| Intro
Us
Prolifers
Their
Conversion
Bill
Gothard & R.J. Rushdoony & David Barton
American
Heritage Party to Ron Boehme
Grateful
Anyway
Links |
|
Beloved sister-in-the-Lord, Ellen Craswell, was
taken home by her Lord April 5th, 2008. See
front page local Kitsap article.
Two of the most
loving and genuine people we have known are Bruce and Ellen Craswell. We
greatly respect this precious couple. My wife and I had the privilege to
know them in the late 1980’s for a time, when we were prolife and
political activists. We were among the grass roots while they played
county and statewide roles that periodically reached to national
influence. After 16 years as a state representative and state senator in
Olympia, Washington State, Ellen was the Republican candidate for
Governor in 1996 but lost to the Democrat, Gary Locke.
Bruce, a dentist, had been the
politician early on. And yet, Bruce once told about how it was his
unwillingness to run for the Washington state legislature that started
his wife’s long career. Ellen served as a state representative from
1977 to 1980 and in the state senate from 1981 to 1992. She was the
first woman to serve as President Pro Tem of the state senate in 1991.
The
Craswells were part of the “Reagan Revolution” in 1980. Bruce served
as chief of staff of the King County executive in the early 1980s. Bruce
and Ellen were already part of the Reaganite conservative wing of the
Republican establishment by the time the “religious right” began to
come to power.
Us
Prolifers
Many
of us Christians became political activists through participation in
the “prolife movement” in the mid to late 1980s. Some of us were
from the local Christian Action Council; some from the Crisis
Pregnancy Centers; some from Women Exploited by Abortion (WEBA). I had
been inspired by a Melody Green article in the “Last Days
Newsletter” of the late Keith Green to become a prolife activist.
Judge Steve Alexander encouraged me through my mother-in-law to become
involved in a prolife initiative campaign in 1984. Statewide, we
prolifers were being organized and mobilized by various initiative
campaigns and by leaders such as Michael Undseth and Dottie Roberts. A
number of us in Kitsap County who began to participate in county and
state politics were encouraged by the Craswells. The Craswells were in
a position to try to bridge the gap between the Reaganite right wing
and the new Christian Right.
Bruce
and Ellen had been participating for years in a conservative gathering
every two years called, the “Sun Mountain Conference” named
because of the lodge that was the location of the first meeting. The
Washington State conservative elite would meet to plan strategy. There
were mostly old guard Republican conservatives, but there were a few
conservative Democrats. The Craswells invited some of us Christian
activists to attend in the late 80s when a Silverdale hotel hosted the
event. Former governor Dixie Lee Ray was one of the speakers. John
Carlson and his fellow University of Washington classmate Brett Bader
were there. Carlson, who like Ellen lost a governor’s race to Gary
Locke (2000), was another one of the speakers.
For
many years Ellen Craswell published a “Family in Touch” newsletter
which was a vehicle for informing and mobilizing to action her
constituents and supporters. Bruce and Ellen were the lightning rods
for controversy as the Kitsap County Republicans were taken over by
the Religious Right. Adele Ferguson, then a columnist for the
Bremerton Sun newspaper, had a “love – hate” campaign going as
she often wrote about the Craswells. Adele had been longtime close
friends with Bruce and Ellen but could never get use to their
increasing testimony for Jesus Christ. And she found it unforgivable
that they would use their religious following to ruin the Republican
party and county and state politics.
My
wife, Kim, and a number of our friends were elected precinct
committeemen in the elections of 1986 and 1988. We all went to the
Kitsap County Republican conventions and to the State Conventions. So
many of us were new to politics. We really only knew the dogma of the
prolife movement. At the 1986 state convention, every time a
resolution was up for a vote, Bruce Craswell and prolife leader,
Dottie Roberts, took turns holding up “yes” or “no” signs so
that all of us prolife newbies knew how to vote! It looked ridiculous,
of course, to the establishment Republicans. But it was all the more
galling to them because we usually won each vote.
