THEO-NEO-PALEO CONS
…I saw a woman mounted on a Scarlet-colored Beast
(Rev. 17:3 – ASV/the Message)
PART XII – The Prophetic Sequence
By
Doug Krieger
A frightful perversion, full of apocalyptic turpitude, flaunts her stuff as the fullness of Cannanitish apostasy in the latter days. Her vainglorious descript flabbergasted the Beloved John (Revelation 17:6)—for her seductive charms have corrupted the whole earth!
Shrouded in mystery—she is the catastrophic antithesis of all that the Woman of Revelation 21:9 is to Christ! She—the Mother of Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth—Mystery, Babylon the Great—her golden cup full of earth’s abominations and filthiness of fornications . . . held in contemptuous counter distinction to the Woman, the Holy City Jerusalem, descending out of heaven as the Lamb’s Wife, prepared as a Bride, a chaste virgin—full of the glory of God!
She, arrayed in the regal Tyrian-purple and scarlet of her apostate predecessor, Jezebel, bedecked in the commercially-exploitive expressions of gold and precious stones and pearls—projecting the externalities of holiness and righteousness; but alas, her golden cup is full of abominations which reek from the stench of their putridity.
Inebriated by the blood of the martyrs of Jesus—her staggering silhouette reflects the ghastly appearance of one who drips with the blood of the saints. John—why were you flabbergasted? Why did you marvel at this great amazement? This is no apparition, no sweated nightmare where your awakening is greeted with relief—no, a thousand times no—the stark consciousness of this vision is the culmination of all her dealings throughout the centuries. Yes, a glaring impression so overwhelming in its blatant clarity that her image is the ultimate fabrication of all evil, and of the Wicked One who perpetrated this despicable sight.
BEHOLD: THE WOMAN MOUNTS THE BEAST
John’s prescient exposé of her visceral posture informs us of her immoral epistemological significance—she who has mounted the Scarlet Beast. No mélange we witness here. What John beholds is an awful amalgamation of exactitude: Apostate Religion mounted upon Global Political Power! The Beast this woman rides has seven heads—seven mountains upon which she sits—seven kings—empires past (five have fallen), present (one is—the sixth) and future (the other has not yet come), and all connected to "the Beast that was, and is not, is himself also . . . THE EIGHTH” (Revelation 17:10-11).
These kings/kingdoms presented by John were/are/will be the manifestations of dominion, of Gentile World Powers—Powers which interacted with Israel past, present and future and with the “saints of the Most High.”
“As we look upon Rome, most certainly the existing power in the day of John, as being the sixth ‘mountain,’ or kingdom that partakes of the nature of Satan’s rule, we can easily count back through Daniel’s prophecies to Greece as the fifth, Medo-Persia as the fourth and Babylon as the third . . . at the moment John wrote, Israel was in subjection to Rome. It had been in subjection to Greece, Persia and Babylon. But in its still earlier history, Israel had been in slavery to Assyria, and, in its beginnings was in slavery in Egypt. So Isaiah writes, ‘For thus saith the Lord God, My people went down aforetime into Egypt to sojourn there; and the Assyrian oppressed them without cause’ (Isa. 52:4).” (Revelation – An Expositional Commentary, Donald Grey Barnhouse, Zondervan, p. 329)
This Beast is not only the expression of Gentile World Powers evolving throughout the centuries, but this beastly Eschaton is the revival of the futuristic seventh king or empire who abides a short time. Moreover, “The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going to perdition” (Revelation 17:11).
Therefore, the sixth, seventh, and eighth kings are the most relevant in John’s immediate thought—a trinity of expression ever-increasing in scope of power and exceedingly interconnected . . . as if the origin of the sixth represents the finality of evil that dominates the world and the kingdoms of this world. The “father of these final three” is ancient Rome; the “son” who comes in succession to the sixth—i.e., the seventh—is “of course . . . the Roman Empire in its revived form.” (Ibid. p. 330, Barnhouse)
“To him (the seventh) Satan appears and to him the Satanic rule is committed. The dragon endows him with his power, his throne and with great Authority (Rev. 13:3). If we look upon the Roman dictator as being the seventh, he (the seventh) becomes the eighth, the Antichrist at the time of the Satanic incarnation, and thereby becomes an eighth (note that the Greek is not the eighth), who is thus out of the seven, since Satan is the cause of all of the others.” (Ibid. p. 330, Barnhouse)
Thence, the Beast is not only an empire, but a personage—a personage who occupies the position of the EIGHTH—the figure of resurrection, for he recovers from his wound (Revelation 13:3) and becomes the Son of Perdition—the absolute antithesis of Christ in Resurrection! Supreme counterfeit of counterfeits and the final “Abomination of Desolation” wherein this IMPOSTER’S sequence is predetermined . . .
“First, the man of sin (lawlessness) is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (II Thessalonians 2:3b-4).
Furthermore, and this is no tautological tirade—it unveils a revelatory understanding of the Beast upon whom she rides. These empires with their potentates—the last expressly Romish (i.e., Emperor and “Revived Roman Empire”) – “one is (the Roman Empire of the Apostle John, the sixth), and the other has not yet come” (the seventh—or “Revived Roman Empire” – the ultimate expression of Western Civilization)—wield ultimate global hegemony. But, that hegemonic order is not fully manifested until . . .
