R.J. Rushdoony

Christian Nationalism and its "DominionTheology" are relatively new, dating from the publication in 1973 of The Institutes Of Biblical Law by the Rousas John Rushdoony.

According to Steve Weissman, Rushdoony was "a man of widely acclaimed brilliance and near-encyclopedic knowledge, Rushdoony claimed to descend from a long line of aristocratic Armenian clerics reaching back to the year 315. He himself was an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, not be confused with the generally liberal Presbyterian Church (USA)."

Weissmann makes it a point to stress that Rushdoony was no liberal. "Though gentle in his personal demeanor, he and his Chalcedon Foundation preached nothing less than a holy war 'to demolish every kind of theory, humanistic, evolutionary, idolatrous, or otherwise, and every kind of rampart or opposition to the dominion of God in Christ,'" writes Weissman,

Rushdoony wrote, according to Weissmann, as early as 1963 a "Christian revisionist" historical account called The Nature Of The American System, in which he rejected the separation of church and state. The authors of the Constitution intended "to perpetuate a Christian order," according to Rushdoony.

"He (Rushdoony) similarly opposed the secular bent of American public schools, becoming an early proponent of Christian home-schooling, which he defended as a First Amendment right of their parents," according to Weissman.

"We must use the doctrine of religious liberty ... until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government," explained his son-in-law Gary North. "Then they will get busy constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

Rushdoony opposed labor unions, women's equality, and civil rights laws. He favored racial segregation and slavery, which he felt had benefited black people because it introduced them to Christianity.

Interestingly, he also largely denied the Holocaust, claims Weissman.

And he made it kosher for Christian leaders like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell openly to despise democracy.

"Supernatural Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies. Democracy is the great love of the failures and cowards of life," according to Rushdoony.

Journalist Marghe Covino called Rushdoony the "Ayatollah of Holy Rollers," and that despite few members of the Assembly of God or other evangelical, Pentecostal, or charismatic churches even know his name or are becoming comfortable with some of his ideas.

It's interesting that the Evangelicals who are involved in Christian Nationalism are in fact being led by ideas espoused by an Orthodox Presbyterian.

Weissman also notes that "Evangelicals immerse themselves in the New Testament and some of their mega-churches at times seem almost New Age. Rushdoony was an Old Testament patriarch, following in the more austere tradition of Puritan rule in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Calvin's theocratic governance of early 16th Century Geneva, and the Mosaic law of the ancient Israelites."

Furthermore, Weissman claims that "Evangelicals - or at least most of them at present - believe that Christ will return to establish a Millennium of biblical rule, and many take as gospel the End Time stories of the Rapture that the Rev. Tim La Haye has popularized in his "LeftBehind" novels. Rushdoony saw La Haye's dispensational prophecies as "cheap grace" and "escapist theology," preaching instead that Christ would return only after virtuous Christians created "a world order under God's law."

Nor are Evangelical leaders rushing to proclaim their adherence to the terrifying Christian theocracy that Rushdoony's Reconstructionists now seek. Few Americans want to live like Puritans or die at the stake for committing a sin. "DominionTheology" is not an easy revolution to sell, at least not yet.

In the November 1998 issue of Reason, Walter Olson told of two of televangelist Jerry Falwell's associates who wrote an article in which they criticized the Reconstructionists for advocating ideas that even they, as biblical fundamentalists, found "scary." As an example, the authors mentioned "mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards," tells Weissman, adding that Rushdoony dashed off a letter to the editor complaining. Reconstructionists, he wrote, had no intention of putting drunkards to death.

With denials like this, the Reconstuctions "allow everyone else to feel moderate," Olson concluded. "Almost any anti-abortion stance seems nuanced when compared with Gary North's advocacy of public execution not just for women who undergo abortions but for those who advised them to do so. And with the Rushdoony faction proposing the actual judicial murder of gays, fewer blink at the position of a Gary Bauer or a Janet Folger, who support laws exposing them to mere imprisonment."

But the gap between the Biblical "moderates" and Reconstructions is getting shorter every day. As an Evangelical Southern Baptist, Falwell still distances himself from Rushdoony over questions of theology. But, he increasingly talks of Christians exercising dominion over America's secular institutions.

It has also been reported that Rushdoony enjoyed a long friendship with Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society. Rushdoony took great interest in the Birchers, and mentioned them in his epic Institutes Of Biblical Law.

"The key to the John Birch Society's effectiveness has been a plan of operation which has a strong resemblance to the early church," he wrote. Rushdoony denied ever becoming a Bircher himself, but not because of any political disagreement. As he told Marghe Covino of the Sacramento News & Review, "Welch always saw things in terms of conspiracy and I always see things in terms of sin."

"All sides of the humanistic spectrum are now, in principle, demonic; communists and conservatives, anarchists and socialists, fascists and republicans," Rushdoony said.

Rushdoony was one of the first members of the secretive Council For National Policy, which the Rev. Tim La Haye and others started to bring right-wing Christians, other conservative activists, and John Birchers together with wealthy patrons willing to fund them. He also served on the board of Dr Jay Grimstead's Coalition On Revival (COR).