At
the 1988 state convention, the Craswells were among our leaders again
and we heard speeches by presidential candidates, including Pat
Robertson. Some of our crowd were Robertson delegates and some
were delegates for Donald Rumsfeld’s bid for president, or Bob Dole,
or Jack Kemp, or Alexander Haig, or the eventual winner, Vice
President George Bush. Bob
Williams, at the state convention, was the Republican candidate
for governor and he relied quite a bit on us in the Christian Right.
Lynn Harsh was his campaign manager. He ended up losing to the
Democrat, Booth Gardner. Future U.S. Senate candidate, Linda Smith,
was at the convention. During this period of our political activism
was also when fellow Christians, Bob Oke and Lois McMahon, began their
careers as state legislators.
Back to the Top
Their
Conversion
Bruce
and Ellen Craswell were not always “Right Wing Christians”. They
started out just as “Right Wing”. It always blesses me to hear
about how people came to put their trust in the Lord Jesus, whether I
end up agreeing with their politics or not. Consider the following
account of Bruce’s conversion to Christ by political writer, Mark
Matassa, in a 1995 article called, “Craswell’s Crusade”:
So it happened that
anti-tax crusader [Ellen] Craswell fell into a quick kinship with Rep.
Ron Dunlap, a tightfisted Bellevue Republican, and in 1979 they
sponsored Initiative 62, a tax-limitation plan.
While Craswell and Dunlap
campaigned around the state for their initiative, Bruce and Dunlap's
wife, Allison, traveling with them, killed time discussing the Bible.
Bruce loves a good-natured argument - "If it's Advil vs.
Anacin," Allison Dunlap says, "he'll take you to the
mat" - and he was sure he could prove the Bible was not absolute
divine truth, as Allison had accepted it to be. But after several
weeks of debate, Allison recalls, Bruce was astonished to see he
hadn't shaken her faith. Intrigued, the Craswells agreed to join the
Dunlaps and several other couples in a more thorough Bible study.
All of this was floating
through Bruce's mind that Wednesday evening as he drove south after
work. He was thinking about the Rev. Billy Graham's remark that it is
harder for a rich man to get to heaven than for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle. Suddenly, he says, he realized what the
passage meant: It wasn't his money God wanted, but his life. He had to
surrender his life to God.
And with that, he was so
overcome with emotion that he had to pull the Mercedes over to the
side of the freeway, somewhere around Fort Lewis. When he got out of
the car he saw a vision, he says, that is still "just as clear
and just as real as sitting here looking out the window."
There before him was
Christ, nailed to the cross.
And for five minutes Bruce
Craswell, who had been so proud of his skepticism and his logic and
his impeccable debating skill, knelt, crying, traffic whizzing past,
staring up at Him.
Mark
Matassa goes on to write about Ellen’s conversion:
ELLEN CRASWELL'S acceptance
of Christ was not nearly so dramatic as her husband's. He told her
what happened that day on the freeway; she watched him, liked the new
sense of peace she saw, and six weeks later, April 15, 1980, decided
she, too, would surrender her life to God.
"I remember feeling
suddenly it was like the weight of the world was off my
shoulders," Craswell says. "I think that's part of what
gives you strength. You don't have to do it alone. You have this inner
strength. Somebody else is there to hold you up."
In that sense, politics got
easier for Craswell when she became a Christian. She could look to the
Bible for guidance, and she felt God supporting her efforts, no matter
what the earthly outcome.
At the same time, though,
her devotion weakened her effectiveness in Olympia. Compromise is
everything in a legislative body. But if every position you take is a
matter of religious faith rather than mere political ideology,
compromise becomes nearly impossible.
[I
don’t know anything about Mark Matassa so I can’t endorse him in
general, but look at his article about the Craswell’s for more good
info about them: 1995 article called, “Craswell’s Crusade”
(http://www.seanet.com/~matassa/craswell.htm)
This article is gone now, I'm sorry to say, Jim B. 4/7/08]
[Heres is Mr. Matassa's blog article:
http://incrementalupdates.blogspot.com/2008/04/gods-plan-for-ellen-craswell.html
4/9/08]
Though
not mentioned in the above article, Ellen use to often testify how she
was miraculously healed of cancer in a charismatic ministry at
Silverdale United Methodist church in the early 1980s. Since that time
she has had to face at least one other bout with cancer, but the Lord
has used each circumstance in both her life and in the lives of many
who have come in contact with her.
