The Dangers of Christian Reconstructionism

For those of you who don’t know, I am a graduate of Patrick Henry College, the small Christian liberal arts school sometimes affectionately (and sometimes despairingly) referred to as God’s Harvard. At PHC we were frequently amused by the rumors claiming we were part of a conspiracy designed to “prepare the leadership of a theocratic United States,” “extinguish[] secular governance” or otherwise overthrow the Constitution, mandate church attendance, require tithing, and execute anyone who didn't follow our version of Mosaic law. But while this was grounds for amusement, Christians need to realize that there are thinkers who do advocate these sort of things - and sometimes they are closer to home than we realize.

I'm speaking of R.J. Rushdoony, his son-in-law Gary North, and their following, commonly known as the Christian Reconstructionists. Fundimentally these men err in that they cannot accept a political state with Christians and non-Christians living side by side. North, specifically, was a firm opponent of religious freedom, insisting that the nation broke its covenant with God in the Constitution by not requiring Trinitarian oaths for political officers.

There is no escape from this conclusion: the United States Constitution is an atheistic, humanistic covenant. The law governing the public oath of office reveals this. (Gary North, Political Polytheism, 403-404)

To make possible this hypothetically disinterested examination of politics, the Constitution removed Christian religious tests as the judicial requirement of the judges and officers of the new national government. That, in and of itself, delivered the republic into the hands of the humanists. Nothing else was necessary after that. From that point on, the secularization of America was a mopping-up operation. (Political Polytheism, 367)

His solution is to require not only a Trinitarian oath for every office holder…

The long-term national political goal has to be the substitution of a Trinitarian national oath for the present prohibition against religious test oaths. (Political Polytheism, 568)

What is needed is a very simple modification of the U.S. Constitution. First, the Preamble should begin:” We the people of the United States, as the lawful delegated agents of the Trinitarian God of the Bible, do ordain and establish. . . . “48 Second, Article VI, Clause 3, should state “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all the executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; and a Trinitarian religious Test shall be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” (Political Polytheism, 653)

...but also church membership and orthodox Christian belief for every citizen.

The longterm goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant – baptism and holy communion – must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel. (Political Polytheism, 87)

The biblical model for a theocratic republic would restrict voting to those who are voting (i.e., tithe-paying) members of local churches, and who are also taxpaying citizens. (Political Polytheism, 597)

God wants every nation to have its political citizenship match its people’s heavenly citizenship. This goal can be achieved positively: by widespread conversions of political citizens to saving covenantal faith in Jesus Christ. This new political order can subsequently be maintained — though not without continuing widespread conversions — on a judicially negative basis: by removing legal access to the franchise and civil offices from those who refuse to become communicant members of Trinitarian churches. (Political Polytheism, 621)

And here he defines orthodox belief.

It is my view that there are three subordinate tests for orthodoxy, once a person has affirmed the obvious: the virgin birth of Jesus, the Trinity, and the bodily resurrection of Christ. These three tests are: affirming the six-day creation, affirming the worldwide Noachic flood, and affirming the doctrine of hell (lake of fire). (Political Polytheism, 642)

So, in North’s utopia, anyone who denies the worldwide flood or has a different view of creation is, on a good day, kicked out of the state-associated church and denied voting rights. On a bad day they’re stoned.

Does Schaeffer mean that, given the freedom to advocate Christianity (he means ‘proselytization), Christians should enforce their views by ‘law’ if people will not accept Christian belief and behavior by choice?” To which any Christian not paralyzed with guilt should reply: “That is what Schaeffer should have meant, even if it wasn’t what he did mean. (Political Polytheism, 190)

Why this burden? In North’s view, we need to because God is depending on our actions, and He cannot move unless we do first. North explicatively ties it in to the second coming of Christ, which, in his view, must be ushered in by this theocratic state.