“The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast . . . these are of one mind, and they will give their power and authority to the beast” (Revelation 17:12-13).
Now, the full tyrannous disregard for cooperation and irenic relations with the woman who rides this seven-headed, ten-horned monstrosity comes to its perfidious terminus—the proviso of moral covering she so putatively extended to the Beast (the EIGHTH) has reached its wretched end:
“And the ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire . . . for God has put it into their hearts to fulfill His purpose, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled” (Revelation 17:16-17).
Her portentous display, her grandiloquent and boastful ascendancy, has now been debased, defrocked, and desolated. No longer is heard in the land the “public language of moral purpose” – for it suited the Beast, who arose from the fourth kingdom on earth (i.e., the “fourth beast”) to make short shrift of this rider. Undoubtedly the 11th Horn gave tendentious approval to eviscerate this Mother of Harlots—while speaking “pompous words against the Most High.”
“The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all other kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, trample it and break it in pieces. The ten horns are ten kings who shall arise from this kingdom. And another shall rise after them; he shall be different from the first ones, and shall subdue three kings. He shall speak pompous words against the Most High, shall persecute the saints of the Most High” (Daniel 7:23-25a).
Seemingly, this unceremonious, even facile dispossession of the latter-day Jezebel by the civil administration of the Great City, Babylon, cannot obscure her seminal quest for legitimacy, coupled with her alleged exceptionalism, which brought her to the rarified heights atop the Beast who would on that day with fervent alacrity devour and burn her with fire!
The “trinity of evil” – religious, commercial, and civil Babylon – is indeed an admixture of incompatibility and diffusion. No salutary tranquility abides between the projected theodicy of this Woman and the civil authorities, under the mutual empowerment of the 11th Horn—notwithstanding the catalyst known as the merchants of the earth who bind their purposes together . . . for the cross and the crown have always found deliberate justification for their contrivance through economic subterfuge and, disquieting gain, known as filthy lucre. For these same merchants have been found in the Father’s house on virtually every occasion (courted by both Religion and Politics); and their compelling ventures have always merged the pursuits of the gospel, with the garnishments of glitz and guns! Oh, what a sad commentary have we observed throughout the ages when Church and State find their kingdoms united within this fleeting moment in time; and, all the more, when she is adorned in purple and scarlet, gilded with earthly jewels which belie her inward depravity.
In the Prophetic Sequence – this is what we behold – the inescapable illustration of perfidious posturing on the part of that Woman! Don’t think this an exhausting prolix void of substance—if we do not capture the eschatological profundity of this apocalyptic slide, then, friend and foe . . . you will have altogether missed the prophetic essence of these Last Days and of their tragic judgment, yet pending until the divine capacity abides no longer.
This, then, is worth ten-thousand times ten-thousand words—and, if this Book be His message to and throughout the ages—and the time of fulfillment at long last rages about us—then, this similitude, thus described, bears our utmost attention and despairing concentration. I repeat: The impress of political power, of global domination, struts and strives its grotesque frame and heady outcroppings—treading asunder all beneath its four-footed protrusions—all the while receiving the prodigious pandering of this preposterous personage who a strides this composite of conspicuous consumption and criminality!
She lavishes her style as the “anthropological doctrine of the autonomous self” – the Harlot of harlots has utterly imploded! There is nothing more contemptible than she who commits fornication with BOTH the kings of the earth and the merchants who traffic in the bodies and souls of men—and all the while her predilections toward theodicy in the midst of evil seeks to justify her compromise and, above all, ingratiate Her Highness to the masses—masses be struck by her audacious claims as Queen atop the civil beast who, for a time, craves her moral externalities, for they lend justification to the Beast’s ulterior agenda.
Under exile and banishment by the fourth beast, whose legs of iron and composite beastly descriptions comprised the three empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece—culminating in Rome—convinces us that John had to be imminently clear that these graphic symbols of Beast and Harlot encrypted in his Apocalypse spoke of Rome present and Rome future . . . but who was the Woman who mounted the Beast from the Abyss? What allusions to the future succession of kings beyond the sixth—the “one is”—does John conjure in his vivid imagery and assignment to “the other” (i.e., the seventh)? Even so, it is this one from whom the Beast derives his identification: “The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going to destruction” (Revelation 17:11); thence, it is this EIGHTH Beast who assumes support for that Woman, as she provides some form of moral covering for his antics. The imagery is ghastly—as was the prostitutions wrought by Queen Jezebel in the Temples of Baal and Ashtaroth. Unimaginable—but not really, considering today’s commercial vulgarities—the religion of Tyre and Sidon, where the priesthood and the crown were wholly mingled into the personage of the father of Jezebel (i.e., the Priest-King, King Ithobaal). Mixing religion and politics were her forte (father taught her all too well)—but commerce held it together, and that’s precisely why the merchants transacted their “business” with temple prostitutes (male and female) . . . all the while exonerating and embellishing this hideous practice by mixing the religion of Yahweh with the Cannanitish fertility gods smack dab in the middle of Israel!
Peering into the apocalyptic future John witnesses “the other” – the seventh who will arise to the eighth, whose entitlement is THE BEAST. And, as the types and shadows shift within this trinity of evil the woman takes on the very expression of that Great City herself!
