TAKING OVER THE CRA/NFRA AND THE CHALCEDON FOUNDATION

This California recall has enabled us to take a close look at the inner workings of California politics, and of some of the shadowy interests which manipulate teh GOP to serve the interests of a numerically small but very noisily ideological group of malcontents from within the party. I have taken the time to come up with links to articles and excerpts of what is contained within so as to provide FReepers with some of the connections which exist between various individuals and groups within the California Republican Party, as well as the beliefs espoused by each.

When reviewing these excerpts (and they are all fairly lenghty, be forewarned), keep this working set of names and definitions in mind:

Howard Ahmanson, Jr. - Heir to vast savings and loan fortune, a 20 year contributor and former board member of the Chalcedon Institute. Prolific donor to campaigns of CRA members, and a particular patron of Tom McClintock.

Mark Rushdoony - Dead pseudotheologian and proponent of doctrine of Christian Dominionism.

Chalcedon Foundation/Institute - "Think tank" which advances the cause of Christian Dominionism in America.

Christian Dominionism - an ideology that the United States shall be governed under a Christian moral code with heavy emphasis on Old Testament rules as a matter of civil and criminal law.

California Republican Assembly - an organization which claims to consist of grassroots California Republicans

John Stoos - Former Vice President of the California Republican Asssembly, long time Chalcedon contributing writer and staffer and now a political aide to Tom McClintock.

Rod Martin - Eastern Region Vice President of the NFRA, Editor-Director of the Vanguard.

NFRA - National Federation of Republican Assemblies, the umbrella organization set up by the founders of the CRA, which is to give the movement a nationwide focus.

Writing in the February 1997 issue [of Chalcedon Magazine], Stoos described how "a small group of Christians" first began to take over the California Republican Assembly in 1988 and came to dominate the state Republican Party itself. Stoos said what happened with the CRA "may well be a good model" to export "to facilitate the same type of successes across the country."

"In recent issues, Chalcedon writers have considered how those who believe in the Lordship of Christ and dominion mandate should involve themselves in American politics," Stoos wrote. "We agreed that Christians should not approach politics as 'wanting a seat at the table' as if the Creator of the Universe or his vice regents need to ask permission to be involved."

Political involvement in a constitutional republic, he continued, "is a natural obligation" for Christians who want the freedom to "preach the Gospel and further God's Kingdom."

The CRP debacle began in 1988 when Pat Robertson challenged President Bush in the Republican Primary. Although Robertson lost, he energized the Christian Coalition nationwide. In California they joined with the large and powerful California Republican Assembly and ran an effective though losing grassroots campaign.

After Robertsons loss to Bush, the leaders of the two groups had a meeting to discuss starting a third party. (Well documented in the Chalcedon Magazine by John Stoos.) They decided that as a third party, they could have a lot to say about philosophy but little or nothing to say about governance. They decided instead to take over the California Republican Party, control the party platform and the $20 million budget during each election cycle. The CRA-dominated coalition ran a stealth campaign in County Central Committee elections and was successful at winning a majority. They elected a Chairman and Board of Directors that was so dominated by the radical-right that they did not invite Governor Wilson to the 1992 convention, would not let him attend and demonstrated against our sitting Republican U.S. Senator when he was the keynote speaker. The CRA continued to consolidate its control of the CRP to such an extent that by 1994, every office and board member of the CRP was a member of the CRA and no one else was allowed to run. During the six years they had absolute control, the party suffered the worst three defeats in its history. During that time, CRA members and even officers of the party attacked Republican candidates in General Elections, costing us several seats. Although there were many such attacks, including the CRP Chairman initiating lawsuits against Republican Assembly candidates, the ones that could be the most costly were the attacks by a CRA Unit President and his associates on Congressman Steve Kuykendall and candidate Jim Cuneen. While Republicans in the rest of the country were trying to save our Speakership in the House, they were trying to hand it to the Democrats.

