Contemporary Cultural Ethics

Christianity and Politics

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Culture

Lesson: Christianity and Politics

Genre: Speech

Track: 09

Dictation Name: RR133A2

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our concern this afternoon is to consider the area of politics from a Christian perspective. The subject is so big a one we can do no more than barely touch on a few of the many central aspects of the political question, but what we need to say at the very beginning, that priority in the modern world is given to things other than religious man. Political man, economic man, Existentialist man, have all been important in the thinking of the modern age. Rational man at the very beginning and continuing in all these other forms, but it has been the characteristic of the modern age that it has founded its ideas on something other than religious man, man created in the image of God.

The question, therefore, immediately comes up of the image of man, created in whose image? There is very definitely a radically different concept of man that motivates modern politics, politics since the age of the Renaissance, and politics before the Renaissance. Politics in the Medieval world and politics very briefly in the Reformed world, both in Geneva and in Scotland, and also in Colonial America.

In the politics of Christendom in those areas I have cited, in varying forms, and with sometimes unhappy deviations, yet nonetheless, the basic factor has been man created in the image of God. This concept of man has been radically displaced by the modern world, and as a result, the image of man that has been developed as basic to the political order is radically at odds with scripture, so that we must, of necessity say that the doctrine of man that informs modern politics of virtually every category, whether it be communism, fascism, democracy, liberalism, radicalism, or conservatism all rest on a doctrine of man which is alien to scripture.

Then, a second key question we need to raise with regard to politics in the modern age is the question of authority. Authority from whence? From God, from man, or the state? The modern state has progressively eroded the question of authority and bypassed it in favor of the question of power. There is a difference between power and authority, and the modern state is essentially concerned with power, not legitimate authority. The question of legitimacy, the question of due authority is alien to it progressively. It lingers on in the thinking of some political theorists, but essential to it is the question of power.

We might say that the turning point was the French Revolution. The French Revolution very definitely replaced authority with power. It did go through the motions of claiming legitimacy and deriving it from the people, and deriving it from this or that idea of Rousseau, but to all practical intent, the shift had been made. The idea of legitimate authority now was secondary to the question of power.

Then, we must say secondly, that with the French Revolution very openly, religion was dethroned. Prior to that, even though nominally only, every state in Europe was ostensibly Christian. Now, in reality, after 1660, the Christian orientation of the European states had ended, they were only formally not truly Christian. Prior to that, for example, we would have to say that however defective we may find the theology of Philip II, and however repugnant a figure he may be to us, the fact still remains that Philip II tried to ground his state on the concept of theological order. When he built his palace, he made a chapel the center of his palace, because he felt it was his ideas of what constituted Christian faith, his Catholic theology, which had to be at the center of his state craft. In England, you had, of course, Cromwell and his regime attempting, in terms of Puritanism, to establish an idea of what constituted godly order, but with 1660 and the accession of Charles II in England, and the passing of Philip II, and a new thoroughly humanistic regime in Spain, Louis XIV in France who was soon to build the Versailles, in which, not a chapel, but his bedroom, was at the center, you have a totally different concept of what constitutes the foundations of the state. Religion had been dethroned, specifically, the Christian faith.

As a result, the French Revolution was a logical consequence in its thinking of those events which came to focus with 1660, the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, and the centrality of man rather than of Christo-centric thought, in the political ideology of Western man.

Then third, we would have to say very definitely as these things developed further, another central focus comes into light in Western thought, the idea of democracy. Now, in democracy, the great cry is freedom and equality. The French Revolution, of course, made its slogan “Liberty for Eternity and Equality.” We must dissent, however, and say the slogan has very little reality to it, that the real goal is not liberty, freedom, or equality, or fraternity, but power. The modern state began with the conception that now, a holy institution was born whereby man could achieve the millennium on earth.

In one of our previous meetings, and I forget which because I’m beginning to be a little fuzzy, I referred to the fact that the early socialists, on through Lenin and their theory of terror, espoused terror as a necessary instrument of state which would be a holy and purgative thing, which would sanctify society, because by presupposition, the state was the righteous agency for the accomplishment of paradise on earth. Therefore, the state in its application of terror had to be, of necessity, right. We fail to comprehend what these men are talking about when they espouse terror, unless we grasp that fundamental. Thus, equality and democracy are not the goals of the ostensibly democratic state, but power, and so you have, with the birth of the democratic movement, the progressive concentration of power into the hands of the central state. We have, of course, seen how, in our day, the federal government has used the idea of equality to destroy power centers.

