecostal Kingdom Now theology, New Apostolic Reformation, and perhaps others not identified.[1][2] Most of the contemporary movements labeled dominion theology arose in the 1970s from religious movements asserting aspects of Christian nationalism. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Integralism in Three Sentences

Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that, rejecting the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holds that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power. (Underscored emphasis in the original.)

The following hyperlinked documents define Roman Catholic Integralism, and make clear that it is a fundamental principle of the religio-political power of the papacy:

Integralism

In politics, integralism, integrationism or integrism (French: intégrisme) is the principle that the Catholic faith should be the basis of public law and public policy within civil society, wherever the preponderance of Catholics within that society makes this possible. Integralists uphold the 1864 definition of Pope Pius IX in Quanta cura that the religious neutrality of the civil power cannot be embraced as an ideal situation and the doctrine of Leo XIII in Immortale Dei on the religious obligations of states.[1] In December 1965, the Second Vatican Council approved and Pope Paul VI promulgated the document Dignitatis humanae–the Council's "Declaration on Religious Freedom"–which states that it "leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ" while simultaneously declaring "that the human person has a right to religious freedom," a move that some traditionalists such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of St. Pius X, have argued is in contradiction to previous doctrinal pronouncements.[2][3] Integralists therefore do not accept the Second Vatican Council's perceived repudiation of civilly established Catholicism.(Underscored emphasis added.)

The promulgation of Dignitatis humanae by Pope Paul VI was a mockery. It is basically no different from the policy enunciated by Leo XIII in his encyclical letter Immortale Dei. Now there is open discussion in Roman Catholic circles about the implementation of the Institution's "Integralism" in America. This is a recognition that the Catholization of the nation is so advanced that there is no longer any need to be circumspect. This is the climax of a debate within Catholicism which has been continuing since Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of "Americanism." It is an ill omen of a rapidly advancing and intense future of darkness. The following article was obviously written by an advocate of Americanism:

What is Catholic integralism?

One of the oldest ideas in Christianity has come to renewed prominence.

I had an opportunity recently to sit in on a discussion of Catholic integralism among a number of scholars who have been at work promoting the movement. Catholic integralism has come to renewed prominence recently, although it is among the oldest ideas in Christianity. (Importantly, we should note—integralism is not as old as the gospels.)

Catholic integralists believe that, “rendering God true worship is essential to [the] common good, and that political authority therefore has the duty of recognizing and promoting the true religion.” Contemporary integralists include Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist. (quoted here), Patrick J. Deneen (Notre Dame), Gladden Pappin (University of Dallas), and Adrian Vermeule (Harvard). The movement has been endorsed in the pages of First Things, Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal, and its online home is a website called The Josias.

But for all that recent exposition and publication, Catholic integralism is little different in substance from the enthusiastic expressions of Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century. Eusebius styled Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, as “invested…with a semblance of heavenly sovereignty…and fram[ing] his earthly government according to the pattern of the divine original, feeling strength in its conformity to the monarchy of God.”

The aim of the Catholic integralist is the integration of religious authority and political power. And, if this seems like a strange idea in the 21st century, we should perhaps pause over that. Popes were crowned with triple tiaras to signify the unity of their heavenly and earthly authority as recently as Paul VI’s coronation in 1963, and Pope Francis remains a head of state today. Still less than a century ago, the popes made claims to the Papal States that challenged the legitimacy of the Italian national government. Like so much in the traditionalist imagination, these things have lingered into our time. It seems almost forgivable. A century is not very long in the lifetime of the church.

Still, there is something else. In 2018, Patrick J. Deneen wrote Why Liberalism Failed to explain…well, why he thinks liberalism failed. I should say that Deneen offers a poor account of what he means by “liberalism” in the book, and probably he doesn’t mean what you think he means. Deneen’s complaints certainly encompass the political positions of people like Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden. Yet, if you are sensing that there are important differences between Warren and Biden, you’re beginning to see some of the problem.

Deneen is untroubled by that. He means liberalism in a larger sense, one that encompasses the whole project of modern philosophy and politics. For Deneen, the critique of liberalism is an argument with “A political philosophy conceived some 500 years ago, and put into effect at the birth of the United States nearly 250 years later.” In other words, Deneen’s argument with what he calls “liberalism” really is an argument with the separation of church and state, our whole way of life, and everything most readers probably assume is true about the world—such as, that the political presuppositions of American politics are good and true.

There is a different argument underway right now among conservatives. National Review‘s David French and Sohrab Ahmari of the New York Post have been embroiled in an argument on Twitter and, most recently, at The Catholic University of America, about whether conservatives should accept or reject the same presuppositions of American politics that Deneen wrote about.
Ahmari, who is Catholic, believes that Christians need to “fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy,” while French, an evangelical, takes a more conventional approach to say that people deserve strong guarantees of personal freedom even if the use of those freedoms sometimes offends Christians: no one needs to be “defeated.” The stakes of this argument are the same as the stakes in Deneen’s book—whether believers still have enough confidence in what Deneen calls “liberalism” to defend it. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The fact is that liberalism is wholly incompatible with Catholic integralism. For this reason Rome has consistently stood in opposition to liberalism, often in the most vehement terms in relation to the political form of liberalism. The author of the essay in which the last two hyperlinked statements appear, seems to separate the religious form of liberalism as the one resulting from the Reformation. However, the liberalism of the modern world, and particularly the American Constitution, also trace back to the Reformation:

Political Consequences of the Protestant Reformation, Part III

Modern liberalism’s origins trace not just to Protestant doctrine but also to pragmatic compromise between religious factions.

The Reformation and the Birth of Modern Liberalism

A third consequence of the Protestant Reformation was its role in the emergence of modern liberalism as a political doctrine. In this respect, it was not doctrine as much as the accidental chain of real-world consequences of the Reformation that led to this result.

Liberalism is a political doctrine that begins with the premise that individuals are born with natural rights, which include the right to life, private property, and individual autonomy with regard to religion, speech, and other aspects of personal choice. Governments in this view are legitimate only to the extent that they protect those rights; there is no collective good or divine right of rulership that overrides these rights.

There was of course a doctrinal connection between Protestantism and liberalism, in the sense that Luther and other Reformation thinkers emphasized faith and the individual believer’s direct and unmediated connection with God. But it is also the case that early Protestant societies, both Lutheran and Calvinist, were anything but liberal in the sense we understand that doctrine today. As noted earlier, Lutheranism spread initially not simply through sermons and individual conversions, but as the result of princely power that simply imposed Protestant worship on often unwilling subjects. Calvin’s Geneva was essentially a theocratic dictatorship in which other confessions were not tolerated, and in which the state intervened in the private lives of its citizens to an extraordinary degree.

Modern liberalism emerged only in the second half of the 17th century as the accidental byproduct of the wars set off by the Reformation. With the rise of the post-Tridentine Church and the Counter-reformation in the second half of the 16th century, the Papacy, the Empire, and individual Catholic monarchs were willing to use force to contain the spread of the Protestant heresy. This led to civil wars across Europe, most notably in France, England, and above all Germany, where the Thirty Years War led to the deaths of perhaps a third of the German population in the first half of the 17th century.

Many of the doctrines underlying modern liberalism were born in England, as a direct consequence of the religious conflicts that culminated in the great English Civil War of the 1640s that pitted a heavily Puritan Parliament against a high-church Anglican Stuart monarchy and led to the beheading of King Charles II in 1649. Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan was published in the immediate aftermath of those traumatic events and became a foundational work in subsequent Anglo-American liberal thought. Hobbes argued that rights were not inherited or conventional, but inhered in human beings qua human beings. . .

John Locke accepted Hobbes’ natural right framework, and argued that governments could also violate those rights, leading to a right on the part of citizens to resist governments that did not receive popular consent. Political legitimacy in liberal societies would henceforth be based on “consent of the governed.” Locke directly influenced Thomas Jefferson and the American Founding Fathers, who declared their independence from Britain on the basis of the protection of their rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Liberalism originated in a pragmatic compromise between religious factions that understood that they would be better off settling for religious tolerance than seeking their maximal goals of a religiously grounded polity. But the stability of this system depended also on the emergence of ideas that legitimated a regime preserving individual rights. Individualism was deeply ingrained in English culture from well before the Reformation, but the Reformation’s emphasis on inner faith cemented the view that all human beings were autonomous agents who were subject to God’s grace as individuals. In later years the religious component underlying notions of agency would erode, but the individualism would remain as a foundational principle of modern Western civilization. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Leo XIII categorically condemned individualism, which is the rock on which democracy and liberalism rest. Thus the right of individuals to decide for themselves what to believe or to reject is denied by the Church of Rome.

Pontiffs of Rome and Catholic intellectuals alike have consistently sought to undermine individual liberty and to destroy both democracy and liberalism in all of its forms. This has been as much the task of the Counter-Reformation as that of reversing the religious form of liberalism. The enforcement mechanism of Rome's war on democracy and liberalism is Integralism, and the viewpoint of Ahmari in an earlier passage quoted from a hyperlinked article is the central purpose of the USCCB's Action Plan.

The Action Plan unleashed a formidable army of organizations asked to take steps which can only be described as anti-democratic. Given the events which have followed, it can be concluded that the wishes of the Bishops are heard as commands by the lay organizations. To be cohesive an army must have commanders, and among the early commanders the most important and influential was Paul Weyrich:

Paul Weyrich

Early life and conservative activism . . .

After Second Vatican Council, Weyrich transferred from the Latin Church of the Roman Catholic Church to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and was ordained as a deacon. . .

[N.B. "Melkite Byzantine Catholic Church, is an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See as part of the worldwide Catholic Church." (Paul Weyrich)]

Dominionism

According to TheocracyWatch and the Anti-Defamation League, both Weyrich and his Free Congress Foundation were closely associated with dominionism.[28][29] TheocracyWatch listed both as leading examples of "dominionism in action," citing "a manifesto from Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation," The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement[30] which "illuminates the tactics of the dominionist movement".[28] TheocracyWatch which calls it "Paul Weyrich's Training Manual", and others, consider this manifesto a virtual playbook for how the "theocratic right" in American politics can get and keep power.[31] The Anti-Defamation League identified Weyrich and the Free Congress Foundation as part of an alliance of more than 50 of the most prominent conservative Christian leaders and organizations that threaten the separation of church and state.[29] Weyrich continued to reject allegations that he advocated theocracy, saying, "[T]his statement is breathtaking in its bigotry",[32] and dismissed the claim that the Christian right wished to transform America into a theocracy.[33] Katherine Yurica wrote that Weyrich guided Eric Heubeck in writing The Integration of Theory and Practice, the Free Congress Foundation's strategic plan published in 2001 by the FCF,[34] which she says calls for the use of deception, misinformation, and divisiveness to allow conservative evangelical Christian Republicans to gain and keep control of seats of power in the government of the United States.

