Reluctantly Remembering Rushdoony

It was 100 years ago that Seinan Gakuin was founded as a small school for junior high boys in Fukuoka City, Japan. June and I have just arrived in Japan to see old friends and to participate in the centennial activities of Seinan Gakuin. I will share more about those events next month.

It was also 100 years ago, on April 25, 1916, that a baby was born in New York City and given the name Rousas John Rushdoony. His parents were recently arrived Armenian immigrants, having fled the Armenian Genocide of 1915. His ancestors had lived for generations in a remote area near Mount Ararat.

R.J. Rushdoony followed his father and many of his ancestors into the ministry. He was ordained by the Presbyterian Church USA in 1944 and later transitioned to the more conservative Orthodox Presbyterian denomination.

In the early 1950s, Rushdoony became a reader of, and then a contributor to, the Christian libertarian magazine Faith and Freedom, which advocated an “anti-tax, non-interventionist, anti-statist economic model” in opposition to FDR’s New Deal.

Rushdoony moved to Los Angeles in 1965 and founded the Chalcedon Foundation. The monthly Chalcedon Report, which Rushdoony edited, began appearing in October of that year. In the early 1970s, his daughter Sharon married Gary North (b. 1942), an economic historian. Rushdoony and his son-in-law worked together, and later separately, on what is known as Christian Reconstructionism.

Rushdoony’s major work, and the foundational book for Reconstructionism, is his 890-page book The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973). His key ideas of theocracy (“government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided,” according to Merriam-Webster) and theonomy (rule by God’s law) are found in that book.

Rushdoony’s ideas are also known as Dominionism, the belief that Christians following God’s law should have dominion over civil affairs. As Rationalwiki.org puts it “Dominionists are, for all intents and purposes, the literal Christian equivalent of Islamists demanding Sharia law.”

“Dominion Theology” is succinctly explained in Sara Diamond’s authoritative book Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (1995). (See especially pages 246~9.)

A recent and also notable book on the subject is Michael J. McVicar’s Christian Reconstruction: R.J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism (2015). In it also there is a brief section titled “Dominion Theology” (pp. 197~201).

As noted in these two books, Rushdoony’s greatest influence was in the late 1970s and 1980s. I briefly wrote about him and his influence in my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (see pp. 48~51). That influence was seen in his contact with Pat Robertson (and his appearances on Robertson’s “700 Club”), with Jerry Falwell, and with Francis Schaeffer, who, to his credit, later repudiated the Reconstructionist movement.

While his influence may not be as great now as it was 30 years ago, neither is it negligible. Among current right-wing politicians, perhaps Sen. Ted Cruz has, partly through his father, been most influenced by Rushdoony’s view of Christianity.

In Christian Nation, the dystopian novel that I wrote about on Feb. 14 (see here), Rushdoony is mentioned repeatedly.

So, because of his historical significance as a “mover and shaker” of the Christian Right, R.J. Rushdoony is someone who needs to be remembered on this 100^th anniversary of his birth. But I remember him reluctantly because of the justifiably negative reactions toward the kind of Christianity he espoused and for his failure to have a more enlightened view of God, the Bible, and the responsibility of Christians in the world.

What Does “Jesus Is Lord” Mean?

Earlier this month I wrote about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his highly influential book The Cost of Discipleship, published in a new translation in 2001 as just Discipleship. Bonhoeffer’s emphasis was upon following Jesus as Lord. But what does that mean?

For most of my life I have generally agreed with those who said that the most basic, and most important, “creedal” statement for Christianity is simply “Jesus is Lord.” All people who could sincerely make that profession, and only those who make that profession, should be considered Christians.

In my Jan. 30 blog article I mentioned that I had started reading Frederic Rich’s book Christian Nation (2013). I have now finished it, and I can’t remember when I have read a novel that has been as disturbing, and thought-provoking, as it.

In Rich’s novel, John McCain and Sarah Palin are elected in 2008, and within a year or so McCain dies (of natural causes). Soon under President Palin there is a move to make the United States into a Christian nation as envisioned by her and those of the Christian Right who agree with her.

The movement toward the Right’s concerted attempt to establish a theocracy is greatly aided by terrorist attacks on 7/22/2012, which are much worse than the attacks of 9/11/2001. Those attacks also facilitate Palin’s reelection in 2012.

Four years later Palin’s successor is her principal advisor, the fictional Steve Jordan. He starts his inaugural speech in 2017 by declaring, “I submit America to Christ.” He then establishes a commission to draw up plans for a specific legislative program to implement his vision of a Christian nation.

