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. . . the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

                                                  Isaiah 11:9

> One of the dominant teachings of the New Testament is the universalization of God's plan of redemption. As a result of Jesus Christ's great work of redemption, God expanded His covenant purposes from the Jewish nation to include all the peoples of the earth. This is just what the Old Testament predicted. Paul summarizes this fact in Ephesians 4:4-6:

          Ok. This is sort of a nice attitude - God means his (sic) plan as part of a plan for universal redemption of all humankind. Nobody is to be left out of God's plan for redemption.

> There is one body, one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

          Ok. I'll go along with one God - as long as we have a very expansive notion that God is worshipped by many peoples in different ways using different names for God. But I won't quibble with the writer on his meaning. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

> The patristic church lost no momentum in adopting this view. They laid great emphasis on "one holy, catholic and apostolic, church."1 The idea of a Christianity that could be limited to and anchored in a single province, race, or nation was totally foreign to their thinking.

          Nice attitude.

> They all knew of St. Paul, himself a Jew, whom God had called as the apostle to the Gentiles. He was the church's first great missionary and church planter beyond the confines of Israel. The truth of Christianity as a universal, or catholic, Faith gradually atrophied, however, as the churches at Rome (West) and Byzantium (East) gained preeminence. The greatest division in the history of the church, the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western branches of the church in 1054, highlighted the magnitude of this problem. In the West, the church had become solidly Latin, while in the East it became Greek. It was no longer recognizably universal.

          This sounds a bit ominous, but I will continue to have confidence in the writer.

> The Protestant Reformation constituted, among other things, an attempt to restore the church's catholicity.2 Unfortunately, though, in eroding the Western church's Latinity, it usually countered with various national or at least nationalized churches: Anglican; German Lutheran; Swiss, German, or Dutch Reformed; and so forth. Even those churches that were not politically established developed a highly nationalized and ethnic character that undermined the catholicity of Christianity. It would be unfair to criticize these churches too harshly, because without the help of the Protestant princes, the Reformation, humanly speaking, would not have gotten off the ground. Adamant Protestant civil magistrates in Europe were essential to break the stranglehold of Rome's monopoly. In time, however, it would have been much more advantageous had these Protestant churches recognized the inherently provincial character of their arrangement.

> What the Protestant churches may have lacked in the extensity of catholicity, they soon made up for in their intensity. The Faith is designed to be not only a universal fact; it is designed to pervade every area of life. Protestants, particularly the Puritans and later such Reformed luminaries as Kuyper and Van Til and their disciples, recognized that every area of life and thought must be brought under Christ's authority. Christianity is not only for the church; Christianity should pervade the entire culture.

          Oh, Oh. Trouble ahead. "Christianity is not only for the church; Christianity should pervade the entire culture." So if you aren't a Christian who wants to be constantly reminded of God, there will be no intellectual space for you in the author's Christian utopia. What is to happen to the great secular works of literature and philosophy in the author's Christian utopia? No more Shakespeare? No more Locke? No more Jefferson or Madison? No symphony? No opera? No Broadway plays? Well, at least Christine de Pizan and Sarah Grimke will make it onto the author's approved list. No more Star Wars? No more WWF wrestling? (Well, maybe there is a bright side to this dark cloud.) I suppose we can keep PacMan if we redraw PacMan with little angel wings and the sprites he eats with little devil's tails.

> Extensiveness

> The Christian Faith is a universal faith. There is not, strictly speaking, North American Christianity, Asian Christianity, Sub-Saharan Christianity, Bulgarian Christianity, and so forth. There is simply Christianity. It is true that there are local and regional variations and expressions of Christianity. For instance, the highly spirited music of orthodox African churches would seem out of place in orthodox Presbyterian churches in the United States, but this has nothing to do with the core of Christianity both churches embrace. One of the most counterproductive practices of many North American missionary agencies is trying to establish "Americanized" churches in other cultures. It is not only counterproductive; it is just plain wrong. It undercuts the catholicity of the Faith. The unity of the church does not consist in any particular provincial expression of it, but in worship of and union with the sovereign Triune God by means of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, and the affirmation of historic, Christian orthodoxy. This is the extensiveness of Christian catholicity.