Christian Reconstructionists are self-consciously attempting to lay new intellectual foundations for a comprehensive moral and therefore intellectual, social, political, and economic transformation of the world. Not until at least the preliminary steps in this theological and intellectual transformation are accomplished can we expect God to send worldwide revival. (Political Polytheism, 610-11)

The implication lurking behind all of this is that it is an illegitimate state that does not acknowledge God. Yet, in the order of creation, God has delegated political authority even to rulers who do not acknowledge Him. Christ, in saying "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" declared that the pagan Roman empire had legitimate political authority. Paul in telling the Christians to submit to authorities affirmed this. Likewise, in the Old Testament, there is no hint that Babylon or Egypt were illegitimate empires, but rather that God specifically raised up pagan rulers. (e.g. Jeremiah 27)

The Christian Reconstructionists cannot accept this. For them, the mere fact that someone is not Christian (or for some, a Christian of their specific denominational leanings), disqualifies them from holding office or (for North) voting. There is no natural law, no appeal to reason, and no common good, that the Christian can appeal to in political discussion with the non-Christian. For one to win, the other has to lose (or convert, or be publicly executed).

Fortunately, although there are some historic ties between PHC and the Reconstructionists  (PHC founder Michael Farris self-identified as a reconstructionist at one point but then left the movement), any allegiance that PHC graduates have to the movement is in spite of, not because of, their time at the school. If anything, PHC is a liberalizing and moderating force on the prevalence of Reconstructinism in the homeschool movement. And for that, it should be applauded.

Earth Day in light of Good Friday

Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals. On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot be human. That you and a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason for being as cruel as the tiger. It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws.

If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.

~G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Freedom of Thought

I am often shocked at what does not shock people. Sometimes it is seeing a parent give in to the terrorist demands of a small screaming child. (You know how Iran freed the US hostages the day Reagan took office? That is the kind of fear and authority my parents had. They would not negotiate with terrorists.)

Another thing is freedom of thought. America is unique in many ways, good and bad, but one thing that we have is freedom to believe what we want and to express it.Governments have long tried to control thoughts, and even those that realize that you can't turn the screws on if you try to express it.

Obviously you can see in history dramatic examples

like Nero's persecution of early Christians but it isn't an issue just “in the old days.” Just a few years ago a Canadian Judge ruled that freedom of speech did not apply in Canada because it was an American right, not a human right. “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value. It’s not my job to give value to an American concept,’’ he said.

The other night I went to have my hair cut. The gentleman who cut it was Ahmet a Turkish expatriate. He and I talked about his childhood and what he thought about America. I asked him what he felt the best and worst things about America were. The worst thing, he told me, was that youngsters do not respect their elders. The thing he said Turkey (and he also extrapolated) the rest of the Middle East) needed from America was freedom of speech and religion.

Sometimes I am shocked that we are not shocked that so many people do not have freedom to believe what they want. I cannot say it better than Reagan, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

What shocks you that should shock others?

The Modern Quagmire

I am going to break with the usual format of this blog and speak about a personal experience I had recently. Hopefully it will not devolve into a simple travelogue, but will instead shed some light on the unique place we have reached in the development of American politics.

I found myself walking into history this past weekend. I took a road trip to visit one of the other writers of this blog who had traveled to a city several hours north of where I live for business. I am absent minded enough that I was not paying too much attention to what was supposed to go on there. When I arrived, I realized I was smack dab in the middle of the presidential straw poll and that live presidential candidates were going to be speaking. This surprised me because the event itself seemed rather low key compared to what I imagined presidential straw polls being, yet there was no mistaking the hubbub of national election proceedings. I subsequently found myself taking pictures of Governor Tim Pawlenty's speech and then tabulating the voting results on my iPad at the end of the weekend. If you've ever seen the Young Indiana Jones series then you'll recall he frequently found himself interacting with (at random) a diverse group of historical figures; as I walked down the hall as part of the governor's entourage, I wondered if I too would live a life on the fringes of history's footnotes. Only time will tell. But my few brushes with the elites of our time have taught be an important lesson.

