R. J. Rushdoony | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Rousas John Rushdoony April 25, 1916 |
| Died | February 8, 2001(2001-02-08) (aged 84) |
| Occupation(s) | Minister, missionary, author, founder of theChalcedon Foundation,Rutherford Institute board member |
| Notable work | The Institutes of Biblical Law, Chalcedon Report,Journal of Christian Reconstruction |
| Spouse(s) | Arda Gent Rushdoony (m. 1943, div. 1959, d. 1977) Dorothy Barbara Ross Kirkwood Rushdoony (m. 1962, d. 2003)[2] |
| Children | Rebecca (mother, Arda) Joanna (mother, Arda) Sharon (mother, Arda) Martha (mother, Arda) Ronald (adopted) Mark (mother, Arda) |
| Theological work | |
| Language | English |
| Tradition or movement | Christian Philosophy |
| Main interests | Calvinism,Cognitive Metaphysics,Epistemology,Philosophy of Education,Philosophy of Politics,Psychology of Religion,Predestination,Presuppositionalism |
| Notable ideas | Christian Reconstructionism,Christian homeschool |
Rousas John Rushdoony (April 25, 1916 – February 8, 2001) was anArmenian-AmericanCalvinistphilosopher,historian, andtheologian. He is credited as being the father ofChristian Reconstructionism[3] and an inspiration for the modernChristian homeschool movement.[4][5] His followers and critics have argued that his thought exerts considerable influence on theevangelicalChristian right.[6]
Rousas John Rushdoony (Armenian:Ռուսա Հովհաննես Ռշտունի,romanized: Rrusa Hovhannes Rrshtuni) was born in New York City, the son of recently arrivedOttoman Armenian immigrants Vartanoush (née Gazarian) and Yegheazar Khachig Rushdoony.[7] Before his parents fled theArmenian genocide of 1915, his ancestors had lived in a remote area nearMount Ararat in what is nowTurkey.[8] It is said that since the year 320 AD, every generation of the Rushdoony family has produced a Christian priest or minister.[9] Rushdoony himself claimed that his ancestors "would perpetually give a member of their family to be a priest to perform a kind of Aaronic priesthood as in theOld Testament, an hereditary priesthood. Whoever in the family felt called would become the priest. And our family did so. So from the early 300's until now there has always been someone in the ministry in the family."[10]
Within weeks of arriving in America, his parents moved to the small farming community ofKingsburg, California, inFresno County, where a number of other Armenian families had relocated. They then converted from theArmenian Apostolic Church toPresbyterianism.[9] In Kingsburg, his father Yegheazar founded a church, Armenian Martyrs Presbyterian. Rousas learned to read English by poring over the family'sKing James Bible: "By the time I reached my teens I had read the Bible through from cover to cover, over and over and over again.”
The family moved in 1925 for a short time toDetroit, Michigan, where his father pastored another Armenian church. They returned to Kingsburg in 1931, and Rousas completed school in California.[11] His father was the pastor of Bethel Armenian Presbyterian Church in San Francisco in 1942.[12] Rousas had a younger sister, Rose (named after their mother), and a brother, Haig. His father died in Fresno in 1961.
Rushdoony attended public schools, where he learned English, but Armenian was the language spoken at home.[6][13] He continued his education at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, where he earned aB.A. in English in 1938, ateaching credential in 1939, and anM.A. in Education in 1940. Rushdoony and Arda Gent married in San Francisco the week before Christmas 1943.
Rushdoony attended thePacific School of Religion, aCongregationalist andMethodist seminary inBerkeley, California, from which he graduated in 1944. Through letters over the years, he kept up his friendship with his Pacific School of Religion mentor, theology professorGeorge Huntston Williams, who saw in him the "heir of a great national Christian heritage" who would "enunciate anew the Gospel which seems to have been forgotten for a season." In 1944, he wasordained by thePresbyterian Church in the United States of America.[6]
He was later awarded anhonorary Ph.D. fromValley Christian University for his book,The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum.[9]Gary North stated that Rushdoony read at least one book a day, six days a week, for fifty years of his life, underlining sentences and making an index of its main ideas in the rear.[6]
Rushdoony and his wife Arda served for eight and a half years asmissionaries to theShoshone andPaiute Indians on the remoteDuck Valley Indian Reservation in northern Nevada. They lived in the reservation's primary town,Owyhee.[5][6][14] It was during their mission to the Native Americans that Rushdoony began writing.
