The FBI had trouble placing Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) in the ideological landscape of twentieth-century America. A second-generation Armenian immigrant who founded a Christian think tank, Rushdoony was a Presbyterian pastor who had spent time with Chinese immigrants in San Francisco and the Paiute and Shoshone tribes in Nevada. He subscribed to a communist newspaper. He had studied at University of California Berkley with a Jewish political historian who fled the Nazification of German academia in the 1930s. He also got mail from the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Rushdoony battled the modernists in his Presbyterian church, was very interested in the history of the British socialist Fabian Society, and wrote for the secretive, far-right Volker Fund. He was not an easy man for the FBI to situate (46–47).
More than a few historians have run into this same problem of trying to place R.J. Rushdoony. It has long been clear he was important to the post-war politicization of conservative Christianity, but not where he fits, exactly. Where the matter was “satisfactorily resolved” for the FBI in 1964, historians have had to wait for Michael J. McVicar's excellent new monograph, Christian Reconstruction: R.J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism. In this history, McVicar has meticulously traced Rushdoony's connections to the broad religious and political movements of the era. He contextualizes Rushdoony and his theology of Christian Reconstruction. McVicar, an assistant professor of religion at Florida State University, charts the rise and fall of this controversial theological project from the time it began as an upstart movement using the presuppositionalist apologetics of theologian Cornelius Van Til against the dominant liberalism of church and state. McVicar recounts how Rushdoony theorized cultural transformation while attempting to effect it through a variety of institutions and networks, each progressively further from the mainstream of American life. He follows that story to the end, through the rough careers of the small cadre of Reconstructionists to the present, where Rushdoony's ideas are broadly appropriated without credit and, at the popular level, the movement is mainly remembered as a convenient foil (230).
Though this work is focused on a specific “fringe” movement, it is an important addition to the historical record. McVicar's monograph supplements broader studies of post-war conservatism and evangelicalism, such as the scholarship of Lisa McGirr, Matthew D. Lassiter, Darren Dochuk, Matthew Avery Sutton, and Michelle M. Nickerson. McVicar's study of Christian Reconstructionism reveals a lot about twentieth century discourses, how movements took shape, how lines were drawn, and how ideas were adopted, appropriated, or excluded. The result is an excellent work of scholarship, valuable both for its treatment of its specific subject and for how it brings larger historical processes into view.
McVicar's account of a fight over a series of articles Rushdoony wrote for Christianity Today, evangelicalism's flagship magazine, serves as an example. Rushdoony was being promoted by oilman J. Howard Pew, one of Christianity Today's wealthy backers, in 1966. Pew was concerned the editors of the evangelical magazine—in particular Carl F.H. Henry—weren't taking a strong enough stand against socialism. He had no such qualms about Rushdoony. The editors and publishers of Christianity Today, meanwhile, were trying to resist their benefactor's impulse to micromanage the magazine. They sought to establish their credibility though their independence, while still receiving substantial financial support. Rushdoony's article on the Kingship of Christ served as the site of a battle between Pew and Henry. Henry solicited peer reviews of the article and he got reviews calling Rushdoony's work “bizarre,” “laughable,” and “twisted.” He shared them with Pew and Rushdoony. Rushdoony angrily withdrew the article from consideration. Pew was not deterred by the fact Rushdoony was seen as a crackpot and wanted more articles. Rushdoony, however, was done. “I cannot work with pygmies,” he wrote his would-be patron. “I am sorry that this terminates our association” (121). McVicar shows how this impolitic response had the effect of marginalizing Rushdoony and Christian Reconstructionism. Rushdoony did not get support from Pew after that and Christianity Today instituted an unwritten policy of not mentioning Rushdoony in its pages. The policy remained in effect for years and had an effect for even longer, even shaping some scholarship that has imagined Rushdoony as the religious right's dirty secret.
This is only one of the many behind-the-scenes vignettes that will make Christian Reconstruction indispensable for historians of modern American evangelicalism and contemporary conservatism. McVicar had unprecedented access to Rushdoony's private papers and personal library for this monograph and made good use of the material, illuminating all sorts of fascinating interactions and intersections.
McVicar faces two likely criticisms. One is that he is not critical enough, not calling attention to the harshest and extremest aspects of Rushdoony's thought. McVicar only passingly mentions Rushdoony's unpalatable theories of race, the things he wrote about homosexuality, and the practical applications of the death penalty that he endorsed. McVicar does little to support the popular thesis that Reconstructionists were or are an American Taliban. But then, that is not his thesis. His work, in fact, calls that thesis into question and presents a more complicated picture. Another likely criticism is that McVicar has not given enough attention to Rushdoony's magnum opus, the three-volume The Institutes of Biblical Law. There is some truth to this. McVicar commits ten pages to a discussion and summarization of the 1,791-page exposition of God's law and its authority in every aspect of life. There may be legitimate reasons to quibble with his gloss. Rushdoony's original work is widely available, however, as are interpretations of his work by friend and foe. What was not available, until now, was a careful contextualization of Rushdoony and his movement. McVicar deserves nothing but praise on this score. He has done great work situating Rushdoony and showing where Christian Reconstructionism fits in this tumultuous period.