We live in a time of young, inexperienced politicians. Those with connections to the administrations of days gone by are deceased, or at best, retired, and treated by the world and those who govern as if they were deceased. Men like former secretary of state James Baker, a true statesman with a keen insight into the ambiguities of American foreign policy and decades of experience. Yet men like this cannot even dream of holding high office in America today. Is it ageism? Youthful hubris on the part of city politicians who were in college when James Baker was threatening an Iraqi delegation with American nuclear retaliation with such subtlety the words never had to be uttered? This subtlety is impossible in a world where a round-the-clock media dissects every word and every statement and asks every question and refuses to let anything left unsaid have any meaning in the national dialog.

Men like Pawlenty have a great legacy to live up to. As we clamor for them to listen to our pet ideas and to give no quarter to the pertinent issues of the day, let us not neglect the lessons of the past, and let us not allow our leaders to neglect the lessons of the past. Let us be shrewd and demanding of our leaders, showing no partiality, and showing little tolerance for failure. American politics and policy will be shaped by necessity for the foreseeable future. Necessity leaves no margin for error. Likewise, we can afford none.

TAXES

Nobody likes tax day. It is a nightmare of paperwork and the sinking feeling in your stomach that you did something wrong and that men in black suits will come to your home and audit you.

Besides the fact that taxes are due there are other headlines that prompt thought on this issue.

Obama’s new budget plan for 2012 claims to reduce the deficit in the next 12 years, primarily, by raising taxes. His first target is Bush’s so called “tax cuts for the rich.” Did you know that one of those “tax cuts for the rich” include the elimination of the marriage penalty tax? Yeah, if you are married you no longer have to pay higher taxes because of it. Under Obama’s plan married peoples’ taxes will go up.

Also, there has been a bit of a spat between Senator Tom Coburn (a solid conservative from Oklahoma) and the founder of the conservative organization American’s for Tax Reform Grover Norquest. Both of these men have admirable records. Both want to reduce the Federal deficit. But Norquist is calling out the Senator for supporting small tax increases to help cover government expenses.

I believe in paying my taxes. It is the right thing to do. There is, however, a problem with both Coburn and Obama’s solution. Raising taxes will not fix the problem. Our government has proven that when they have lots of money they just spend more of it.

Practically speaking there are lots of attractive programs out there; too many for us to assume that the congress will not spend the tax increases. It might start out small. They may say, as they often have, that for every $100 they bring in only a few dollars will go to new programs and the rest will help pay off the debit.

It doesn’t happen.

They need to cut the debit and earn trust by being serious about balancing the budget. They need to have that adult conversation about our budget problem and learn the lesson that you should not spend money that you do not have. Until then, “Read my lips, no new taxes.”

The Lost Cause

This week marks 150 years since the beginning of the Civil War. And in light of that struggle that tore our nation apart, as well as the recent resurgence of nullification, some words must be said about the conflict.

Some time back at a used book sale I picked up a book by Burton Hendrick entitled Statesmen of the Lost Cause: Jefferson Davis And His Cabinet. Unfortunately, I have never made it very far past the preface. That preface, however, is worth well more than $1 I paid for the book. For the author makes a very important, yet often forgotten, point about the Civil War: the war was won not by the military leaders, but by the North's superior statesmanship and superior political philosophy.

While I originally attempted to summarize the argument, I am not sure I can improve upon Hendrick's original. So without further ado, here are excerpts from the preface of Statesmen of the Lost Cause.

Significantly [the South's] hero of that conflict to-day is Robert E. Lee, not Jefferson Davis. Just as significantly the hero of the North is Abraham Lincoln and not Grant or Sherman. . . . Thus does the popular mind, working instinctively, perhaps subconsciously, arrive at a great historic truth, For the fact that the North emphasizes statesmanship in the Civil War and the South military achievement goes far to interpreting the events of 1861 – 1865. In particular, it may answer a question much debated in that era and since. Why did the South lose the war?

. . .

