An updated PDF Prepublication Draft improving on the thesis is found here: Draft  This really is a publication draft, so it has typesetting tags in!  When the text has finished editing and proofing, I will add a fully formatted version.  The Preface of the book is found below.

Preface

If I was to describe this book in a sentence, it would be “a manifesto for Christians who want to come out of the political closet and join the wider public square of broad cultural discourse.” A particularly obnoxious feature of late 19th century and 20th century conservative Christian thought has been the cyclical obsession with the “Rapture,” and this has extended into our present milieu. The “Rapture” will indeed be a glorious event but as the posited Rapture dates come and go, the obsession with it ends up discrediting Christian thought more generally as intellectually shallow and escapist.  For example, yet another viral hoax was perpetrated this year as a pastor announced Jesus had appeared to him and informed him of the date of the Church’s departure.[1]

Obedient congregations quit their jobs, accompany ministers to the woods and mountaintops to wait for their catching away; but now you have the disgruntled, distressed, and disillusioned posting to YouTube and renouncing Christianity.  Other ministers have set the date only for it to pass and to excuse their failure by claiming it was because of their prayer and fasting that judgment was delayed and the Rapture deferred.[2] Others have allegedly had the audacity to charge a “rapture fee” to their congregants to guarantee their place in heaven.[3] Similarly, the “Left Behind” media series primarily targeting the American evangelical market had amassed 41 million in sales at its midpoint by 2001 (it continued to 2007) and the creators were still milking the franchise in 2018; there was seemingly no limit to the appetite for the “coward’s way out”[4] of exit the Tribulation on the first Rapture train to glory.

One of my now elderly mentors expressed my feelings about this perfectly when she said that “theologies of imminent return” emerge as a reaction in conservative Christian circles whenever radical Christians begin to assert themselves in the wider culture, and militate against building a coherent Christian theology of involvement.  Scripture commands we are to “occupy until I come” (Luke 19:13, KJV) and, as I expound in the book, the definition of the Greek word “occupy” is best understood as a call to build and shape all the dimensions of culture, the Arts and the Sciences, the political and the social.

For my part, it was very frustrating that it had been nearly a decade that this book had lain fallow on my personal website where it was (and is still) in its original thesis form, but I am very pleased that now has been the time to revisit and overhaul the work for publication in this revised form.  There were some strong reasons for making this happen.  Firstly, with the untimely assassination of Charlie Kirk, there has been a muscular response, especially amongst those of college age, against the attempt to sideline and discriminate on the basis of their Christianity, and to push them out of the public discourse; those young Christians are now making their presence felt both intellectually, politically, and socially. This revival of the interest in the intersection between Christianity and the spheres of culture, makes the availability of this work pertinent and appropriate.  These recent events underline why Christianity is so desperately needed in the public square, not as the King of the Catholic hegemony but as the Prophet, Priest, and Intercessor of Protestantism.  That is, we are not, as is the frequent accusation against the dominionist, of seeking to impose a “theocracy.”

Secondly, and this disturbed me most profoundly, many Christians after leaving their political closets tentatively in the 1980s and 1990s crying “dominion” had retreated back to its safety by the turn of the new millennium, and more particularly so in the wake of the Trump phenomenon this century.  I was personally involved in an influential, cutting-edge “prophetic” fellowship who energetically prophesied us all back into the closet because of the foul-mouthed Trump and his course tweets, ignoring that he had also, like no President since Abraham Lincoln, opened the Whitehouse to the evangelical Christian world.  Such was my visceral reaction to this that I wrote the best part of 45000 words in a month as a reaction to it and received the “left foot of fellowship” for my trouble.[5]

Thirdly, as a wider issue of Christian political ethics, it was a perceived dogma of the Enlightenment, oft repeated in political science classes and the hallowed halls of government, that the “religious” belongs to the sphere of the private, and should not intrude into the realm of the public, where an indifferent pluralism was considered the binding norm; indeed, with more than a hint of irony, it was considered sacrilegious for the private to intrude into the public. For, in my view, this “secularism” in the public square functions as would a religious commitment, and further, its adherents are known for their fundamentalism, seeking to delegitimize those who would oppose them and to exclude all ‘religious’ distinctives that would challenge their orthodoxy.  That is, in effect, we have a choice of two oppositional religious points of view for the public square, secularism or Christianity, and it is appropriate we choose the true religion and not a counterfeit.

