From the website of Christian Concern for Our Nation:
On Sunday 21st March, 70 delegates gathered in the stunning grounds of Exeter College, Oxford, to embark on a week of intense study, fellowship with one another, and worship… Andrea Minichiello Williams (Director, Christian Legal Centre) and Jeffrey Ventrella (Senior Vice President, Alliance Defense Fund) spoke after the dinner with passion and humility, challenging all the delegates to ‘put Christianity in its place’ and to answer the ‘call of today’s worshipful warrior’.
… Teaching from Jordan Lorence (Senior Vice President, Alliance Defense Fund) at these sessions was always highly relevant; he spoke honestly about the traps that Christians can fall into and provided practical advice for keeping our future careers devoted to God…
Williams’ links with Ventrella and the ADF were noted in a 2008 Channel 4 documentary which I blogged here. Ventrella’s background is discussed on this Americans United page:
Jeffery J. Ventrella, the ADF’s senior vice president of strategic training and coordinator of the Blackstone program, has published several articles in The Chalcedon Report, the leading Reconstructionist journal, which was founded by [Rousas] Rushdoony. Ventrella… describes himself as an “ordained Ruling Elder in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church” in his ADF bio…
Christian Reconstructionism is a form of Calvinist religious supremacism; while using the language of libertarianism, its goal is an authoritarian Christian society that would rule as harshly as any Islamic extremist polity. ADF president Alan Sears argues that separation of church and state is actually a KKK conspiracy:
It took a former Ku Klux Klansman turned Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black, to move the so-called “separation of church and state” into common jurisprudence, which he accomplished in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education. As a committed Klansman, Black surely must have participated in the Klan’s oath of allegiance, to “most zealously… shield and preserve… (the) separation of church and state… ” Klan doctrine is not a good way to interpret the U.S. Constitution.
The ADF’s “Blackstone program” is a series of events which has included Reconstructionist speakers. Despite these associations (and others), Ventrella says he is not himself a Reconstructionist. However, the Americans United article gives us some idea of what putting “Christianity in its place” might mean:
Ventrella called for moving beyond boycotting gay-friendly companies.
“In reality, a better strategic approach may well be to infiltrate publicly held companies (by stock purchases) and then tactically exercise voting rights and other ownership privileges, et al, in an effort to bring pressure to bear upon corporate policy and practice,” he wrote.
In another piece, Ventrella discussed the possibility of advocating vouchers as a means of tearing down the public school system.
Ventrella has also written for the Southern California Center for Christian Studies, an outfit affiliated with the Bahnsen seminary. One of his articles discusses “theonomic postmillennialism.” (“Theonomy” – which is defined as God’s law – is another term for Reconstructionism.) It highlighted the need to “engage the culture strategically” and use an incremental approach to bring about change.
The ADF was a prominent participant at the recent CPAC in Washington DC; one observer saw Lorence speak and claims that he “finished his remarks with a bizarre Islamophobic rant – warning students that if they aren’t careful the United States will be taken over by Muslims like Western Europe has.”
Islam was also a theme at the Christian Concern event at Oxford:
Dr Sam Solomon presented powerfully for four hours on Islam, clearly demonstrating his in-depth knowledge…
Solomon’s thesis on Islam is straightforward and crude, and one wonders why it would take four hours to expound; as I’ve noted previously, he warns that Muslims are brainwashed to hate, and that the situation in Nigeria shows that hospitable Muslim neighbours are likely to become killers. He is also the author of The Mosque Exposed, published by an American missionary organisation called Advancing Native Missions. A quote here has few surprises:
Despite the overtly cruel, harsh, and intolerant Quranic views toward others, namely Jews and Christians, there are injunctions in the Quran that enable the Islamic community to disguise, play down, and when necessary, deny both the intensity and the validity of these anti-Semitic and anti-Christian teachings of its religious system.
This particular injunction is taqiya, which permeates almost all the activities and dealings of Muslims within non-Muslim societies, be they religiously sacred or religiously temporal, secular or civic, since…Islam does not distinguish between sacred and secular.
Migration is legally obligatory on a Muslim as preparatory to other forms of jihad for the victory of Islam and Muslims in other countries . . . . Migration precedes jihad and both are inextricably linked…
It is not possible to consolidate the Islamic religion without migration. There is no way to raise the profile of Islam in the abode of apostasy without the help of Muslims and the increase of their numbers.
(Solomon’s book is also currently being promoted by English Defence League activists opposed to the building of a mosque in Dudley)
Also addressing Christian Concern for Our Nation in Oxford was the former Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali, who, we are assured, “spoke with great wisdom”.
CCON also outlines the other participants:
Professor Julian Rivers (Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Bristol) presented a detailed model of law in the United Kingdom and clearly demonstrated how English law is becoming anti-Christian. Pastor Mark Baines (Partner, Deloitte LLP) engaged the delegates with practical advice on networking and defeating passivity. Teaching was also given by barristers: John Pugh-Smith proved that Christian values can be upheld within the UK land-use planning system; Peter Duckworth spoke convincingly of the importance of marriage; and, the Christian Legal Centre’s Paul Diamond, along with some of his clients, spoke about his work defending religious liberty. Also lecturing were Dr Peter Saunders (General Secretary, Christian Medical Fellowship) and Countess Josephine Quintavelle [sic- should be Josephine Quintavalle] (Founder, Comment on Reproductive Ethics) who spoke cogently and persuasively on the importance of life, both for the elderly and the unborn…
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