Rushdoony’s Legacy: The Overlooked Influence Of A Religious Right Godfather
Some of the people hating on Cordoba House also keep one or more of Rushdoony’s books under their mattress or bed.
The nuances of the Religious Right are admittedly sometimes hard to follow. But I was still surprised on Saturday morning to read a seriously misguided Washington Post article that touched on Christian Reconstructionism. As a matter of fact, I almost turned over my bowl of Cheerios.
Reporting on the Senate race in Nevada, The Post’s Amy Gardner asserted that Christian Reconstructionism, the most hardline faction of the Religious Right, is and always has been pretty much irrelevant.
“At its peak in the 1990s,” the article said, “the Christian Reconstructionist movement was small and mostly ignored. The group’s founder, R.J. Rushdoony, tried to start a political party, but it went nowhere. When Rushdoony died nine years ago, the movement dried up.”
Most of this, of course, is quite wrong.
It’s true that most Religious Right activists don’t buy into all aspects of Christian Reconstructionism. Only the most hard-hearted fanatics are willing to endorse slavery or the stoning of miscreants. The Old Testament may prescribe the death penalty for adultery, as Rushdoony argued, but most Americans probably don’t want to see that penalty written into criminal law (do we, Newt?).
However, Rushdoony’s overarching philosophy – that secular democracy is evil and that God’s law should prevail in today’s America – became the theological and intellectual framework for early Religious Right activists.