Michael Farris, who is a real person (see this link to the Wikipedia article about him), was appointed chair of that commission, which included people whose names you know: John Ashcroft, Rick Perry, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Ralph Reed, and David Barton, among others.

The third section of the completed Farris Report is titled, “This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of our Lord Jesus Christ.” One provision of that section states, “Only persons who have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior shall serve as federal judges.”

Maybe you can see why this caused me to think deeply about what it means to confess “Jesus is Lord.” Those seeking to establish a Christian theocracy in the U.S. use their belief in Jesus as Lord to lord it over people who are not Christians or who do not agree with their interpretation of Christianity, which I don’t.

Here is why I strongly disagree with them: proclaiming Jesus as Lord never means coercing other people. According to the biblical records, Jesus never coerced anyone to follow him. Accordingly, those who are disciples of Jesus should never seek to coerce anyone to follow him—or to follow explicit “Christian” laws enacted by those who think they are following Jesus.

In Christian Nation, though, blasphemy, all abortion, homosexual activity, adultery, extra-marital sexual activity, and even labor unions are made illegal. Moreover, all American citizens are forced to live under the government’s interpretation of Biblical law—a kind of Christian Sharia.

All of this may seem so fictitious as to be completely implausible. But I think we have to consider the fact that, in the words on the dust jacket of Christian Nation, it could happen here.

The best chance of it beginning to happen here soon is for Ted Cruz to be elected the next President. If he wins the nomination, which is still quite possible, I’ll write then about why I think that.  

What about Evangeliphobia?

At the Vital Conversations meeting that I mentioned in my previous blog article, one of the participants asked if anyone had read the novel Christian Nation. No one had—but I have now been reading it for the last several days. It is an intriguing book.

That 2013 novel by Frederic C. Rich is based on the author’s speculation of what might have happened if McCain and Palin had been elected in 2008. You will likely see me refer to Rich’s novel again in future blog articles.

As I began to read the absorbing book, though, it dawned on me that it was doing the same sort of thing that books and movies have done with regard to Islam. That is, it exacerbates fear and enmity toward people whom the author clearly dislikes and distrusts.

So, author Rich may be guilty of encouraging what might be called “evangeliphobia.” When I thought of that term, I thought that I was perhaps coining a new word. But, alas, there is nothing new under the sun.

I found use of that term as far back as 1998. And in a 2005 article posted online by The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, “Who’s Afraid of Evangelicals?” refers to “the recent rash of ‘evangeliphobia’.”

In his book The Fear of Islam, Todd Green explains that Islamophobia is closely linked to essentialism, which is the idea that the characteristics of some individuals in a group apply to all the people in the same group.

Isn’t that sort of thing happening to evangelicals (as well as Muslims) in this country (and elsewhere)? In some circles aren’t all evangelicals being looked down upon because of the outrageous statements and questionable activities of some evangelicals?

As most of you know, I am highly critical of Christian, as well as other types of, fundamentalism. My first book was titled Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007). In that book, though, I differentiated between being a fundamentalist and being a conservative: all fundamentalists are conservatives, but not all conservatives are fundamentalists.

And, of course, the word “evangelicals” could be used in place of conservatives in the previous sentence. Often, however, all evangelicals/conservatives/fundamentalists get lumped together as if they are all the same. That clearly seems to be the case in the novel Christian Nation.

And that is the reason for using the word “evangeliphobia.”

One of the ways to combat Islamophobia is by pointing out that there is much diversity among Muslims. All should not be judged and condemned because of the outrageous behavior of a few. That is a point insisted on by moderate/liberal Christians—such as those who gathered for the discussion of Green’s book at Central Seminary on Monday evening.

But some of these same Christians—and I don’t mean to be critical of my friends at Central—are guilty of this same sort of problematic thinking when it comes to conservative evangelical Christians.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I (still) consider myself an evangelical—but one who is on the far left of the evangelical spectrum, one who is a Jim Wallis or a Tony Campolo or even a Jimmy Carter type of evangelical.

However, I have many friends (and family members) who are evangelicals and far to my right theologically and politically/socially. But they are not political extremists and don’t deserve to be lumped in with the evangelicals who are exposed/condemned in Christian Nation.

Let’s beware of the unfairness of evangeliphobia as well as of Islamophobia.

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RECOGNIZING THE DIVERSITY AMONG EVANGELICALS

      For a recent article that clarifies the diversity among evangelicals, see “7 types of evangelicals — and how they’ll affect 2016.”