The courage and ability of the Southern armies aroused the admiration of their foes; that Southern generalship, at least in the first two years, surpassed that of the North, stands upon the surface; other facts than an inferiority in military strength must therefore hold the secret of Confederate failure. We shall probably find it rather in civil than in military affairs. Had statesmen ruled its domestic and foreign policies with the same skill that Lee and other generals guided its armies, the result might have easily been very different. In one respect this assertion may look like a reversal of history. Statesmanship was a quality on which the South had always prided itself. Its political thinkers had played a leading role in framing the Constitution. For nearly forty years following 1789 it gave the Union its Presidents. It seems strange, therefore, that at the supreme test of 1861 – 1865 this region should so disastrously fail in exclusive possession. But perhaps there is a solution to the mystery. It may be found in the particular South that organized the Confederacy and plunged the nation into war. The fact to be kept always in mind is that the South which started the Confederacy, and dominated its government for four years, was not the South that wrote the Declaration of Independence, played so important a role in framing the Constitution, and provided so much leadership for the United States in its earliest days.

. . .

The Southern commonwealth chiefly famous for statesman – Virginia – had no hand in organizing the Confederacy. Neither had North Carolina or Tennessee, other states distinguished for political leadership in the Union. These older states came in three months afterwards, for particular reasons; they had no part in framing the Southern constitution, organizing the government, and had little to do in the civil department for four years of war. . . . the new-rich Southwest contributed the political leaders, the old traditional South the military captains.

. . .

Probably the political philosopher would find an even more significant study in the effect exercised upon the Davis experiment by the constitutional ideas that formed its reason for existence. State Sovereignty, the Right of Succession – these were the foundation stones on which this new nation was built. They had provided the theme of impassioned argument for seventy-five years. Now at last Southern statesmen had before them the opportunity of testing the worth of these principles in the practical conduct of a government. Was a nation possible composed of independent units, teach claiming to be a “sovereign state,” joined to a central power only by the loosest ties? Could a Confederacy assert the authority necessary to vital existence in which each “sovereign republic” asserted the right to withdraw at will? The Federalists and Hamiltonians had always objected to Jeffersonism on pragmatic grounds; such theories were preposterous simply because they would not work. They could produce no orderly society – only chaos. The failure of Davis and his colleagues has an important bearing on this point. It seems to prove that the “consolidationists” had the practical argument on their side. . . . Professor Frank L. Owsley, of Vanderbilt University, has probably said the final words on the subject. “There is an old saying that the seeds of death are sown at our birth. This was true of the Southern confederacy, and the seeds of death were state rights. The principle on which the South based its actions before 1861 and on which it hoped to base its future government was its chief weakness. If a monument is ever erected as a symbolical gravestone over the ‘lost cause’ it should have engraved upon it these words: ‘Died of State Rights.’”

Thus the Confederacy failed for two reasons. It produced no statesmen, such as the South had produced in the revolutionary crisis of 1776 and afterword, it was also founded on a principle that made impossible the orderly conduct of public affairs.

Of course, this leaves the question of whether the South could have succeeded with either good statesmen or good political theory - and if the strength of one could have overcome the deficiencies of the other. Or maybe it is simply two sides of the same coin - good statesmen craft good policy, and the South's weak theory stemmed from its poor statesmen.

But more fundamentally, Southern sympathizers today - those who long for the "states rights" model to be implemented more fully - often paint it as an idea prevented by Lincoln and the Civil War. Yet if Henrick is right, and his analysis appears correct, then it is a political idea that has been tried and failed. Indeed, if one includes the Articles of Confederation, it has been tried twice in US history, and both times proved unworkable. Theoretically, at least, the Confederacy's cause was not lost during the Civil War, but during the ratification debates.

Some may object that I have not yet addressed the root issue of the Civil War, that of slavery, and rather painted it entirely as an issue of state's rights. While the theory of the Confederacy was an attempt to implement state's rights, slavery was the issue that brought the theoretical differences between North and South to a head. This is demonstrated by the various secession documents, most notably those of Texas and Mississippi, the later opening with "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world." So for the Confederacy, the general issue was state's rights, but the specific application was the preservation, and expansion, of slavery.