By contrast, the leaders of Reconstructionism believed that Old Testament teachings—on everything from capital punishment for gays to the virtues of child-beating—were still valid because they were the inerrant Word and Will of God and therefore should be enforced. Not only that, they said that biblical law should be imposed even on nonbelievers. This theology was the American version of the attempt in some Muslim countries to impose Sharia (Islamic law) on all citizens, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
It’s no coincidence that the rise of the Islamic Brotherhoods in Egypt and Syria and the rise of North American Reconstructionism took place in a twentieth-century time frame—as science, and modern “permissiveness” collided with a frightened conservatism rooted in religion. The writings of people such as Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and those of Rushdoony are virtually interchangeable when it comes to their goals of restoring God to His “rightful place” as He presides over law and morals. According to al-Banna, Islam enjoins man to strive for a segregation of male and female students, a separate curriculum for girls, a prohibition on dancing, and a campaign against “ostentation in dress and loose behavior.” Islamic governments must eventually be unified in a theocratic Caliphate. Or as the late Reconstructionist/ Calvinist theologian David Chilton (sounding startlingly al-Bannalike) explained:The Great Commission to the Church does not end with simply witnessing to the nations.... The kingdoms of the world are to become the kingdoms of Christ.... This means that every aspect of life throughout the world is to be brought under the lordship of Jesus Christ: families, individuals, business, science, agriculture, the arts, law, education, economics, psychology, philosophy, and every other sphere of human activity. Nothing may be left out. Christ “must reign, until He has put all enemies under His feet” (1st Cor. 15:25). . . . Our goal is a Christian world, made up of explicitly Christian nations. How could a Christian desire anything else? . . . That is the only choice: pagan law or Christian law. God specifically forbids “pluralism.” God is not the least bit interested in sharing world dominion with Satan.29
It was my old friend, the short, stocky, bearded, gnomelike, Armenian-American Rousas Rushdoony who in 1973 most thoroughly laid out the Far Right/Religious Right agenda in his book The Institutes of Biblical Law. Rushdoony changed the definition of salvation from the accepted Evangelical idea that it applies to individuals to the claim that salvation is really about politics. With this redefinition, Rushdoony contradicted the usual reading of Jesus’ words by most Christians to mean that Jesus had not come to this earth to be a political leader: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
According to Rushdoony, all nations on earth should be obedient to the ancient Jewish/Christian version of “God’s Law,” so that the world will experience “God’s blessings.” Biblical salvation will then turn back the consequences of The Fall, and we’ll be on our way to the New Eden. To achieve this “turning back,” coercion must be used by the faithful to stop evildoers, who are, by definition, anyone not obeying all of God’s Laws as defined by the Reconstructionist interpretation of the Bible.
Most theologians argue that the New Testament Law of Love “corrects” or “completes” the Old Testament Law of Retribution. Not the Reconstructionists. Rushdoony’s son-in-law Gary North has argued that in the Sermon on the Mount the commandments about love are only “recommendations for the ethical conduct of a captive people.”30 North says that Jesus’ commands that we agree with adversaries quickly, go the second mile, turn the other cheek, and so forth are no more than instructions on how to survive captivity while being ruled by unbelieving sovereigns as the Jews were ruled by the Romans in Jesus’ day. Once Christians are in charge, according to North, rather than turning the other cheek to our enemy, we “should either bust him in the chops or haul him before the magistrate, and possibly both.” North adds, “It is only in a period of civil impotence that Christians are under the rule to ‘resist not evil.’”31
How far would the Reconstructionists go? North, writes, “The question eventually must be raised: Is it a criminal offence to take the name of the Lord in vain? When people curse their parents, it unquestionably is a capital crime (Exodus 21:17). The son or daughter is under the lawful jurisdiction of the family. The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death. Clearly, cursing God (blasphemy) is a comparable crime, and is therefore a capital crime (Leviticus 24:16).”32
Here’s a good summary of the Reconstructionists’ extremism from Frederick Clarkson (coauthor of Challenging the Christian Right): Epitomizing the Reconstructionist idea of Biblical “warfare” is the centrality of capital punishment under Biblical Law. Doctrinal leaders (notably Rushdoony, North, and Bahnsen) call for the death penalty for a wide range of crimes in addition to such contemporary capital crimes as rape, kidnapping, and murder. Death is also the punishment for apostasy (abandonment of the faith), heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, “sodomy or homosexuality,” incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, “unchastity before marriage.” According to North, women who have abortions should be publicly executed, “along with those who advised them to abort their children.” Rushdoony concludes: “God’s government prevails, and His alternatives are clear-cut: either men and nations obey His laws, or God invokes the death penalty against them.” . . . The Biblically approved methods of execution include burning (at the stake for example), stoning, hanging, and “the sword.” . . . People who sympathize with Reconstructionism often flee the label because of the severe and unpopular nature of such views.”33
Here is how I imagine a Reconstructionist version of the Sermon on the Mount would read, inclusive of Reconstructionist “inside” theological/political code words like “Law-Word”:Blessed are those who exercise dominion over the earth: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who deport the immigrants: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who agree that the significance of Jesus Christ as the ‘faithful and true witness’ is that He not only witnesses against those who are at war against God, but He also executes them: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who subdue all things and all nations to Christ and His Law-Word: for they shall be filled. Blessed are those who say that those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God must be denied citizenship: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the Calvinist Christians who are the only lawful heirs to the Kingdom: for they shall see God. Blessed are those who know that turning the other cheek is a temporary bribe paid to evil secular rulers: for they shall be called sons of God if they bust their enemies in the chops. Blessed are those who have taken an eye for an eye: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are ye when ye know that the battle for My sake is between the Christian Reconstruction Movement and everyone else. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad: for great is your reward in heaven. For so we are to make Bible-obeying disciples of anybody who gets in our way, and kill those who resist.