Dominionism is a controversial term, with many conservatives and religious writers dismissing it as a left-wing term to tar people they disagree with.

Weyrich publicly rejected accusations that he wanted America to become a theocracy:

Some political observers may see the presence of religious conservatives in the Republican Party as a threat. My former friend Kevin Phillips [author of American Theocracy], who in the early days of the New Right was so helpful, now acts as if a theocracy governs the nation. Phillips was the architect of President Richard M. Nixon's Southern strategy, which worked brilliantly until Nixon did himself in. Now that the South does have the upper hand in the Republican Party Phillips is bitter about it. I see no theocracy here. As someone who has helped the religious right transition to the political process, I would have nothing to do with something akin to Iran translated into Americanize.[33] (Underscored emphasis added.)

Weyrich's denial that he wanted America to become a theocracy was a blatant lie. The evidence is abundant that this was precisely his objective, and at the center of his obsession was his absolute loyalty to the papacy. The devout Catholic that he was, his opposition to Vatican II which professed to seek a genuine toleration of Protestantism, and his expression of confidence that the Pope agreed with what he and his associates were doing, expose him as an Integralist. He brilliantly maneuvered the Evangelicals into fronting for the papacy; and this fronting is precisely in line with the prophecy of Rev. 13:11-12.

Weyrich knew that he had the approval of the Pope in the guidance he rendered to Eric Heubeck in writing "The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement; and the Catholic Church is at the heart of the dominionist movement in America. The papacy was the deadliest foe of the American constitution from the day that it was adopted by the founding fathers of the nation to the present!

Weyrich had influential accomplices, among whom was one as dangerous as he, and that accomplice was also a Roman Catholic. There is no evidence that like Weyrich he had left the mother institution; but there are ample indications that like his accomplice he was no friend of Vatican II:

Richard Viguerie was another prominent Catholic activist who collaborated with Weyrich in his wide-ranging religio-political organizational activities and independently advanced them:

'Reaganland' Author Revisits The Roots Of American Conservatism [A PBS "Fresh Air" interview]

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. . .

Perlstein is one of the country's foremost students of the rise of the New Right in American politics. . .

PERLSTEIN: So there was this guy, Richard Viguerie, who was a Catholic. He was the maestro of direct mail. He was the guy who figured out that the bigger the mailing list you had and the more terrifying the letters you sent to this mailing list about how liberals were going to, you know, end Western civilization as we know it, the better you could do for politicians. And one of the things that it was so effective for, it was a very stealthy strategy.

So I described in the 1978 congressional elections all these conservative results that no one saw coming because they didn't realize that this guy, Richard Viguerie, was sending out millions of direct mail pieces that were, you know, basically scaring the bejesus out of these, you know, kind of rural, conservative folk. You had Howard Phillips, who was a converted Jew. You had this guy Paul Weyrich, who I've talked about. And they were not having as much luck as they hoped organizing people around issues like unions being too powerful, issues like the Tennessee Valley Authority being socialism - all this stuff that Barry Goldwater had tried to become president and failed.

But once they picked up things like gay rights, like feminism, they found that they had a lot more success. And Paul Weyrich later said he realized that sex was the Achilles' heel of liberal politics, that the fact that someone like Jimmy Carter could be yoked to people who thought that gays should not be discriminated against on the job, and the fact that Jimmy Carter was a very big supporter of the ERA and, actually, lobbied very strongly for it, became their battering ram. And Richard Viguerie was very, very confident that if he could only win the loyalty of the nation's evangelical preachers, who, after all, had these built-in organizations of churches - they had this built-in communication network in the form of things like church newsletters that liberalism could not live to see another day. And he worked very hard at this, and then he discovered the perfect issue for it when Jimmy Carter's IRS commissioner realized that a lot of Christian schools - not necessarily segregationist schools, but just these schools that had kind of sprung up to protect kids from the influence of the '60s and, you know, made kids wear short hair and believed in God, flag and the country - that they weren't following IRS guidelines against, basically, having two segregated student bodies.

And so he created new guidelines. And this became the spark that lit the prairie fire because it was the money nerve, right? These guys relied on the fact that they were tax deductions under, you know, 501(c)(3) of the IRS code in order to keep their doors open. And once they saw that threat, suddenly it was a stampede to Washington. And that's one of the most dramatic parts of the book, I think. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Viguerie has been deeply involved in shaping the Republican Party into just the kind of autocratic power as is envisioned by the Dominionists:

How Fringe Christian Nationalists Made Abortion a Central Political Issue

The most popular origin story of Christian nationalism today, shared by many critics and supporters alike, explains that the movement was born one day in 1973, when the Supreme Court unilaterally shredded Christian morality and made abortion “on demand” a constitutional right. At that instant, the story goes, the flock of believers arose in protest and threw their support to the party of “Life” now known as the Republican Party. The implication is that the movement, in its current form, finds its principal motivation in the desire to protect fetuses against the women who would refuse to carry them to term.

This story is worse than myth. It is false as history and incorrect as analysis. Christian nationalism drew its inspiration from a set of concerns that long predated the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade and had little to do with abortion. The movement settled on abortion as its litmus test sometime after that decision for reasons that had more to do with politics than embryos. It then set about changing the religion of many people in the country in order to serve its new political ambitions. From the beginning, the “abortion issue” has never been just about abortion. It has also been about dividing and uniting to mobilize votes for the sake of amassing political power. . .

In the late 1970s a curious combination of religious and political activists assembled to ponder the strategy of a new political movement, sometimes by letter or phone, and sometimes in conference rooms or at a hotel in Lynchburg, Virginia. Some of the more vocal members of the group included Southern Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell; conservative activists Ed McAteer and Paul Weyrich; Nixon appointee Howard Phillips; attorney Alan P. Dye; and Robert J. Billings, an educator and organizer who would later serve as Ronald Reagan’s liaison to the Christian right.

This was an angry group of men. “We are radicals who want to change the existing power structure. We are not conservatives in the sense that conservative means accepting the status quo,” Paul Weyrich said. “We want change—we are the forces of change.” They were angry at liberals, who threatened to undermine national security with their unforgivable softness on communism; they were angry at the establishment conservatives, the Rockefeller Republicans, for siding with the liberals and taking down their hero, Barry Goldwater; they were angry about the rising tide of feminism, which they saw as a menace to the social order; and about the civil rights movement and the danger it posed to segregation, especially in education. One thing that they were not particularly angry about, at least at the start of their discussions, was the matter of abortion rights.

Weyrich was “the man perhaps with the broadest vision,” according to his fellow conservative activist Richard Viguerie. “I can think of no one who better symbolizes or is more important to the conservative movement.” In matters of religion, Weyrich was personally conservative: he abandoned the Roman Catholic Church, which he believed had become too liberal, for the Melkite Greek Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. But his politics weren’t necessarily centered on religion. He formed his political creed as a twenty-something in the Barry Goldwater uprising of 1964, and it consisted of visceral anticommunism, economic libertarianism, and a distrust of the civil rights movement. Jimmy Carter’s famous religiosity did nothing to redeem him in Weyrich’s eyes. Indeed, in 1978 and 1979, Weyrich’s immediate priority was to make sure that Carter would be a one-term president.

Weyrich began to identify himself in the late 1970s with a movement whose name Richard Viguerie put on the title of his 1980 manifesto: The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead. Weyrich came to be known as the “evil genius” of the movement—or sometimes “the Lenin of social conservatism”—and Viguerie, who is considered the pioneer of political direct mail, came to be known as its “funding father.”

From the beginning, the New Right sought radical change. They would establish themselves “first as the opposition, then the alternative, finally the government,” according to Conservative Caucus chair Howard Phillips. “We will not try to reform the existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them and eventually destroy them,” said Weyrich protégé Eric Heubeck, writing for the Free Congress Foundation. “We will maintain a constant barrage of criticism against the Left. We will attack the very legitimacy of the Left. We will not give them a moment’s rest . . . We will use guerrilla tactics to undermine the legitimacy of the dominant regime.”

Weyrich went on to call for a constitutional convention in hopes of producing a form of government more congenial to conservatism. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” he said at a gathering in the fall of 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” 14 Richard Viguerie emphatically endorsed Weyrich’s radicalism, which in turn led both men to adopt a kind of experimental pragmatism in pursuing their ends. “One of the major differences in this group of new conservatives was that we weren’t afraid to try even when there was only a 20 per cent chance of success,” Viguerie wrote. “We knew that if you expected to hit a lot of home runs, you had to expect to strike out a lot.” . . .

As the Lynchburg crowd commenced their conversations, Weyrich had already formulated a general idea for an electoral strategy that would take the New Right from opposition to power. He had studied the successes of the left in the 1960s and 1970s, and now he thought he knew what the left had that the right lacked: the right needed to get religion. The left had successfully appealed to religious feelings and organizations in forming the coalition that advanced civil rights, promoted Great Society programs, and opposed the Vietnam War. Just as reformers around the turn of the century had deployed the Social Gospel on behalf of progressive causes, Martin Luther King Jr. has used his pulpit to mobilize change. If the right could access the religious vote, Weyrich reasoned, power would be in its grasp. Together with Phillips, he devoted “countless hours cultivating electronic ministers like Jerry Falwell, Jim [James] Robison, and Pat Robertson, urging them to get involved in conservative politics,” according to Viguerie.

Weyrich eventually founded or played a critical role in a number of prominent groups on the right. They included the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Free Congress Foundation. Arguably the most consequential of the groups Weyrich played a role in founding was the Council for National Policy, a networking organization for social conservative activists that the New York Times once referred to as a “little-known group of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country.”

