@ LUHE: "I don't think he had in mind stonings and doing f*ck all on the Sabbath, somehow ... "
There are different kinds of Christian Nationalists with different opinions on Old Testament law.
Christian Nationalists, which every Republican seems to be, do not believe in bringing back all O.T. law, just the ones that they pick and choose. There are in this nation 10s of millions of people with this mentality.
Reconstructionists, who refer themselves as Theonomists (God's law.) are the ones who state that all O.T. civil law should be followed exactly as they are. Some of them even go so far as to say that capital punishment should be by stoning instead of lethal injection or the gas chamber. Below is a sampling of their beliefs:
Those who are obedient to His commands will rule the world,
reconstructing it for His glory in terms of His laws. Psalm 2 shows God
laughing and sneering at the pitiful attempts of the wicked to fight against
and overthrow His Kingdom. He has already given His Son "all authority in
heaven and earth," and the King is with His Church until the end of the
age (Matt. 23:18-20)! Is it possible that the King will be defeated? He has, in
fact, warned all earthly rulers to submit to His government, or perish (Ps.
2:10-12). And the same is true of His Church. The nation that will not serve
us will perish (Isa. 60:12); all the peoples of the earth will be subdued under
our feet (Ps. 47:1-3)--promises made originally to Israel, but now to be
fulfilled in the New Israel, the Church.
David Chilton, The
Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth,
TX: Dominion Press, 1984), p. 117.
So let us be blunt about it: we
must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian
schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no
religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral
civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social,
political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of
the enemies of God. Murder, abortion, and pornography will be
illegal. God’s law will be enforced. It will take time. A minority religion
cannot do this. Theocracy must flow from the hearts of a majority of citizens,
just as compulsory education came only after most people had their children in
schools of some sort. But religious anarchy, like “democratic freedom” in
ancient Greece,
is a temporary phenomenon; it lasts only as long as no single group gets sufficient
power and accepted authority to abandon the principle. Religious anarchy, as a
long-term legal framework for organizing a society, is as mythical as neutrality
is. Both views assume that the institutions of civil government can create and
enforce neutral law. They are cousins, and people believe in them only
temporarily, until they make up their minds concerning which God they will
serve.
Gary North, "The
Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right" in Christianity
and Civilization: The Failure of the American Baptist Culture, No. 1 (Spring,
1982), p. 25
The bible permits slavery. This statement will come as a shock to
most people. The laws in the Bible concerning slavery have very seldom been
studied, much less preached upon. But the biblical laws concerning slavery are
among the most beneficent in all the Bible. ...
David
Chilton, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators (Tyler, TX:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1981), pp. 61-62.
Biblical law sanctions capital punishments in the forms of the
sword, burning, and stoning (and possibly hanging, as noted in chapter 13).
With the sword and hanging not considered nearly as barbaric and primitive as
burning and stoning by today’s humanistic standards, there is no pressing need
to currently defend these forms of punishment. We will briefly defend burning carried out biblically, and then turn
our efforts to defending stoning carried
out biblically. At the outset, though, we must note that “the Bible does
limit the gruesomeness of capital punishment. Deuteronomy 21:23 says that a
body was not to remain hanging overnight. There was not to be a morbid delight
in death even if it was legal.
It is amazing how many consider
burning to be too harsh an execution. Every single sin—no
matter how small we think it
is—deserves eternal burning.
And violating God’s civil code is a sin. Thus execution by temporal burning for violating God’s
law (insofar as it relates to an offense the state is biblically authorized to
punish in this way) is actually extremely lenient compared to what the sin
truly deserves.
Steve C. Halbrook, God
is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws – Second Edition.
PDF Page 255, Chapter 23: Old Testament Capital Punishment Methods.
(Registration required)
There are hundreds of thousands Theonomists in the U.S. but in spite of their small number they have influence amongst Republicans such as Michelle Bachman who was mentored by John Eidsmoe who himself was one of the original apostles of their founder, Rousas Rushdoony.