          Well, back to something that most Christians can agree on.

> Intensiveness

> Then there is the intensiveness of Christian catholicity. The Faith is designed to govern not only the entire globe, but also every area of life and thought on the globe.

          Backsliding again. "The Faith is designed to *govern* not only *the entire globe*, but also *every area of life and thought* on the globe." So, in this writer's Christian utopia, there will be nowhere on the planet for any one to escape the Christian religion. What is going to happen to the non-Christian - those of other faiths and those of no faith? What if someone doesn't want to be a Christian? What does the author mean by "The Christian religion will *govern*"? Does he mean "govern" as in "run the government"? Does this mean there is no place in his Christian utopia for any one who isn't a Christian?

          Who is going to decide if some one is really a Christian? Are feminist Christian theologians Christians? Are Mormons Christians? Are Seventh Day Adventists Christian? Are Moonies Christian? Are Catholics Christian, or are they followers of the AntiChrist who chase after the whore of Babylon? How about Pentecostals with their speaking in tongues? How about the Metropolitan Church? What about Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, and the AMC? What about liberation theologians? What about Baptists? Are all Baptists ok, or just the ones who refuse to ordain or to hire women ministers? One of the foundational arguments of Protestantism is that each person is free to interpret scripture according to his or her own conscience. Will that Protestant idea remain or will some sort of orthodoxy institute be constructed to determine the proper interpretation of the Bible? I think before I buy into this argument, I need some clarification about exactly what the author means.

          "Every area of life and thought." No escape any where from Christianity. If nothing else, it sounds like a boring world.

          Now at first glance I was quite concerned with this idea, then I remembered that men won't have to give up being entertained by sex, murder, and mayhem on the boob tube if all of the stories on the tube are restricted to biblical stories. We can keep the blood and guts on the boob tube - we just need to rename it, "The Story of the Amalekites" or "Joshua Enters Caanan." We can keep rape on the tube, too, just call it "Tamar's Tale," or, for adultry and murder, "David, Bathsheba, and Uriah" or "David and Abigail". So I suppose men will adapt to the new programming, after all, the producers can still run lots of raping, pillaging, mayhem, sex, and violence on the tube.

          On the other hand, maybe we can get some powerful women in staring roles. "Deborah's Court," "Jael and Sistera," "Judith and Holofernes," "Ester Hangs Haman," "Mary, Mother of God," "Pilate's Wife, The Honorable Heathen," "Mary Magdalen, First to Believe in the Resurrection," "Phebe, Prophet and Minister."

          Maybe some one will even make a movie of the real story of Genesis - the story as written in the Bible, not the story that is passed around popular culture which is more what men have read into the story than what is actually written in the Bible. No, I mean the real story. The one where God, after making the rough draft of humanity, man, makes his great masterpiece, woman, then pronounces all of his creation "good," and rests - an act that God commands humankind to reenact each week by claiming the Sabbath Day as a holy day for worshipping God and for reflecting on his most marvelous creation.. The one where woman is created as a helpmeet to man, much like God has always been man's helpmeet. The one where Eve reaches for the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, fruit that God forbade Adam, not Eve, from eating. The one where God promises Eve that he will put enmity between Eve (and her seed), not Adam (and his seed), and the serpent and that womankind shall crush the head of the serpent under her heal. The one where God expels Adam from paradise for his disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit, the one where Eve, of her own free will, joins Adam in his banishment. The one where God assigns to Adam all the labors of life as atonement for his sin, and the one where God blesses womankind with only one task, childbirth. Obviously, there is only one correct way to interpret the story - God, wanting Eve but not Adam to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, met for his final masterpiece to take precedence in all areas of human endeavor over his rough draft. As usual men got the moral of the story all wrong.