While the CCR was busy getting started and growing to over 25 Chapters around the state by 1997, the CRA had completed its takeover of the CRP to the extent that they outnumbered Mainstream Republicans by about 1200 to 400, and the counties by about 50 to 8.

While belief could not be mandatory in a Biblical society, and unbelievers could live and work among the people of God, not all religious practices would be permitted. A Biblical society would have to restrain religions based on murder, aggressive revolution, or other civilization-destroying practices. Exodus 22:18, 20 and Deuteronomy 18:10-12 indicate that the practice of occultist religions or religions involving sacrifice to idols was a capital crime under the civil law given to Moses. I did not mention this fact in my reply because it would invite hysterics over witch trials rather than an understanding of my broader point — that the state, and therefore the idea of "crime," is necessarily religious. My correspondent evidently wants official state toleration for all religions, including outright paganism, Satanism, and witchcraft. I wanted her to see the impossibility of this pluralism.

Pagans and occultists should not be ignored by Christians as fringe groups of little significance. R. J. Rushdoony, in The Institutes of Biblical Law, pointed out the danger posed by such groups in the past:

At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early years of the modern era, a widespread outbreak and revival of pagan and anti-Christian occultism was responsible for a massive assault on Christianity, an attack on tithing, the mainstay of Christian society, a sexual revolution aimed at destroying the family, and a revival of cannibalism, human sacrifice, and related acts.

A conference committee drew up an agreed-on list of reforms, everyone shook on the deal and it appeared that conservatives had won an impressive victory. The conservative leadership still managed, however, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

First, they sent liberal staff off to draft the details of the reforms, creating over four hundred pages of legal jargon to implement the few simple reforms. The final product actually moved California to the Left of the reforms signed by President Bill Clinton! When this was pointed out to the conservative leadership, they simply said it was the best they could get!

Next came their favorite legislative game: Announcing major reforms, while voting to do just the opposite. There were the obligatory debates, and when the dust had settled, only Senator Dick Mountjoy and Assemblyman Tom McClintock were willing to vote NO, after speaking against the phony reforms in the public debates.

Chalcedon and most other orthodox Christian reformers do not undertake to establish a national or state church (and thus do not deny the validity of the separation of church and state, properly understood); rather, we endorse and practice Christian establishmentarianism: the prevalence of historic, Biblical Christianity in all areas of modern life. We advocate a disestablished church but an established Faith.

All consistent Christians are thus intently disestablishmentarian and establishmentarian: To press the claims of Christ in all spheres is necessarily and simultaneously to disestablish Satan’s kingdom and establish Christ’s kingdom.

And it is the establishment of Christ’s kingdom which is destined to prevail.

Chalcedon supports only one form of "racism": God blesses, nourishes, and honors the Royal Race of the Redeemed, all of those of whatever physical race that have placed their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and God curses the race of the First Adam, all of those who live in unbelief, rebellion, and work-righteousness (Rom. 5:12-21). This is the only "racial discrimination" the Bible knows anything about. God discriminates in favor of covenant-keepers, and discriminates against covenant-breakers (Dt. 28). Some may object that He favors the race of Israel in the Old Testament era, but it must be immediately noted that His choice was not fundamentally racial, but religious. For this reason, Gentiles could become a part of the Jewish race, and thus a part of the covenant people of God (Gen. 17:12-13). The non-racial aspect of Biblical Faith is clear from Ephesians 2:11-15:

Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace....

All converted Jews and Gentiles stand on the same plane of blessing in God's sight, just as all unconverted Jews and Gentiles stand on the same plane of judgment in God's sight. The race God favors is the race of the Second Adam; the race He disfavors is the race of the First Adam. And this has nothing to do with physical race.

From radical fringe to kingmakers in a decade — how did they do it? "Basically, there's two places you have influence: one is in the nominating process in the primaries, where you can elect people in ideological agreement with your views, and the other is in the party structure," says former CRA vice president John Stoos, a former gun lobbyist, member of the fundamentalist Christian Reconstructionist movement, and senior consultant to the State Assembly. "And who pays attention to this stuff? You literally have to plan months and years ahead to know where the openings are."

