Sen. Ted Cruz leaves no doubt that his father, evangelical minister and wildly popular conservative Christian speaker Rafael Cruz, is his most important professional and personal mentor. Throughout his 2012 Senate campaign, the Texas Republican relied heavily on his father as both chief advisor and veritable stand-in for himself whenever needed. The senator opened both his March 23rd speech declaring his presidential candidacy and his first campaign ad with tales of his father’s inspiration and guidance.

While it was questionable whether President Obama‘s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, was fair game for those seeking clues to Obama’s views and intentions, here there can be no question. Rafael Cruz is a wide-open window into Ted Cruz’s soul. And the view isn’t pretty.

Rafael Cruz is a Dominionist, a believer in Christian theocratic world rule. After his son’s 2012 Senate victory, Pastor Cruz participated in a bizarre “anointing” of Christian “kings” at a Texas megachurch. As Cruz stood by with hand raised in acceptance, Pastor Larry Huch introduced the new Senator’s father in prophetic terms:

“The number 12 means ‘divine government’, that God begins to rule and reign. Not Wall Street, not Washington — God’s people and his kingdom will begin to rule and reign“… … … in a few weeks begins that year 2012, and that this will begin what we call the “End Time Transfer of Wealth…” … God is looking at the church, and everyone in it, and deciding, in the next 3 and 1/2 years, who will be his bankers. And the ones that say, “Here am I, Lord, you can trust me”, we will become so blessed that we will usher in the coming of the Messiah. This message [is] for you. Would you welcome our good friend Rafael Cruz? What a tremendous man of God.

Pastor Cruz stepped up to agree:

The pastor [Huch] referred to Proverbs 13:22, a little while ago, which says that the wealth of the wicked is stored for the righteous. And it is through the kings, anointed to take dominion, that that transfer of wealth is going to occur… … … God has given you an anointing to go to the battlefield. And what’s the battlefield? The battlefield is the marketplace. To go to the marketplace and occupy the land. To go to the marketplace and take dominion. If you remember the last time I was in this pulpit, I talked to you about Genesis chapter 1, verse 28, where God says unto Adam and Eve, “Go forth, multiply, TAKE DOMINION over all creation.” And if you recall, we talked about the fact that that dominion is not just in the church. That dominion is over every area — society, education, government, economics…

Anyone seeing Graeme Wood‘s must-read February Atlantic piece, “What ISIS Really Wants,” will be struck by Cruz’s eerily similar rhetoric to the Islamic extremists’ fanatical commitment to prophecy and theocratic rule, of a world divided by their preferred form of Abrahamism vs. everyone else — good vs. evil.

I doubt at this point it would surprise you to learn this closest political advisor and spiritual guide to a presidential hopeful believes men should rule women in the home; the “average black” doesn’t understand much; atheists can’t be moral; homosexuality is a plot to destroy the nation, family, and belief in God; global warming science, endangered species law, and pretty much all environmental protection are a plot to destroy America; Michelle Obama is a spell-casting witch; and Barack Obama is an atheist-Muslim-Communist out to destroy God and Christianity who should go back to Africa.

All of which makes Pastor Cruz’s latest craziness on Friday a tad anti-climactic, as he explained on an Iowa conservative radio talk show his mission to convince conservative pastors to join his Dominionist crusade:

“The church is actually more responsible to the place where America is today than anybody else,” he said. “Because if we go back to 1962 and 1963, two abominable decisions of the Supreme Court. 1962, prayer was taken out of schools; 1963, Bible teaching was taken out of schools. You know, for generations kids prayed in school before starting the day. The Bible was the principal textbook in all schools all the way to universities.” The “church remained silent” in the face of those Supreme Court decisions, he said. “The consequence of that, we can see it in the statistics. Teen pregnancy skyrocketed after 1963 and so did violent crime, all as a result of taking Bible-reading and prayer out of schools.”

To clarify, Cruz blames a nonexistent rise in crime and a nonexistent rise in teen pregnancy on a nonexistent removal of prayer from schools.

As Right Wing Watch notes:

Cruz, as usual, did not mention that rates of violent crime and teen pregnancy have actually been plummeting in recent years, without the imposition of government-mandated religious education.

A presidential candidate’s advisor is calling for a political war on non-Christians and the Bible as our primary textbook in all public schools and universities. Just too fringe, too crazy to worry about? Wish we could be sure.