Back to the Top
Bill
Gothard & R.J. Rushdoony & David Barton
By
the time my wife and I met the Craswells in 1985 or 86, they were a
part of a small Baptist congregation. The two greatest influences on
their lives seemed to be Bill
Gothard’s “Institute in Basic Life Principles” and the
Reconstructionism of R.J.
Rushdoony. These two personalities and their doctrines and their
systems had become the basis for the Craswells’ world view about
everything from diet and nutrition to their politics and vision for
mobilizing Christians for political action.
During
this period of our political activism the Lord had also been breaking
me and remaking me and teaching me in many ways. I had become a
Christian in 1976. In 1978, in my little Assembly of God church in
Hawaii, I had heard a Human Potential seminar about visualizing your
goals and creating your own reality. I completely bought into the
views and techniques taught at that motivational seminar. I moved to
Kitsap County, Washington state, in 1979. Pat
Robertson’s 700 Club was a huge influence on me at the time. Kim
and I were married in 1981. I went with Kim to a Bill Gothard, Basic
Youth Seminar which was required by my wife’s employer, Bremerton
Christian Schools.
By
1984 we were prolifers and getting into
politics. While watching a Christian talk show one day, I heard the
guest speaking about truth from the Bible that totally demolished, in
my understanding, the deception of the Human
Potential movement. The guest’s name was Dave Hunt. The “New
Age” media hype was just beginning. In November, 1986, I was
required to take a course where I worked, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard,
that included guided visualization techniques and promoted the Human
Potential movement philosophies. My confronting
of this improper use of taxpayers’ money was to have a huge impact
on my life.
And
yet, overlapping this period, I continued my social and political
activism and became involved in the “Coalition On Revival” or COR,
led by Jay Grimstead, which sought to unify and mobilize Christians to
take dominion over all aspects of civilization, including politics and
government. Eventually, through the ministry of Dave Hunt (Christian
Information Bureau which turned into the Berean
Call) and Al Dager (Media
Spotlight) I realized the corrupt nature of the “Coalition On
Revival” and how professing Christians were being manipulated and
used and the Gospel was being perverted and idolatry was being
promoted by unholy alliances in the name of “traditional family
values” and conservative political agendas. I was also learning to
what degree the occult and Freemasonry
and other unbiblical traditions had had on the founding of America;
the many threads of deception within Evangelical Christianity; and the
trends toward a false religious and political unity, preparing the
world for a counterfeit Christ and global deception.
The
Lord continued to transition my wife, Kim, and me out of social and
political activism. We had our last get together with Bruce and Ellen
Craswell when we had them over to dinner. I gave them what was
developing into my presentation, “The World System and Rebellion
Against God” which later was titled, “Counterfeit
Christianity, The World Religion, and the New World Order”. As
always our evening with them was precious fellowship because they are
such gracious people. We spent time discussing our different views on
what the Bible teaches about diet and whether the Old Testament dietary
laws apply to Christians today and what the significance was of
Peter’s vision in Acts 10. Bruce and Ellen encouraged us to look at
some videos by David Barton of WallBuilders, an “organization
dedicated to presenting America's forgotten history and heroes, with
an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional
foundation on which America was built”.
The
Baumgaertels and Craswells agreed to disagree. We parted ways. They
were so kind to spend time with “grass roots” people like us. They
are as sweet and unpretentious as anyone you will meet.