I remember first meeting Rushdoony at his home in Vallecito, California, in the late 1970s. (That was where I also met Gary North for the first time.) I was accompanied by Jim Buchfuehrer, who had produced the antiabortion documentary series of films with me that featured my father and Dr. C. Everett Koop. (Koop was an ultra-Calvinist who would become Ronald Reagan’s surgeon general.) The movie series and book project Whatever Happened to the Human Race? were Koop’s and my brainchild. He had seen Dad’s and my first film series—How Should We Then Live?—and Koop wanted to team up to expand on the last episodes, in which Dad had denounced the “imperial court” for “stripping the unborn” of their right to life. I talked my father into doing the project.
The impact of the two film series, as well as their companion books, was to give the Evangelical community a frame of reference through which to understand the “secularization of American culture” and to point to the “human life issue” as the watershed between a “Christian society” and a utilitarian, relativist
ic “post-Christian” future. By the time the films had been viewed by millions of American Evangelicals, Dad had become the leader of those Evangelicals who took a “stand” on the “life issues.” And the films made the Reconstructionists believe that perhaps in Francis Schaeffer and his up-and-coming son they might have found new allies. So I began to get messages that Rushdoony urgently wanted to meet me.
I was struck by the similarity between the adulation Rushdoony received in his compound and the adulation my father enjoyed at L’Abri, although Rushdoony’s outfit was much smaller. As in L’Abri, the man at the center of all the activity was treated with deference bordering on idolatry. Since Rushdoony was also so similar in build and manner to my father, he struck me as a sort of imposter, even wearing a beard very much like Dad’s!
Rushdoony’s manner was both condescending and fatherly, as if he wanted to ingratiate himself to me and recruit me for his team, all the while instructing me. We spent three days together talking. Rushdoony spoke earnestly and with plenty of hand-onarm touching and “fatherly” good humor. On the second visit, a few months later, Rush (as his friends called him and as he asked me to call him) introduced me to his biggest financial benefactor, Howard Ahmanson.34 Now that got my attention! Most religious leaders would rather share their wives than their major donors.
Howard started writing my religious media production company (Schaeffer V Productions) handsome checks for amounts totaling several hundred thousand dollars. Howard and I became friends (we still are), and while using his money to churn out Religious Right films, books, and newspapers, I also got Ahmanson to help my friend attorney John Whitehead to found the Rutherford Institute.
I was the institute’s first fund-raiser as well as a founding board member. The Rutherford Institute was just one more example of the impact of Rushdoony’s ideas. Whitehead was inspired by Rushdoony’s political theology of “reclaiming America for God” and also personally encouraged by him to start what Whitehead pitched as “our version of the ACLU.”35
The Rutherford Institute spawned many imitators, from Pat Robertson’s legal foundation to James Dobson’s legal program. A whole crop of Evangelical leaders suddenly wanted to cash in on the save-America-through-the-courts game, with its fund-raising (and publicity-making) grandstanding possibilities. Typically, Rutherford got involved with defending what in our Rutherford Institute newsletters we claimed were religious civil liberties: For instance, when Reconstructionist homeschool families were investigated by education or child welfare agencies, the Rutherford Institute would intervene to defend them.
What first put the Rutherford Institute on the Evangelical map was its association with Rushdoony, Ahmanson, and me. In 1980–1981 I produced and directed a film project (authored by Whitehead), The Second American Revolution, that not only brought Whitehead and the Rutherford Institute a large Evangelical following, but also painted the Evangelicals as victims of a “secularhumanist” America bent on “stripping Christians of our civil rights.” We also produced a best-selling book of the same title that Whitehead wrote. Ahmanson funded the film portion of the project with a check for $150,000, and Dad and I were Whitehead’s key advisors throughout the project.
When we talked, Rushdoony spoke about “secular America” as if it were an enemy state, not our country. He talked about how “we” should all use cash, never credit cards, since cards would make it “easy for the government to track us.” Rushdoony held forth passionately about the virtues of gold, how very soon the conflict between the Soviet Union and America would lead to war. Rushdoony also noted that Vallecito was “well located to survive the next war” given “the prevailing wind directions” and its water supply.
