Article snippet: In the article, Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, the editor-in-chief of the quasi-official Vatican periodical La Civiltà Cattolica, slams conservative Christians in the U.S. as ignorant, theocratic, Manichean, war-mongering fanatics. Steve Bannon, Spadaro suggests, is part of a dangerous “fringe group” of U.S. Christians who seek to bring about a theocratic Christian state, wiping away America’s healthy secularism. The Jesuit priest is a friend and counselor of Pope Francis and drafted the essay with a Presbyterian minister, Marcelo Figueroa, another friend of the Pope, who was hand-picked by the pontiff as editor of the Argentinean edition of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. The article states that U.S. evangelicals and Catholics have engaged in “an ecumenism of conflict” that seeks to advance “a theocratic type of state.” The authors claim that Bannon’s views are fueled by ideas from Calvinist Pastor Rousas John Rushdoony, the father of so-called “Christian reconstructionism,” and assert that Rushdoony had a great influence on Bannon’s “theopolitical vision of Christian fundamentalism.” In the sparsely documented essay, Spadaro makes no mention of where he came up with his odd theory that Bannon is a disciple of Pastor Rushdoony, a radical Calvinist who advocated the application of strict biblical law, including execution for adultery, blasphemy, homosexuality, witchcraft, and other sins. Instead, in a footnote, the authors refer to an article in the W... Link to the full article to read more