Ahab of The Republic of Gilead<\/a>\u00a0attended Vision Forum<\/a>\u2018s History of America Mega-Conference<\/a> earlier this month. In this post I will offer links for each part of Ahab\u2019s series detailing his experiences and impressions there, offering an excerpt from each.<\/p>\n Part I:\u00a0First Impressions<\/a><\/p>\n About a dozen vendors were manning tables at the conference \u2014 mostly books, DVDs, and homeschooling curricula \u2014 and their titled amused me. The National Center for Family-Integrated Churches seemed keen on gender roles, judging by book titles such as\u00a0Preparing Boys for Battle\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Feminine By Design.\u00a0<\/em>At the Vision Forum merchandise table, alongside toy guns, toy swords, and books such as\u00a0Large Family Logistics<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>were DVDs with titles such as\u00a0Tea with Michelle Duggar\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Birth Control: How Did We Get Here?,\u00a0<\/em>a video on the evils of \u201cchild prevention\u201d. I chuckled at the title of a video on food culture,\u00a0Food Heresies: How to Reform Our Theology of Food Without Becoming a Selfish Marxist, a Radical Environmentalist, or an Imbalanced Vegan.<\/em><\/p>\n The New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy table was stocked with books by Christian Reconstructionist author\u00a0R. J. Rushdoony<\/a>, such as the colorfully named\u00a0Noble Savages: Exposing the Worldview of Pornographers and Their War Against Christian Civilization.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Part II:\u00a0Doug Phillips on God in Histo<\/a>ry<\/a><\/p>\n Doug Phillips delivered the evening\u2019s main talk, entitled \u201cThe Panorama of God\u2019s Providence in the History of America\u201d. Phillips thanked God for the nearly one-thousand people in attendance. He lamented that this generation has supposedly forgotten our fathers and the goodness of God. A theme he impressed upon the audience was \u201cnow is the time\u201d, since the day may come when there are no longer opportunities to have conferences and monuments. I wasn\u2019t sure how to interpret this \u2014 was Phillips envisioning a time when Vision Forum would not be hosting conferences, or was he trying to frighten the audience by claiming that a time of oppression and censorship would come? Given fundamentalist Christians\u2019 predilection for claiming that they\u2019re being persecuted, I lean toward the second interpretation.<\/p>\n Phillips provided an overview of the conference, discussing the historical reenactors in attendance, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the \u201cWar Between the States\u201d. \u201cWar Between the States\u201d is a curious term I\u2019d hear throughout the conference, and it surprised me since I\u2019ve never heard of the Civil War referred to that way. When Phillips announced a Saturday reenactment of the Lincoln-Douglas debate, he cheerfully boomed, \u201cWe brought Lincoln back!\u201d Boos rose from a section of the audience.\u00a0Please tell me those were just Confederate reenactors acting in character,\u00a0<\/em>I thought.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Part III:\u00a0\u201cReligious Liberalism\u201d and Those Magnificent Mathers<\/a><\/p>\n Eidsmoe listed several alleged dangers of religious liberalism, including the supposed lack of a basis for morality, the supposed lack of basis for evangelism, and the reduction of Jesus to a mere man\u00a0or<\/em>\u00a0to one path to truth among many. Religious liberalism supposedly leaves no room for freedom, he claimed, since it reduces humans to evolutionary animals rather than moral agents accountable to God. He accused religious liberalism of having no means of maintaining Christianity or perpetuating the faith, claiming that liberal Christian denominations are losing members. (Perhaps he forgot that manymainline denominations<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0religious schools<\/a>\u00a0are losing members too?) Germany serves as a model for what can go wrong with religious liberalism, he insisted, claiming that one-hundred years of liberal German thought gave rise to Hitler and the Holocaust. In short, Eidsmoe demonized religious liberalism, using straw man arguments to grossly misrepresent what liberal Christians actually believe.