Larkin felt the wrath of the CRA when he ran for the California Assembly in 1996. In 1992 he had angered the CRA by launching a campaign to wrest control of the party's Ventura County Central Committee away from the conservatives. In reprisal, the CRA backed conservative Tom McClintock, who defeated Larkin in the 1996 primary and ultimately won the general election.

"They're organized and dedicated," says Larkin, "and mainstream Republicans are neither, so a very small group can take over."

Ahmanson's patronage benefits several nonprofit think tanks, including the Claremont Institute, where McClintock worked for two years after losing his 1994 run for state controller, and the Chalcedon Foundation, which promotes a brand of Christianity known as Christian Reconstructionism. Chalcedon produces journals for which McClintock political aide John Stoos routinely writes.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Ahmanson served on Chalcedon's board of directors and was its largest benefactor, giving it at least $733,000. He remains a donor to the nonprofit organization, which was founded by Rousas John Rushdoony. Often called theologian to the religious right, Rushdoony, who died in 2001, advocated a nation ruled by Biblical law, a vision that assigned the death penalty for 18 sins, including murder, rape of a betrothed virgin, adultery and sodomy.

Ahmanson could not be reached for comment. But at a news conference this week, McClintock said he knew nothing about Ahmanson's theology, other than that he is a Christian. [compiler's note - take from that what you will]

Our Founding Fathers firmly held to the conviction that religious freedom was fundamental to a free society. We also express the conviction that we are a God-fearing people, according one another the equal right of religious freedom and acknowledging with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God.

Parents bear the final responsibility before God in the rearing of their children. Parents have been commanded by God to love their children and lead them in the paths of truth. Parents must be free to discipline their children in love and direct their education without government intrusion.

We believe with the framers of that document when President Adams stated, "This Constitution will not work except with a religious people."

Even these numbers understate the case. In California, for instance, where the study rightly noted reverses, Christian conservatives in the powerful California Republican Assembly were nevertheless able to overturn the “foreordained” outcome of their party’s gubernatorial primary, badly upsetting left-wing Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan with conservative underdog Bill Simon. A Simon win in November would guarantee their dominance in the party, and dramatically increase their influence in both state and nation.

From the Nov. 1998 issue of REASON Magazine -- http://reason.com/9811/col.olson.shtml

Invitation to a Stoning
Getting cozy with theocrats

By Walter Olson

For connoisseurs of surrealism on the American right, it's hard to beat an exchange that appeared about a decade ago in the Heritage Foundation magazine Policy Review. It started when two associates of the Rev. Jerry Falwell wrote an article which criticized Christian Reconstructionism, the influential movement led by theologian Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdoony, for advocating positions that even they as committed fundamentalists found "scary." Among Reconstructionism's highlights, the article cited support for laws "mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards." The Rev. Rushdoony fired off a letter to the editor complaining that the article had got his followers' views all wrong: They didn't intend to put drunkards to death.

Ah, yes, accuracy does count. In a world run by Rushdoony followers, sots would escape capital punishment--which would make them happy exceptions indeed. Those who would face execution include not only gays but a very long list of others: blasphemers, heretics, apostate Christians, people who cursed or struck their parents, females guilty of "unchastity before marriage," "incorrigible" juvenile delinquents, adulterers, and (probably) telephone psychics. And that's to say nothing of murderers and those guilty of raping married women or "betrothed virgins." Adulterers, among others, might meet their doom by being publicly stoned--a rather abrupt way for the Clinton presidency to end.