“And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:18)
Now, her appearance is not only that of the Woman, but of that Great City who reigns over the kings of the earth. So intertwined within this vision of Babylon the Great are its distinctives, which, for one, its religiosity permeates the earth and literally dominates the kings of the earth, whereas the same Great City—from a wholly separate perspective, conforms to crass worldly power wherein ten kings will give their utmost power and authority to the Beast. Indeed, to behold the Beast, one must behold the Woman who rides the Beast—their inseparable identity is ignobly compounded—thence, she is called in toto: The Great City. Simply put: The final manifestation of apocalyptic degradation unveils a wholesale apostate charade wherein a religious consortium comprised of divine revelation and pantheistic divination are wholly condoned and celebrated by political power and mercantile concupiscence.
ROMAN SURVIVAL
We now extrapolate John’s Sixth King—the Roman Empire of antiquity—to the extensions of Western Civilization. We course through Rome’s devolution, her metamorphosis in the West, and fathom the perplexities of Greco-Roman Man, and the Woman whose twisted future finds her ultimate destiny mounted upon this horrid creature.
Alas! The nightmarish image of Nebuchadnezzar commences to walk the
face of the whole earth—treading down its tribes, tongues, peoples, and nations with feet mixed with clay and iron; some weak, others strong . . . but one among them, the 11th horn, shall become the fiendish personage of the Antichrist-Beast. Our transition from antiquity to the modernity of democratic refinement seems truly far-fetched—no wonder then, the Jeffersonian “ravings of a maniac” fit so well within the contemporary consideration; how plausible can it be, given our immediate checkered past, especially over the last century?
To say that the ideal that was and is Rome perished in her much-touted Fall in 476 A.D. is altogether a sordid revision of history—for she simply transformed herself by acquiescing to her religionists—her Christian protagonists. Constantinian resolution to the Empire’s inevitable fate was a grandiose religio-political coupe de maître.
The State Religion of Christianity would bring the State into dynamic collusion with her counterpart, wherein the spiritual and the temporal, the celestial and the terrestrial, would cease their disparity and hostility, and find compatibility of purpose and order for both heaven and earth . . . and, as time advanced, and there were observed discrepancies in this tenuous arrangement, all that could be understood and resolved would theologically deliberate through Augustine’s ultimate City of God, not through the dictates of Eusebius of Caesarea, who proffered the notion that the Church’s extensions were dependent upon Rome’s providential intrusions throughout the world.
Rome’s preeminence sufficed this promulgation of the faith—but her sacking by the Visigoths in 410 A.D. diminished this religio-political tour de force. Alas, the Kingdom of Heaven and His Kingdom on Earth find reconciliation in the doctrines of Augustine—divine providence transcends history . . . is apart from the vulgar; can only find its finality in God alone. . . we can only hope from an eternal vantage point, not from temporal relief. Hence, the Church is freed from earthly confrontation with the sinful world of politics and its “city of man” – freed from powerful lusts which war against the soul – our destiny abides in the City of God, beyond the confines of this frivolity.
Notwithstanding the brilliance of Augustine—discerning the nuances within his systematic theology was not to be; instead, throughout the Church’s history the perilous temptation that the “continuation of the incarnation of Christ” declares that we, His Body, are as a “City set upon a hill which cannot be hid.” Our mission is the dissipation of darkness – “among whom you shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15).
Therefore, the “Doctrine of the Two Swords” prevailed and persisted throughout the discovery of the New World and beyond, slightly mitigated by the Enlightenment and Reformation (i.e., “Doctrine of the Sovereign State”). And, although the influences of the Enlightenment and the Reformation released man’s creativity, as well as his salvific responsibility before God—likewise did these socio-religio outbursts give rise to the secular (viz. cuius regio eius religio, or “to each prince his own religion”). Tensions, to say the least, between the two abide to this day—except in a much more sophisticated, though draconic at times, manner.
AMERICA: A City Set on a THEOCON Hill?
The tension commences—in so far as the pinnacle of Western Civilization concerns. The convergence of exploitive commerce, political extension, and religious expression exacerbated an inevitable socio-religio confrontation: The American Experiment.
Thence, it is inconclusive to surmise America’s founding as wholly motivated by Christian impulse. America’s founders were extravagant in their designs relative to religion in the public square. Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Adams were complicated figures, deists, and in sum and at best, very liberal in their Christianity. Most were not paragons of Christian virtue and parlance. A few of their “secular perceptions” are hereby extended:
“Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have 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.” (James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, 1785)
Or, the derisions of Thomas Jefferson:
“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” – (Thomas Jefferson, letter to J. Adams, April 11, 1823)
Jefferson’s effronteries to orthodox Christianity reach their zenith when he excoriates the writer of the Book of Revelation as nothing more than “the ravings of a maniac” (Ibid.)
They who are adamant in their resistance to Christianity’s involvement in these United States are, to say the least, vociferous in their denunciations of the same and provide a wide variety of “proofs” to exclude the Church’s “salt and light” as having the remotest influence upon the founding fathers—to the contrary—they are obliged to present a rather hostile approach to the Christian religion in order to secure its common good! Exhaust yourself on their many web sites, but this is a good one to prove their hostilities are quite sophisticated: Debunking the Christian Democracy Myth
Finally, the founders delighted in the diffusion of religious expression—not its consolidation . . . rather to see the disbursement of lights throughout the fruited plain than the consolidation of light disseminated from the city set on a hill; embracing, no doubt, the British model of manifold sectarianism as guarantor of the peace among peoples. God forbid their happy cooperation would savage science and progressive liberalism, throwing us all into the dark ages of uniformity wrought by an unwelcome conformity.