Arda taught at the reservation school and Sunday school, led a Girl Scout troop, coached the girls' basketball team, and visited with families. In 1945, they adopted Ronald, an orphaned baby from the reservation. Between 1947 and 1952 in Owyhee, four daughters were born to them. In late 1952, Rushdoony took anAmerican Presbyterian Church pastorate at Trinity Presbyterian Church inSanta Cruz, California, and the family left Duck Valley in January 1953. Their son Mark was born the next month in Santa Cruz.[13][15]
In Santa Cruz, Rushdoony became a reader of the Christian libertarian magazineFaith and Freedom, which advocated an "anti-tax, non-interventionist, anti-statist economic model" in opposition toFranklin D. Roosevelt'sNew Deal.[16]Faith and Freedom's views on government aligned with Rushdoony's fears of centralized government power, given the Rushdoony family's memories of the Armenian Genocide.[17] Rushdoony contributed articles toFaith and Freedom, including one describing his observations of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, arguing that government support had reduced residents to "social and personal irresponsibility".[18][19]
The Rushdoonys separated in 1957 and later divorced. About this time, Rushdoony transferred his church membership from theAmerican Presbyterian Church to theOrthodox Presbyterian denomination. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church's newsletter,The Presbyterian Guardian, reported in July 1958 that "the Rev. Rousas J. Rushdoony… was received and a new Orthodox Presbyterian Church organized, consisting of [sixty-six charter members] who had separated from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in Santa Cruz." In their petition, the group asked that Rushdoony be ordained as their pastor and stated, "[W]e cannot abide in any church which seeks to define righteousness or sin, salvation or sanctification, except in terms of the Word of God. We have witnessed, here in Santa Cruz, against modernism, man-made perfectionism, and church bureaucracy". The newsletter article goes on to report, "The Presbytery in receiving the church also examined Mr. Thomas Kirkwood and Mr. Kenneth Webb as prospective elders, and they with Mr. Rushdoony were constituted the session of the church," and announced the publication of Rushdoony'sBy What Standard? later that year.[20]
The May 1962 edition ofThe Presbyterian Guardian reported Rushdoony's resignation, noted as "reportedly to devote his time for his writing and lecturing."[21] Rushdoony married his second wife, Dorothy Barbara Ross Kirkwood, in 1962. She died in 2003.[22]
Rushdoony moved to Los Angeles in 1965 and founded theChalcedon Foundation; the monthlyChalcedon Report, which Rushdoony edited, began appearing that October.[6] His daughter Sharon later marriedGary North, a Christian Reconstructionist writer and economic historian. North and Rushdoony became collaborators, and their partnership lasted until 1981 when it ended due to a dispute over the content of one of North's articles. Following the dispute, North and Chalcedon continued to promote each other's views independently, but they did not reach a "truce" until 1995.[3]
Under Rushdoony, the Chalcedon Foundation grew to twelve staff members with 25,000–40,000 people on their mailing lists during the 1980s. Chalcedon and Reconstructionism obtained the support of major Christian book publishers and endorsements from influential evangelical leaders, includingPat Robertson,Jerry Falwell, andFrank Schaeffer (who later repudiated the movement).[3]
Rushdoony died in 2001 with his children at his side. Rushdoony's son, Mark R. Rushdoony, became and remains the president of the Chalcedon Foundation and editor of theChalcedon Report.[6]
Michael J. McVicar summarized Rushdoony's theology and philosophy as follows:[17]
As a theologian Rushdoony saw human beings as primarily religious creatures bound to God, not as rational autonomous thinkers. While this may seem an esoteric theological point, it isn't. All of Rushdoony's influence on the Christian Right stems from this single, essential fact. Many critics of Christian Reconstructionism assume that Rushdoony's unique contribution to the Christian Right was his focus on theocracy. In fact, Rushdoony's primary innovation was his single-minded effort to popularize a pre-Enlightenment, medieval view of a God-centered world. By de-emphasizing humanity's ability to reason independently of God, Rushdoony attacked the assumptions most of us uncritically accept.
