Your link from the UnionDemocrat doesn't work for me.
I'm been surprised by the outright deception that's been offered around here. I guess a nation under God really fries some people's circuits.
Published: January 21, 2005
By SUNNY LOCKWOOD
The Chalcedon Foundation's two-story gray stone building sits unobtrusively across Highway 4 from Red Hill Road.
There are no signs on the building or along the drive to identify it. Ranch fields filled with grazing cows surround the grounds.
Despite its bland exterior, the foundation offices bustle with work.
There, foundation books, journals and tapes are shipped to groups and individuals across the nation. It is also where foundation President Mark Rushdoony counts on changing the world by promoting the controversial ideas of his late father, R. J. Rushdoony.
An ordained Presbyterian minister with degrees from U.C. Berkeley and the Pacific School of Religion, R.J. Rushdoony wrote 35 books and hundreds of essays about applying Biblical law to every aspect of life.
Known as the father of Christian Reconstruction, Rushdoony's ideas have energized some and frightened others, but his son sees them as the solution to a sin-filled world.
"We believe (my father's) writings are based in Scripture. We don't believe his writings are inspired, but nobody said it better," says the soft-spoken former history teacher and father of four.
Rushdoony's father established the Chalcedon (pronounced kal-SEE-dun) Foundation in 1965 and moved it to Vallecito in 1975.
Chalcedon takes its name from the religious Council of Chalcedon of 451 A.D., at which church fathers declared Jesus Christ to be completely God and completely human, one in two natures.
In 1978, R.J. asked his youngest child and only son to help run the foundation. Mark left his teaching job in Virginia and brought his family to Vallecito.
R. J. Rushdoony died in 2001.
Today, Mark Rushdoony is 49 — a tall, trim man with dark brown hair and a youthful, wrinkle-free face. He works with his wife, sister and other family members and says his foundation's labors are all-consuming.
From the start, the senior Rushdoony's ideas were controversial. Yet, many of them caught the imagination of the political right.
In 1981, Chalcedon's influence was noted by Newsweek magazine in an article about how Christian conservatives helped re-elect Ronald Reagan president.
The article identified Chalcedon as the think tank of the religious right. But the "think tank" term makes Mark Rushdoony uncomfortable.
He says it "puts too much emphasis on a political strategy that we don't really have. We see ourselves more as speaking to the culture and society in a much broader vein."
Broad is the word.
Christian Reconstruction advocates restructuring every aspect of life and culture to conform to Biblical law as R.J. Rushdoony described it in his 800-page volume, The Institutes of Biblical Law, first published in 1973.
Specific ideas, such as Christian home schooling and reducing the size of government, detailed in his prolific writings, have been embraced by the Christian right.
"More than a few people have said he was the founding father of ideas for the religious right," Rushdoony says.
"I believe he was one of the most important theologians of the 20th century — and as time goes on and more people read his ideas, this will be born out."
Yet other Christian Reconstruction ideas — such as the Biblical punishment of stoning to death those who practice homosexuality, engage in adultery or who are incorrigibly rebellious against their parents — have kept many from taking up the cause.
Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights group, calls The Institutes of Biblical Law "an ugly theocratic book" because it advocates stoning, voices support for slavery and condemns all non-Christian faiths.
"The ideas produced by this little foundation are unalterably opposed to democracy in any form," he said. "This is a medieval theology."
Christian Reconstruction had quite an influence on mainstream Christianity in the 1980s and '90s, Potok said.
"But there was so much bad publicity about some of these ideas, in particular the stoning of incorrigible children, that people got frightened off and reconstruction theory (has become) marginalized," he said. "Now it's on the defense."
As for the references to stoning, Chalcedon Foundation Communication Director Chris Ortiz acknowledges that they indeed are part of the Christian Reconstruction ideology but, "We haven't spent a single sentence on the topic in God knows how long."
However, added Ortiz, "If God advocated the stoning of anyone for any infraction, (and) we call that cruel and unusual punishment, we're guilty of two things. 1) We declare ourselves to know better than God. 2) We simply don't understand how heinous the sin is."
Ortiz thinks it is those who believe in a secular society who are on the defense.
"Our enemies culturally are systems of thought like secular humanism," he said.
He said last summer's removal of Alabama Chief Justice Roy S. Moore from office for his refusal to take a monument of the 10 Commandments out of the state judicial building has galvanized moderate Christians.
"That victory of the ACLU was a watershed, and moderate Christians began tilting in Chalcedon's direction," he said.
Philip Goff, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University, said he thinks the Christian Reconstruction movement is still growing.
"It's hard to tell whether this is just a part of the natural flow of ideas or if it is a driving force, but clearly there is a larger river of thought that is moving away from the idea of separation of church and state," he said in a telephone interview.
"Christian Reconstructionists understand themselves as going back to the model of ancient Israel where there really was no separation between the state and God's covenanted people. It's a powerful idea."
Yet Rushdoony repeatedly emphasizes that the Chalcedon Foundation is a nonprofit, educational organization — not a political organization.
He and Ortiz say the foundation does not focus on right-wing political aims. "We don't see a Christian president as the solution to anything," Ortiz said. "We advocate decentralization, with everything being based on the self-governing individual. As long as you have government-sponsored everything, you sap the individual's initiative."
Rushdoony said Chalcedon's purpose is to teach people obedience.
"We're not evangelical. We don't preach the Gospel. Churches do a good job of that. We teach Christians how to apply their faith."
However, Goff points out that reconstructionists believe that they build the kingdom of God here on earth through their teachings.
"They believe that by teaching that we are all in this covenant with God, the government will eventually become religious,"
Here's the editor of Chalcedon Reports in his own words., on a sympathetic web site.
For nearly a century and a half the National Reform Association has pressed for the crown rights of Jesus Christ in the political life of the nation. This implies a nation covenanted with God. One of the (though by no means the only) means of doing this is formal recognition of the authority of our Triune God and of Christianity in the prime political instrument(s) of the nation. Another means is requiring Christian test oaths for the civil magistrate and for all voters in a democracy.
Note the obvious and direct conflict with Article VI of the Constitution.