However, just as numerous a citing can be found by modern secularists to substantiate their exclusions of the Christian religion from the public square—even so, their fellow citizens who aspire to a strict Catholic-Christian (even a Judeo-Evangelical-Catholic-Christian) under girding of Americana are unfaltering in their blandishments to convince this Republic’s founding is a direct result of the Great Awakening, as well as divine providence wrought through the noble leaders who on numerous occasions called upon the Almighty to intervene in the affairs of these United States of America.
“It is hoped that by God's assistance, some of the continents in the Ocean will be discovered....for the Glory of God.” (Christopher Columbus)
“All persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the One Almighty and Eternal God to be the Creator, Upholder, and Ruler of the world, and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall in no wise be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion or practice, in matters of faith and worship; nor shall they be compelled at any time to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever.” (April 25, 1662- William Penn signed this to establish religious liberty in the new province of Pennsylvania).
“Everyone appointed to public office must say, ‘I do profess faith in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost. In God who is blessed forevermore I do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures and the Old and New Testaments which are given by divine inspiration.’” (Delaware Constitution of 1776)
“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religion but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We shall not fight alone. God presides over the destinies of nations. The battle is not to the strong alone. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, ALMIGHTY GOD! Give me liberty or give me death!” (Patrick Henry of the Constitutional Convention)
“It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” (President George Washington, September 17th, 1796)
“‘Except the Lord build the house, They labor in vain who build it.’ I firmly believe this.” (Benjamin Franklin, 1787, Constitutional Convention)
“The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and His Apostles.... This is genuine Christianity and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.” (Noah Webster)
“The reason that Christianity is the best friend of Government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart.” (President Thomas Jefferson)
“Of all systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to be so pure as that of Jesus.” (Thomas Jefferson, To William Canby, 1813)
“The highest story of the American Revolution is this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.” (President John Adams)
Should you be inclined to read more of these insights of early and latter American leaders: America’s Judeo-Christian Heritage Foundational Quotes.
This secularization of America’s founding is NOT within the lexicon of what has become known as the rise of the THEOCON—theological conservatives.
Finally, the term “theocon” was tagged onto religious conservatives who truly are convinced—notwithstanding peripheral and disquieting deists and secularist influences periodically popping their perfunctory discordant claptrap into the experiment from time to time—by fellow travelers amongst the neocons (primarily American-Jewish “political conservatives” – we shall speak of this more); to wit:
“This term first appeared in 1996 in a The New Republic article entitled Neocon v. Theocon by Jacob Heilbrunn. He wrote, "The neoconservatives believe that America is special because it was founded on an idea—a commitment to the rights of man embodied in the Declaration of Independence—not in ethnic or religious affiliations. The theocons, too, argue that America is rooted in an idea, but they believe that idea is Christianity.” (Wikipedia)
FIRST THINGS: THE NAKED PUBLIC SQUARE— RELIGION AND DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
In 1980 an Independent Baptist preacher, founder of the Moral Majority, stood upon the steps of Oregon’s Capitol, Salem, to have God bless America—I know; I was there. Jerry Fawell’s attempts to galvanize “moral America” into a political majority by, among other things, holding rallies on virtually the steps of every capitol in America, waxed and waned under President Reagan’s pseudo-evangelical embrace; notwithstanding, the “fightin’ fundies” persisted through the likes of Pat Robertson, the National Association of Evangelicals, Ed McAteer, James Dobson, the entire Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God, Chuck Colson, and a host of ventures and sundry allies from the Moonies to the Mormons.
A religio-political vacuum awaited a New American Century—and the evangelicals were going to fill the void. The persuasions of vibrant liberalism championed by the era of Civil Rights and the mainline Protestant-Liberal Catholic Nexus had peaked—even Carter’s disappointment to be the standard bearer of conservative religionists did not inhibit the resurgence of a Christian fundamentalism long-excluded from the American public square by the absurdities of the Scopes-Darrow Monkey Trial.
Not altogether on the sidelines, but certainly a scant distance from his born-again evangelical “hicks” –but hardly disinterested in their recent doings—stood one orthodox Lutheran of intellectual merit, Richard John Neuhaus, a Canadian immigrant, via Texas and on to New York City. In 1981 Neuhaus founded the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy—designed to disparage mainline Protestants (National Council of Churches) and their political counterparts (viz. liberals).
The ‘80s represented quantum cooperation between Neuhaus and paleoconservatives like the Illinois-based Rockford Institute. Neuhaus wound up opening the Center on Religion and Society in Manhattan—again, a think tank doing similar things as his 1981 effort—but greatly expand its efforts bringing religion and politics together through conferences, seminars and debate. It was funded by neocon Gerhard Bradley and the Scaife Foundation. Its quarterly publication, This World, and its monthly newsletter, The Religion and Society Report, were the exclusive domain of Neuhaus.