> In other words, Christianity should no more be limited to Sunday school and prayer meetings than it can be limited to North Americans and Asians. Let me express this negatively, taking into account Christianity's conflict in the modern world. The same religious pluralism that combats the exclusive claims of Christian missions equally combats the exclusive claims of Christian culture.

          Ah, ha! A clue as to why fundies hate multiculturalism - "religious pluralism ... combats the exclusive claims of Christian missions." So fundie's problem with multiculturalism is that multiculturalists don't believe that Christianity is the only way in which one can led a moral life! Oh, my. In the fundie conception of the world, all those Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, etc are moral degenerates whose religions must not be tolerated.

> Regrettably, many of the same ardently conservative Christian mission agencies which argue that Jesus Christ is the exclusive way of salvation neglect the equally important fact that Jesus Christ is the exclusive way to culture. These Christians are justifiably angered at a modern pluralism, which insists that Christian evangelization is unnecessary because there are "other valid ways to God." Yet, they seem not the least troubled by the equally pluralistic assertion that there are "other valid ways" to culture.

          And it is not enough to be intolerant of other religions - we must also be intolerant of other cultures.

> If, however, the Faith is truly catholic, or universal, it must be catholic in its cultural dimensions no less than in its soteriological dimensions. If Jesus Christ really is the way, the truth, and the life, He is the way, the truth, and the life in all things, not just in individual salvation. In J. Gresham Machen's words, "The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of all connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations, but also all of human thought."3

          Let's repeat that next to last sentence: "The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of all connection with Christianity." No opposition to Christianity will be tolerated in the new world order. No behavior that is not in conformity with the dictates of Christianity will be tolerated either. Sound like there won't be many freedoms in the new, one world Christian order.

> This means He is the way, the truth, and the life in vocation, science, technology, politics, education, music, agriculture, and so on. These catholic claims of Christianity conflict at every point with the equally catholic claims of all non-Christian systems and, in today's Western world, notably secularism.

> Science

> The Christian view of science, for example, is based squarely on the six-day creation account revealed in the Bible, and all that this implies. It implies, among other things, God's sovereign, purposive control of the universe. It denies every hint of chance, chaos, and human autonomy an autonomy by which the chance and the chaos can be reordered. This is an immediate and irreconcilable conflict with the secular view of science, which sees man as the evolutionary product of matter and time, a higher form of animal that can recreate reality including himself at his own whim.

          So if science can not be reconciled with Christian theology, we teach junk science. If history can't be reconciled with the wishes of the elite in the new, Christian, one-world order, we write junk history. How do you teach children intellectual honesty and integrity when you teach them lies for science and half-truth, slander, and lies as history.

> Vocation

> Likewise, the Christian view of vocation is diametrically opposed to the secular view of vocation. According to the Bible, man's life is to be lived to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). His vocation provides sustenance for himself and for his family as well as for others in need and for the advancement of Christ's kingdom on the earth. Man's vocation, in summary, is a sacred calling.

          Nice words. They sort of give you a warm fuzzy feeling, don't they?

> This is frankly the opposite of the secular view of vocation.

          Oh, those horrid secular humanists. Shame on them. They don't believe that creating 50,000 nuclear warheads is a fitting tribute to the Christian God. They don't believe that picking up suburbanites' gargage is a way of advancing Christ's kingdom on earth. They don't think that hawking Veg-o-matics on late night TV is man's sacred calling. Does the author mean that under the Christian dispensation, we will eliminate all weapons of mass destruction, ignore garbage that piles up on the curb, and no longer have the opportunity to view infomercials on those sleepless nights? Can we get rid of lawyers, too? After all, under the Christian dispensation there will be no crime, except blasphemy, that is, and you need a minister or a theologican, not a lawyer, for defense against blasphemy.

> In this view, man lives for himself and for his own aims and purposes. He may start a family if he chooses; and if he does, his vocation may provide them lavish material benefits. On the other hand, if he so chooses, he may divorce his spouse and his children and live only for himself.