Since I was the son of someone Rushdoony regarded as a rival, I had to be handled delicately. For the heir apparent to the growing Schaeffer movement to join Rushdoony would have been quite a coup. During our half-dozen or so meetings, Rushdoony made every effort to reel me in and constantly proposed ways we could all cooperate and “join forces,” as he put it. Rushdoony was polite when talking about Dad, but nevertheless made it very clear that my father just didn’t “go far enough.” Dad, Rushdoony said, was “not consistently Calvinist.” Dad had failed to present the “full Reformed solution.” Rushdoony added that my father’s “analysis of the problem of secular humanism is good,” but that the only “real solution” to modernity is the “full application of the biblical law.”
The bizarre scope of Reconstructionists’ ambition—“insanity,” as my father often called it—is clear in the table of contents of Rushdoony’s 890-page The Institutes of Biblical Law,36 wherein he commented on the world, its history, and its future in the light of what the Bible “says.” Rushdoony provided Reconstruction theory for law, politics, jurisprudence, and social morality, just about everything except a Reformed Calvinist recipe for chicken soup!
The message of Rushdoony’s work is best summed up in one of his innumerable Chalcedon Foundation position papers, “The Increase of His Government and Peace.”37 He writes, “The ultimate and absolute government of all things shall belong to Christ.” In his book Thy Kingdom Come38—using words that are similar to those the leaders of al Qaida would use decades later in reference to “true Islam”—Rushdoony argues that democracy and Christianity are incompatible: “Democracy is the great love of the failures and cowards of life,” he writes. “One [biblical] faith, one law and one standard of justice did not mean democracy. The heresy of democracy has since then worked havoc in church and state.... Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies.”39
The impact of Reconstructionism (often under other names) has grown even though Rushdoony has largely been forgotten even in Evangelical circles, let alone the wider world. He made the Evangelical world more susceptible to being politicized—and manipulated by some very smart people. Religious leaders like Jerry Falwell who once had nothing to do with politics per se were influenced by the Reconstructionists. That in turn moved the whole Evangelical movement to the right and then into the political arena, where it became “normal” for Evangelical leaders to jump head first into politics with little-to-no regard for the separation of church and state.
Non-Evangelicals with political agendas have cashed in on the Evangelicals’ willingness to lend their numbers and influence to one moral crusade after another, or rather I should say, to one political crusade after another masquerading as moral crusades. For instance, conservative Roman Catholic Princeton University Professor of Jurisprudence Robert George was an antiabortion, anti-Obama, anti-gay-rights, and anti-stem-cell-research “profamily” activist, and he found ways to effectively carry on the Reconstructionist agenda while truthfully denying any formal connection to people like Rushdoony. Take George’s brainchild: the “Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience.” This was published in 2009 as an anti-Obama manifesto, and many Evangelical leaders signed on. George may not have been following Rushdoony or have ever read his work, but the Evangelicals who signed on to George’s agenda would never have done so if not for the influence of Reconstructionism on American Evangelicals decades before.
The “Manhattan Declaration” reads:We will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act . . . nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.40
In case you’ve never heard of George, he’s been a one-man “brain trust” for the Religious Right, Glenn Beck, and the Far Right of the Republican Party as well as for the ultraconservative wing of the Roman Catholic Church. Here’s how the New York Times introduced him to its readers:[Robert George] has parlayed a 1
3th-century Catholic philosophy [the natural law theory] into real political influence. Glenn Beck, the Fox News talker and a big George fan, likes to introduce him as “one of the biggest brains in America,” or, on one broadcast, “Superman of the Earth.” Karl Rove told me he considers George a rising star on the right and a leading voice in persuading President George W. Bush to restrict embryonic stem-cell research.... Newt Gingrich called him “an important and growing influence” on the conservative movement, especially on matters like abortion and marriage. “If there really is a vast right-wing conspiracy,” the conservative Catholic journal Crisis concluded a few years ago, “its leaders probably meet in George’s kitchen.”41
I confronted George on a panel discussion entitled “Campaign’08: Race, Gender, and Religion” at Princeton University. We butted heads over what he’d been mischaracterizing as presidential candidate Obama’s “proabortion” position. At the time we met on that (six-person) panel, George was one of McCain’s key advisors and I (a former Republican) was blasting George’s man for having sold out to the Religious Right, which McCain had once called “agents of intolerance.” In introducing myself to the Princeton audience, I mentioned that McCain had written a glowing endorsement for one of my several books on military-civilian relations.42 I also admitted that I’d actively worked for McCain in the 2000 presidential primaries against W. Bush by appearing—at McCain advisor Mark Salter’s oft-repeated urgent request—on several religious and other conservative talk shows (for instance, on Ollie North’s top-rated talk show) on McCain’s behalf. (In those days McCain was being attacked by the likes of Religious Right leader James Dobson for not being “pro-life” enough.)
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