Weyrich did not act alone. Other cofounders and early members of the CNP included Tim LaHaye (then head of Moral Majority), billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell. A leaked 2014 membership directory of the CNP, posted on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center, shines a spotlight on this powerful subsection of the reactionary right. The directory includes Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre; Christian right leaders such as Tony Perkins, Ralph Reed, and James Dobson; and antiabortion advocates Phyllis Schlafly, Penny Nance, and Kristan Hawkins. The group also brought into the fold leaders of right-wing economic policy groups and media conglomerates; masterminds of the right-wing legal movement including Alan Sears, Jay Sekulow, and Leonard Leo; and various members of the DeVos and Prince families, including Betsy DeVos’s brother Erik Prince and her husband, Richard, who served as president twice. “The Council for National Policy went on to assemble an impressive network of media and organizations that worked to advance their cause, with a special focus on mobilizing the fundamentalist vote in key districts,” says Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. (Underscored emphasis added

The foregoing article is a veritable goldmine of information about the "curious combination of religious and political activists" which established a network of organizations to work in concert to achieve their goal of destroying American democracy. Mentioned are Jay Sekulow and Leonard Leo, an evil genius like Paul Weyrich, executive vice president of the Federalist Society.

There was a brief period when Weyrich harbored some doubt that they were succeeding in their crusade; but continuing progress in the war on democracy soon banished his doubts:

Rift On The Right

When Paul Weyrich met with Jerry Falwell in May 1979 to discuss ways to bring fundamentalist Christians into the political process, the two men had high hopes for the proposed venture.

Weyrich, a veteran right-wing strategist and ultraconservative Eastern-Rite Catholic, believed a coalition of conservative Protestants, anti-abortion Catholics and other socially conservative Americans could easily dominate the U.S. political process. If Falwell, a Baptist pastor and increasingly well known television evangelist, would agree to help lead such a movement, Weyrich argued, that would be an enormous step forward.

"Out there is what one might call a moral majority--people who would agree on principles based on the Decalogue [the Ten Commandments], for example--but they have been separated by geographical and denominational differences and that has caused them to vote differently," Weyrich reportedly said. "The key to any kind of political impact is to get these people united in some way, so they can see that they are battling the same thing and need to be unified."

"That's it," Falwell replied. "That's the name of the organization."

According to historian William Martin, that conversation at the Holiday Inn in Lynchburg, Va., was the genesis of the Moral Majority. Falwell's group became the best known of an array of Religious Right organizations that have assailed church-state separation, touted "Christian nation" theology and tried to forge evangelical and fundamentalist Christians into a reliable Republican voting bloc during the past two decades.

But in a shocking turn of events a few weeks ago, Weyrich, the godfather of the Religious Right, announced a dramatic change of heart. In a Feb. 16 letter posted on his Free Congress Foundation's website, Weyrich said, "I no longer believe that there is a moral majority. I do not believe that a majority of Americans actually shares our values."

Embittered by the Senate acquittal of the president and the public's overwhelming support for that action, Weyrich proclaimed, "If there really were a moral majority out there, Bill Clinton would have been driven from office months ago."

Weyrich, who helped found the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups, said conservatives have lost the culture war and should adopt a "strategy of separation" from the rest of society. They should engage in politics, he said, only as a secondary enterprise to keep a "politically correct" government at bay. In a March 7 essay in The Washington Post, he called for a "complete, separate, parallel structure" of institutions, a traditional Western Judeo-Christian network of schools, universities, media, entertainment, and even private courts. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Weyrich's despondency was premature. The "Moral Majority" was always a delusional myth, and its ultimate dissolution was deeply involved with sexual and financial scandals. Nevertheless the schemers who created an enduring coalition of religio-political Roman Catholics and Evangelicals proved that a firmly united minority of deluded religionists could dominate the body politic of America.

The emphasis of this study paper is on events of the past, dating from the times of Pope Leo XIII to to the present current events, all fulfilling the prophecies of Rev. 13:12-18 in particular. Fulfillment of verses 13, and 14 (first part) is unclear; but 14 (last part) and 15 (first part) clearly have been substantially fulfilled, emphasizing the need to follow Jesus' repeated admonitions to "watch."

Readers familiar with the theology of Adventistlaymen's Foundation will be familiar with the date of fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy recorded in Luke 21:24. Of this event William Grotheer wrote in The Sign of the End Of Time:

"What is the Fulfilled Prophecy of Jesus Saying?"

The very least that this fulfilled prophecy of Jesus is saying is that God is no longer restraining the power of Satan in his control of the nations of earth. Even though Satan declared that he possessed such power and could delegate it to whomever he chose (Luke 4:6), the book of Daniel draws the curtain aside and reveals that God "ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will" (Dan. 4:17). When kings and rulers resisted His purposes, Michael, to whom all earthly authority is given (I Cor. 15:27), comes Himself to influence the outcome of human events (Dan. 10:13). That time is now past, and God has stepped aside and Satan is working his will in the nations of earth.

We have not been left in doubt as to what Satan is seeking to accomplish. In the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the picture is drawn. "The spirits of devils go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty" (Rev. 16:14). But some may respond, if ignorant of Adventist Laymen's Foundation exegesis, that is the sixth plague after the close of probation. No, it is the cause for the sixth plague, not the plague itself. Consider the first plague: a "grievous sore" on those who had received the mark of the beast (16:2). Was not the mark of the beast received prior to the close of probation? Just so, the sixth plague. Verse 12 describes the plague - the drying up of the great river Euphrates, and verses 13-14 give the cause in probationary time.

Note the use of this text in The Great Controversy, pp.561-62. Observe the context - "the last remnant of time." . . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

That the validity of this insight has been confirmed abundantly by the march of events since 1980 will be obvious to the unbiased mind. Falling within this context are the revelations about Dominionism. Can anyone doubt that the work of Dominionist Christian nationalism is inspired and directed by the spirits of devils?

A DIABOLICAL NETWORK OF EVIL

Rev. 16:13-14 in Action

Of the original conferees Pat Robertson and Richard Viguerie are among those still alive, and both of them are supporters of Donald Trump. The following report on Viguerie's support for Trump in the 2016 election is revealing:

Richard Viguerie and Movement Conservatives Riding the Donald Trump Train

Dubbed the “direct mail wizard of the New Right” for his pioneering techniques in the pre-Internet age, Richard Viguerie helped elect conservative firebrand Jesse Helms to the U.S. Senate from North Carolina for five consecutive terms in the eighties and nineties.

At 83, he has been around long enough to qualify as Old Right, and with conservative cultural values at the core of his politics, he and President Donald Trump don’t appear to have much in common. Yet Viguerie is riding the Trump train for all it’s worth, and loving every minute.

In an interview with the Daily Beast, he praises the “movement conservatives” around Trump: Kellyanne Conway, Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon, Mike Pence, exclaiming, “I know them…We know them.”

“From August on, the campaign was run by movement conservatives,” he says, and that’s never happened before.

“Kellyanne is one of us,” he exclaims. Viguerie attended her wedding more than fifteen years ago, and he recalls how her husband, George, secretly packed her wedding dress on their honeymoon trip to Rome so she could wear it when they had their marriage blessed by the Pope. “She’s very Catholic,” he adds.

“They’ll be in the meetings,” Viguerie says of these movement conservatives, along with Trump’s hard-right nominees to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, Scott Pruitt and Tom Price, respectively.

“Trump won’t be in 99 percent of the meetings,” he says confidently. “That’s Trump’s management style. You can’t run something like he did, a worldwide corporation, and be a micromanager. You hire the pilot of the plane, and you pick the surgeon, and you let them go. 99 percent of the meetings he won’t be in, but Pence will be there, and Scott Pruitt.”

“Justice (with nominee Jeff Sessions as Attorney General) and the White House are solid,” says Viguerie. “Who knows what course things can take, but every indication now is they are looking good for us. Personnel is policy, and the personnel while it’s not 100 percent is really, really good—and conservatives like me, we’re just wildly excited.”

Asked how cultural conservatives and evangelicals can support Trump given his checkered history, Viguerie says the media are consumed with Trump’s personal behavior, while “we conservatives are consumed with Supreme Court judges that could rule for thirty years.”

In the third debate, after Hillary Clinton said she would appoint Supreme Court justices that stand up for women’s rights, Viguerie sent out some seven million pieces of direct mail targeting Catholic households in the states surrounding the Great Lakes: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

A third of the people who live there are Catholic; 40 percent of registered voters are Catholic, and on Election Day, almost 50 percent of those who showed up to vote were Catholic, says Viguerie. Mitt Romney lost Catholics 50 to 48; Trump won them 52 to 45, according to the Pew Research Center. Unlike the evangelical vote, which is reliably Republican, but will turn out in greater or lesser numbers, the Catholic vote is a true “swing” vote, he says, and Trump carried it by 7 points.

Viguerie had been building the case against Clinton among Catholics for some time. Her comment at a Global Women’s Summit in New York on March 23, 2015, that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed” for women around the globe to have access to abortion as part of their health care, was readymade.

“What that says to me, Richard, you’re going to have to change your religious beliefs,” says Viguerie. “That’s lock and load and go to war.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

Richard Viguerie is quoted above as stating that Trump's 2016 campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway is "one of us," adding that “She’s very Catholic.” In the paragraph of the hyperlinked article immediately preceding these disclosures about Conway, Viguerie is quoted as praising the “movement conservatives” around Trump including Kellyanne Conway exclaiming, “I know them…We know them.”' Conway was the member of the Trump White House staff who coined the phrase "alternative facts" to define the volume of lies emanating from his administration. She would know, as a "very Catholic" person.

This report confirms and expands on the identification in an earlier article hyperlinked in this paper, of the movement conservatives at the heart of the power structure in the Trump White House, as well as others wielding national political influence. Three paragraphs down from naming the “movement conservatives” around Trump, his "hard-right nominees to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, Scott Pruitt and Tom Price" are mentioned. Roman Catholicism is strongly represented among these named "movement conservatives," and all of the living members are committed to the mission of destroying democracy and liberty of conscience by every means possible. Worthy of note is the role of Richard Viguerie in the 2016 presidential election, by mobilizing the Roman Catholic vote for Trump in key midwest swing states.

It is now clearly established that the descriptive terms "Religious Right," "Dominionists," "Christian Nationalists," and "Theocrats" can be used interchangeably to identify what Viguerie described as "Movement Conservatives" who laid their plans in the late 1970s. The founders were "a curious combination of religious and political activists assembled to ponder the strategy of a new political movement." Actually the term "Movement Conservatives" disguises the founders' acknowledged true identity as extreme radicals. A founding principle was secrecy and stealth.

The Movement has had spectacular success in establishing diabolical propaganda as a norm, spread through a network of agencies, conditioning a politically potent minority of the American electorate to believe whatever they are told. This has been perfected under the presidency of Donald Trump, who spewed an incredible volume of lies, and has continued to do so as ex-president.