          Sorry, but you are wrong. Indeed, many feminists believe that it is men's self-centeredness, often indoctrinated into men by their religion, that is the root cause of many of the world's problems. Further, most liberals believe that if a man and a woman bring a child into the world, they have the responsibility to raise that child to maturity. Feminists and liberals also feel that at times a divorce is in the best interest of the woman and children, especially when the man is physically or emotionally abusive, a drunken, wife-beating sot, or a faithless adulterer.

          Statistics say that somewhere around 75% of men have cheated on their wives and about 50% of all first marriages end in divorce. The Bible gives permission for divorce in the case of adultery. So I conclude that the divorce rate can go up to 75% and most of the cases of divorce will still be for a biblically approved cause. Why has the Christian religion been so unsuccessful in keeping men sexually faithful to their wives? Perhaps we need to increase the civil sanctions against divorce. Why not join me in supporting an effort to guarantee women perpetual alimony in the case of divorce? Say 2% of the man's paycheck for each year of the marriage up to 1/2 of the man's paycheck with the woman getting a raise each time the man gets a raise. Do you think that might encourage men to do what it takes to make their marriages work?

          Perhaps you feel that women should stay with a man who beats her. If so, do you think a man should stay with a woman who gives him a cock-crusher a couple of times a week? Or is that something different?

> The objective of his vocation is not to honor God and advance His kingdom, but to advance the kingdom of man his own interests.

          That's the way it has always been. Only now, women have a chance to escape from their failed marriages and stand on their own two feet.

> If he works in a communistic state, he also works to advance the kingdom of man, collectively rather than individualistically. The Christian view of vocation is uncompromisingly opposed to the secular view of vocation.

          Yes, the Christian view which you espouse, and which is not shared by many other Christians, is "keep women in the marriage, even if it costs her her sanity or her life."

          Why is it that your opinion is "the Christian view?" I am a Christian. Why isn't *my* opinion "the Christian view"? You have placed your opinion of what Christianity is about at the center of your life, which is quite alright, even laudable. But when you set up your opinion as an object to be worshipped by others as if it was God himself, you have set your opinion up as a false idol, to be worshipped and glorified in God's place. To me, you are guilty of a great blasphemy when demand that others submit to your view of Christianity.

> Politics

> Similarly, the Christian view of politics is fully antithetical to the secular view of politics.

          Blasphemy. "Christian view of politics." Pure blasphemy.

> Politics is the realm of the state. The Christian view of the state is radically different from the secular view of the state.

          Blasphemy. "Christian view of the state." Pure blasphemy.

> The Bible depicts the state as a genuine, though severely limited, institution (Dt. 1:9-18; Rom. 13:3-4). In a Christian society, its role is quite simple: maintain external order in Christian terms.

          I wonder what it means to "maintain external order in Christian terms." I guess there isn't anything along the line of "promote the general welfare" that is part of the responsibility of the state in the author's Christian utopia.

> To a remarkable degree, this essentially reduces to a protection of the early American trio of "rights": life, liberty, and property.

          Christian libertarianism. The only role of the state is to protect life, liberty, and property. What happened to "the pursuit of happiness"?

> The state and its officers, civil magistrates, stand under and are limited by God's authority.

          Interesting concept - right out of the middle ages.

> They are God's ministers, and they are subject to Him.

> This is not the secular view of the state, which invariably leads to tyranny.

          Gee, I don't recall Americans burning any one at the stake for not professing the correct religion since the "secular humanists" took control of the state. So why are we living under a tyranny when it was the church that brought the Inquisition and the witch trials, a 500 year holocaust of people whose crimes existed only in the imaginations of their tormentors, to the world, the greatest tyranny man has imposed upon man. (But let me add, it is not the greatest tyranny that man has imposed on woman - the binding of 50 generations of Chinese women's feet, suttee, and FGM all compete with the Christian concept that woman brought sin and death into the world, a sin for which all women must pay in perpetuity, all compete, among other things, for the title of greatest tyranny man has imposed on woman.)