Mainstream outlets like the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post are finally starting to take note of the influence Rushdoony and his followers have exerted for years in American conservative circles. But a second part of the story, of particular interest to readers of this magazine, is the degree to which Reconstructionists have gained prominence in libertarian causes, ranging from hard-money economics to the defense of home schooling. "Christian economist" Gary North, Rushdoony's son-in-law and star polemicist of the Reconstructionist movement, is widely cited as a spokesman for free markets, if not exactly free minds; he even served for a brief time on the House staff of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), the Libertarian Party presidential nominee in 1988, when Paul was a member of Congress in the '70s. For his part, Rushdoony has blandly described himself to the press as a critic of "statism" and even as a "Christian libertarian." Say what?

Reconstructionism can be traced to Rushdoony's 1973 magnum opus, Institutes of Biblical Law. (Many leading Reconstructionists emerged from conservative Presbyterianism, but as with so much of today's religious ferment, the movement cuts across denominational lines.) Not one to pursue a high public profile, Rushdoony has set up his Chalcedon Institute in off-the-beaten-path Vallecito, California, while North runs his Institute for Christian Economics out of Tyler, Texas.

As a "post-millennialist" school of thought, Reconstructionism holds that believers should work toward achieving God's kingdom on earth in the here and now, rather than expect its advent only after a second coming of Christ. Some are in a bit of a hurry about it, too. "World conquest," proclaims George Grant, in what by Reconstructionist standards is not an especially breathless formulation. "It is dominion we are after. Not just a voice... not just influence...not just equal time. It is dominion we are after."

Well, OK, it's easy to laugh. Yet grandiosity does sometimes get results, especially when combined with an all-out conviction that one is historically predestined to win (the Communist Party in the '30s comes to mind). Reconstructionism has a record of turning out hugely prolific writers, tireless organizers who stay at meetings until the last chair is folded up, and driven activists willing to undergo arrest (Reconstructionist Randall Terry founded Operation Rescue, the lawbreaking anti-abortion campaign) to make their point.

Politically, Reconstructionists have been active both in the GOP and in the splinter U.S. Taxpayers Party; but their greater influence, as they themselves would doubtless agree, has been felt in the sphere of ideas, in helping change the terms of discourse on the traditionalist right. One of their effects has been to allow everyone else to feel moderate. To wit: Almost any anti-abortion stance seems nuanced when compared with Gary North's advocacy of public execution not just for women who undergo abortions but for those who advised them to do so. And with the Rushdoony faction proposing the actual judicial murder of gays, fewer blink at the position of a Gary Bauer or a Janet Folger, who support laws exposing them to mere imprisonment.

Among other ideas Reconstructionists have helped popularize is that state neutrality on the subject of religion is meaningless. Any legal order is bound to "establish" one religious order or another, the argument runs, and the only question is whose. Put the question that way, and watch your polemical troubles disappear. If we're getting a religious establishment anyway, why not mine?

"The Christian goal for the world," Recon theologian David Chilton has explained, is "the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics." Scripturally based law would be enforced by the state with a stern rod in these republics. And not just any scriptural law, either, but a hardline-originalist version of Old Testament law--the point at which even most fundamentalists agree things start to get "scary." American evangelicals have tended to hold that the bloodthirsty pre-Talmudic Mosaic code, with its quick resort to capital punishment, its flogging and stoning and countenancing of slavery, was mostly if not entirely superseded by the milder precepts of the New Testament (the "dispensationalist" view, as it's called). Not so, say the Reconstructionists. They reckon only a relative few dietary and ritualistic observances were overthrown.

So when Exodus 21:15-17 prescribes that cursing or striking a parent is to be punished by execution, that's fine with Gary North. "When people curse their parents, it unquestionably is a capital crime," he writes. "The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death." Likewise with blasphemy, dealt with summarily in Leviticus 24:16: "And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him."

Reconstructionists provide the most enthusiastic constituency for stoning since the Taliban seized Kabul. "Why stoning?" asks North. "There are many reasons. First, the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost." Thrift and ubiquity aside, "executions are community projects--not with spectators who watch a professional executioner do `his' duty, but rather with actual participants." You might even say that like square dances or quilting bees, they represent the kind of hands-on neighborliness so often missed in this impersonal era. "That modern Christians never consider the possibility of the reintroduction of stoning for capital crimes," North continues, "indicates how thoroughly humanistic concepts of punishment have influenced the thinking of Christians." And he may be right about that last point, you know.