Neocons, however, were outraged when the paleocon Rockford Institute’s journal, Chronicles, under its editor, Thomas Fleming, savaged the influence of Washington’s neocons—using classical anti-Semitic allusions and touting the likes of the obvious anti-Semitic Gore Vidal as one of America’s foremost American conservatives.
This 1989 flap made the front page of the New York Times when Neuhaus corresponded with Fleming and denounced his inflammatory anti-Semitic delusions. That did it—neocons who had supported Neuhaus’ efforts urged him to bale from the paleocon Rockford Institute. But, before Neuhaus could strike, the “Rockford gang” filed into his offices on May 5, 1989, and summarily told Neuhaus et al to vacate the premises. There they were—Neuhaus and crew standing on the streets of Manhattan clinching sacks of papers and the like. It was adios or vamoose!
Thence, Neuhaus was born-again under the neocon Olin-Bradley-Scaife Foundations in NYC as the The Institute on Religion and Public Life (an inter-religious and education institute, and its intellectual journal, First Things (cir. 1989).
To encapsulate the essence of Fr. Neuhaus, his activism and his outspoken incorporation of conservative Christianity within American exceptionalism, I’ve decided to quote from his most overtly “American” piece: Our American Babylon –
“As for the leadership of the Catholic Church in this country, it oscillates between, on the one hand, a touching desire to be accepted by the old-line, and, on the other hand, co-belligerency with evangelicalism on great moral and cultural questions. But there are also, let it be said, some Catholics, including bishops and theologians, who remember that the Church is to be the ‘contrast society’ of Madison's prior allegiance. As such a contrast society, the Church is not above the fray, but neither is she captive to the fray. Her chief political contribution is to provide a transcendent horizon for our civil arguments, to counter the confusion of the political penultimate with the theological ultimate, and to insist that our common humanity with God’s gift of reason is capable of a common deliberation about how we ought to order our life together.
“And so we return to the beginning. When I meet God, I expect to meet him as an American. Not most importantly as an American, to be sure, but as someone who tried to take seriously, and tried to encourage others to take seriously, the story of America within the story of the world.
“The argument, in short, is that God is not indifferent to the American experiment, and therefore we who are called to think about God and His ways through time dare not be indifferent to the American experiment. America is not uniquely Babylon, but it is our time and place in Babylon. We seek its peace in which we find our peace as we yearn for and eucharistically anticipate the New Jerusalem that is our pilgrim goal. It is time to think again—to think deeply, to think theologically—about the story of America and its place in the story of the world. Again, the words of Augustine: ‘It is beyond anything incredible that God should have willed the kingdoms of men, their dominations and their servitudes, to be outside the range of the laws of his providence.’” (Our American Babylon, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, First Things, December 1, 2005)
Attempt to sequester the somewhat esoteric intonations embodied in the depth of Fr. Neuhaus—for his America is, on this earth—as only terrestrials can perceive—Babylon that Great City; yet, our final aspiration confides not on this earthly clod but in the wedding feast of the New Jerusalem. He then defies spiritual reason—if I may interpret his interior soliloquy—as he probes the inner sanctum of Augustine’s profundity . . . that God had any notion to exclude His providence from, as Fr. Neuhaus defines, the Public Square! Indeed, in the world of Fr. Neuhaus—God’s indifference to the American Experiment is non sequitur, for His providential intervention and persistent interference into her national life is unequivocally foundational. . . any disabuse to the contrary is denial, perhaps blasphemous! But, most certainly, if we are to “think about God” we must profoundly grasp what must be an inexcusable conclusion: God is NOT indifferent to the American Experiment; nor should we be so inclined lest our neutrality provide an offense to the Almighty’s predisposition.
Thus, did one, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, set out to galvanize – to “reclothe the public square” – by bringing the language of transcendence into the militant secularism now ravishing the nation – by educating traditionalist Catholics to embrace their Christian defiance to all things ungodly and antichrist; and to dissuade fundamentalists and evangelicals to refrain from their offensive born-again rhetoric when addressing the public good—instead to persuade, along with their Catholic brethren, the American populous, through the “public language of moral purpose.” One’s covenantal community could enthrall the believer, but its assaults against the bastions of secularism, nihilism, and atheism—and the “culture of death” which they breed—must call Americans “back to their original providential moorings” with moral platitudes which convince, not recoil.
THE CULTURE OF LIFE v THE CULTURE OF DEATH
Building alliance is no small task—and building the “culture of life” within the American psyche is one’s most noble goal. To this end Fr. Neuhaus, along with old and newly found allies set out to clothe her nakedness. Those, in the main, Catholic aspirants who Romanized the initial ideology of the theocons, were fixated upon the most disconcerting expression of what became known as the “culture of death” – Roe v. Wade.
Eventually, the public square—on its purposeful detour through Rome—welcomed, once its Declaration of Interdependence (i.e., The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America, 1984) was penned, and the articulation for the overthrow of America’s tragic redound with secularism squashed, the likes of George Weigel, the writings of John Courtney Murray (1904-1967), Robert P. George, Hadley Arkes (one of a token non-Catholics welcomed into the soul of theocons—Arkes is Jewish)—all of whom joined the original two witnesses: Fr. Neuhaus and co-patriot-in-Catholic-arms, Michael Novak.
