Is Ryan Lizza An Idiot or Willfully Distorting Christian Theology?

Wednesday, August 31st at 9:32AM EDT

22 Comments

From Ben Domenech’s excellent Transom, I found out some news I did not have when I wrote yesterday about Ryan Lizza’s The New Yorker article where he got major, substantive facts wrong.

One of the things Lizza did was tie Michele Bachmann to Francis Schaeffer and Nancy Pearcey, who Lizza opined are “dominionists.” Well, Schaeffer may be dead, but Nancy Pearcey is very much alive and has her own website. She has responded to Lizza’s piece.

The take-away from Ryan Lizza’s hit piece on Michele Bachmann in the New Yorker is this: “Dominionist” is the new “fundamentalist” — the preferred term of abuse, intended to arouse fear and contempt, and downgrade the status of targeted groups of people.

Never mind that most of those people have never heard the term — including me. Bachmann told Lizza that a major influence on her thinking was my book Total Truth (“Bachmann told me [it] was a ‘wonderful’ book”), along with the work of Francis Schaeffer, who I studied under.

Lizza labeled the two of us Dominionists. Dozens of liberal websites have picked up the story and repeated the charge.

I had to Google the term to discover whether there really is such a group.

Will Lizza and The New Yorker bother to correct what increasingly looks like an intentional smear as opposed to a wholesale misunderstanding of Christian theology and terminology?

22 Comments Leave a comment

No. He is very intelligent.

Repair_Man_Jack (Diary) Wednesday, August 31st at 10:28AM EDT (link)

Ryan Lizza personally hates Michele Bachmann. He hates me too; although he and I have never been formally introduced. He is dishonest and amoral. His goal is to destroy anyone who professes their Christianity in the public sphere.

Ryan Lizza is a dishonest and hateful man. The fact that he knowingly distorts and lies to pursue his agenda causes him nary the slightest twinge of regret. He is very intelligent and he is an utter soul-sucking jerk. That is all.

Mr. Obama is pretending that an economic “recovery” is underway when he knows damn well that the banking system is just blowing smoke up the shredded *** of what’s left of that economy – James Howard Kunstler

5

westcoastpatriette (Diary) Wednesday, August 31st at 10:33AM EDT (link)

Praise ye the Lord. Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints. Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King. Let them praise His name in the dance: let them sing praises unto Him with the timbrel and harp. Psalm 149:1-3

I feel sorry for him.

cwilson (Diary) Wednesday, August 31st at 11:00AM EDT (link)

Matt 18:6 “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! –Samuel Adams

Times change...

jacobite Saturday, September 3rd at 1:57PM EDT (link)

Wow! Talk about divisive hate-speech. Surely there were reasonable people back then who looked for a balanced approach to our disagreements with George II. We all know that violence is never the answer. More to the point, when the Constitution was ratified, blasphemy was a crime. Libel and slander were also subject to criminal penalties. Glad we’re so much so more enlightened nowadays that nobody can defend themselves against untruths. Times v. Sullivan is the decision that abolished libel and slander. Now, if you eliminate a citizen’s defense against lies, who beneifits from this? Correct — liars. Another key constituency of the Left.

The connection was posited in 2004

sbm1 Wednesday, August 31st at 10:48AM EDT (link)

Here is an old article that a simple google search of Francis Schaeffer and Dominionism turns up.

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

I am not computer genius, but I doubt that it was severely backdated.

I also don’t really pay much heed to the nomenclature in Evangelical Theology (read some ancillary to Catholic theology, which I did study), but I do think it is a fair representation of Schaeffer to say he advocated that Evangelical Christians become actively involved in politics with the goal of shaping policy towards Christian principals. If that falls under “dominionism” then it would be a fair representation, but drawing tangents from that catch all phrase, and taking these then from the writings of someone else, would be intellectualyl dishonest.

OK, now I get it....

racvt Thursday, September 1st at 6:38AM EDT (link)

The attack on Bachman and attempts to tie her to the fantasy of a Christian theocracy might have something to do with the fact that the liberal base is seeing more Jews walk away from Obama as they realize that Evangelicals are true and strong defenders of Israel, whereas Obama is at best, an apologist for Israel.
The Left figures it has to do something to keep its base from waking away.
Then again, it may be that the left smears, because, that’s what it does best.

racvt

Look for Frankie Schaeffer to Support Ryan Lizza

kipling (Diary) Wednesday, August 31st at 10:48AM EDT (link)

It is an intentional distortion of Christianity and a willful misinterpretation of Schaeffer and Pearcy.

To support the distortion, look for Lizza or someone else in the MSM to trot out Frankie Schaeffer – the son of the late Francis Schaeffer. Frankie worked with his father for a time but soon turned against evangelicals and against the work of his father and mother. He is one of the lefts favorite talking heads on Christianity. He appears on the Rachel Maddow show and others frequently. I have already heard him attack Bachmann and claim that she wanted to set up a theocracy and oppress homosexuals.

Frankie is a real class act who will distort Scripture to serve his purposes and even called his own mother a terrorist. He now works against the legacy of his parents.

I had no idea his son was that big a freak...

sbm1 Wednesday, August 31st at 11:33AM EDT (link)

I just youtubed him, and he is a nut. What especially struck me was the way he said “anti-abortion”….it was a tone that I could never expect from someone who is religious.