This website has documented how the "Movement Conservatives" have progressed from the Moral Majority to the Christian Coalition and the Tea Party. A major identifying link has been Richard Viguerie. He remains so indirectly through the power behind the latest phases of the Movement. The CNP is deeply involved in the new phenomenon of "Trumpism" and its deadly assault on American democracy. As reported earlier in this study paper, Viguerie himself played a major role in the election of Donald Trump to the presidency by manipulation of the Roman Catholic vote in key midwest States.

In considering the pervasive power and influence of the diabolical alliance of right-wing Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, it should never be overlooked that "evil genius" Paul Weyrich was the primary founder, or a participant in the founding, of a network of organizations dedicated to destroying the American constitutional democracy, and aimed at abolishing the separation of church and state. Known primary organizations in the network are the Council for National Policy, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Free Congress Foundation, and there are many affiliates such as the State Policy Network. Although Paul Weyrich is not reported to have been involved in the founding of the Federalist Society, there is a connection through the Council for National Policy:

Judges, Jesus and justifications

The Federalist Society is a group of conservative attorneys, judges and legal scholars that are an arm of the Council for National Policy (CNP). The CNP is described as a “secretive umbrella group of far right leaders” that’s pushing America toward a theocratic government; a society ruled by God’s law.

Members of the Federalist Society and the CNP are generally opposed to immigration, regulation, global warming science, abortion and homosexuality.

Paul Weyrich was a co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and the CNP. He was closely related to Dominionism and the beliefs of Southern Baptist Pastor Jerry Falwell. Weyrich and Falwell partnered to battle against the Civil Rights Act and desegregation in the South on the grounds of religious freedom. . .

Ever to be kept in mind is that "evil genius" Paul Weyrich was a fiercely loyal Roman Catholic who once said: "It may not be with bullets . . .and it may not be with rockets and missiles, but it's war nonetheless. It is a war of ideology, it's a war of ideas, and it's a war about our way of life. And it has to be fought with the same intensity, I think, and dedication as you would fight a shooting war," (ROASTING THE RIGHTEST OF THE RIGHT.) In AMERICAN DEMOCRACY & THE VATICAN: POPULATION GROWTH & NATIONAL SECURITY, By Dr. Stephen Mumford, the following passage appears:

"If we didn't know the Pope agrees with us, we Catholics in the New Right wouId have serious conscience problems. I would never work counter to the Church's official position." - PauI Weyrich, founder Moral Majority - Christian Voice - Religious RoundtabIe.

The radical religious in our country, the so-calIed New Right, religious right, religious conservatives, and the Moral Majority, according to Paul Weyrich, will be guided by policy established in the Vatican.

To ensure that the Moral Majority does not act in ways in which the pope would not approve, the opinion of Weyrich and other Catholics in the organization must bear considerable weight in decision-making by the Moral Majority organization. They must be in positions of leadership.

We have discussed earlier the Vatican's control over faithful laypersons, and Weyrich is apparently in this mold. Weyrich and his Catholic colleagues control the Moral Majority. The Vatican controls Weyrich and his colleagues. Thus the Vatican controls the Moral Majority.

It is a fact that the American Catholic bishops described the Moral Majority in their 1975 Pastoral Plan of Action (appendix two), four years before Jerry Falwell was asked by the Catholics who named the organization to head it. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The facts stated in the above passage have been corroborated by events in America over the last 40-50 years. The Roman Catholic hierarchy has flooded every sphere of the American body politic with individuals and organizations dedicated to ending the "American Experiment" in liberal democracy, and most important, separation of church and state. These individuals and organizations are all of the laity. Rarely do members of the Catholic clergy expose themselves, and the USCCB maintains a discreet distance while the hordes of laymen advance its Action Plan. These, with "all the world" (Rev. 13:3b-4) are being gathered to the battle of that great day of God almighty (Rev. 16:16,) together with deluded "Protestants" so-called. The battle will end in their inevitabe defeat by "the Lamb" (Rev. 17:14.)

Among the victories of the USCCB's Action Plan are three US Presidents dedicated to advancing the Church of Rome's objectives: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. (The current President, Joe Biden, is a representative of Americanism in this nation; but he is almost certainly committed to the Roman Catholic Social Doctrine, and appears to be on good terms with Pope Francis.)

Trump has been the most destructive so far, and he remains a menace; but looking to the future there are others equally dangerous, and probably potentially moreso because of intellects superior to that of Trump:

Christian nationalism is a threat, and not just from Capitol attackers invoking Jesus

Christian nationalists inside our government are working quietly to take America for Jesus. They are the more resilient danger to religious pluralism. . .

It is easy to protest when white Christian nationalism turns violent. Within the chorus of critics, however, are a substantial number of Christians who plan to take the country for Jesus another way. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, a leader of the misinformation campaign that led people to believe (falsely) that the presidential election was stolen, is among them.

Speaking in his official capacity as attorney general of Missouri in 2017, he proclaimed at a “Pastors and Pews” meetingthat their charge is to “take the lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm and to seek the obedience of the nations — of our nation… to influence our society, and even more than that, to transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.” . . .

It is easy to protest when white Christian nationalism turns violent. Within the chorus of critics, however, are a substantial number of Christians who plan to take the country for Jesus another way. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, a leader of the misinformation campaign that led people to believe (falsely) that the presidential election was stolen, is among them.

Speaking in his official capacity as attorney general of Missouri in 2017, he proclaimed at a “Pastors and Pews” meetingthat their charge is to “take the lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm and to seek the obedience of the nations — of our nation… to influence our society, and even more than that, to transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.” . . .

The agenda is not always explicit. When Sen. Ted Cruz talks of “restoring” America, he means to recover what he believes is its original identity as a Christian nation. Historian John Fea argues that Cruz’s outlook reflects the Seven Mountains Dominionism of his father — a conviction that Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions (religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business). While Cruz is too politically savvy to endorse dominion theology outright, he uses code words like “religious liberty” to sustain Christian privilege and cultural authority. . .

I do not wish to emulate QAnon enthusiasts in projecting a deep-state conspiracy, but there are Christian nationalists embedded throughout our governing institutions — courts, military, legislatures, agencies, police. Many are regular figures at the Capitol and in the halls of power. Distracted by those ready to bring on the apocalypse, we have not adequately exposed this more resilient threat to religious pluralism in the United States. . .

Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are potentially more dangerous than Trump.

The passages quoted below from the same article are pertinent to the general menace of the USCCB's Pastoral Plan of 1975, dramatically exposed by Dr. Stephen Mumford earlier in this paper:

Most people have never heard of Project Blitz, for example, but it was responsible for at least 75 bills in 2018 that advance Christian nationalism. They have a playbook developed by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation with “model legislation” designed to privilege “traditional Judeo-Christian religious values and beliefs in the public square.” The term Judeo-Christian here is a perverse appropriation of Judaism, deployed as a cover for Christian exclusivism.

The playbook advises beginning with bills that require schools to teach Bible courses or offer release time, and to display “In God We Trust” banners. (Their parallel project to set the motto in license plates has been linked to corrupt fundraising practices.) Second-tier proposals include Christian Heritage Week and Year of the Bible, to reinforce the idea that America was and always will be a Christian nation. The third tier focuses largely on religious liberty as a tool for exempting religious individuals and organizations from laws they do not like, especially laws that prohibit discrimination or protect women. If officials object, the spin machine can go after them as anti-faith. (Underscored emphasis added.)

There is overwhelming evidence that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is responsible for all of the assaults on democracy and separation of church and state in America over the past 46-50 years. There is worse developing. Reports expose the Council for National Policy (CNP) and other entities spawned by the USCCB's Action Plan, but always stop short of indicting Rome.

The following report is a chronological narrative reporting how the CNP "helped spawn Trumpism, directed his re-election strategy, disrupted the transfer of power" after the 2020 presidential election, and "stoked the assault on the capitol" on January 6, 2021. No quotations from the article can detail the perfidious actions of this sinister organization as fully as the whole narrative. Hopefully however, enough essential facts have been excerpted from the narrative to convey an accurate picture of the dominant role being played by the CNP in the destruction of American democracy. Not mentioned in the article is the role of the USCCB at every stage of advancement of the undemocratic theocratic governance being imposed on the nation: 

How the CNP, a Republican Powerhouse, Helped Spawn Trumpism, Disrupted the Transfer of Power, and Stoked the Assault on the Capitol (By Anne Nelson)

On January 6, 2021, a stunned nation watched as protesters stormed the Capitol to prevent the certification of the electoral votes from the November election. The effort failed, but not without shining a harsh light on the fault lines of American democracy.

In the weeks that followed, analysts have struggled to define how much of the incursion was the spontaneous result of a “riot”—or a “peaceful protest” gone wrong—and how much was the result of a planned operation.

One major player in the events leading up to the assault on the Capitol was the Council for National Policy, an influential coalition of Christian conservatives, free-market fundamentalists, and political activists. Over the previous year the CNP and its members and affiliates organized efforts to challenge the validity of the election, conspired to overturn its results, and tried to derail the orderly transfer of power. This is an account of the measures they took, leading up to the deadly January 6 insurrection.

The Council for National Policy was founded in 1981 by a group of televangelists, Western oligarchs, and Republican strategists to capitalize on Ronald Reagan’s electoral victory the previous year. From the beginning, its goals represented a convergence of the interests of these three groups: a retreat from advances in civil and political rights for women and minorities, tax cuts for the wealthy, and raw political power. Operating from the shadows, its members, who would number some 400, spent the next four decades courting, buying, and bullying fellow Republicans, gradually achieving what was in effect a leveraged buyout of the GOP. Favorite sons, such as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, were groomed, financed, and supported. Apostates, such as John McCain and Jeff Flake, were punished and exiled. The leaders of the CNP tended to favor their conservative Christian co-religionists, but political expedience came first.

In 2016, the CNP put its partners’ money, data, and ground game behind Donald Trump, as the ultimate transactional candidate. Trump promised it retrograde social policies, a favorable tax regime, regulatory retreats, and its choice of federal judges. He delivered in spades. By 2020, the leaders of the CNP were ready to go to extreme lengths to keep him—and themselves—in power.

