THE "CHRISTIAN EXODUS" UTOPIA

[Zlatko Waterman]

(Historical note: South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, December 20, 1860 and found The Confederate States of America. One eventual consequence of secession and the dissolution of the Union was the American Civil War.)


(paste-- A news story and background on the "Christian Exodus" movement, an attempt to found a Christian utopia where "traditional" Christian values would reign . . . from the LA Times)


Published on Sunday, August 28, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times



Strategizing a Christian Coup d'Etat
A group of believers wants to establish Scriptures-based government one city and county at a time.

by Jenny Jarvie

GREENVILLE, S.C. - It began, as many road trips do, with a stop at Wal-Mart to buy a portable DVD player.

But Mario DiMartino was planning more than a weekend getaway. He, his wife and three children were embarking on a pilgrimage to South Carolina.

"I want to migrate and claim the gold of the Lord," said the 38-year-old oil company executive from Pennsylvania. "I want to replicate the statutes and the mores and the scriptures that the God of the Old Testament espoused to the world."



Christian Exodus activists plan to take control of sheriff's offices, city councils and school boards. Eventually, they say, they will control South Carolina. They will pass godly legislation, defying Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state.


DiMartino, who drove here recently to look for a new home, is a member of Christian Exodus, a movement of politically active believers who hope to establish a government based upon Christian principles.

At a time when evangelicals are exerting influence on the national political stage - having helped secure President Bush's reelection - Christian Exodus believes that people of faith have failed to assert their moral agenda: Abortion is legal. School prayer is banned. There are limits on public displays of the Ten Commandments. Gays and lesbians can marry in Massachusetts.

Christian Exodus activists plan to take control of sheriff's offices, city councils and school boards. Eventually, they say, they will control South Carolina. They will pass godly legislation, defying Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state.

"We're going to force a constitutional crisis," said Cory Burnell, 29, an investment advisor who founded the group in November 2003.

"If necessary," he said, "we will secede from the union."

Burnell has not moved to South Carolina himself - he promised his wife that they would stay in Valley Springs, Calif., until the end of next year - but believes that his 950 supporters will rally to the cause. Five families have moved so far.

Burnell said his inspiration came from the Free State Project, which in October 2003 appealed to libertarians to move to New Hampshire for limited government intervention, lower taxes and greater individual rights. By 2006, organizers had hoped to have 20,000 people committed to relocating to New Hampshire; so far, 6,600 have said they intended to make the move, and only 100 have done so.

Christian Exodus, Burnell predicted, will be more successful.

"There are more Christians than libertarians," he said.

After scrutinizing electoral records, demographic trends and property prices, Christian Exodus members identified two upstate South Carolina counties - they will not officially say which ones - as prime for a conservative takeover. By September 2006, Burnell hopes to have 2,000 activists in one county and 500 in the other.

Frank and Tammy Janoski have settled into a five-bedroom house with white vinyl siding in a new subdivision in rural Spartanburg County.

"This is where God wants us to be," he said.

Janoski, 38, a self-employed computer engineer, had been contemplating moving from his deadline-oriented lifestyle in Bethlehem, Pa., to a more conservative region with cheaper housing and lower taxes when a church friend handed him a Christian Exodus flier.

"What attracted me to the movement was the idea of calling back the country to a righteous standard," he said.

His first six months in South Carolina have been idyllic, Janoski said. Not only do his neighbors wave as they pass by, but they also share most of his conservative Christian beliefs.

"If you're going to secede, this is the place to do it," he said. "A lot of the locals have that spirit."

Although Christian Exodus members are confident that they can capitalize on evangelical disillusionment with the Republican Party, local observers are skeptical.

James Guth, a professor at Furman University in Greenville who studies the influence of religion on politics, does not think that Christian Exodus will be successful beyond a county level.

"South Carolina is a state that is dominated by Republicans," he said. "Although there are people on the far right edge of the Republican Party … in general, the population is a big fan of Bush."

Nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, upstate South Carolina is the most conservative region of a conservative state: Bush won 58% of the South Carolina vote in 2004, and Greenville is home to Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian college that until recently had banned interracial dating.

( link inserted by me):

http://www.bju.edu/

Cleatus Blackmon, treasurer and director of missions at the Greer Baptist Assn., which oversees 39 Baptist churches in Janoski's town, doubts that Christian Exodus' focus on taking over government bodies will appeal to the majority of the region's Christians.

