by Michael J. McVicar. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Pp. xiii + 309, $34.95 (paper). [Reviewed by David Engelsma.]

On behalf of full disclosure, I acknowledge that this book about Christian Reconstruction and Rousas J. Rushdoony is of special interest to me.

My first, personal encounter with Rousas Rushdoony was influential, if not decisive, in turning me against the man, his theology, and his movement. As a young pastor in Loveland, Colorado, just beginning his ministry, with a number of small children, and without an extra dime to his financial account, much less gold bullion and silver coins, or even the remotest prospect of them, in the middle or late 1960s I attended a public lecture by Rushdoony in nearby Ft. Collins. The topic of the speech was the present state of the world, particularly the society of North America, and the calling of the Christian church in light of this wretched state.

Rushdoony painted a dark picture of the world. At hand, he prophesied, were hard times for the church and her members. To all of this, a Reformed amillennialist such as myself could, and did, respond with a hearty “Amen.” Towards the end of the lecture, Rushdoony raised the vital, if not burning, question, what the calling of the Reformed Christian was in view of the ominous developments in our society.

Not yet having read much of Rushdoony, and being a committed amillennialist, as the Reformed creeds require, I anticipated a stirring call to prepare for the coming persecution of the church by grounding ourselves on the Word of God and by a lively hope for the second coming of Christ and the glorious inheritance of the new world in which righteousness shall dwell.

How jarring was Rushdoony’s answer to his question! “Save your gold and silver! Stockpile weapons!” His thinking, as everyone familiar with Christian Reconstruction knows, and as this book confirms, was that gold, silver, and guns will enable their possessors to survive the coming collapse of Western civilization and to emerge capable of exercising earthly power, so as to establish postmillennialism’s carnal kingdom in this present world upon the ruins of our present godless society.

Then and there, Rousas Rushdoony exposed himself to me as a false prophet. Then and there, I rejected the kingdom that he and his Christian Reconstruction movement were promoting. Then and there, Christian Reconstruction became as obnoxious to me as the delusions of dispensational premillennialism.

Whoever preaches the coming of the kingdom of heaven by the quite unheavenly means of gold, silver, and guns is a false prophet. The book echoes that speech by Rushdoony. Rushdoony warned of the collapse of civilization: “riots; mass killings; government-sponsored torture; food shortages;” and more. His purportedly Christian advice to his Christian audience? “Rushdoony advised readers to buy silver and gold, carefully selected parcels of land capable of supporting crops and livestock, and other goods with inherent value, such as guns, alcohol, and tobacco” (104, 105).

Later, as editor of the Standard Bearer, I had exchanges with Rushdoony’s disciples and colleagues over the nature of the kingdom, whether the postmillennial dream of earthly peace, prosperity, and power of Christian Reconstruction or the amillennial reality of the spiritual kingdom of Scripture and creedal Reformed Christianity.

One of those with whom I crossed swords was Rushdoony’s son-in-law, Gary North. The last I heard of this bold warrior on behalf of postmillennialism’s carnal kingdom, he was hunkered down in some remote southern hideaway, to which he had fled in fear of the collapse of Western civilization at the terrifying threat of Y2K. If the reader asks, “What in the world was this terrifying Y2K,” the answer is, “nothing.”

I came to this book, therefore, both with lively interest and a definitely formed judgment of Rushdoony and Christian Reconstruction.

Nothing in the book changes or softens the judgment.

Everything in the book, which is not an attack on Christian Reconstruction, but an attempt to be as objective an examination as possible, confirms and hardens the judgment.

The book is a well-researched examination of the movement that calls itself “Christian Reconstruction.” This movement intends to reconstruct the culture of the entire world, beginning with the United States, as Christian. “Christian Reconstructionism called for capturing entire social and cultural systems for Christ” (181). The power to accomplish this ambitious—“hopeful,” the Christian Reconstructionist would say—goal is the imposition upon the way of life, first of the United States and then of the world, of the law of God. This reconstructing law of God for Rushdoony and his disciples is by no means only the ten commandments. It is also the entire body of Old Testament laws, including those that the Reformed faith considers to have so been fulfilled by Jesus Christ as no longer to be binding upon New Testament Christians—those classified as civil and ceremonial, in distinction from the moral law. “We believe that the ceremonies and figures of the law ceased at the coming of Christ, and that all the shadows are accomplished, so that the use of them must be abolished amongst Christians…” (Belgic Confession, Art. 25).

The fundamental error of the movement, however, is not its resuscitating and re-imposition of Old Testament laws that have been fulfilled by Christ “so that the use of them must be abolished amongst Christians,” grievous an error as this is. The fundamental errors of Christian Reconstruction are three. So fundamental are they that they expose Christian Reconstruction as un-Reformed, heretical, and schismatic. First, the power of destroying the kingdom of Satan that now dominates earthly life, particularly in the West, and of establishing and promoting the kingdom of Christ is not the law, not even the moral law of God, but the gospel.