Over the final year of the Trump presidency, the CNP took center stage. By January 2020, its leading figures had become sought-after guests on talk shows and frequent visitors to the White House. Many of its stated goals had been advanced. By March, the Republican Senate had confirmed more than 185 of Trump’s conservative nominees for the federal bench. All but eight of the judges had ties to the Federalist Society, headed by longtime CNP members Eugene Meyer and Leonard Leo. Two of the CNP’s favored Supreme Court nominees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, had been confirmed. The court was only one justice away from a conservative majority, and the CNP had its eye on the seat held by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. With a second term in office and normal attrition, Trump could decisively tilt the federal courts, opening the door for a massive overhaul of the American legal framework. . .

Ultimate realization of the CNP’s agenda depended on winning a second term for Trump in November. With another four years, it could enshrine its socially regressive policies on the federal level, further blur the line between church and state, and consolidate huge windfalls for corporations and wealthy individuals. As of January 1, electoral prospects looked sweet. . .

On the tactical front, it seemed as though the Trump team had found a winning formula. Ralph Reed, a member of the CNP’s board of governors. . . . continued to employ his Faith and Freedom Coalition and its partner, United in Purpose, to get out the vote among conservative white Christians in critical swing states, expanding their targeting from evangelicals to Catholics.

The coalition’s data and app development also advanced. The uCampaign apps developed by Thomas Peters had served their purpose in the 2016 and 2018 elections, but they were due for an upgrade. In late 2019, word began to circulate that Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was preparing to release the Trump 2020 app, a component of what he labeled a “juggernaut campaign.” Parscale had quietly taken over Trump’s digital operations and planned to use the new app as part of a broader strategy. Trump 2020 was designed to leverage uCampaign features such as gamification (awarding points and prizes for participating in campaign activities and sharing contacts). It also expanded the use of geolocation devices to recruit and harvest data from attendees of Trump rallies. The crowds, energized by Trump’s live performances, would be invited to download the app and recruit others across their social networks. The rallies were a crucial component of the campaign. The more outrageous Trump’s rhetoric on the podium, the more earned media coverage he received. . .

Then, on January 20, 2020, doctors diagnosed the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the United States. . .

Trump’s reelection strategy rested on a thriving economy, as well as mass rallies and in-church recruitment. Now public health officials were urging lockdowns that would derail both the economy and the gatherings. Trump’s CNP supporters stepped up to the plate.

The CNP’s meetings had long featured briefings on forthcoming elections by members and allies, followed by a memorandum containing a series of “Action Steps.” The October 2018 meeting’s action steps, for example, called for members to “Volunteer and Contribute to key candidates and organizations (FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots, [anti-abortion group] Susan B. Anthony List) that are engaged in turning out voters” for the midterms.

But by February 2020, the CNP, fearing the erosion of Trump’s support, shifted its strategy from boosting the popular vote to deflecting it. Lisa Nelson, the CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council, told the group, “We’ve been focused on the national vote, and obviously we all want President Trump to win, and win the national vote, but it’s very clear from all the comments and all the suggestions up front that, really, what it comes down to is the states, and the state legislators.” Her organization, she told them, had already drafted a model resolution “to make sure there’s no confusion among conservative legislators around national popular vote and the Electoral College.”

Nelson noted that her group was exploring additional ways to invalidate a potential Trump loss in consultation with three election experts, including CNP board of governors member Cleta Mitchell, “who I know you all know, on trying to identify what are those action items that legislators can take in their states, and I think that they’ve identified a few. They can write a letter to the secretary of state, questioning the validity of an election, and saying, ‘What did happen that night?’ So we are drafting a lot of those things. If you have ideas in that area, let us know, and we’ll get them to the state legislators, and they can start to kind of exercise their political muscle in that area.”

So as early as February 2020, the CNP and its advisers were already anticipating various strategies to overturn the results of the election in the event of the loss of either the popular vote or the Electoral College, or both. At the same time, they adopted a three-pronged approach to enhancing Trump’s chances in November. The first involved expanding their use of data to juice Republican votes and suppress Democratic turnout. The second was to mobilize supporters in swing states to ignite Tea Party–like protests against the virus-related public safety lockdowns. The third was to deploy physicians with dubious credentials to dismiss the dangers of Covid-19 through a massive media blitz. All three initiatives were activated in April. It was a rehash of a familiar formula, concocting groups whose names and URLs changed with dizzying speed and calling them “grassroots” organizations. (Critics preferred the term “astroturf.”)

United in Purpose took the lead. In June 2016, UiP had convened the epic Times Square gathering of 1,000 fundamentalist activists to give Trump their blessing. Now, over the spring of 2020, UiP held a series of conference calls to update its strategy. One call—a recording of which was leaked to The Intercept reporter Lee Fang—took place in mid-April. UiP Chairman Ken Eldred told his associates on the call that the Covid-19 virus was a “gift from God” because it was turning Americans back to Christ and building audiences for religious broadcasts—which had been crucial platforms for political campaigns. But “Satan has been busy too,” Eldred warned. “The virus has messed up many of our plans involving our in-person meetings with voters.” UiP called its 2020 campaign “Operation Ziklag” (named after a Biblical town that served as a base for the Philistines until it was won by David).

The April call featured various movers and shakers from the CNP. Ralph Reed spoke to the “macro political landscape,” explaining that a key component of the Democrats’ strategy was the Black vote in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. The Democrats had experienced a significant drop-off between 2012 and 2016. “There were 47,000 fewer Black votes cast in just Milwaukee County alone,” Reed told the call participants—in Wisconsin, a state Trump had won by fewer than 24,000 votes.

This was not a coincidence. In September 2020, Britain’s Channel 4 reported that the Trump campaign had used Cambridge Analytica data to profile and target 3.5 million Black voters in 2016, assigning them to a category the campaign called “Deterrence,” with messaging designed to suppress the vote.

Reed told his associates that “his ‘data partners’ had identified 26 million key voters in battleground states, about three-fourths of whom were Facebook users,” The Intercept’s Fang reported. Once again, the 2020 strategy, like the 2016 efforts, would strive to get out the vote for Republicans and suppress the vote of traditional Democrats.

Abortion continued to be a major calling card of the campaign, spearheaded by CNP Gold Circle member Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of the Susan B. Anthony List. Dannenfelser, who had recently joined the UiP alliance, told the callers that her organization had conducted surveys on messaging with pro-life working-class voters in battleground Rust Belt states and found that its “born alive” formulation on abortion, promoted by Trump, “has had a tremendous effect in moving persuadable voters in all those areas in Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.” This would strengthen Trump’s chances in the swing states that comprised the “northern path” to victory: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as well as the “southern path” of North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona. (Georgia, assumed to be solidly in the Republican column, would prove a wild card.) . . .

The Washington Post’s April story on the “100 business leaders” initiative made no mention of the CNP, despite the fact that among the leading figures, Moore was on the CNP board of governors, Nelson was a member, and Martin and Brandon were officers. Moore warned the Post that the disaffection of “the right” presented a growing threat to public order, neglecting to mention the ways the CNP was stoking the flames. “There’s a massive movement on the right now, growing exponentially,” he said. “In the next two weeks, you’ll see protests in the streets by conservatives; you’ll see a big pushback against the lockdown in some states. People are at the boiling point.”

The “boiling point” materialized over the next two weeks, as Moore forecast, with the assistance of another CNP-linked effort called Convention of States, led by Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and CNP Gold Circle member. He told the Post his group would function as a “clearinghouse where all these guys can find each other” and praised “spontaneous citizen groups self-organizing on the Internet and protesting what they perceive to be government overreach.” Earlier that week, The New York Times reported that the coalition’s members were mobilizing their networks for state-level rallies, filing lawsuits, and commissioning polls, all to counter the lockdowns. “Nonprofit groups including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots have used their social media accounts and text and email lists to spread the word about the protests across the country.” The most publicized events occurred at the Michigan statehouse on April 15 and May 1, when armed protesters invaded the state Capitol, but these were far from the only ones. . .

The rest of the August CNP meeting was held under the usual conditions of secrecy, but this time its proceedings were leaked to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow Jr., who published an account on October 14. The CNP leaders were sounding notes of alarm. “This is a spiritual battle. This is good versus evil,” CNP president Walton told the group. “We have to do everything possible to win.” Trump’s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 crisis was hurting his chances at the polls, and Democratic voters were newly energized. The old messaging about abortion and unisex bathrooms looked less compelling as the pandemic death toll mounted and millions were thrown out of work.

The CNP went into crisis mode, focusing on the mechanics of the election. Charlie Kirk, head of the right-wing student group Turning Point USA and a relatively new member, took the stage to celebrate the closure of campuses, which could deprive the Democrats of a half-million student votes. “So, please keep the campuses closed,” he said. Executive committee member Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, asked his audience for ideas to foil mail-in voting: “We need to stop those ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do.” . . .

A new Stop the Steal Facebook group had appeared on November 4 and was banned the following day. The Washington Post quoted the page’s recruitment of “boots on the ground to protect the integrity of the vote” and solicitation of donations to cover “‘flights and hotels to send people’ to battleground states including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.” According to the Post, the “Stop the Steal” group appeared as a co-host on 12 different Facebook protest listings, among them one for a car caravan from California. The group gained 360,000 members before it was removed for violating Facebook’s rules for inflammatory content, as users called for “civil war” and “overthrowing the government.”

According to Allpress, the StoptheSteal.us site provided organizational information for protests on November 6 at counting centers and capitols across six “contested” swing states. CNP member Charlie Kirk was listed as the primary organizational contact for Nevada protests, along with alt-right activist Mike Cernovich. The Center for Media and Democracy reported the state-level involvement of other CNP members and added that FreedomWorks, run by CNP Action board of governors member Adam Brandon, was organizing “Protect the Vote” protests in five states.

On November 6, as Biden pulled ahead, Jenny Beth Martin announced that Tea Party Patriot Action was going to hold “Protect the Vote” rallies in four swing states, “working with FreedomWorks, Turning Points [sic], Heritage”—all run by members of the CNP—“and countless social media influencers to help organize and assemble citizens in various locations around the country to voice our support for transparent and honest ballot counting.” . . .

The election was called for Joe Biden on November 7, based on late-counted ballots in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Attorney Cleta Mitchell made her feelings known on Fox News, stating, “We’re already double-checking and finding dead people having voted,” and tweeted that the Georgia recount was “A FAKE!!!”

The CNP refused to surrender and convened a special meeting November 12 to 14. Mitchell appeared at the meeting on an updated panel, now called “Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?” And CNP Action answered the question with a new set of “Action Steps.”