Added to the initial “pentagon of political virtue” were members of Hillary’s vast rightwing conspiracy, including—but not inclusive—Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Thomas, Leon Kass (the former chairperson of the President’s Council on Bioethics), Gilbert Meilaender, Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles, Rabbi David Novak, Mary Ann Glendon (chair of the Pontifical Academy for the Social Sciences in Rome,—and the clarion spokesperson for the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage).
EVANGELICALS AND CATHOLICS TOGETHER – THE ECT.
To this prestigious summitry were added the excreta: ETC. It was in September 1992, when Neuhaus, Avery Dulles, Weigel, along with four other Catholics, discreetly huddled with Chuck Colson, of Prison Fellowship and of disgraced Watergate fame, along with leading lights of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God, and World Evangelical Fellowship—and all this blessed by progressive evangelical participants Carl Henry and Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ . . . and lest we forget Michael Novak and the Revered Pat Robertson . . . now that was some gathering that penned their John Hancocks to what fundamentalist Dave Hunt called “the most devastating blow against the Gospel in at least one thousand years”: “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission for the Third Millennium” – March 29, 1994 (ECT) – whose declarative approbation was heralded, according to Neuhaus in “The Catholic Difference” (p. 176) by one of America’s leading evangelical theologians, to wit:
“One of America’s most prominent evangelical scholars told me that, upon receiving the declaration, he stayed up all night reading and rereading it, and fell on his knees to thank God that something so long prayed for was at last happening.”
At long last, sufficient numbers of Catholics and evangelical Protestants had entered into a compact of unprecedented agreement by uniting to thwart the bastions of rank secularism and defeat the culture of death by the “culture of life” by enshrining, from the trenches of social, political, and religious struggle, the ideal of American exceptionalism until the mist which too long enshrouded the view of this city set upon a hill cleared: IT CANNOT BE HID!
ETC was and is straightforward in its declaration—and, given the gravity of America’s moral, political, and theological decay—it was altogether fitting that a pronouncement of this magnitude would be embraced by heretofore conservative religious antagonists. It was time to overlook our doctrinal squabbles for the common good of America—we must surmount our chasms of theological disputation lest the nation’s culture war open up and swallow us all under the judgment of the Almighty! Let us resolutely engage the enemy both here and abroad—we must all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately!
And, so was born the sociological, even theological, under girding necessary to elect American’s “Candidate for Life” – to save us from the debauchery of one Bill Clinton, and bring us home to an America we all recognize, not its Hollywood fabrication; to wit:
CONCLUSION
“Nearly two thousand years after it began, and nearly five hundred years after the divisions of the Reformation era, the Christian mission to the world is vibrantly alive and assertive. We do not know, we cannot know, what the Lord of history has in store for the Third Millennium. It may be the springtime of world missions and great Christian expansion. It may be the way of the cross marked by persecution and apparent marginalization. In different places and times, it will likely be both. Or it may be that Our Lord will return tomorrow. We do know that his promise is sure, that we are enlisted for the duration, and that we are in this together. We do know that we must affirm and hope and search and contend and witness together, for we belong not to ourselves but to him who has purchased us by the blood of the cross. We do know that this is a time of opportunity-and, if of opportunity, then of responsibility-for Evangelicals and Catholics to be Christians together in a way that helps prepare the world for the coming of him to whom belongs the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
“PARTICIPANTS: Mr. Charles Colson Prison Fellowship, Fr. Juan Diaz-Vilar S.J. Catholic Hispanic Ministries, Fr. Avery Dulles S.J. Fordham University, Bishop Francis George OMI Diocese of Yakima (Washington), Dr. Kent Hill Eastern Nazarene College, Dr. Richard Land Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Larry Lewis Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Jesse Miranda Assemblies of God, Msgr. William Murphy Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Boston, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus Institute on Religion and Public Life, Mr. Brian O'Connell World Evangelical Fellowship, Mr. Herbert Schlossberg Fieldstead Foundation, Archbishop Francis Stafford Archdiocese of Denver, Mr. George Weigel Ethics and Public Policy Center, Dr. John White Geneva College and the National Association of Evangelicals
“ENDORSED BY: Dr. William Abraham Perkins School of Theology, Dr. Elizabeth Achtemeier Union Theological Seminary (Virginia), Mr. William Bentley Ball Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Dr. Bill Bright Campus Crusade for Christ, Professor Robert Destro Catholic University of America, Fr. Augustine DiNoia O.P. Dominican House of Studies, Fr. Joseph P. Fitzpatrick S.J. Fordham University, Mr. Keith Fournier American Center for Law and Justice, Bishop William Frey Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, Professor Mary Ann Glendon Harvard Law School, Dr. Os Guinness Trinity Forum, Dr. Nathan Hatch University of Notre Dame, Dr. James Hitchcock St. Louis University, Professor Peter Kreeft Boston College, Fr. Matthew Lamb Boston College, Mr. Ralph Martin Renewal Ministries, Dr. Richard Mouw Fuller Theological Seminary, Dr. Mark Noll Wheaton College, Mr. Michael Novak American Enterprise Institute, John Cardinal O'Connor Archdiocese of New York, Dr. Thomas Oden Drew University, Dr. James J. I. Packer Regent College (British Columbia), The Rev. Pat Robertson Regent University, Dr. John Rodgers Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla S.J. Archdiocese of San Francisco” (Conclusion and Signatories to: Evangelicals & Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium).