One practical implication of this truth is that Rousas Rushdoony erred greatly when he abandoned his office of preacher of the gospel to become teacher of, lecturer upon, and proponent of the law. Only the preaching of the gospel of the grace of God in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ destroys the foundations of the kingdom of darkness and establishes and advances the kingdom of light. Wielding the law as his weapon against the kingdom of Satan, Rushdoony made himself impotent with regard to the coming of the kingdom of Christ.

The second fundamental error of Christian Reconstruction is its postmillennialism. Christian Reconstruction operates on the belief that God purposes to perfect the kingdom of Christ, not at Christ’s coming, but during a future millennium of earthly history prior to the second coming of Christ. Christian Reconstruction is postmillennial, through and through. One implication of this gross eschatological error is that on the throne of power and glory during the time of the grandest realization of the kingdom of God will be, not Jesus Christ, but Rousas J. Rushdoony, or, depending on the success of the revolution that is sure to follow the coronation of King Rush, Gary North, or Gary De Mar, or James Jordan, or one of the other leading Christian Reconstructionists.

I write, “the revolution that is sure to follow,” for good reason. As the history of the movement of Christian Reconstruction demonstrates, specifically, the warfare between the Vallecito, CA and the Tyler, TX camps and the self-devouring and self-destructive debacle of the Tyler, TX group (all of which the book exposes), if Christian Reconstruction comes to power in a future millennium, the internal strife of that kingdom will make the War of the Roses in Great Britain, the French Revolution, and the Civil War of the United States look like Sunday School picnics. Law and lust for power make for a heady brew of revolution.

If postmillennialism—the second main error of Christian Reconstruction—is false—a “Jewish dream,” as I once publicly described it, to the rage of the proponents of Christian Reconstruction, and as it is—Christian Reconstruction is thereby refuted. And, third, in closest connection with its error of postmillennialism, Christian Reconstruction conceives the kingdom of Christ as material and earthly, that is, carnal. In truth, the kingdom of Christ is spiritual. As the Heidelberg Catechism teaches in Q. 123, the kingdom of God in Christ Jesus that comes throughout history, especially the history of the new dispensation, and that will be perfected at the coming of Christ is Christ’s rule by His word and Spirit. It is not Christian Reconstruction’s rule by police and guns. The effect of Christ’s rule by His word and Spirit in history is not that the culture of earthly nations is reconstructed physically, but that elect believers submit to God. Their “culture,” or way of life, in a wicked world is radically changed spiritually. Their lives are governed by the law of the ten commandments, as also by the abiding “truth and substance” of the Old Testament laws that have been so fulfilled in Jesus Christ that the use of them is abolished among Christians (see Belgic Confession, Art. 25).

It belongs to the truth of the spirituality of the kingdom of God that this kingdom does not displace, or even disparage, the church—the church institute—as is the impression left both by the life and teaching of R. J. Rushdoony. (I include the life of the man because for years he himself showed little, or no, interest in or faithfulness to the church.) On the contrary, the kingdom of Christ takes form in the era of the New Testament as the true, instituted church. The church is the kingdom, as is the official doctrine of the Reformed churches in Q. 123 of the Heidelberg Catechism and in Article 27 of the Belgic Confession. The latter teaches that “Christ is an eternal King” of the “church.” To dismiss the church as the glorious kingdom of God in New Testament history in favor of the “Jewish dream” of the carnal culture of a world of nations dominated by mainly Old Testament law is as radical an attack on the genuine kingdom of God as is imaginable.

Nor does the full perfection of the kingdom take place in a millennium of earthly history prior to the coming of Christ. Rather, the kingdom will be perfected when God is “all in all,” that is, at the second coming of Jesus Christ (Q. 123 of the Heid. Cat.; I Cor. 15:24-28).

Nevertheless, the influence of Christian Reconstruction upon many reputedly conservative, evangelical Christians and upon many conservative movements and organizations in the United States has been considerable. Included are the home-school movement; John Wayne Whitehead and his Rutherford Institute; David C. Gibbs and his movement of opposition by legal means to compulsory education in the state schools; Franky Schaeffer and his efforts to Christianize American culture, and many more. Some of these men and movements were reluctant to acknowledge their indebtedness to Rushdoony and his movement of Christian Reconstruction. This did not endear them to Rushdoony.