These directed members to lobby legislators in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada to support litigation challenging the election outcome; to “actively educate your pastor and church” with resources from Charlie Kirk, the Family Research Council, and others; to “reach out” to 10 CNP affiliates engaged in the Georgia runoff election; and (ominously) to “connect with local law enforcement.”

Other measures were being set in motion. A familiar figure resurfaced: Trump’s first national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Flynn, too, had a history with the CNP. In July 2016, Flynn appeared on a CNP panel on “Terrorism and the Condition of the Military.” Academic researcher Allpress found Flynn listed in a Zoominfo database of “email addresses and direct dials for the Council for National Policy employees” with a CNP phone number (first listed on November 26 and still active as of February 11—throughout the period when he was appearing at the Stop the Steal protests, including in the January 6, 2021, WildProtest rally).

Dispelling any possibility of the entry representing another “Mike Flynn,” the listing was linked to his 2016 CNP panel appearance. . .

On December 10, the CNP’s Conservative Action Project published a letter stating, “There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election.” It stated that “state legislatures in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada and Michigan should exercise their plenary power under the Constitution and appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump.” It further called on conservative leaders and groups to implement the strategy discussed at the previous CNP meeting and pressure their state and national representatives to replace the electors. The letter was signed by over a dozen members of the CNP, including the president, the executive director, and executive committee member Jenny Beth Martin. . .

The CNP connection surfaced on a number of fronts, as reflected in a chronology published by The Washington Post. On December 20, the domain “WildProtest” was registered. The Post’s Philip Bump wrote, “It appears to be the brainchild of Ali Alexander” (the onetime CNP member and former Ali Akbar). On January 2, Amy Kremer of Women for America First tweeted, “We are excited to announce the site of our January 6 event will be the Ellipse in President’s Park, just steps from the White House!” Kremer appeared in the CNP’s 2014 roster on the CNP board of governors, listed as chairman of the Tea Party Express. Her daughter Kylie Kremer took out the National Park Service permit for the “March for Trump,” dated January 5, 2021.

CNP affiliates took action on a local level. Two days before the protest, Charlie Kirk tweeted that his organizations were “sending 80-plus buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president.” (Kirk was indulging in hyperbole. Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet later confirmed to Reuters that Kirk’s organization, Turning Point Action, sent “seven buses carrying 350 students” to the rally, but added that the group “condemns political violence.”) Another tweet from Turning Point Action invited protesters to “ride a bus & receive priority entry” and “stay in a complimentary hotel.” Both tweets were deleted after January 6. In Lynchburg, Virginia, more than 100 protesters boarded buses organized by Liberty Counsel Action, chaired by CNP board of governors member Mat Staver. . .

On Tuesday, January 5, Trump supporters gathered at Freedom Plaza in Washington for a Stop the Steal “pre-rally.” Ali Alexander led them in cries of “Victory or Death!” Michael Flynn told them, “We stand at a crucible moment in United States history,” and local CBS affiliate reporter Mike Valerio tweeted from the scene, “We’ve heard General Mike Flynn give a salute / shoutout to QAnon soldiers.”

On January 6, thousands of protesters converged on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. President Trump addressed his followers in strident tones, urging them to “walk down to the Capitol,” “show strength,” and “demand that Congress do the right thing.” Then he departed for the White House to watch the day’s events on television.

The crowd moved toward the Capitol and invaded its halls, attacking Capitol police officers and vandalizing the premises. Simone Gold reprised her speech in the Rotunda, condemning the Covid-19 vaccine as “an experimental biological agent deceptively named a vaccine.” Some members of the mob clutched Bibles and carried signs reading “Jesus Saves.” Americans were stunned by shocking images of men in paramilitary gear snaking up the Capitol steps, of the mob assaulting a prostrate police officer, of extremists brandishing zip-tie handcuffs in the Senate chamber. . .

It will be months, if not years, before the details of the events in January will be fully revealed, including the identities of the organizers and underwriters and the role of the CNP. Many additional threads require urgent examination, and this will demand the combined efforts of federal and congressional investigators, journalists, academics, and litigators. One is the mounting evidence of heavy QAnon involvement in the violence in the Capitol. The FBI has noted the wide display of “symbols associated with QAnon conspiracy theories” among the rioters, and QAnon followers are heavily represented among those arrested so far. The marchers on the Capitol also bore a number of Christian Nationalist symbols, including a wooden cross and a flag reading “Make America Godly Again.” Recently, there have been disturbing reports that QAnon has been aggressively targeting Midwestern evangelicals, including mainline Protestants, Southern Baptists, and Pentecostals. Pentecostals are a little-understood but growing force in American politics, particularly among African-American and Hispanic voters, and the CNP has been cultivating their leaders for years.

The CNP’s affiliates were by no means acting alone in attempting to overturn the results of the election, or in their support for the Capitol protest on January 6. The evidence shows various networks at work: civilian and military, independent and intersecting, feckless and murderous.

What is irrefutable is that members of the CNP and their circle exerted their influence and manipulated their followers to support Trump’s lies about the stolen election and his effort to derail the electoral process. Many of these people emerged as key players in the efforts to disrupt America’s 220-year-old tradition of the peaceful transfer of power and stoked the fury of insurrectionists who desecrated American democracy on that fateful January afternoon. (Underscored emphasis and external hyperlink added.)

The author, Anne Nelson) is either unaware of, or overlooked, the dominant role of radical Roman Catholic laymen, determined to overthrow America's democracy, in the formation of the "Moral Majority" and connected activist organizations such as the CNP. Not to be overlooked is the fact that the Evangelical dominionist Christian nationalists were waiting in the wings at the time when the USCCB's Pastoral Plan was formulated, and certainly melded with "the angry group of men" if they had not already been a part of them. In connection with Ralph Reed's role in the 2020 election, the author uses the phrase, "expanding their targeting from evangelicals to Catholics." Here again the always dominant role of Roman Catholics in the alliance with right-wing Evangelicals is obscured. The error was not that of the author, but of Ralph Reed and his associates. With egos bloated by a sense of power, they have from the beginning been blind to the fact that they are being manipulated by Roman Catholics. Among the voting public, regular church-going Catholics were always a reliable voting bloc for the Republican Roman Catholic right-wing Evangelical alliance. For Trump, Conservative Catholics Are The New Evangelicals points out that it was the Roman Catholic vote in the key battleground States that won the White House for Donald Trump in 2016. Trump himself did not realize it, and the Evangelicals also clearly did not. While they were unaware of this critical fact, Richard Viguerie of "the angry group of men" boasted of what he had done.

The passages quoted from the Nelson article prove conclusively that the CNP was deeply involved in promoting the candidacy of Donald Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. Moreover there is conclusive evidence that they were closely associated with, and probably the primary instigators of, the machinations designed to keep Trump in the White House even if he lost the 2020 election. The CNP must be held accountable for all of the unconstitutional actions that followed Joe Biden's election victory, including the attempted coup of January 6, 2021.

In the passages quoted above there are several references to a sinister movement called QAnon. To the soberminded, this movement's mysterious conspiracy theories are nothing short of extreme delusional lunacy; but they are strangely seductive for an astonishing number of people, including elected officials. Moreover, the movement's conspiracy theories are spreading alarmingly. The evidence is strong that QAnon was deeply embedded in the CNP action plans supporting the lies propagated on behalf of Donald Trump during and after the 2020 election campaign. This dangerous and ideologically driven propaganda movement demands a detailed examination of the enormous threat it poses to democracy and the separation of church and state. Here it must be noted that because of the QAnon involvement in the CNP, it can be linked all the way back to the USCCB's Pastoral Plan.

Anne Nelson's indictment of the CNP has been corroborated abundantly by other reports including the following:

The Shadow Network (Council for National Policy) Is Not Going Away

Anne Nelson details the elusive Council for National Policy's strategy for the election and onward.

Five years ago, at the dawn of the Trump era, few national observers were focused on the role of the Council for National Policy. That was not a coincidence; over the past four decades, this coalition of Christian nationalists and fossil fuel interests has deliberately kept a low public profile, maintaining both its meetings and its membership under a veil of secrecy. Although it is registered with the IRS as a tax-exempt “educational” organization, it has advanced an unapologetically partisan agenda, promoting Republican candidates from the radical right and purging moderates. Key to its success is the expansion of its information ecosystem, composed of fundamentalist broadcasting outlets and myriad digital platforms. Often masquerading as “news” outlets, these organizations have served as vehicles for partisan propaganda and dangerous disinformation, including the ongoing hydroxychloroquine hoax claiming that the drug cures COVID-19.

Even Washington insiders who were familiar with the CNP often discounted its influence. As of 2020 this was no longer possible. CNP affiliates played an outsized role in helping Trump win the 2016 election (as documented in my book Shadow Network), offering his campaign the money, the strategy, and the ground troops his primitive operation lacked—enhanced by state-of-the-art digital campaign tools and the Koch Brothers’ i360 data platform. The CNP went on to reap the benefits: CNP’s then-president Tony Perkins, became a regular visitor to the Oval Office, where he successfully lobbied to restrict the civil rights of LGBTQ populations. Trump granted a day of exclusive coverage at the White House to Salem Media, co-founded by another former president of the CNP. CNP leadership pushed the nominations of right-wing federal judges, and turned out in force for the Rose Garden super-spreader event to celebrate the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. . .

As the campaign season advanced, the CNP leadership realized that Trump’s chances were eroding. They held a series of strategy meetings, which were accessed and recorded for the first time by researcher Brent Allpress. There the CNP strategists laid out a series of options: If Trump lost the popular vote, they would emphasize the Electoral College. If he lost the Electoral College, they would promote spurious claims of election fraud and support challenges to the electors in Republican-controlled statehouses. Videos of the meetings record the presentation of these strategies by various CNP members, including Lisa Nelson, CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), attorney Cleta Mitchell, and Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a member of the Board of Directors of CNP Action, the organization’s lobbying arm.

After the November votes were counted, the organization went into overdrive. On December 10 the CNP leadership released a letter (drafted by Mitchell) calling on legislators in swing states to throw out over 25 million votes based on false claims of electoral fraud. On January 2, 2021, Cleta Mitchell represented Trump on his call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger pressuring him to alter his state’s count.

Finally, as a last-gasp effort, a number of members helped to organize the January 6 “Stop the Steal” protest on Capitol Hill. CNP members Jenny Beth Martin, Charlie Kirk, and Virginia Thomas all publicized the event in advance. Ali Alexander, a former CNP member, was a lead organizer, and Trump advisor Michael Flynn, who appeared on the CNP’s staff roster, gave an address at the protest saluting his QAnon supporters. . .