Only in America! At long last Evangelicals and Catholics have united in the cultural war against DEATH: Euthanasia (including eugenics and population control), abortion, same-sex marriage, Hollywood hedonism, cloning and deviant forms of stem-cell research, sexual depravity, antireligious bigotry in entertainment; and for LIFE: defense of chastity, parental choice in education, support of moral education (along with the counter-evolutionary “intelligent design”), strong traditional families and support for “a vibrant market economy” . . . and, all this, predicated upon the conviction that we, as Americans, are “one nation under God” . . . “a nation under judgment, mercy, and providential care of the Lord of the nations to whom we alone render unqualified allegiance.” (“Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” First Things, May 1994, pp. 19-20).
NEW JERSEY’S SAME SEX MARRIAGE & JOHN KERRY
I repeat (Cut & Run), never has a party had so much going for it into an off-year election (November, 2006) with every issue pointing toward a Democrat landslide—the Iraq War, Foley Follies, health care, general Republican Congressional corruption as in Jack Abramoff—than Howard Dean’s Party of the Big Fat Mouth. All it takes to implode such a prospect is a little maneuvering to exchange feet before someone in that party opens their mouth to do the trick again—in this case the stunning reversal is made by the New Jersey Supreme Court in support, in point of fact, same-sex marriage or whatever you want to call it, and the gunboat diplomacy of one, John Fitzgerald Kerry whose snafu on G.I. dolts serving in Iraq is only compounded by his hubris to infer, with belated apology, his joke simply went South—he meant it for Bush!
Forgive this seeming diversion; however, so-called polls that show the political-religious-commercial coalition of that Great City miles from victory—well, “rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated!” Imperial power demands this triumvirate coalition persist today and throughout the Seventh King’s journey into the Seventieth Week of Daniel—it has never been more pronounced than it is today!
THE ALLIANCE PERSISTS
Although neocons recoiled from the anxieties expressed by theocons after several court decisions left them, so they felt, little alternative but to surmise “The End of Democracy? The Judicial Usurpation of Politics” (November 1996). These court decisions championed the culture of death (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1992; Romer v. Evans, 1996), and the resultant affirmation of a woman’s constitutional right to abortion, as well as finding a Colorado statue curtailing gay rights to be unconstitutional; but, the final straw was the infamous Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals finding a “right to die” embedded in the U.S. Constitution.
Catholics and Evangelicals huddled to respond with force but the subsequent special in First Things suggesting that “Americans, perhaps even a majority” had no intention of passively allowing activist courts to promulgate the perceived culture of death without the righteous upset because that same government had reached the threshold wherein it had become “sufficiently corrupt that a believer must resist it.” To neocons this bombastic approach crossed the line itself—Midge Decter, wife of Norman Podhoretz of Commentary magazine simply, in the common vernacular, freaked; as did many a concerned neocon.
Notwithstanding these aforementioned anxieties, theo-neo-paleo cons have been driven together by 9/11 and the aggravations of the Left in the War on Terror. This “righteous crusade” demands American leadership, not “Old Europe’s” vacillations, nor the equivocations of defeatism. The disputes among the activist blocks of America’s traditionalists are wholly surmountable given the extremities of social degradation and global peril viewed by this religio-political alliance. The Eagle’s ascendancy, leadership, and global democratic ideals, as well as her moral exceptionalism, shall and must prevail.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE “COALITION OF THE RIGHTEOUS”
Will the Evangelical-Catholic-Christian alliance—an alliance well-noted by Euro-secularism, for they endured tumultuous violence and oppressive religious zealotry for centuries—evermore ride this beast from shore to shore and throughout the planet?
Voltaire, of all people, suggested that religious pluralism is our greatest guarantor that a singular Christian expression—or for that matter, any unified religious-political coalition—safeguards the rights of all its minorities. The American Constitution’s First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses were designed to balance religious tolerance . . . their united design assures us religious liberty, but not just for the sake of its practice. While such assurances tend toward the proliferation of sectarian demonstrations—they do so to assure that no one, or combination of the same, shall amass such strength of purpose to threaten the religious expression so guaranteed by that First Amendment.
“Nothing could be further from the pluralizing intent of the founders than theocon efforts to form an interdenominational coalition of religious groups united by common political interests and ambitions. That the theocons place Catholicism at the core of this coalition would be, from the standpoint of the founders, especially troubling, though also unsurprising. All the early modern liberals viewed the Catholic Church as the greatest obstacle to establishing free government in the Western world. Its transnational scope, its doctrinal homogeneity, its hierarchical and authoritarian structure, its historic hostility to religious ‘error,’ its record of political ambitions on the Italian peninsula and beyond--in all these ways, Catholicism Seemed to be the religious ‘faction’ least likely to play by the rules of a pluralistic liberal order.” (The Theocons – Secular America Under Siege, Damon Linker, Doubleday, 2006, p. 213)
Linker rightly concludes in his watershed release, The Theocons, that “Catholic-Christian belief will fail to unify the country. In fact, the more the church and its ideological champions seek to impose such belief on the nation’s public life, the more they will generate division and heighten sectarian tensions” (Ibid. p. 215).