"You don't find the word 'control' in the scriptures," he said. "The basic mission of the church is to proclaim God's redeeming love through the example of Jesus Christ."

But Christian Exodus activists insist that they will forge ahead, even if they end up polarizing the Christian community.

"We want to separate the wheat from the chaff," DiMartino said. "There's a lot of deception in the church. If the Republican Party says something, a lot of churches say it's gospel."

Despite its cynicism about the Republican Party, Christian Exodus plans to use the party's popularity to its advantage. Rather than running for office themselves, Christian Exodus activists hope to influence which Republican candidates win local primaries.

"All we have to do is put our guy on the ballot with an 'R' sign," Burnell said. "It could be a corpse and they'll vote for him."

Local Republicans, however, point out that they would never sit idly by while Christian Exodus took over.

"He talks about 2,000 activists, but I can easily get 4,000 activists," said Bob Taylor, a Republican Greenville County councilman and a dean at Bob Jones University. "There's incredible dedication to the [Republican] cause."

While many South Carolinians may oppose abortion and gay marriage, Taylor said, few would support secession.

But DiMartino is not worried about the naysayers.

When he explained Christian Exodus to the man who sold him his home in Pickens County, he said, the salesman gave him a high-five. DiMartino looks forward to living alongside Christians who want to put local government back in the hands of what, he believes, America was really founded for.

"Whether it flies or not," he said, "is really in the Lord's hands."

© 2005 Copyright Los Angeles Times

###

[Glorious Amok]

whoa. i had so many responses to reading this.

wal-mart, oil executives, old testament values, religious supremacists, dismissal of the constitution, and white vinyl siding .... that's just about everything bad in america rolled up into one neat little package.

i'm thinking ... let 'em secede. america would be the better off for it, but the new utopia would be one bloody mess.

do they have to stay on the mainland? can't you push them out onto an island somewhere? naw, i guess all the animal sacrifices would foul up the waters.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear Glorious:

I enjoyed your comments very much.


Amazingly, in 1954, close to the time (1957) Kerouac published "On the Road" and Ginsberg published "Howl", Robert A. Heinlein, famous US science-fiction writer, published "Revolt in 2100"
( 1954), a book about a theocracy's rule over society emphasizing medieval reasoning and condemnation of pleasure, "deviation" and just about every other potential act of imagination .

Here is a partial synopsis

(paste)

Revolt in 2100 is the third volume in Heinlein's Future History series (preceded by The Man Who Sold the Moon and The Green Hills of Earth). The bulk of the book consists of the famous novella "If This Goes On" and is rounded out with the short stories "Coventry" and "Misfit."

America is a much different place in the year 2100. What was a thriving, democratic country reaching for the planets and beyond at the end of the second volume of the series is now a theocracy typified by brutal repression and backward-thinking. Heinlein provides some information about the three unwritten tales that would describe the rise to power of evangelist Nehemiah Scudder, the First Prophet who tore asunder the Constitution and set up a regime as repressive and backwards-thinking as anything from the Middle Ages. In 2100, Scudder is gone, but a First Prophet reigns in his name. There are virgins to "serve" the First Prophet, and there are "Angels of the Lord" (such as protagonist John Lyle) charged to protect his safety. Pariahs are frequently attacked and repressed by the government to further its dictatorial control, and history has been essentially deleted and replaced by a new version of America's story drilled into the heads of all youngsters. For those who dare resist, a modern Inquisition exists to punish and torture them -- there is no bigger fear than of being subjected to The Question. Still, there are revolutionaries, even among the palace guard, and John Lyle finds himself joining their ranks after having fallen for a deaconess serving under the Prophet. The account of Lyle's soul-searching conversion from loyal soldier to doubting pariah is well told, as is the story of his admission to the cabal and attempt to escape the service of the Prophet. Once outside of the palace grounds, the narrative takes on a science-fiction feel built around the plans of the cabal to overthrow the corrupt theocracy. The transformation of Lyle is fascinating; as he discovers the unknown history of a free America and reads the words of men such as Thomas Paine for the first time, he has little choice but to accept the fact that the world of his youth was based on falsehood and corruption.

( end paste)


A sidebar:

Francis Ford Coppolla has determined to go ahead with making a film of "On the Road", by the way:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainmen ... 748009.stm


Again, thanks for your usual lively comment, bristling with wit . . .



--Z