> It can be the "benevolent" tyranny of modern Western democracies

          And it's not just US citizens who are wallowing in this tyranny - the citizens of all Western democracies are wallowing in a godless tyranny. Perhaps the author can explain to me why more people protested at the WTO meetings last year than protested the tyranny of their governments. Hell, more people protested at the inaguration of G. W. Bush this year than protested against the tyranny of government - oh wait a minute. G. W. Bush was inagurated President, so I guess maybe a lot of people were protesting the tyranny of the current US government and the selection of Bush as president by the Supreme Court in one of the greatest travesties of justice perpetuated against an individual, in this case Al Gore, in 20th century America (and the 21st century really started on Jan 1, 2001 according to the Naval Observatory). I say run all the Republican stooges for Bush out of government at all levels. Until they learn the democratic process, they can not be trusted with political power.

> that unlawfully extort citizens' wealth to fund their own utopian educational system;

          So, expecting some one to pay their taxes to support public schools is "unlawful extortion of citizen's wealth." Christian libertarianism. Secular libertarianism is kooky enough, Christian libertarianism is even worse. At least the secular libertarians don't want to impose a religion on others.

> illegitimately conscript citizens (of both sexes) to fight godless, foreign wars;

          Drafting citizens for the army to protect America is now tyranny. I'll bet this guy was on the front lines of the anti-Vietnam War protesters, don't ya' think? Nah. I'll bet he loves any war Bush II gets us into - after all, Bush won't get us into a godless, foreign war - he'll get us into a god(awe)ful, foreign war.

> and create special privileges for particularly egregious sinners like abortionists and homosexuals.

          Wow! Not murdering abortionists is a special privilege for the abortionist. Not beating up homosexuals is a special privilege for the homosexual. What will they think of next? How about "Not raping women in the work place is a special privilege?" (After all, women belong in the home and if they just stayed in the sphere assigned to them by God, they wouldn't be raped.. I actually work with a Kristian Kook, the one who introduced me to Christian Reconstructionism, who believes that.) Whose rights will they think are special privileges next? Now we know that they believe in equal rights for fertilized eggs. They just don't believe in equal rights for godless heathens, women, people of color (those children of Ham have to pay for the sin of Ham in perpetuity, just like women have to pay for Eve's sin in perpetuity), homosexuals, foreigners, immigrants, the poor, the uneducated, and the less able. Obviously they don't think that there should be any religious freedom - so every one stands to loose religious freedom - except the right variety of Christians. So in the Christian dispensation, we will have an elite who live under separate rules - the all-white-male religious leaders and fertilized eggs and the rest of humanity.

> In more malevolent tyrannies of modern secular societies, the state uses its monopoly of coercion to bulldoze the slightest degree of liberty of its citizens and grind humanity's collective face into the mud.

          Wow! Now there is some prose writing. Is he talking about Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, or Maoist China - no, he's talking about the US and other western democracies today!

> It is ironic no, laughable when secularists express fear that a Christian society will somehow undermine liberty and freedom.

          "The Faith is designed to govern not only the entire globe, but also every area of life and thought on the globe." and we "secularists" are worried about loosing our freedoms under the Christian dispensation. Now why would any one with a wit of sense think that a staement like "The Faith is designed to govern not only the entire globe, but also every area of life and thought on the globe" should make them fear for their religious freedom?

> The most tyrannical, persecuting, thieving, murderous, and warmongering societies in history have been secular or otherwise anti-Christian societies: the ancient pagan empires, the Islamic nations, revolutionary France, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and Communist China.

