A Bible-Based Government

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A Bible-Based Government

By John Lobertini, CBS.5 Television (San Francisco, California), April 27, 2006

(CBS 5) VALLEY SPRINGS, Calif. What if you long for a world where not only gay marriage, abortion, and safe-sex education are against the law, but so are taxes, assisted suicide, and pornography?

What could you do? Where would you go?

To the state of South Carolina, says Corey Burnell, who, from the small Central Valley town of Valley Springs, has been relocating families to South Carolina for over a year.

Burnell, 30, and his wife Nicole, 28, started a movement called Christian Exodus out of frustration over California laws that they say are too liberal and against the teachings of Christianity.

Nicole Burnell is outraged by recent efforts to recognize gays and lesbians in California textbooks.

"They're wanting to teach everybody about homosexuality. I'm not," Nicole Burnell said. "Why is when they do it, it's okay, but when I want to do it, it's not okay. I disagree with them. They're wrong."

Christian Exodus believes in getting its way by moving to a conservative state and then running for elected office -- on school boards, city councils, the state legislature -- then changing laws.

They are looking for people who would be willing to fight for prayer in schools, sex education that preaches abstinence, and making sodomy a crime.

"This takes a particular type of individual," said Cory Burnell. "One who really sees the last 30 years of Christian activism has failed."

Christian Exodus has set its sights on six conservative South Carolina counties, places big enough for its followers to find jobs, but small enough places where change can quickly take place.

By 2014, these political pioneers want enough people in key positions to make a dramatic impact on statewide elections.

University of California at Davis religious scholar Allison Coudert applauds Christian Exodus for using the ballot box instead of violence. But she says the movement's rigid codes are troubling.

"There is such a kind of apocalyptic rhetoric that the world is absolutely going to hell, and the only way to save this is by sheltering yourself, building walls around you that really don't encourage any kind of diversity," Coudert said.

Cory Burnell said, "We would allow people of all sorts of ideologies and races. But when you talk about the law and how the law is applied, law is effected to change or correct behavior."

The Burnells' group also wants to reduce or eliminate income and property taxes.

And it's willing to take on the federal government under the 10th Amendment and a state's right to regulate its own activities.

Christian Exodus is not a cult, the Burnells say. The group has no church. Their members pay no tithing.

In fact, these strict conservative beliefs are not new and may be widely held, all of which could make Christian Exodus a force in an increasingly divided America.

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