The Recons are keenly aware of the P.R. difficulties such views pose as they become more widely known. Brian Abshire writes in the January Chalcedon Report, the official magazine of Rushdoony's institute, that the "judicial sanctions" are "at the root" of the antipathy most evangelicals still show towards Reconstruction. Indeed, as the press spotlight has intensified, prominent religious conservatives have edged away. For a while the Coalition on Revival (COR), an umbrella group set up to "bring America back to its biblical foundations" by identifying common ground among Christian right activists of differing theological backgrounds, allowed leading Reconstructionists to chum around with such figures as televangelist D. James Kennedy (whose Coral Ridge Ministries also employed militant Reconstructionist George Grant as a vice president) and National Association of Evangelicals lobbyist Robert Dugan.

In recent years, however, the COR has lost many of its best-known members; former Virginia lieutenant governor candidate Mike Farris, for example, told The Washington Post that he left the group because "it started heading to a theocracy...and I don't believe in a theocracy." John Whitehead, a Rushdoony protégé who, with Chalcedon assistance, launched the Rutherford Institute to pursue religious litigation, has moved with some vigor to disavow his old mentor's views.

Prominent California philanthropist Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., who has given Rushdoony's operations more than $700,000 over the years, may also be loosening his ties. According to the June 30, 1996, Orange County Register, Ahmanson has departed the Chalcedon board and says he "does not embrace all of Rushdoony's teachings." An heir of the Home Savings bank fortune, Ahmanson has also been an important donor to numerous other groups, including the Claremont Institute, the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and--just to show how complicated life gets--the Reason Foundation, the publisher of this magazine (for projects not associated with its publication).

The continuing, extensive Reconstructionist presence in fields like the home schooling movement poses for libertarians an obvious question: How serious do differences have to become before it becomes inappropriate to overlook them in an otherwise good cause? The printed program of last year's Separation of School & State Alliance convention constituted an odd ideological mix in which certified good guys such as Sheldon Richman, Jim Bovard, and Don Boudreaux alternated with Chalcedon stalwarts like Samuel Blumenfeld, Howard Phillips, and Rushdoony himself.

Lest such relations become unduly frictionless, here's a clip-and-save sampler of Reconstructionist quotes to keep on hand:

On the link between reason and liberty: "Reason itself is not an objective `given' but is itself a divinely created instrument employed by the unregenerate to further their attack on God." The "appeal to reason as final arbiter" must be rejected; "if man is permitted autonomy in one sphere he will soon claim autonomy in all spheres....We therefore deny every expression of human autonomy--liberal, conservative or libertarian." Thus affirmed Andrew Sandlin, in the January Chalcedon Report.

Intellectual liberty (other religions department): Hindus, Muslims, and the like would still be free to practice their rites "in the privacy of your own home....But you would not be allowed to proselytize and undermine the order of the state....every civil order protects its foundations," wrote the late Recon theologian Greg Bahnsen. Bahnsen added that the interdiction applies to "someone [who] comes and proselytizes for another god or another final authority (and by the way, that god may be man)."

Intellectual liberty (where secularists fit in department): "All sides of the humanistic spectrum are now, in principle, demonic; communists and conservatives, anarchists and socialists, fascists and republicans," explains Rushdoony. "When someone tries to undermine the commitment to Jehovah which is fundamental to the civil order of a godly state--then that person needs to be restrained by the magistrate...those who will not acknowledge Jehovah as the ultimate authority behind the civil law code which the magistrate is enforcing would be punished and repressed," wrote Bahnsen.

On ultimate goals: "So let us be blunt about it," says Gary North. "We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

Contributing Editor Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of The Excuse Factory: How Employment Law Is Paralyzing the American Workplace (The Free Press).

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