          How did you manage to leave the 500 year long Inquisition in which Christian murdered Christian in the name of God off your list? Oh, that's right. The Inquisition wasn't run by "secularists," it was run by the Christian Church. Now, the church had no rules by which it could condemn a man to death. But it had the power to declare a man unlawful - ie, a man who had no recourse to the courts of law. Such a man was prey to the first comer - his life and his possessions, even to the life of an anointed king and his entire kingdom, were forfeit to the first comer strong enough to take them from him. The church could compel secular authorities to burn a heretic at the stake - if the secular authority refused to fulfill the order, he was declared a heretic, an outlaw, a man with no recourse to the law. The church would continue declaring secular authorities heretics until it found one who would burn all the heretics at the stake. So the true guilt for the judicial murder of millions of people lies with the church. Please don't think that I am only criticizing the Catholic church; the Protestant church was just as bad when it took power, it just didn't maintain power as long as the Catholic church did. So why did the author neglect to mention the Inquisition?

          What about the witch trials in Germany and Scotland? At a minimum, hundreds of thousands of mostly women lost their lives. Millions of others were tortured and driven to destitution in the name of God. Why did the author ignore those atrocities?

          What about the "ethnic cleansing" of Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella when the Jews and Moors were driven from Spain? What about the later burnings of conversos and moriscos? What about the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of victims of the Spanish Inquisition in the Spanish colonies - Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, and all other places where the Spanish flag flew?

          Find out something about the 500 year long Inquisition - the confiscations of innocent people's property, the introduction of torture into the European judicial system by the church, the corruption of the clergy, the willingness of the church to declare a king an outlaw - thereby releasing his subjects from their oaths of allegiance to him - and throwing countries into civil war. I will give the author the benefit of the doubt and claim that, like so many Americans, he is ignorant of European history. Please dear reader, don't let him fool you. Learn your history before it is too late.

          The author also somehow managed to ignore the bloodbath, a bloodbath in which Christian slaughtered Christian, which followed Constantine declaring the Catholic church the state church of the Roman Empire.

          Let us talk about Nazi Germany and the church. Hitler was a devote Catholic who was *never* excommunicated by the church. Now the church has always felt that it was entitled to excommunicate even dead men for their sins. Indeed, it was a fairly common practice during the age of faith. So according to the Catholic church's own rules, it is not too late to excommunicate Hitler. Why doesn't the church atone for their past neglect of the issue and excommunicate Hitler posthumously?

> By far the most tyrannical, murderous political regimes in history occurred in the twentieth century, and all of them were secular.

          Oh, hogwash. The centuries long reign of terror by the Catholic church throughout much of Europe, and later all Spanish colonies, was much, much worse than any of the 20th century regimes.

> There is a good explanation for this. A secular society imposes no barriers to state power.

          How interesting. I'm sure every president, every Speaker of the House, every Senate Majority Leader, every state governor, and every city mayor is acutely aware of the limits of his power.

> Political leaders are accountable to no one.

          Well, when the president is selected by the Supreme Court in opposition to the vote of the majority of the voters, I have to agree with you. But normally, when the government is not controlled by religious zealots, politicians are accountable to the voters.

> They own a monopoly on firing squads, electric chairs, nuclear weapons, and, in some cases, guns. Therefore, they can torture and kill people if they want to.

          I guess now that Republicans control the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court I'll have to agree with you. Religious zealots seem to be answerable only to their opinion of what God would like, which is usually amazingly close to what they would like as an individual. I've never met a religious zealot yet who thought that God met to inconvenience him personally. Yet, some how they seem to think that God wants all of the rest of humanity to inconvenience themselves for the sake of the zealot's opinion of God.

> By contrast, a Christian society contains built-in barriers to tyranny.

          Then what do you call the Inquisition? A 500 year long bar-b-que?

> The most notable one is the fear of God.

          Yes, just like the Popes who instigated the Inquisition feared God. Just like John Knox in Scotland feared God. Just like the ministers who supported slavery feared God. Just like the Bible thumpers in the south feared God when for over a century no white man in the deep south was ever convicted of murdering a Black man or raping a Black woman. Just like the pseudo-Christain *billionaire* shyster, Pat Robertson, fears God. Just like G. W. Bush fears God.

> For this reason, an honest atheist and there is no genuinely honest atheist would prefer a Christian society to an atheistic society.