Rushdoony developed his philosophy as an extension of the work of Calvinist philosopherCornelius Van Til. Van Til critiqued human knowledge in light of the Calvinist doctrine oftotal depravity. He argued that sin affected a person's ability to reason. In order to be rational, Van Til claimed, one must presuppose the existence of God and theinerrant, divineinspiration of the (Protestant)Bible.[17] Rushdoony attended to the implications – where Van Til held true knowledge came from God, Rushdoony asserted that "all non-Christian knowledge is sinful, invalid nonsense. The only valid knowledge that non-Christians possess is 'stolen' from 'Christian-theistic' sources."[17] In effect, Rushdoony extended Van Til's thinking from philosophy to "all of life and thought."[9]
Rushdoony began to promote the works of Calvinist philosophers Cornelius Van Til andHerman Dooyeweerd into a short survey of contemporaryhumanism calledBy What Standard?. Arguing for a Calvinist system of thought, Rushdoony dealt with subjects as broad asepistemology andcognitive metaphysics and as narrow as thepsychology of religion andpredestination. He wrote a book,The One And The Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy, using Van Tillianpresuppositional philosophy to critique various aspects ofsecular humanism. He also wrote many essays and book reviews, published in such venues as theWestminster Theological Journal.
Rushdoony's next focus was on education, especially on behalf ofhomeschooling, which he saw as a way to combat the intentionally secular nature of the U.S.public school system. By the early 1980s, he was active in the homeschooling movement, appearing as anexpert witness in order to defend the rights of homeschoolers.[5] He vigorously attackedprogressiveschool reformers such asHorace Mann andJohn Dewey and argued for the dismantling of the state's influence on education in three works:Intellectual Schizophrenia (a general and concise study of education),The Messianic Character of American Education (a history and castigation of public education in the U.S.), andThe Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum (a parent-oriented pedagogical statement).
Rushdoony then pursued history – of the world, of the United States, and of the church. He maintained that Calvinistic Christianity provided the intellectual roots for theAmerican Revolution and thus had always had an influential impact inAmerican history. The American Revolution, according to Rushdoony, was a "conservative counterrevolution" to preserve American liberties from British usurpation and it owed nothing to theEnlightenment. He further argued that theUnited States Constitution was a secular document in appearance only and did not need to establish Christianity as an official religion since the states were already Christian establishments.[5] Drawing on the work of theologianRobert Lewis Dabney, Rushdoony argued that theAmerican Civil War "destroyed the early American Republic, which he envisioned as a decentralized Protestantfeudal system and an orthodox Christian nation." Rushdoonysaw the North's victory as a "defeat for Christian orthodoxy."[23]Some historians have argued that this aspect of Rushdoony's thought influenced some activists in theNeo-Confederate movement[23] and Southern conservatives such asJ. Steven Wilkins.[24] He would further this study in his works on Americanideology andhistoriography,This Independent Republic: Studies in the Nature and Meaning of American History andThe Nature of the American System.
On the matter of Israel's place in history, he believed that the prophet Daniel "makes clear that God by-passed His chosen people in favor of four great monarchies...and then called forth a Fifth Monarchy which is by no means identified with Israel".[25][26]
Rushdoony's most important area of writing, however, waslaw andpolitics, as expressed in his small book of popular essaysLaw & Liberty and discussed in much greater detail in his three-volume, 1,894-pagemagnum opus,The Institutes of Biblical Law. With a title modeled afterCalvin'sInstitutes of the Christian Religion, Rushdoony'sInstitutes was arguably his most influential work. In the book, he proposed thatOld Testament law should be applied to modernsociety and that there should be a Christiantheonomy, a concept developed in his colleagueGreg Bahnsen's controversial bookTheonomy in Christian Ethics, which Rushdoony heartily endorsed. In theInstitutes, Rushdoony supported the reinstatement of the Mosaic law's penal sanctions. Under such a system, the list of civil crimes which carried a death sentence would includehomosexuality,adultery,incest, lying about one'svirginity,bestiality,witchcraft,idolatry orapostasy, publicblasphemy, false prophesying,kidnapping,rape, and bearing false witness in a capital case.[27] Although he supported theseparation of church and state at the national level, Rushdoony also believed that both institutions were under the rule ofGod,[28] and thus he conceivedsecularism as posing endless false dichotomies, which his massive work addresses in considerable detail. In short, he sought to cast a vision for the reconstruction of society based on Christian principles.[29] The book was critical ofdemocracy. He wrote that "the heresy of democracy has since then worked havoc in church and state ... Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies" because democracy asserts the will of man over the will of God.[9][30] According toFrank Schaeffer, who knew Rushdoony, Rushdoony supported the re-institution of the slave trade, corporal punishment for children, burning people at the stake and public executions.[31]
Rushdoony believed that arepublic is a better form of civil government than a democracy. According to Rushdoony, a republic avoided mob rule and the rule of the "51%" of society; in other words "might does not make right" in a republic.[32] Rushdoony wrote that America's separation of powers between three branches of government is a far more neutral and better method of civil government than a direct democracy, stating "[t]he [American] Constitution was designed to perpetuate a Christian order". Rushdoony argues that the Constitution's purpose was to protect religion from the federal government and to preserve "states' rights."[33]
Rushdoony's work has been used byDominion Theology advocates who attempt to implement a Christiangovernment subject to Biblical law in the United States. Authority, behavioral boundaries,economics,penology and the like would all be governed by biblical principles in Rushdoony's vision, but he also proposed a wide system of freedom, especially in the economic sphere, and claimedLudwig von Mises as an intellectual mentor; he called himself a Christianlibertarian.[17]
Rushdoony was the founder in 1965 of theChalcedon Foundation and the editor of its monthly magazine, theChalcedon Report. He also published theJournal of Christian Reconstruction and was an early board member of theRutherford Institute, founded in 1982 byJohn W. Whitehead.