American
Heritage Party to Ron Boehme
Eventually,
after Ellen was unseated from the state senate in 1992 and then lost
the governors race in 1996, the Craswells gave up on the Republican
party. They helped to found the American
Heritage Party, which was associated with the national American
Taxpayers Party. One of the things I have always respected about the
Craswells was their consistency in what they saw as their Christian
convictions. While many Evangelicals have been willing to compromise
with and yoke with conservative Catholics and Mormons; and compromise
with various pro-abortion conservatives, the Craswells have stood
their ground even when it cost them politically. From their point of
view, it became impossible to be a Republican and still stand for
Biblical values. They simply could not support some of the Republican
candidates as they were expected to do as good Republicans.
In
1998, Bruce Craswell ran for U.S. Congress in the First Congressional
district as the American Heritage Party candidate. Bruce was bitterly
condemned by conservative Republicans for siphoning off 7% of the vote
to cause Republican incumbent, Rick White, to lose to Democrat Jay
Inslee.
In
1999 the American Taxpayers Party changed its name to the Constitution
Party and has a Washington State affiliate by that name. There is
still an American Heritage Party that has tried to create itself
nationally.
Bruce
and Ellen Craswell are listed (April 2006) as Campaign Advisors for
Republican candidate for state representative, Ron
Boehme on his campaign web site. Ron is a Youth With a Mission (YWAM)
leader who teaches Moral
Government theology and has promoted Kingdom
Now – Dominion philosophies for years.
Back to the Top
Grateful
Anyway
In
spite of our differences, we continue to love and respect Bruce and
Ellen Craswell. And even if I think that they have been misguided
through the years by Bill Gothard and R.J. Rushdoony and David Barton,
I know that our Lord Jesus has used them anyway. Our sovereign God
brings fruit in our lives and uses us for His purposes in spite of
ourselves! That doesn’t mean the Lord Jesus endorses our unbiblical
agendas. But we can rejoice that Bruce and Ellen have preached Jesus
Christ many times over many years. Those of us who homeschool in
Washington State should be grateful to the Lord for the freedom our
state’s excellent homeschool law affords. It is my understanding
that Ellen Craswell is largely responsible for that law. The Craswells
have been wonderful examples of loving parents and grandparents. We
remember the house they use to live in on Dyes Inlet near Silverdale
that had secret passage ways Bruce built for his children and a rope
ride in the side and back yard. We praise the Lord for their extended
family, including Jim and Denise. Bruce and Ellen live with some of
their children and grand children on a large family compound.
In
a January 2nd, 2005 article in the Seattle Times’ Pacific Northwest
Magazine, Lynda Mapes writes about Ellen:
At 72, Craswell still
radiates the gracious serenity that charmed voters who wrote to say
thank you for her campaign, even though they wouldn't vote for her in
a million years.
Now retired from politics, Craswell and her husband, Bruce — a
former candidate for Congress — are enjoying 14 grandkids and their
Poulsbo home, reached through a sign over the driveway that commands
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God" on the way in, "Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" on the way out.
See
this article with a great photo of Ellen and the sign over their
driveway at
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0102/portraits.html
I
do pray that followers of Jesus would no longer be drawn away to
worldly agendas in the name of American Heritage, in the name of
Traditional Family Values or unbiblical concepts of unity, or taking
dominion or reconstructionism.
And
yet, we will always love and appreciate Bruce and Ellen Craswell.
Intro
- Us Prolifers - Their
Conversion - Bill
Gothard & R.J. Rushdoony & David Barton - American
Heritage Party to Ron Boehme - Grateful
Anyway
 VENGEANCE
IS OURS
THE CHURCH IN DOMINION
Albert
James Dager
-
283Pages
A new militancy is stirring in the breasts of Christians in response
to the evils that beset society. Tens of thousands attend spiritual
warfare seminars hoping to learn how to “take back from Satan what
he has stolen.” A call for vengeance on God’s enemies and a
restructuring of society under God’s Law is being heard in
ever-widening circles.
But is it the Christian’s responsibility to take control of society
and to reconstruct it in accordance with God’s Law?
Vengeance Is Ours presents some startling revelations in this
analysis of various forms of dominion theology from Manifested Sons of
God to Christian Reconstructionism. Media
Spotlight
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