By Jeremy Leaming
Church and State
Monday 02 July 2007
A recent conference held by American Vision, a radical ministry that toils away to "help Christians build a truly Biblical worldview," displayed the growing organization of the dangerous Reconstructionist movement.
Tucked away a few miles off Interstate 40 just outside Asheville, N.C., the LifeWay Ridgecrest Conference Center provides Southern Baptists with a remote place to facilitate the nurturing of "Biblical Solutions for Life."
The sprawling 1,300-acre compound in the Blue Ridge Mountains is made up of chapels, a book store, café, guest housing, drab-colored brick buildings, fences topped with barbed wire and plenty of wooded grounds for religious contemplation or recreation. It is not easily or quickly located; its address cannot be found via a Google Maps search or traced on a Global Positioning System (GPS).
Despite its isolated location, during the last week of May hundreds of Religious Right activists and their families made their way there for a four-day "Worldview Super Conference." They came to hear fundamentalist Christian speakers rail about the nation's moral confusion, claim the public schools are bastions of secular humanism and warn that Christians, especially their type of Christians, are in danger of being persecuted by America.
The gathering, dubbed "Preparing This Generation to Capture the Future," was hosted by American Vision, a ministry that has been toiling away since 1978 to "help Christians build a truly Biblical worldview." In a conference handout, American Vision states that "By God's grace, we will work together to make America a truly Christian nation for our children's children."
Based in Powder Springs, Ga., American Vision also produces reams of material that push Christian Reconstructionism, a form of fundamentalism that argues for a re-writing of American history, dismantling secular democracy and constructing an America governed by "biblical law." Reconstructionists seek to impose the criminal code of the Old Testament, applying the death penalty for homosexuals, adulterers, fornicators, witches, incorrigible juvenile delinquents and those who spread false religions.
Despite its overtly radical theocratic agenda, American Vision is allied with some of the Religious Right's most powerful outfits. This year's conference was cosponsored by the Alliance Defense Fund, a well-funded Religious Right lawyers' outfit that James Dobson and other religious broadcasters helped create; Michael Farris's Home School Legal Defense Association; the late TV preacher Jerry Falwell's Liberty University School of Law; and World Magazine, Marvin Olasky's influential evangelical Christian periodical.
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