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In an interview with me, Kennedy asserted that Ron Arnold was key to making the interaction with Pat Robertson and other fundamentalists succeed. "Earth Day happened in 1970," Kennedy told me, "and soon after, environmental-protection laws began to be put into place. Polluting industries saw that these laws would threaten their profits. Ron Arnold was instrumental in going to them and convincing them of a way to create an 'army' to combat the environmental movement." Arnold's strategies, said Kennedy, sparked a means of connecting fundamentalist Christians and the industries that stood to lose money because of environmental protections. Kennedy, a practicing Catholic, also questioned whether the religious impetus in the policy making of the Bush administration is genuine. The fundamentalism advocated by the administration, he said, "is not a religion. Religion is an organized framework for seeking truth. Fundamentalism is about power. Shakespeare says that the devil quotes the Bible for his own purposes. With the fundamentalists, it's really all about power."
Mark Crispin Miller, however, disagrees, at least on whether the religious orientation is sincere. What's more, he says that the particular religion of the Bush administration makes its sincerity all the more fearsome. In an interview with Buzzflash.com, Miller, the author of Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order, made a direct connection between the administration and "End of Days" theology: "What's most significant here, and yet gets almost zero coverage in our media, is the fact that Bush is very closely tied to the Christian Reconstructionist movement," Miller told Buzzflash. "The links between this White House and that movement are many and tight. Marvin Olasky—a former Maoist who is now a Reconstructionist—coined the phrase 'compassionate conservatism,' and was hired by the Bush campaign in 2000 to serve as their top consultant on welfare. . . . "
Miller defined the Bush administration's fundamentalism as "Christian Reconstructionism," which he calls "a maverick theological movement." "It's far more activist and radical than most Christian Evangelism is," Miller explained. "For the most part, Christian Evangelicals generally have chosen to deplore this world in their expectation of Jesus' return, whereupon this world will be improved. The Reconstructionists believe that it is the obligation of every Christian to do whatever he or she can do to make this a Christian republic with an eye toward making the other nations of the world Christian republics."
Reconstructionism is the most common form of dominion theology, which is why both terms, in fact, are often used interchangeably to describe a fundamentalist Christian worldview that advocates an activist stance based on a strict, literal interpretation of the Bible. Essentially, dominionists believe that the Bible is to be taken literally, and that the world is to be governed by what they call not a theocracy but a theonomy—that is, ruled not by God but by the law of God set forth in the Bible. Based on their reading of the book of Revelation, they believe that once that rule is established around the world, and once Christianity has ruled the world for 1,000 years, Christ will return and all good Christians, living and dead, will ascend to heaven in what is called "the Rapture." (Some dominionists say Christ will return first, then there will be a 1,000 year "utopia" before the Rapture.)
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http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0544/051102_news_divine.php
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