Christian Coalition: America at a Crossroads

This is a short (17 minutes) Christian Coalition video from 1990, after Pat Robertson had made his run for the White House and decamped to Virginia Beach to … do whatever it was he did. I think it’s fair to describe the history of the Religious Right in three phases so far: Moral Majority, Christian Coalition, and Focus on the Family. This video is from that second awkward phase, when Pat Robertson ran for President and Ralph Reed was more or less the tastemaker until he ran aground due to his association with Jack Abramoff, and the Founding Fathers somehow became the Puritans, not Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin.

It’s amazing how poor the production values were twenty years ago, and how it seemed reasonable to have Ralph Reed stand at a flip chart and talk about a quarter-million-dollar media buy as if it were going to change American politics.

It’s also interesting to see the overt attempts to get Catholics into the fold. Note in particular the real clinker Robertson lets loose when he refers to John F. Kennedy and the moon landing about four minutes into Part 2. Seriously; who wouldn’t see that as blatant pandering? I have to admit that in 1980 I couldn’t have told you the difference between Pat Robertson and Jim Bakker; I can’t believe that in 1987 that the average Catholic could have either. If there was a big “Catholics for Robertson” campaign in 1988 I don’t remember hearing anything about it.

I think it’s a crying shame there isn’t more of this sort of media available on the Web. This stuff is really valuable as either a guiding light or a cautionary tale, and it’s a shame that only People for the America Way has possession of this one.

Rushdoony, Reconstructionism, and all that

Amy Gardner in the Washington Post is covering the Nevada Senate campaign, and offers this little nugget in the Reid vs. Angle race:

Most recently, Reid claims to have uncovered information that links Angle to an obscure political movement called Christian Reconstructionism, which holds that government should rule according to biblical law. [link]

I am surprised how common this tactic is: candidate X has religious right ties, so candidate Y accuses him or her of wanting to institute a theocracy, including slavery, levirate marriage, and death by stoning for adultery and disobedience. I think Gardner estimates the influence of Reconstructionists correctly. Joseph L. Conn at Americans United takes the usual tack on this issue by focusing on the author behind Reconstructionism, Rousas John Rushdoony:

However, Rushdoony’s overarching philosophy – that secular democracy is evil and that God’s law should prevail in today’s America – became the theological and intellectual framework for early Religious Right activists.

When fundamentalists flocked into politics in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, they had few theorists to turn to. They had always believed politics was worldly, and true Christians should focus on converting souls, not running the government. Rushdoony insisted that God wanted them to take over society and crush the infidels (literally). [link]

This is a pretty good description of the tension between fundamentalists and evangelicals, politically, but I’ve never seen any evidence that Rushdoony was more than a fringe figure. The idea that he was important, had lots of influence, etc. is a recurring refrain among people who talk about Reconstructionism, but as best I can tell their story consists of one of two things:

• a bunch of anecdotes knitted together
• a claim that Rushdoony influenced Francis Schaeffer, who in turn influenced Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority/Christian Coalition cadre

Both of these surface in Max Blumenthal’s book Republican Gomorrah; see e.g. the interview with Blumenthal at Harpers, where Blumenthal states but doesn’t substantiate

Rushdoony is also important because of his influence on Francis Schaeffer.

This is something I see repeatedly (see e.g. here), but I don’t ever recall reading a quotation of Rushdoony by Schaeffer.  When I was at Liberty we still held Schaeffer in high regard, and the rainbow-striped five-volume Complete Works was kind of a secret handshake when visiting someone’s house for years after I left, but I’d never heard of Rushdoony until Time Magazine name-checked him in an article about Howard Ahmanson, Jr (another supposedly influential Evangelical I’d never heard of).

And no, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a copy of Rushdoony’s The Institutes of Biblical Law in the wild. Maybe I just don’t travel in the right circles.