Consequently, the book aims to fill in the knowledge gap for the nascent malcontents amongst the ranks of those Christians exiting their closets and a fresh anointing for those who retreated back, but who found the closets were not as comfortable as they remembered them: no longer is it possible for Christians to live as that tolerated oddity on the fringes of civilized society, for now full compliance to the political masters with their digital IDs and their CBDCs, is being demanded on the pain of excommunication from civic society.[6]  It provides some theological and philosophical underpinnings to the legitimacy of the perspective endorsing full participation in every aspect of culture, including the social and the political, and can thus be considered a work in the best apologetic traditions of Christianity.[7]

More specifically, the book examines “dominion theology” as a feature of Reformation thought, which had incorporated the late-Augustinian thinking of the patristic period.  The Reformers frequently wrestled with what was the correct eschatological thinking regarding the triumph of Christ throughout the world.[8]  We then move through the “modern period” [9] where Christianity wrestled with the tensions between evangelism and wider social action, where we see the modern revivalism and fundamentalism essentially rejecting social action as a distraction, conservative Arminian Christianity essentially ghettoizing itself for half a century.[10] However, in opposition to these obscurantist and fundamentalist movements, there was a separate stream within the neo-Calvinism of Abraham Kuyper that addressed the challenge of philosophical modernism and modernity very differently.  With J Gresham Machen’s separation from Princeton and the founding of Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929, things began to change with a distinct theology of Christian involvement emerging from Machen’s life and work, he frequently addressed Congress in the 1930s arguing for the preeminence of biblical principles in opposition to the socialism of the great societal and economic reforms that were being enacted under the auspices of the New Deal.  Machen, I argue, is the historical precursor to what became modern dominion theology.

However, it was to be after the Second World War, in the sociological, political, and theological upheavals of the period that in the work of one man, R.J. Rushdoony, a coherent Christian critique emerged and his subsequent development of a sociological program of reform from it which properly qualifies for the designation “dominion theology.” He was applying the seminal thought of Westminster’s first professor of apologetics Cornelius Van Til who had himself been influenced by Kuyper’s philosophy of “sphere sovereignty.”[11]  Kuyper, an enormous and underappreciated intellect of the second part of the 19^th century, had offered a searching critique of modernism whilst embracing the tools of modernity, and had argued for distinct modal spheres of human culture, in which the church had an ethical regulatory role but to which it was not to dictate or censor.[12]  This concept was itself a recapitulation and modernization of the Reformation emphasis on the legitimacy of and the equal value between the different “vocations” of human culture in opposition to the strict division between the religious and the secular, the priesthood and the laity, with its belief in the pre-eminence of the former.  This tyrannizing over culture and the separation of laity and priesthood had been the cornerstone of the domination of culture by the Roman Catholic hegemony for almost a thousand years, with the absolute authority of the papacy in matters of cultural and scientific disputes.

Following Rushdoony’s seminal work, the period of the 1970s and the 1980s was one of increasing political involvement of Christians in the political realm, particularly in the US.  Conservative Christians had been particularly motivated by the Roe vs Wade case that had “found” a constitutional right to abortion.  President Jimmy Carter was the first to bring his faith to the fore and to make it a political issue in the 1977 presidential campaign.  Subsequently, both Ronald Reagen and George Bush both made their faith commitment a feature of their campaigns, and even Barak Obama made capital from his time in a liberal Chicago church and equivocated on gay marriage that he might get the black evangelical vote in 2008.  The charismatic revival of the period suddenly saw dominion theology becoming a feature of influential leaders within the movement who were seeking an alternative to the traditional evangelical rejection of social action as being a feature of the liberal “social gospel.”  We examine these related but distinct streams of dominion theology far from the Reformed roots of the movement.  We finish with an exposition of a Christian political philosophy for the contemporary period.

Importantly, the book extends and develops substantially the content of a thesis upon which it is based, partly because of the passage of time and improvements in my own understanding, but chiefly because the thesis was subject to a strict word limit of 20000 words.  That provided little opportunity to develop the argument beyond the narrow principal theme of establishing the orthodoxy of the position in response to its persistent portrayal as an extreme, fanatical form of Christianity both from outside and within Christendom.[13]  I believe it provided and still provides an emphatic and coherent answer to that important historical question but this constraint on its content was reflected in a question posed by an academic pastoral reviewer at the time who had made the comment, “so what are you going to do now you have established this orthodoxy, what practical use is it?” [14] The additional material represents the broad contours of an answer to that question, and the book subsequently differs most substantively from the original thesis by: [NL 1–3]

