Historians may someday see the 2016 election season as the turning point in how our society understands the Dominionist movement that is seeking to recast society in its own image.  The herald of this new understanding is--ironically, as I will discuss below--a Washington Post commentary by historian John Fea, titled: "Ted Cruz's campaign is fueled by a dominionist vision for America."    The Post's publication of Fea's piece follows years of both scholarly and journalistic tip-toeing around this elephant on the table of American public life - a dynamic modern theocratic religious and political movement that prior conventional wisdom notwithstanding is not fringe.

Fea, who chairs the History Department at the evangelical Messiah College in Pennsylvania, matter of factly discusses the influence of "seven mountains dominionism" on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) - who may be the most openly theocratic candidate ever to be a serious contender for a major party presidential nomination.  Perhaps just as remarkably, the Dominionism advocated by the likes of the Cruz family is wrapped in a claim that religious freedom is under assault in the U.S.

As I reported in the recent report,  When Exemption is the Rule: The Religious Freedom Strategy of the Christian Right: "I believe that 2016 is going to be a religious-liberty election," Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) declared before a raucous crowd of some 7,000 Southern Baptists in October 2015.  "As these threats grow darker and darker and darker, they are waking people up here in Texas and all across this country."

Unsurprisingly, Cruz features this claim at many of his presidential campaign rallies. This is the new normal.

But of course, Cruz's notion of religious freedom is all about creating religious exemptions to the legal requirements to recognize the civic equality of LGBTQ people, and the rights of people seeking their sexual and reproductive health care, as well as the rights of people - including many Christians - whose religious views are different than those of the Cruzes and their ilk.

The term "Dominionism" was first popularized in the 1990s by researchers, including Chip Berlet, scholar Sara Diamond, and myself, who needed a term to describe the political aspirations of Christian Rightists who believed that they have a biblical mandate to control all earthly institutions - including government - until the second coming of Jesus. But the idea of conservative Christians gaining political power sufficient to take dominion over society predated our use of the term by decades.

 The two main schools of Dominionist thought include Christian Reconstructionism, founded by the late R.J. Rushdoony, which advances the idea not only of the need for Christians (of the right sort) to dominate society, but institute and apply Old Testament "Biblical Law."

The other, closely related form of Dominionism is advocated by the Pentecostal New Apostolic Reformation, which exuberantly advocates for Christians to "reclaim the seven mountains of culture": government, religion, media, family, business, education, and arts and entertainment.

 The religious vision and political aspirations of Ted Cruz and his father Rafael are widely known in conservative Christian religious and political circles and are being discussed in his home state of Texas.  So much so, that reporter Jonathan Tilove of the Austin American Statesman wrote last summer about how Rafael Cruz was compelled to insist, "We are not talking about theocracy."  But Fea reports that the Cruzes are close to Christian Nationalist author, historical revisionist and longtime Texas Republican leader David Barton, who declares that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation but has fallen away from this foundation and must be restored to avoid punishment from God.

There is a part of this story that has not been widely reported or even acknowledged, so it falls to those of us who were a part of it to remember and report this episode.  Here is a further excerpt from my post.

This is remarkable, in part, because a few years ago, journalists and scholars who wrote about Dominionism found themselves facing a smear campaign by, among others, writers at the same paper in which Fea's commentary appears. Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson and then-religion writer Lisa Miller were part of this national effort to discredit the idea that Dominionism was a real thing or that even if it was, that it was of much significance. This despite the fact that then-Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) had made his de facto presidential campaign announcement at a massive prayer rally organized by leaders of the movement for Seven Mountains Dominionism, and that then presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachman's (R-MN) mentor at law school was John Eidsmoe, a prominent Christian Reconstructionist theorist, (who now works at the Foundation for Moral Law, founded by Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.)   Perry's campaign later imploded, (for reasons other than the Dominionism controversy) and Bachman's campaign never gained traction, but the episode certainly prefigured current events.

This year, Ted Cruz's Dominionism has been getting some well-deserved attention -- minus the supercilious sneers of nationally syndicated columnists and reporters who must have known better.  It has been a long struggle for those of us who recognized and wrote about the seriousness of Dominionism's place in the wider Religious Right over the years.  I think it is a case of what Gandhi once wrote:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."