But does Linker think for one minute the Theocons really care about rocking the secular boat? One of their favorite Biblical texts is: “Think not that I have come to bring peace on the earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three” (Luke 12:51-52).
Linker’s claim that the nomenclature of “Catholic natural law” is but a fairy tale because “on issue after issue—from same-sex marriage and euthanasia to the role of men and women in the family—the theocons endorse policies that are indefensible outside a universe of Catholic assumptions that are shared by only one segment of the nation’s citizenry (by its most conservative Christians)”—is understandable. However, to think Americans will not cave to theocon absolutism? Well, simply put: That’s what you think, Mr. Linker; let me disabuse you of your own fairy tale to assume that the experiential born-again evangelicals, allied with their “rationalistic moral absolutism” Catholics, fully intend that their prized “unifying ideology” shall serve as the model for these United States of America. How and what a liberal democratic nation shall appear and practice before the nations of the world is the theocons’ inexorable march to the top of that hill.
Hubris? You bet they have it. Mr. Linker—and, mind you, his synthesis on the theocons from his perspective as a former editor of First Things is a “I-can’t-put-this-book-down read”—simply finds it unfathomable to seriously contemplate this religious alliance effectively instigating their agenda upon the American political landscape, to wit:
“Even if they manage with some future candidate to cobble together enough votes to replicate or slightly surpass Bush’s bare majority victory in 2004, treating that victory as a mandate to impose their divisive theological vision on the nation would be a monumental act of hubris-one that Garry Wills has aptly dubbed ‘government from the fringes.’ For all of its (theocon) emphasis on national unity, the theoconservative movement contributes in an important, even decisive, way to the rancorous polarization of American politics in our time.” (Ibid. p. 217)
That is precisely what is going on here—but to assume it can possibly be otherwise, given the socio-religio chasm inspired by the social upheavals of the past century in this nation—Mr. Linker, you are altogether whistling into the wind.
Linker insinuates that the Europeans’ godless society (aside from Poland) “gets along quite well . . . when it comes to overall quality of life” – alas, has he not witnessed the mass economic upheavals afflicting Eastern Europe, and the irreconcilable cultural polarizations with widespread rioting taking place throughout Western Europe between Islamic immigrants and established Europeans? No, no, no—all is not “love and oneness” in the house that Democratic-Socialism has built.
And, to think that Americans really give a hoot when it comes to the effete European disregard for our religious tendencies . . .
“In America’s case, for example, the rise of public religion may very well lead to international isolation, as the community of nations increasingly responds to the world’s God-intoxicated hegemon with understandable apprehension.” (Ibid. p. 219)
That’s just it—we don’t care what the Europeans think of us—and, quite frankly, never have! Live with it—international isolation, Hillary-Kerry-Linker, et al, is exactly what we’re all about, isn’t it? Unilateral and preemptive wars of national interest may isolate the world from America—but the very idea that the “City set on a Hill” cares about its suburbs is ludicrous. We are intoxicated and we like it! So, our vision is a bit blurred—we’re still in the driver’s seat and movin’ out! Oh, what arrogance—well, how do you think we got here in the first place?
Yes, “the permanent theocon dynamic—hurtling wildly from theological affirmation of the country to theocratic denunciation and back again” is as follows:
“The theocons lurch to the opposite position, demonizing the country, and its leaders, its people, and even going so far as to declare that the nation is on the verge of totalitarianism, civil war, justified revolution, or perhaps all three at once.” (Ibid. p. 221)
Now, if for one minute, Linker thinks that the aforementioned will somehow convince “a majority of our citizens (to be) persuaded that a tolerantly secular liberalism is the only viable governing philosophy for an America worth living in” (Ibid. p. 227) and, through thoughtful persuasion continue to nourish a secularized America contrived by the likes of Tom Paine and Tom Jefferson—then, Mr. Linker and friends have somehow excluded themselves from the real world of commercial globalization, American political and military hegemony, and the full furry of the “Clash of Civilizations” which now confronts us all.
CONCLUSION
It is impossible to otherwise postulate—given the parameters of geopolitical confluence, coupled with the irrefutable prophetic sequence so clearly foreseen in the “Unveiling” of John—that the fulcrum of the religious-political is more domiciled, in so far as Western Civilization concerns, in the United States of America, more so than in any other nation of the West, and for that matter the world! Make no mistake about it—as oxymoronic as it may sound—it is the Christian “Religion” which so uniquely, historically, and sanctimoniously affords the American Experiment with the capacity, drive, and prophetic impetus to be that conglomeration of religious apostasy and brute political force under girded by an ever-growing military-industrial-commercial complex. This is precisely what John the Beloved foresaw.
The verse which inevitably comes to mind . . .
“. . . the Great City which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified” (Revelation 11:8).
. . . for the secular degradations of Sodom now ratcheted to cultural war . . . are strangely linked with the supremacy of the ancient religio-political state: Egypt. Yes, spiritually, there is no other way to view this Great City. It is she (Revelation 17:18) who crucified the Lord of Glory—and it is she who awaits final judgment by the same kings of the earth and of the Beast who sought her favors and her moral justification. “Come out of her my people, and be not partakers of her sins and her plagues” (Revelation 18:4)