1. Adding in what might be called the sociological and political application of the position by outlining what I call a “philosophy of Christian involvement.” [15]
2. Updating the content to include recent literature, developments, and innovations both from within the Christian community and more generally in the wider Western political culture.
3. Where my thought and understanding have matured, particularly on those philosophical issues covered in depth within my doctoral studies (and I can better express what I was sometimes struggling to express in the thesis), I have added new material, rewritten sentences or paragraphs or added an explanatory footnote as directions to my further discussions of the issues in question. [/NL 1–3]

Finally, I believed and still believe Dominion theology is the most coherent form of Christian cultural thinking, and I commend careful consideration by the reader of what is written here.  It represents a measured and critically thought through response to those who for whatever reason, be it fear, genuine ignorance, misunderstanding or maliciousness, have sought to misrepresent the position.  It is very much a sister volume to my doctoral work and in this updated form, it is every bit as intellectually rigorous.  It will provide substantive apologetic material for the believer seeking an intellectual defense of their faith beyond the pop-apologetics and cowardly dispensationalist eschatologies of our time.

[B] How to Read This Book

This book has some advanced passages, arguments, and discussions in places for the most demanding of readers.  Sometimes the language is philosophical or theological, and it is important to not get stuck or bogged down if you are new to the subject or want a more general overview.  There is no need to understand everything you read first time through and there is no need to read the book from cover to cover if you are using it like a textbook or a reference manual – look at the contents, look at the indices, and read what you want to or need to, remembering you can always come back later if you want to dig deeper.  There are lots of moving parts in Dominion Theology and parts like the relationship to eschatology, the key historical figures, or the application in the modern political context, can stand and be read on their own, being self-contained areas of study.

Dr Michael Macneil, October 26^th, 2025.

[1] The pastor at fault this time was South African pastor Joshua Mhlakela, who has since publicly repented and stated he will never talk about the Rapture again; that is to his credit.

[2] This was the infamous claim by Nigerian Pastor Metuh who claimed the day of the rapture would be April 25, 2024.

[3] In Ekiti State, Pastor Ade Abraham of Christ High Commission made headlines after instructing his congregation to relocate to a camp where they were told to “wait for the Rapture.” It was alleged he asked followers to pay a ₦310,000 rapture fee to guarantee their spot in heaven.

[4] This is a phrase I attribute to one of the most well-known and controversial of the British charismatic leaders of the 1980s and 1990s Gerald Coates, who led a 1000-member strong church (extremely large for the UK) and 100-satellite churches nationwide at the height of his movement in 1997. He was one of the proponents of a charismatic form of dominion theology, ‘Kingdom Now’ which we encounter later in the book.

[5] Macneil, Politics. Explaining my colorful idiom, Paul and Barnabas received the “right hand of fellowship” from the Jerusalem elders in Gal 2:9 for the recognition of their ministry.  My censuring was in the early days of COVID, and there was lots of discussion amongst Christian leaders in response to pressure from the politicians of Romans 13 and accepting government mandates; I found myself at odds with almost all my elders.  A search on my blog (https://planetmacneil.org/blog) for ‘COVID’ will yield how strongly I felt over this issue at that time, particularly the removal of our political and social rights.  With the passing of the years and new, unrepentant publications on these issues from those same elders, I believe I was totally justified at the time in “obeying God not men” (Acts 4:19), and my views have not changed regarding their capitulation at that time.  I do not bear any personal animus towards them and would happily worship with them, but we certainly differ when it comes to cultural philosophy.

[6] One particularly vivid account was from a personal friend who works in China.  During the pandemic, their tower block had the main entry doors welded shut; when they had run out of pooled food they began shouting from their balconies for help; a police drone then came and photographed them, with some receiving automatic fines to their bank accounts for “anti-social behavior.”  This is the technocratic utopia being advocated by some of the most influential tech billionaires in the West; Larry Ellison has recently argued that the potential for 100% surveillance being offered by AI systems will ensure peaceful compliance to all laws, for we would “all be on our best behavior,” and thus complete societal peace.  Ellison should be commended for his technological achievements as the founder of Oracle, and his current support of the IDF, but this aspect of his political vision I feel constrained to challenge.

[7] By “apologetic” we do not mean, as in modern English usage, saying “sorry for being a Christian,” but rather the discipline of philosophical apologetics where we defend the faith from its detractors and opponents. More technically, the Greek word used by the apostles Peter and Paul, is ἀπολογία (apologia), quoting the Gingrich lexicon: defense; as a legal technical term, a speech in defense of oneself reply, verbal defense (2Tim 4:16); BDAG (the academic reference work for the Greek of this period) emphasizes this is a speech in defense, it is reasoned, rather than inspirational or preached.  Similarly, Socrates made his apologia before the elders at Athens, it was a positive statement as to why he considered himself innocent of the charges levelled against him.