Frankie Schaeffer is not a Christian.

momma Wednesday, August 31st at 1:57PM EDT (link)

He is an unbeliever — at least at the moment. Absence of fruit of the Spirit, conviction and repentance, etc.

The atheists always trot out unbelievers as ‘experts’ on Christianity. They think this is objective, unbiased journalism. They’re wrong, and it is a blatant excuse for yellow journalism, but that’s what they think.

They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. — 2 Thess. 2:10b-12 NIV

I always find it best not to speak for God.

NightTwister (Diary) Wednesday, August 31st at 2:25PM EDT (link)

Especially when it comes to judging the eternal condition of someone else.

“Baseball fits America well because it expresses our longing for the rule of law while licensing our resentment of law givers.” ― Major League Commissioner of Baseball A. Bartlett Giamatti

You're actually saying that

bethrorie Thursday, September 1st at 11:41AM EDT (link)

You don’t quote scripture? Or are you saying that if anyone quotes scripture they are contemptible? Or are you saying that scripture can be quoted, but not any of the parts where God is trying to help us understand the mental processes of those who persecute Christians?

Not eternal, just temporal

momma Thursday, September 1st at 6:26PM EDT (link)

I’m not judging his eternal condition. I have no way of doing that anyway – only God can do that. I am judging his temporal condition. He is not a Christian at (checks watch and calendar) 3:12 PM on 09-01-2011, as far as I know. Which of course I should have stated above, but being the sinner I am…
OK, I can throw in some caveats: In my opinion, at this time, as far as I know, apparently, Frankie Schaeffer is not a Christian. Better? I’m not trying to be malicious, just stating an obvious fact as I see it. If you have a different opinion or fact about Frankie Schaeffer, you are of course free to disagree. (I didn’t even stoop to calling him a freak…)

As it would have been obvious to any Christian who knew me before I became a Christian (i.e., was regenerated by God and given faith), were they asked they would have said I was not a Christian, and they would have been correct at that time.

As for Mr. Schaeffer the Younger’s eternal condition, why, he still lives and breathes, so he may yet receive the Father’s call. God alone knows whether he is among the elect.

Dominionist is not a new term.

NightTwister (Diary) Wednesday, August 31st at 10:49AM EDT (link)

It’s a form of postmiillennialism popular within some circles of the Pentacostal/Charsimatic movement, especially certain segments of the Assemblies of God.

“Baseball fits America well because it expresses our longing for the rule of law while licensing our resentment of law givers.” ― Major League Commissioner of Baseball A. Bartlett Giamatti

Kowalski.

NightTwister (Diary) Wednesday, August 31st at 10:55AM EDT (link)

Wikipedia links Dominion Theology to Theonomy. This is an incorrect connection. While there are some similarities, the history of the movements is completely separate. It appears the author is trying to link Bachmann to theonomy but using the Dominionist term. It’s another example of journalistic laziness. It would’ve been quite simple to figure out the differences before publishing the article.

“Baseball fits America well because it expresses our longing for the rule of law while licensing our resentment of law givers.” ― Major League Commissioner of Baseball A. Bartlett Giamatti

Christianity is...

pashley1411 Wednesday, August 31st at 11:04AM EDT (link)

a faraway country of which they know nothing.

Correct

aesthete (Diary) Wednesday, August 31st at 3:31PM EDT (link)

It’s also worth noting that, at least in the case of Schaeffer, the connection is weak: while Schaeffer was influenced by Rushdoony’s more strident views on instituting Mosaic law, Schaeffer eventually abandoned this view (as well as the general postmillenial view), saying, “The moral law [of the Old Testament], of course, is constant, but the civil law only was operative for the Old Testament theocracy. I do not think there is any indication of a theocracy in the New Testament until Christ returns as king.”

I really have no idea who Pearcy is.

“It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.”
-P.J. O’Rourke

Dr. Francis Schaeffer

score333 Wednesday, August 31st at 10:53AM EDT (link)

Let Dr. Schaeffer speak for himself. The best you’ll hear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5fHEmGWU2o&playnext=1&list=PL6458CAB77C71BF10

(Ed note: I updated this comment so the link is clickable…. bill s)

Thanks for posting this

Bill S (Diary) Wednesday, August 31st at 6:31PM EDT (link)

I updated your comment so it could be clicked through to YouTube. “How Then Shall We Live” is an excellent piece of work and is very representative of Schaeffer’s overall views on, well, world view. Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey (who also got sucked into this brouhaha) wrote a follow-on called “How Now Shall We Live” that further explores the link between politics, faith and other topics.

“It’s such a fine line between stupid, and clever.” – David St. Hubbins

No, they won't correct it.

lineholder (Diary) Wednesday, August 31st at 11:09AM EDT (link)

Christianity is based on a value system of absolutes. The left wants government to have the power to define what is or is not morally and/or ethically “acceptable” in our society as a whole. They despise any and all reference to absolutes, just like they despise any and all reference to God.

From their viewpoint, they are confident in their own wisdom to define what is good, righteous, honorable, etc. At any point where Christianity or any other religion proves them wrong, that religion (and those who practice it) must be either discredited or silenced.