Stronger Women, 'Battle Ready' Men

And a deeper look at Christian 'Dominionism'

On my show titled Common Sense on NCWlife I have covered a lot of topics in 58 episodes so far. From misinformation and propaganda to the opioid epidemic and its impact on the North Central Washington community to right-wing extremists and their attempts to bully the Wenatchee School Board at the behest of Pastor Carey McPherson of Grace City Church, it’s been a fun and creatively challenging ride. The deal with NCWlife when I embarked on the project was that I won’t get paid, but I have full creative control over the topics I cover.

So after GCC held their “Strongermen Conference 2021: Battle Ready” in Oct. 2021 I started thinking that maybe someone should showcase the strong women who live and thrive in the Wenatchee Valley.

So in the first installment of the series I highlighted Monica Cahalan, a small business owner, mother of five and competitive power lifter. You can watch the full episode here.

In the second installment of the series, which is the most recent episode of my show, I showcase Selina Danko. Selina is an ultramarathon runner who personifies perseverance and grit.

You can watch that full episode here.

Like I say in the episode, Selina may be small in stature but her force of will is impressive. I’d venture to say that her ability to push her body and mind past pain and discomfort rivals that of any Navy Seal, US Marine or any self-described “tough guy” out there. What she also shares in common with elite warriors and athletes is a devotion to a grueling level of preparation in order to accomplish a goal. This aspect of excellence often goes unseen, unheard and unremarked upon.

What I hope people take away from both Part I and II of this series is that physical prowess and mental toughness are not the monopoly of one gender.

I started thinking about putting together a series about strong women after I saw pictures from the “Battle Ready” men’s conference in October.

According to one participant’s public Facebook post, a John Kent Blake, “772” men participated in that event. The weekend conference included a strongman competition, ax throwing, a “second-amendment giveaway” and a whole lotta BBQ.

Local law enforcement officers also attended and one posted posted publicly about it on Facebook saying they “need more men” and “Glory be to God! ALL IN… ONE NAME!”

“Tommy Selleck” is actually Thomas Williams, a Douglas County Sheriff’s Office deputy. He represents just one more tie between local law enforcement and GCC.

Now on one hand a private organization putting on a macho man weekend like this isn’t newsworthy. Churches hold mens retreats all the time. Many play up the militaristic rhetoric and play on masculine stereotypes in order to build relationships among group members and with the leadership in a short amount of time.

The difference is the urgency and hyperbole.

“But brace yourself: war has been declared on you,” wrote GCC leaders on their website.

No one, as far as I know, has declared war on Grace City Church or any of its members. Curiosity and questions are not equal to slings and arrows. If your leader is trying to make one seem like the other, perhaps that should give you pause.

Another thing that is different about GCC is the “extreme complementarianism” as one local pastor described their teachings on sex and gender.

I’ll save the deep dive on complementarianism for later, but Mike Cosper, the host of the podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, said on NPR recently modern Christians see gender relations through one of three lenses:

1. Egalitarianism. Not to be confused with the classical definition of the word that students of history attach to the Enlightenment and French Revolution. For this subculture, it basically equates to “Christian feminism.” It threw me too, at first.

2. Complementarianism. According to Wikipedia: “Complementarians assign primary headship roles to men and support roles to women based on their interpretation of certain biblical passages. One of the precepts of complementarianism is that while women may assist in the decision-making process, the ultimate authority for the decision is the purview of the male in marriage, courtship, and in the polity of churches subscribing to this view.”

3. Dominionism. According to Wikipedia: “Dominionism a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians based on their understandings of biblical law.”

In his 1992 study of dominion theology and its influence on the Christian right, Bruce Barron wrote:

“In the context of American evangelical efforts to penetrate and transform public life, the distinguishing mark of a dominionist is a commitment to defining and carrying out an approach to building society that is self-consciously defined as exclusively Christian, and dependent specifically on the work of Christians, rather than based on a broader consensus.”

According to Wikipedia, journalist Frederick Clarkson defined dominionism as a movement that, while including dominion theology and reconstructionism as subsets, is much broader in scope, extending to much of the Christian right in the United States.

In 2005, Clarkson enumerated the following characteristics shared by all forms of dominionism:

1. Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.

2. Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.

3. Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that the Ten Commandments, or "biblical law," should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles.

If you really pay attention to how McPherson and GCC leadership conceptualize and communicate about the role of Christianity in American society, to an outside observer they seem more like dominionists than complementarians.

You may have observed that dominionism goes far beyond gender relations and power dynamics within marriage. It’s a mental framework geared toward establishing Christian theocracy. I think we can safely assume if a group of men want to establish dominion over civil government (read: democracy) they will also want to dominate their own wives and families in the home.

And women in leadership? Forget about it. Grace City Church leaders have made it clear that the sect follows The Danvers Statement, which you can read more about here.

It was co-written by a man named Wayne Grudem, who is listed as a guest lecturer for GCC’s Vector Academy. The statement is a litany of all that is wrong with modern Christianity and the world, including:

“The emergence of roles for men and women in church leadership that do not conform to Biblical teaching but backfire in the crippling of Biblically faithful witness.”

So basically the roles women had roughly 2000 years ago (wife, mother, slave, crone, prostitute, etc.) are plenty and let’s keep it that way.

Now normally a religious group’s regressive views about women and gender relations isn’t cause for concern from the general public. If some women want to put themselves and their daughters under the yoke of such a system voluntarily, who are we to intervene? It’s a free country, as they say, and as much as dominionists want to pretend the Founders meant for us to live in a “Christian nation.”

But the Constitution is pretty clear about the separation of church and state in the First Amendment.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The free exercise of religion, any religion, is not to be prohibited, and no one religion is to take precedent over any other or society in general.

So when is it reasonable for average citizens to become concerned about religion encroaching on the public’s domain?

When folks who believe their religion should rule our government start to infiltrate said government, and our public agencies.