The Biden administration came to office with a nearly 7 million lead in the popular vote, but his Electoral College victory was based on a razor-thin margin of less than 45,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona (both current targets of voting suppression legislation), and Wisconsin. As election-watchers look ahead to 2024, they should bear in mind that the Council for National Policy is characterized by three traits: it does not give up; its tactics are infinitely morphable; and it is willing to operate on the very fringes of legality, without regard for public safety or the principles of democracy. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The following hyperlinked article provides further corroboration of the CNP's close association with Donald Trump and his attack on the American Electoral system:

Secretive Council for National Policy Closely Tied to Trump

With last night’s confirmation of religious conservative Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Council for National Policy (CNP) has a lot to celebrate.

The secretive Christian right-wing group “has been strategizing to dominate the Supreme Court for decades,” according to Columbia University professor and CNP expert Anne Nelson, and had 15 members in attendance for Barrett’s superspreader Rose Garden nomination ceremony in September, the Associated Press reported.]But CNP’s role in bolstering the Trump administration goes well beyond the Court. The agenda for its August meeting, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) from investigative researcher Brent Allpress, demonstrates the ostensibly nonpartisan group’s strong ties to Trump and the Republican Party. . .

Parts of the meeting were recently exposed in The Washington Post on October 14 by Robert O’Harrow, but the full agenda is being first made public here.

The agenda shows that the meeting began with an exclusive event for Gold Circle members and spouses headlined by Trump’s former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and followed by a panel of three high-powered conservative lawyers, Joseph diGenova, Sidney Powell, and Carrie Severino.

Whitaker, who briefly served as AG after Jeff Sessions’ resignation, was recommended for that position by Leonard Leo, a CNP Board of Governor’s member and Trump’s go-to for federal judicial candidates.

All three lawyers have ties to Leo’s Federalist Society, which Leo now co-chairs, and are connected to the Trump administration. Fox News talking head diGenova is an informal advisor to Trump. Powell, dubbed the “#MAGA Lawyer” by Politico, is currently the attorney for Trump’s former disgraced national security advisor Michael Flynn. And Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), has led efforts to get Trump’s judicial nominees confirmed and attended Barrett’s Rose Garden nomination ceremony. . .

CNP’s meeting agenda shows that the videos discussing voter suppression leaked to The Washington Post were part of another two-part panel on so-called “Election Integrity.” Both were facilitated by Judicial Watch president Thomas Fitton, who told attendees, “We need to stop those [vote-by-mail] ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do.”

A who’s who of the right-wing’s voter suppression advocates joined Fitton including: J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF); Cleta Mitchell, PILF’s chairman of the board and partner at Foley and Lardner, LLP; and Hans von Spakovsky, PILF board member and senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

“Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth,” Adams told CNP members at the meeting.

Adams and Spakovsky, along with Leo’s Honest Election Project (HEP), True the Vote and Election Integrity Project California (EIPC), have been leading the effort to delegitimize mail-in voting, CMD reported. EIPC’s president and co-founder Linda Paine is a Board of Governor’s member of CNP.

In addition, these groups along with Judicial Watch, True the Vote, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, are fighting to purge voter rolls across the country.

CNP’s August meeting also held panels on “Exposing the Black Live Matter Movement,” a “DNC Watch Party” hosted by anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, and remarks from South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R), North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest, and Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick.

The CNP and other radical right-wing organizations are working feverishly to restrict the right to vote, which is the bedrock principle of the "government of the people, by the people, for the people," which sustains democracy:

Conservative Expert Privately Warned GOP Donors That a Voting Rights Bill Would Help Democrats

Testifying before Congress, Hans von Spakovsky gave high-minded reasons for opposing the bill. At a private meeting of GOP donors, he was more blunt.

On the first day the new Congress was in session in January, Rep. John Sarbanes, a Democrat from Maryland, introduced the For the People Act, known in the House of Representatives as H.R.1. The sweeping bill seeks to revamp lobbyist registration, campaign financing, and voting rights. The Brennan Center for Justice said it “would create a more responsive and representative government by making it easier for voters to cast a ballot and harder for lawmakers to gerrymander.”

By the end of the month, hearings were held on Capitol Hill. One of the witnesses before the House Judiciary Committee hearings was Hans von Spakovsky, a former Federal Election Commission member who is now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Von Spakovsky used high-minded and principled language to oppose the bill. In his prepared testimony, he wrote that H.R.1 is “clearly unconstitutional,” complaining that its provisions “come at the expense of federalism.”

Just two weeks later, however, as von Spakovsky addressed a private gathering of conservatives, he was considerably more candid about his reason for opposing the bill: It would be bad for Republicans.

That’s the message this scholar delivered when he traveled to Orlando, Florida, to brief a Council for National Policy-sponsored meeting of Republican donors and Christian right leaders on the bill. Sitting in the Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes Ballroom, von Spakovsky explained that expanded voting rights and nonpartisan redistricting could imperil GOP political power. . .

Both the Council for National Policy and the Heritage Foundation, where von Spakovsky is currently employed, were founded by Paul Weyrich, an avowed opponent of access to the ballot.
“How many of our Christians have what I call the ‘goo-goo syndrome’ — good government?” asked Weyrich at a rally in 1980, a video clip of which is available on YouTube. “They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. ”

“Elections are not won by a majority of people; they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now,” Weyrich continued. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

The suppression of the right to vote was a specific target of Paul Weyrich as betrayed by his own words. Suppression of the right to vote has now been combined with open demands for violation of the existing Electoral College law in specific swing states. It is a mark of the sense of power that the enemies of America's liberal democracy and separation of Church and State now have that they are no longer concerned about maintaining secrecy:

Conservative Activist Leaders Call For an End to Democracy

Leaders of the secretive, Christian Right organization the Council for National Policy (CNP) are calling on state legislators in six swing states that President-elect Joe Biden won to throw out the votes of their constituents and appoint the Electoral College electors themselves.

In a Dec. 10 letter posted to the website of the allied Conservative Action Project, CNP members, including CNP President William Walton, CNP Executive Director Bob McEwen, former South Carolina senator and former Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, Leadership Institute President Morton Blackwell, and Tea Party Patriots Chair Jenny Beth Martin, advocated abolishing the nation’s popular democracy and openly lied about the clear results of the election, which members of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency called “the most secure in American history.”
“There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election,” falsely states the letter. “Joe Biden is not president-elect.”

The signers of the letter want legislators to throw out the collective 25.5 million presidential votes cast by the residents of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—a total that represents roughly 16% of all votes cast in the presidential race. Biden won 312,000 more votes than Trump in those states, including 154,000 in Michigan, and he beat Trump by more than 7 million votes overall.

The letter links to an uncredited document that details a “constitutional remedy” to throw out millions of votes and lists alleged election irregularities in the five states. According to metadata embedded in the file, the document was created by Cleta Mitchell, a GOP attorney, CNP member, and Bradley Foundation board member known for her voter suppression work. Mitchell chairs the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which attacked vote-by-mail and advocate voter purges in swing states this year. . .

The letter is not subtle, dishonestly claiming that there is “overwhelming” evidence that election officials, pressured by Democrats, “violated the Constitution, state, and federal law in changing mail-in voting rules that resulted in unlawful and invalid certifications of Biden victories.”

Under plenary power outlined in the Constitution, state lawmakers should “appoint clean slates of electors,” state the CNP leaders, and members of Congress should “object to and reject” slates of electors for Biden. . .

The letter comes as 18 state attorneys general, led by Texas AG Ken Paxton, are petitioning the Supreme Court to nullify the elections in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Election law expert Rick Hasen said, “This is a press release masquerading as a lawsuit…What utter garbage. Dangerous garbage, but garbage.” . . .

On Thursday, 126 Republican U.S. House members, a majority of the GOP caucus, came out opposed to democratically decided elections, filing an amicus brief in support of Paxton’s desperate lawsuit. The roster includes the very top of the House GOP leadership. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Gary Palmer (R-AL) all joined, as well as several members who won re-election in the states whose elections they alleged were full of irregularities.(Underscored emphasis added.)

It appears that among all of the organizations created pursuant to the USCCB's Action Plan the CNP is probably the most influential and dangerous.

This study paper has contained report after report which collectively and conclusively prove that the USCCB's Pastoral Plan created a network of interlocking personalities and organizations designed to undermine and finally destroy America's liberal democracy with its constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. The network of interlocking personalities is of critical importance, because it is they who have created and executed the operations of the interlocking organizations. Among these personalities Roman Catholics are dominant, and they are clearly the generals of the millions charged with "marshalling political power, and power to manipulate professional groups, in order to advance the objectives of the Vatican."

In The Life and Death of NSSM 200 Dr. Mumford documents the importance of ecumenical action to the USCCB's Pastoral action plan. He states, "Before the Vatican's need of ecumenism came along, the small fledgling ecumenical movement of the 1960s was going nowhere. Blum's article was published in 1971. Then, suddenly, ecumenical activity exploded." This may have been incorrect in not taking into account Vatican II; nevertheless the USCCB stressed the importance of ecumenical activity and this followed in spades in America. However, in this context this was an ecumenism which embraced much more than interrelationships between Christian faiths. As established by the documentation in this study paper, it is an ecumenism ranging from the Christians who have chosen the power of politics over the power of the gospel, to white supremacists raging with resentment towards the racial minorities of America. It includes Dominionists lusting for the power of theocratic dictatorship to irreligionists whose lust is for wealth and autocratic power. The element of white supremacy is not surprising, given the true reason for the agreement to form the Moral Majority movement. The American South has ever been racist, and here the Church of Rome has had a history most worthy of condemnation. In 2015, just short of six years ago, Pope Francis delivered a speech in front of Independence Hall, and at the lectern used by Abraham Lincoln for his Gettysburg speech. At the very least this was a declaration of confidence that autocratic Rome would be victorious over "government of the people, by the people, for the people." On reflection almost six years later, this was probably a conscious signal by the Pontiff that the subversion of American democracy by the USCCB's Pastoral Action Plan was already irreversible.

HOPE FADES FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND CONSTITUTIONAL SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

We are now witnessing the consequences of the USCCB's nefarious Action Plan, ofwhich only a small fraction has been covered in this paper. In concluding this study paper, the following is a sampling of the warnings now being sounded in the secular world:

More Than 100 Scholars Issue Warning That American Democracy Is In Danger, Call For Federal Reforms (Forbes, Monday, June 1, 2021.)