<\/p>\n Eidsmoe concluded the workshop by warning listeners that religious liberalism could seep into their churches. He urged the audience to stay alert for liberal trends in their churches and seminaries, and to stay faithful to belief in Biblical inerrancy. In short, his workshop was not so much a tour of 19th century religious thought as a polemic against non-fundamentalist Christianity, complete with caricatures, oversimplification, and fear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Part IV:\u00a0Kevin Swanson Is Tired of Losing\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n As the workshop churned on, Swanson\u2019s gave voice to more visceral hatred ofThe Scarlet Letter<\/em>. The moral of the novel, he insisted, was that witchcraft, homosexuality, incest, and feminism are better than Christianity. The Bible commands the death penalty for adultery, but Hawthorne and today\u2019s average Christians loathe the death penalty.<\/em><\/p>\n Wait a minute. Did I just hear Swanson defend\u00a0capital punishment\u00a0<\/strong>for adultery?<\/em>\u00a0I thought. The audience sat rapt, apparently unfazed by Swanson\u2019s rant.\u00a0Are you people okay with this? Hello!?<\/em><\/p>\n Swanson observed that many Christians are embarrassed by what the Bible commands regarding adultery, homosexuality, and witchcraft. Such Christians love Jesus but hate his law, he said, and thus American religion is solidly anti-Biblical law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Part V:\u00a0Messiah States and Mega-Houses<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cMessianic statism\u201d, as Botkin defined it, is an organization of men who provide answers to all of humanity\u2019s problems through reorganization of society under the scientific\/secular\/socialist state, rather than Christ. The state, in effect, replaced God in people\u2019s minds, he explained. Changing, man-made laws result in society\u2019s \u201cmoral dissipation\u201d, he claimed, making the state a \u201cmaternalistic necessity\u201d. As a result of Messianic statism, men become \u201cemasculated\u201d, unable to take responsibility in their lives, Botkins claimed. A cycle of dependency emerges, where the more men descend into moral dissipation, the more they need a \u201cnanny\u201d or \u201cmommy\u201d state to care for them.<\/p>\n Emasculation? \u201cMaternalistic necessity\u201d? Mommy states? Someone has masculinity issues<\/em>, I thought.<\/p>\n Tastelessly, Botkins used natural disasters as an example of dependency on the state. When a hurricane causes devastation, everyone whines \u201cWhere is my Messianic state!?\u201d, he sneered. His utter callousness to the suffering of disaster victims and disdain for any safety net to help them recover startled me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Part VI:\u00a0Doug Phillips Rages Against the 20th Century<\/a><\/p>\n In effect, the 20th century forgot God and turned against him, Phillips told listeners. He depicted the 20th century as an era that saw the rise of \u201crationalism\u201d and the rejection of God as a higher authority. Enlightenment thinking had given rise to 19th century movements such as Marxism, feminism, socialism, and evolutionism. Then, despite the \u201crestraining\u201d influences of the British Empire and the Christian Queen Victoria, the 19th century\u2019s \u201ccompromises\u201d produced the 20th century, he argued.<\/p>\n Phillips held considerable scorn for Sigmund Freud and Margaret Sanger. Freud introduced people to psychology, and today, every single branch of psychology is saturated with \u201canti-God\u201d ideas and \u201cevolutionary scientism\u201d, he claimed. Like many other anti-abortion activists, he blasted Margaret Sanger as possibly the most dangerous person of the 20th century, more dangerous than Stalin, Hitler, or Mao. Satan seeks to foment racist extermination efforts, convince people to see babies as dangers to be eliminated, and make parents hate their children, he claimed, seeking to literally and figuratively demonize Sanger. Phillips accused Sanger of embracing eugenics, branding her \u201cthe killer angel\u201d who spawned the modern abortion movement and allegedly fueled the ideology of Hitler and Stalin. \u201cThe death count is in the billions!\u201d he grieved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Part VII:\u00a0Christian Vikings, Godly Explorers, and Strange Bacon<\/a><\/p>\n Foster argued for the supremacy of the Christian faith in history. Rome was an unjust empire, but it now lies in ruins, whereas Christianity has risen from the catacombs to become a major world religion. As proof of its supremacy, Foster claimed that Christianity is the only truly world religion, having spread to multiple continents.<\/p>\n