[8] At first it might seem a breathtaking, sectarian move to leapfrog the entire Catholic period in moving from Augustine to the Reformation with little comment on the thousand years between them, particularly when there were some fine “Catholic” scholars.  However, some consider Calvin to have “merely” expressed the “theology of Augustine in systematic form.”  That is, the Reformation was a re-engagement with the primitive Christian foundations in their unadulterated form before their “infection” with first Plato and then Aristotle (where Aquinas, though brilliant as he was, might be considered a baptized Aristotle).  Whilst the argument to do it justice would need to be far more nuanced than this, even in this course form it still has substantial force and truth in it, for the brutal and tyrannical nature of some periods of the Catholic hegemony, and their violent opposition to protestant thought, is not something we need argue about, it is a matter of historical record.

[9] By the “modern period” we do not mean our contemporary period but that which is argued to have begun with the Renaissance, the earliest dates being given as around 1250 with Italian figures like the painter Giotto and the writer Dante Alighieri.  It was characterized by an increasing preeminence being given to the role of reason and the rejection of ecclesiastical authority, especially that of the papal dynasties.  However, the Renaissance was in fact spread over many centuries and had both Christian and violently anti-religious movements within it; the Reformation shared the basic Renaissance position in rejecting traditional papal authority and was an integral expression of it. Similarly, it was not until the early 17th century that Descartes is considered the first of the “modern” philosophers, and the “Jewish Renaissance” did not occur in the parochial Russian Jewish communities until the mid-19th century.  There are also considered to be separate movements of the French and German Renaissance, and as a matter of disambiguating the terminology, the “Enlightenment” is better considered that period of the later Renaissance where the focus on reason, science, and individual liberty increased.  Many history books argue that the Enlightenment chronologically followed the Renaissance, this is a gross oversimplification, they were different aspects of the same intellectual movement that asserted the right of men to think outside of ecclesiastical authority, free of the fear of sanction.  Whilst the secular Enlightenment might cry “autonomy” in rejection of all religious metanarratives as a way of life, the Christian Enlightenment argued for the right of each individual to directly approach God without the need of a priestly mediator, the essence of a protestant perspective.

[10] As we shall see, modern revivalism is often associated with Charles Finney, and he is held up at the archetype and hero of the movement.  However, Finney argued for and executed an aggressive presence in all the spheres of culture, most notably the political and the educational, serving as the first president of Wheaton College.  He actively encouraged his followers to engage in political fights and to obtain political office as can be read in his autobiography (which is public domain).  Although he rejected the constraints that Calvinism had imposed on the ministers of the colonies which he had viewed as the cause of their failures to maintain a Christian culture, his cultural philosophy was far closer to that of orthodox presbyterian J Gresham Machen, the founder of the Calvinist Westminster Theological seminary than the modern revivalists and fundamentalists who followed in his wake.

[11] Van Til remained for over fifty years in that position.

[12] I consider his remarkable cultural and political achievements in Macneil, Abraham Kuyper where I also offer an explanation as to why he is a figure that has been generally ignored outside the parochial boundaries of the Reformed world.  Kuyper advocated for ‘modernity’ in the sense of embracing the scientific and technological advances of the period, founding the Free University of Amsterdam, two broadsheet papers, a political party, and serving as Primeminister of the Netherlands between 1901 to 1905.  As a result, he was at his most impatient with the religious conservatives suspicious of the innovations of the age.

[13] This book is an updated version of my Master of Arts (Studies in Philosophy and Religion) dissertation which obtained a Distinction at the University of Bangor in North Wales in 2016.  The Masters was a “taught Masters,”, in effect asking you to write 60000 words.  Forty thousand of those were four coursework essays, leaving but 20000 for a dissertation which would have seemed enormous to me when I was studying for my Bachelors, but was woefully inadequate when there was so much to say!

My supervisor for the dissertation, now Emeritus Professor Eryl Davies, said that it would be “an absolute tragedy” if it was to remain gathering dust on the library shelves and encouraged me to publish it.  That has remained frustratingly out of reach until now but post my doctoral studies and the successful publication of a book based on those studies (Macneil, Foundations of Philosophy), I am pleased I have been able to revisit, update and prepare it for publication, receiving further encouragement and assistance from Professor Davies and the current Head of the School, Professor Lucy Huskinson, to do so.

[14] The questioner was the principal of a Pentecostal Bible college in Hungary, so I considered it worthy of consideration.

[15] Stated most fully in Macneil, “Politics.”