Record: Michael J. McVicar, Christian Reconstruction: R. J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
Summary: McVicar, who teaches in the Religion department at Florida State, here provides us with a book-length biography of one of the most important early U.S. homeschooling leaders. Rushdoony is not always put in the same tier of standout leaders as John Holt and Raymond and Dorothy Moore, but I argued in my 2008 history
The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction, in addition to orienting the reader to the book’s contents, makes a historiographical argument for the significance of the subject. McVicar thinks studying Rushdoony and his network of influences offers important lessons for the broader study of postwar American conservatism and American Christianity, for movements now regarded as “extremist” nevertheless shaped and were shaped by those now regarded as “mainstream.” (p. 9) McVicar explains how he was granted nearly unlimited access to Rushdoony’s papers, housed at the Chalcedon Foundation in Vallecito, CA. His book integrates these archival sources into the broader literature on Rushdoony, the Christian Right, and postwar conservatism more generally.
Chapter one provides the most complete account ever published of Rushdoony’s early life, from his family’s narrow escape from the Armenian genocide to his education and missionary work among the Owyhee Indians, to his encounters with key intellectual influences (especially Cornelius Van Til). McVicar connects all of this to Rushdoony’s emerging beliefs about the the relationship between Christianity and the State. Gradually the young Rushdoony became convinced that “only through a rigorously developed educational agenda rooted in a Calvinist criticism of modernity would Christians free themselves from the twin tyrannies of modern theology and oppressive statism.” (p. 45) This view he eventually called “Reconstruction,” for it presumes an inevitable postmillennial future brought about as Christians reconstruct the world according to the principles God lays out in the Bible.
Chapter two chronicles the first round of conflicts in which Rushdoony engaged after he abandoned his missionary work. These conflicts included a divorce from his first wife Arda Gent (which McVicar treats sparingly since this was the only part of Rushdoony’s papers to which he was not granted access), a divorce from the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., in which Rushdoony had been ordained (he switched to the much more conservative Orthodox Presbyterian Church), and the destruction of the Center for American Studies and its parent organization the Volker Fund, largely over the issue of Rushdoony’s uncompromising Calvinism. In the midst of these events Rushdoony was studying and writing, working his way toward his mature vision of Christian Reconstruction.
Chapter three describes Rushdoony’s discovery of conservative housewives and his leveraging of their support into a full-time career as the head of the Chalcedon Foundation. McVicar clearly explains how Rushdoony’s emphasis on family and education fit with the emerging conservative movement, and he documents Rushdoony’s prolific writing, demanding speaking schedule, and growing legal activism, especially for the cause of homeschooling and private Christian schooling.
Chapter four explains in detail Rushdoony’s conflict with the editors of the popular Evangelical periodical Christianity Today, which was too politically soft and Theologically liberal for Rushdoony’s taste. Burning bridges with potential donors due to his inflexible Calvinism, Rushdoony developed in rigorous detail his understanding of Dominion Theology –the idea that Christ will return to earth only after “Dominion Men” have taken control of every aspect of human life, including government. McVicar summarizes the view like this: “the Bible prescribed a social order in which male patriarchs exercised God’s dominion mandate over the earth through an extended network of Christian families under the authority of God’s law.” (p. 124-125)
Chapter five moves to Rushdoony’s influence on the second generation of Christian Reconstructionists. Gary North, Greg L. Bahnsen, and John W. Whitehead are each given thorough treatment. For those interested in the history of homeschooling the section on Whitehead will be particularly interesting, as his Rutherford Institute (TRI) was a key player in several homeschooling court cases in the 1980s.
Chapter six delves into the internecine conflicts between various factions within the Reconstructionist movement as well as its growing influence among more mainstream Christian leaders and organizations. McVicar wades through the messy history of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tyler, TX, which became a hotbed of Reconstructionist activism even as it lurched from controversy to controversy–Theological, financial, and interpersonal. McVicar explains how the “Tyler Theology” stressed the Church as the instrument of dominion, not the family as Rushdoony had done (interestingly, some in the Tyler movement went on to become Anglicans). This and other conflicts led to a permanent rupture between men at Tyler, most notably Gary North (who had married one of Rushdoony’s daughters), and Rushdoony. Despite the infighting, Rushdoony’s ideas were spreading as the Christian right sought a Theological justification for its new-found political activism. Men like Francis Schaeffer and Pat Robertson, in addition to a host of lesser-known leaders, often spoke with a Reconstructionist accent even if they disavowed some of Rushdoony’s more extreme positions. As these ideas grew more popular, more voices, some secular, some Christian, raised the alarm that a dangerous heresy had been birthed whose goal was to impose Christian Theocracy on the United States.
In his conclusion McVicar lays out three lasting legacies of Rushdoony’s life and work. First, Reconstruction’s educational philosophy has “contributed an aggressive, patriarchal antistatism to conservative evangelical understandings of education.” (p. 222) Second, Reconstruction’s economic libertarianism has had a powerful impact on the Christian right, which to this day tends to blend a desire to use government to impose Christian moral values even as it rails against government regulation of business. Finally, Reconstruction came to play the role of foil for many other conservative Christian movements and ideologies. The backlash against Reconstructionism helped clarify for many the limits of Christian political activism. Many conservative activists continued (and continue) to speak with a Reconstructionist accent, but they denounced or ignored Rushdoony (even as they often cribbed his writings).
Appraisal: When I first learned that McVicar was engaged in this project as his doctoral dissertation I was thrilled. Prior to this book very little scholarly attention had been paid to Rushdoony. When I was composing my own section on him in the mid-2000s I had to rely mostly on partisan treatments that were often spare with the sorts of historical details a good biographical account needs to have. McVicar fleshes out Rushdoony’s life in rich detail, and he does so with a storyteller’s knack for the well-turned phrase and illuminating anecdote. I am currently revising my 2008 book, and I can’t wait to rework my section on Rushdoony given how much more I now know about him. Even more than before I see Rushdoony as the original source for the strong emphases in much of the Protestant homeschooling movement on the presumed “secular humanism” of public education, on providential history, patriarchal leadership, family-centered economic and religious life, and the notion that large homeschooled Christian families will eventually reclaim the United States for Christ. Many others (Bill Gothard, Mary Pride, Gregg Harris, and so many more) incorporated many of these insights into their homeschooling teachings, but they were articulated first and with the most intellectual rigor by Rushdoony.
Milton Gaither, Messiah College
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