In 1972, Cornelius Van Til "disclaimed affiliation" with Rushdoony and the Christian Reconstructionist movement, writing "...I am frankly a little concerned about the political views of Mr. Rushdoony and Mr. North and particularly if I am correctly informed about some of the views Gary North has with respect to the application of Old Testament principles to our day. My only point is that I would hope and expect they would not claim such views are inherent in the principles I hold".[34]
Rushdoony was, and remains, a controversial figure, as is the Christian Reconstructionist movement in which he was involved. Pointing to Rushdoony's support for thedeath penalty, theBritish Centre for Science Education decried his perceived dislike of democracy and tolerance.[9] Furthermore, Rushdoony has been accused ofHolocaust denial andracism.[35]
According toFrank Schaeffer, Rushdoony believed thatinterracial marriage, which he referred to as "unequal yoking", should be made illegal;[36] however, his son Mark R. Rushdoony stated that his father R. J. Rushdoony officiated at weddings between European American and African American couples, teaching that "I cannot forbid what God has not!"[37] What R. J. Rushdoony actually thought was imprudent, according to his son Mark R. Rushdoony, were marriages in which there were significant cultural differences such as those between non-Christianwar brides from Japan and American soldiers who, in Rushdoony's view, little understood one another; in his own life, the father of the first woman whom R. J. Rushdoony courted rejected Rushdoony's proposal citing cultural differences between theirSwedish background and Rushdoony'sArmenian background.[37] Mark R. Rushdoony stated that R. J. Rushdoony's views "did not reflect on any race but on what could potentially create an unequal yoke" and asserted his own father's view that "Man ... cannot treat his fellow-men or any part of creation with contempt."[37]
He also opposed "enforced integration", referred toSouthern slavery as "benevolent", and said that "some people are by nature slaves".[38] Kerwin Lee Klein, however, argues that Rushdoony was not a "biological racialist" and that for him "racism founded on modern biology simply represented another pagan revival."[39]
InThe Institutes of Biblical Law, he uses the 1967 workJudaism and the Vatican byLéon de Poncins as a source forPaul Rassinier's figure of 1.2 million Jewish deaths during theHolocaust, and the claim thatRaul Hilberg calculated the number at 896,292, and further asserts that very many of these died of epidemics. He called the charge of 6 million Jewish deaths "false witness" against Germany.[40][41] In 2000, Rushdoony stated concerning this passage in hisInstitutes: "It was not my purpose to enter a debate over numbers, whether millions were killed, or tens of millions, an area which must be left to others with expertise in such matters. My point then and now is that in all such matters what the Ninth Commandment requires is the truth, not exaggeration, irrespective of the cause one seeks to serve."[42]Carl R. Trueman, Professor of Historical Theology and Church History atWestminster Theological Seminary wrote in 2009 regarding the passage and Rushdoony's Holocaust denial:
His sources are atrocious, secondhand, and unverified; that he held this position speaks volumes about his appalling incompetence as a historian, and one can only speculate as to why he held the position from a moral perspective… He deals with the matter under the issue of theninth commandment and, ironically breaches it himself in his presentation of the matter.[43]
Joe Boot, in a misguided attempt to rebut Trueman's claim, argues that Rushdoony's "sole point was to say that our society has become so desensitized to violence, brutality, and cruelty that citing murders in small numbers doesn't have the same psychological impact upon people anymore."[44]
Murray Rothbard, a prominent figure in theAmerican libertarian movement, disputed Rushdoony's claim of being a libertarian in a scathing book review of Rushdoony'sIntellectual Schizophrenia.[45]
Wilkins is the leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North. This revisionist take on the Civil War, known as the 'theological war' thesis, had little resonance outside a small group of Southern historians until the mid-twentieth century, when Rushdoony and others began to popularize it in evangelical circles.
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