          The author's poor puncutation in this sentence almost caused me to overlook the author's contention that "there is no genuinely honest atheist." Humbug.

> Why? Because a Christian society would protect his life, liberty, and property,

          History says otherwise.

> since this is precisely what the Bible requires, while an atheistic society is bereft of any transcendent standard

          Hogwash. Atheists believe in right and wrong as often as Christians and other people of faith do. They just don't need a bogeyman and the threat of the torments of hell for all eternity to frighten them into acting civilized.

> and, thus, may and has easily developed the pernicious attitude that might makes right.

          Nope, sorry. There are many things that democracies do that are morally wrong, such as allowing slavery to exist. Slavery existed (with the moral support of the church, I might add), but because the state was secular, it could be and was criticized - criticized enough to eventually end the barbarous institution in spite of the support from most ministers of the cloth, at least in the southern states. In a free and open secular state, citizens are free to criticize the policies of their government - to say that they are morally wrong and that might does not make right. It is only under religious states, where the government claims to operate under the authority of God and criticism of the state is seen as treason alike to God and man that might makes right.

          If the people in this country are living under such a tyrannical, anti-Christian government which will not tolerate criticism, why has the author of this piece not been arrested and imprisoned for his work? Why are the airwaves filled with religious broadcasters regularly denouncing the policies of their government? Why are the American people thought of as the most religious people in the Western democracies? Why does religion flourish in our country, rather than stagnate as it does in the countries that practice socialized, state-sponsored religion?

> The Christian view of politics

          There you go again. Blasphemy. "The Christian view of politics" Pure blasphemy.

> is violently opposed to the secular view of politics.

          Yes, I noticed, but thank you for adding the word "violently." Does this mean that you and your followers will resort to physical violence to take control of the reigns of power of a secular state? Does it mean that in the Christian theocracy, physical violence will be used to enforce the blasphemous "Christian" one-world view of morality, law, and order?

> And what is true of science and vocation and politics is equally true of family, the arts, education, medicine, architecture, and every other area of modern life. The catholicity of Christianity demands the Christianization of the world and all areas of its life and thought, and as such it dramatically conflicts with all fundamental anti-Christian views and practices.

          Once again, you have told us that Christianity will permeate all aspects of human life in your Christian libertarian utopia.

> A Conflict of Catholicities

> Since Genesis 3, Satan's objective has been the subversion of God's plan for the earth. That plan is God's benevolent governance with Christians as His vicegerents, or representatives (Ps. 8). Satan's plan is not merely to stymie God's plan. In addition, it is his own version of earthly catholicity. Satan wants the worship the absolute allegiance of man

          Now those opposed to a Christian theocracy in the US are the agents of Satan. Fear deeply my fellow Americans. If these people are ever given real power, there will be a blood bath such as the world has never before seen.

> (Mt. 4:8-9). The catholicity of Christianity is, therefore, on a collision course with the catholicity of Satan. There can be no détente between rival religions, visions, ethics, churches, and eschatologies that all claim catholicity.

          So you have declared war on those who disagree with you. Fear deeply my fellow Americans. If these people are ever given real power, there will be a blood bath such as the world has never before seen.

> The universal vision of Satanic catholicity opposes the universal vision of Christian catholicity at every key point. They are comprehensively rival visions; there can be no peaceful coexistence.

          No peaceful coexistance. You heard it here. Fear deeply my fellow Americans. If these people are ever given real power, there will be a blood bath such as the world has never before seen.

>1 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (Chicago and London, 1971), 156.

> 2 M. Eugene Osterhaven, The Spirit of the Reformed Tradition (Grand Rapids, 1971), 40.

> 3 J. Gresham Machen, Education, Christianity and the State (Jefferson, MD, 1987), 50.

> Rev. P. Andrew Sandlin is Executive Director of Chalcedon and Editor-in-Chief of the Chalcedon Report and The Journal of Christian Reconstruction.

> Copyright ©2000 Chalcedon Inc., PO Box 158, Vallecito, CA, 95251

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