Appropriately, if not necessarily, this study of the movement of Christian Reconstruction centers on the life and work of Rousas Rushdoony. The book approximates a biography of the influential founder of the movement. As it outlines the life of Rushdoony, the book sheds light also on a number of his most notable disciples and co-workers, including Gary North, Greg Bahnsen, David Chilton, James B. Jordan, Ray Sutton, Gary De Mar, and others. The light is by no means always flattering.

Although informative and significant, the accounts of the dissensions and splits in Christian Reconstruction ranks are sordid. First, there was the angry division between that part of the kingdom whose base of operations was Vallecito, CA, with patriarch Rushdoony as the leading figure, and the break-away faction in Tyler, TX, including North, Jordan, Chilton, Sutton, and others. The hostilities between these two groups were fierce.

Then there was the self-destruction of the Tyler, TX faction. Years ago, there came into my hands a tape on which David Chilton, participant in the action, frankly exposed the ungodly goings-on in Tyler, TX as the princes of the Christian Reconstruction movement went about to establish and expand their earthly kingdom of God. Although he is not as detailed, McVicar substantiates Chilton’s chilling account (182ff.). The Christian Reconstruction leaders could not reconstruct their own small kingdom in and around the church in Tyler. With a disgraceful abuse of the key of Christian discipline, these power-hungry men fell upon each other, deconstructing and destroying.

This internecine warfare was not a judgment only upon the men themselves, all of whom as self-proclaimed lords of their kingdom aspired to the highest seat in their earthly kingdom. But it was also divine judgment upon their movement at its very foundation. Law, exercised as the power to build the kingdom of God, divides and scatters; only the gospel of grace builds the kingdom of God, and unites its citizens, including its princes.

One irony looms large both in the life of Rushdoony and in the Christian Reconstruction movement more broadly. The author of the book notes the fact, but not the irony of the fact. Fundamental to the social and cultural philosophy of Rousas Rushdoony, ostensibly his theology, is the importance of the family. Family is the fundamental agent of the dominion that Christian Reconstruction intends to exercise over all the world. “The relationship between biblical law, dominion, and the family led Rushdoony to an important conclusion: the family is the ‘most powerful institution in society’…Biblical law… establishes the family as the productive institution responsible for ushering in the future Kingdom of God” (134). Rushdoony “worked to convince Christians—especially theologically conservative, fundamentalist, and evangelical Protestants—that they needed to rethink their political activism and refocus it on creating a proper Christian family” (93).

But Rushdoony himself was a divorced and remarried man. He remarried a woman who was herself divorced, with a living first husband (44, 57). Divorce was prominent and accepted among the leadership of Christian Reconstruction. Not only did none of the leaders condemn Rushdoony’s remarriage after divorce, but also others in or closely associated with the movement were divorced. Greg Bahnsen, widely regarded as the leading theologian of the movement, was divorced. Doug Phillips, who, with his Vision Forum ministry, was closely allied with Christian Reconstruction, was exposed as unfaithful to his wife. “Phillips—husband of Beall Phillips, father of eight children, and son of Rushdoony’s close friend and political confidante, Howard Phillips—ran the popular patriarchal ministry until the fall of 2013, when he publicly acknowledged an inappropriate relationship with a woman other than his wife” (223).

The Rev. Ray Sutton, one of the most glittering satellites revolving about Rushdoony, at least, for awhile, and pastor of the church of the Tyler, TX faction of Christian Reconstruction, wrote what has the dubious distinction of being the most lawless book on marriage, divorce, and remarriage ever written under the auspices of Christianity in all the long history of despicable, nominally Christian concession to the adulterous lusts of the unregenerate heart, or of the old man of a Christian. The book is Second Chance: Biblical Principles of Divorce and Remarriage. The title page of this licentious work accurately gives as the book’s sub-title, Biblical Blueprints for Divorce and Remarriage (for my expose of the book, see my Marriage, the Mystery of Christ and the Church, 3rd ed., 224-228). For Christian Reconstruction, Christian marriage is a “chance,” like the lottery. If the “chance” proves disappointing, and the odds, I suppose, are 50/50, Sutton offers “blueprints” for divorce and remarriage. Not blueprints for marriage! But for divorce and remarriage! Blueprints!

No Christian Reconstructionist has repudiated Sutton’s enthusiastic promotion of sheer antinomism with regard to the seventh commandment and with regard to the family.

Surely, Christian Reconstruction recognizes the importance of marriage for family and, therefore, according to Christian Reconstruction, for the reconstruction of society by means of family.

How its aggressive assault on marriage, in both theory and practice, serves to promote the family, which is fundamental to its world-changing mission, Christian Reconstruction has yet to explain.

This article was originally published in the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, and has been reproduced here with permission from the PRTS faculty. You can find the original full issue PDF and subscribe to PRTJ here: https://www.prcts.org/past-journals