A statement signed by more than 100 scholars on Tuesday warns that as a result of Republican-led states proposing or implementing “radical changes” to election laws, the voting procedures in several states are being transformed into “political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.” The statement includes this dire prediction: “our entire democracy is now at risk” . . .

Referring to themselves as “scholars of democracy,” the signatories include leading professors of political science, government, communications and history at many of the nation’s most prominent universities and colleges. As of mid-afternoon today, more than 100 individuals had signed onto the statement, but additional signatures were expected to be added.

Claiming that “statutory changes in large key electoral battleground states are dangerously politicizing the process of electoral administration,” the statement identified several actions recently put in place by Republican-controlled legislatures that undermine fundamental democratic principles, including:

extending the power to override electoral outcomes based on unproven allegations;

seeking to restrict access to the ballot;

putting in place criminal sentences and fines meant to intimidate and scare away poll workers and nonpartisan administrators;

curtailing procedures such as early voting and mail voting; and

appealing to qualities like the “purity” and “quality” of the vote, concepts once used in the Jim Crow South to restrict the Black vote. . .

Similar statutory changes are being made in an increasing number of states:

Voting Laws Roundup: July 2021

Eighteen states have already enacted 30 laws this year that will make it harder for Americans to vote.

As many state legislatures conclude their regular sessions, the full impact of efforts to suppress the vote in 2021 is coming into view.

Between January 1 and July 14, 2021, at least 18 states enacted 30 laws that restrict access to the vote. These laws make mail voting and early voting more difficult, impose harsher voter ID requirements, and make faulty voter purges more likely, among other things. More than 400 bills with provisions that restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states in the 2021 legislative sessions. . .

This wave of restrictions on voting — the most aggressive we have seen in more than a decade of tracking state voting laws — is in large part motivated by false and often racist allegations about voter fraud.

Congress has the power to stem the tide. The For the People Act, passed by the House and now awaiting action in the Senate, would mitigate the effect of many state-level restrictions. And the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would protect voters by preventing new discriminatory laws from being implemented. (Underscored emphasis added.)

It is common knowledge that there is a seemingly insurmountable obstacle in the way of passage through the US Senate of the legislation that would "stem the tide." Perhaps this is the reason for widespread pessimism that America's democracy will survive the onslaught:

Wake up, folks: the campaign against democracy continues

In a speech 40 years ago to a group of conservative preachers, Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich said, “Now many of our Christians have what I call the ‘goo-goo syndrome.’ Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now.

“As a matter of fact,” he continued, “our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Weyrich’s idea continues to animate the GOP today. In dismissing a Democratic push for reforms, including vote-by-mail, same-day registration, and early voting to assist state-run elections in the midst of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump opined, “They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Starting with Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” in 1968, through Weyrich’s candid acknowledgement in 1980, to Donald Trump’s numerous rants, the GOP has consistently stood against reasonable voter registration laws and fair and equitable access to the polls — because they know they lose in a battle ideas.

What was that about believing someone when they tell you who they are? Republicans have been telling us who they are for half a century. Weyrich is gone, but his Heritage Foundation and voter suppression efforts endure. The GOP continues to do everything they can to keep Democratic turnout as low as possible.

Republicans have also consistently shown they have no respect for the very concept of governance. Weyrich called good governance “goo-goo.” Ronald Reagan said government is “not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist said his goal was to starve government until it was so small he could “drown it in the bathtub.” . . .

Former George W. Bush speech writer David Frum doesn’t trust his old Republican colleagues. In his 2018 book, The Corruption of the American Republic, Frum writes, “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”

The call to wake up is clearly directed at Democrats, but generally falls on deaf ears in the general populace. This has been so since the times of Seventh-day Adventist preachers and writers A. T. Jones and Christian Edwardson, followed more recently by secular population control expert Stephen Mumford, then again Seventh-day Adventist preacher and writer William Grotheer (there are probably more, but always an unheeded minority.) The warnings of the deadly peril in which American democracy stands are now being sounded in academia and the news media; but is being muted by Rome's many propaganda outlets in the most blatant fashion.

The following is a warning in the world of journalism:

Guess what? The Trump coup against American democracy never stopped

If you think the coup attempt is over, or that Jan. 6 was a "defeat" for fascism, you're not paying attention

I would like to share a public secret: Donald Trump and the Republican Party's coup attempt was not defeated on Jan. 6. The war against American democracy continues — and is gaining momentum.

All one has to do is take off one's blinders to see it. Unfortunately, too many Americans, including the Democratic Party's leadership, the professional smart people and other members of the country's mainstream media and chattering class, have waited for months to acknowledge what has been happening in plain sight.

Republicans have rejected any independent investigation into the events of Jan. 6. Why? Because they feel implicated, explicitly or otherwise, in supporting and collaborating with Trump's coup attempt and the assault on the U.S. Capitol.

By rejecting any efforts to properly investigate those events, Republicans are also giving permission and encouragement for similar acts of right-wing political violence and terrorism in the future.

Instead of being cowed by President Biden's victory and the events of Jan. 6, the Republican Party and Trump's larger neofascist movement have only been further empowered in their campaign to end America's multiracial democracy.

With attempts to pass voting restrictions in nearly all states, Republicans are trying to impose a new Jim Crow regime on Black and brown people. This strategy involves onerous ID requirements, gerrymandering, threats of intimidation and violence, severe limitations on polling places, absentee voting and early voting, and other selectively enforced laws and rules aimed at making it more difficult for nonwhite people — an indispensable part of the Democratic base — to exercise the right to vote.

Republicans are also trying to make their anti-democracy attacks "legal" by rigging America's electoral system so that only their approved candidates will win. In this near-future scenario, Democrats and others will still be permitted to vote — thus lending a veneer of legitimacy to Republican claims that they have won "free and fair elections" — but the outcome will be already have been determined.

This strategy, which political scientists describe as "managed democracy," is common to autocratic regimes such as Vladimir Putin's Russia, Viktor Orbán's Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey.

In the Atlantic, Adam Serwer explores the Republican attack on democracy in further detail, explaining that Republicans did not block a Jan. 6 commission purely because they fear Trump or want to "move on":

"They are blocking a January 6 commission because they agree with the underlying ideological claim of the rioters, which is that Democratic electoral victories should not be recognized. Because they regard such victories as inherently illegitimate — the result of fraud, manipulation, or the votes of people who are not truly American — they believe that the law should be changed to ensure that elections more accurately reflect the will of Real Americans, who by definition vote Republican. They believe that there is nothing for them to investigate, because the actual problem is not the riot itself but the unjust usurpation of power that occurred when Democrats won. Absent that provocation, the rioters would have stayed home. . ." (Underscored emphasis added.)

Finally, a projection into the future which may not be wide of the mark:

January 6, 2025 could be the date American democracy dies. Mark it on your calendar.

The 2022 and 2024 House elections are not just political battles over the Biden agenda or the Trump tax cuts. US democracy itself will be on the ballot.

You can write it down: Jan. 6, 2025, will be a hinge date in history. On that day, American democracy either will live or die. And if we do not take aggressive steps to ensure that Democrats control the House of Representatives when we get there, the prognosis for our republic is grim.

It is rare to have advance notice of a monumental moment. Before Pearl Harbor, no one suspected that Dec. 7 would “live in infamy.” We could not predict years beforehand that we would celebrate our nation’s birth on the Fourth of July or mark 9/11 as a monument to national tragedy and heroism.

Yet it is now clear that the Sixth of January 2025 will join those historic dates. A joint session of the new 120th Congress will meet that day to count the electoral votes from the 2024 election. The House of Representatives should perform its largely symbolic function and certify the will of the voters, naming the winner of 270 or more electoral votes as the president. That is how it should go. But there is a real chance that it will not.

GOP could install its own president

House Republicans are now firmly in the grip of a deeply anti-democratic right-wing populism. Almost all have now essentially pledged to "support and defend" Donald Trump and Trumpism rather than the Constitution of the United States. They no longer are constrained by once inviolate norms or even by observable facts. If these radicals control the House on 1/6/25, and if a Democrat has won the Electoral College vote, it now seems completely possible that Republicans will instead confirm their own choice as president of the United States. If that happens, the world’s greatest democracy will come to an end.

The mechanism would be the same as the one they tried after the 2020 election: invalidating the Electoral College votes of certain states that went for the Democrat, thereby throwing the election to a vote of the House. This gambit failed because Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the majority Democrats blocked it. We will not have that protection in 2025 if the Speaker is Kevin McCarthy. He voted with the insurrectionists last January.

But wasn’t that just a protest vote? If they have power next time, would House Republicans actually do something so catastrophic?

Well, consider their recent behavior. Almost all have helped spread Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen. Two-thirds of them took that seditionist "protest" vote just hours after a violent mob stormed the Capitol, maimed police officers, erected a noose, and desecrated our democracy’s most sacred spaces. Only 10 of them voted to impeach Trump for inciting the insurrection. . .

So yes, it’s easy to predict that a House GOP caucus that remains deeply committed to Trump and his seditionist lies would steal the presidential election if they could. That means that the House elections in 2022 and 2024 are not just battles over normal political questions, like the future of the Biden agenda or the Trump tax cuts. Rather, our democracy itself will be on the ballot. But with gerrymandering and voter suppression laws sweeping the GOP-held states, winning these races will be tougher than ever. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Thus in the secular world there is recognition that the future of America's constitutional democracy is bleak. If there is also recognition of where the culpability lies for democracy's imminent demise it is never mentioned. Is it because of a failure to discern that the paramount religio-political power in the world is the perpetrator, or is it because of fear of that power which has been democracy's mortal enemy for well over a century?

CONCLUSION

The final offensive against America's liberal democracy began in 1975 when the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops published their "Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities." It was the launching pad for a gigantic push to finally destroy democracy and the separation of church and state in America.

For Rome's anti-democratic network of organizations in America victory is in sight. This not alarmist "political spin" as Adventist Laymen's Foundation, under the leadership of Pastor William Grotheer, was accused of in 2004. This is realism, pure and simple.

Rome will prevail for a time; but Armageddon will end her power forever. There were early signs that the climax of Rome's war against American democracy was rapidly approaching, when Pastor Grotheer published The Battle of the Great Day of God Almighty It is Pending! in "Watchman, What of the Night?" over sixteen years ago. It is now much more clearly in sight. The "time of test" looms. How far in the distance is it?