Now, this is important for you to understand as Southerners, because of course, the South has been one such target. What are power centers? Well, one of the things that creates a great deal of trouble for central governments is to have local units with strong local authority and strong local orientations which controls its representatives, which controls its officials. As a result, what the French Revolution immediately did, and this has been a pattern for politics since, was to say we will take the historic areas of France, areas which are not geographical entities, but which are racial entities, which have Bartons{?}, which have Gascons, Burgundians, Picards, and so on. Deep roots with linguistic differences, and we will destroy them. We will redraw the lines so that some of these people will be in one area and others in another area. What we in American history call gerrymandering. Why? Because the central government in Paris can n ever be strong if the Burgundians can think as Burgundians, but if the Burgundians are broken up into different legislative and departmental groups which are so arbitrary that no longer can Burgundian thought operate, then we do not have power centers apart from Paris. Now, that was the thinking of the French Revolution. This thinking, since the 1930’s, has been progressively, self-consciously operative in the United States, as it has been everywhere.

What has it led to? Well, in the name of equality, it has worked to destroy power centers. Let us examine a few of the concrete ways this has worked. One of the power centers in some of your big eastern cities has been the Italian and the Irish neighborhoods. What has urban renewal done? Some of these neighborhoods have been the most stable, the most crime-free, and basically, while the houses are old, the best kept neighborhoods in those cities, but systematically, urban renewal has struck at these areas, beleveled them over the protests of the community, and scattered them. The consequence has been that, that area, which has had always a strong political power in the city and in the state, and electing an ethnic congressman, has had a power in congress, has suddenly disappeared. It’s been scattered, and the members thereof have been integrated into the community at large, and of course, this is behind the integration movement. Politicians are not equalitarians in any devout, pious sense, and some of the most eloquent champions of integration in congress have been men who have, very fastidiously, like the Kennedy’s, put their children in private schools where they will not be corrupted with the likes of our children, or with any black children, but only with a limited elite.

Now, these people have therefore, then proceeded to insist on the integration of the blacks, even over the objection of some black communities at times. Why? Because having deliberately worked first of all to create a power block in the blacks to use against others, now that power block has to be broken. There can be no concentration of blacks permitted in any area because they create a strong power unit, and this cannot be tolerated.

Similarly, you are seeing right now, whether you realize it or not, the second reconstruction underway in the South. About seventy or so engineers who used to attend my meetings about five and six, and seven years ago in Southern California, all now have southern addresses. Why? Because Aerospace has been very extensively moved since the latter part of the sixties into the South, and a flood of people have been brought in. I can remember the first time I came to Jackson how self-conscious I felt at the airport, that was almost eleven years ago before the seminary began before there was a ministerial institute here. Mine was the only non-southern accent in the airport, and I really felt self-conscious. Now, a genuine old-fashioned accent you can only hear if you go outside of the city into the countryside, whether it’s out of Jackson, or out of Birmingham, or out of Atlanta, or wherever it may be, because there is such a flood of outsiders that have been brought into the South, to break, of course, the character of the South.

You see, what I’m saying is that integration is not a principled thing as far as people are concerned. It’s basic premise, and this is irrespective of what you may think of integration or segregation, I’m not concerned with that issue. It has been a means of destroying power groups, rendering people into mass men, atomistic men, so that the only power that remains is the central power.

As a result, we see, wherever this kind of process takes place, a progressive concentration of power with the result, the totalitarianism in some form is the end product, whether it be fascism or communism, and it can come in the name of liberalism, or it can come in the name of conservatism, whatever the occasion dictates or requires, but democracy becomes an instrument, whereby there is an equalization of man which is, in effect and in actuality, an atomization. All of this begins with a false doctrine of politics and of the role of the state.

From the biblical perspective, of course, we believe that all power and authority must come from God and must be under his law, that it is the function of the state to be a terror to evil-doers. We must, of course, further say with St. Augustine when the state does not rule in terms of justice, in terms of the word of God, in terms of legitimate authority from God, the state becomes no different than any other band of robbers, and the modern state, of course, is increasingly, simply, an organized band of robbers. We do not have to go as far afield as Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago to document that. Incidentally, one refugee from the Soviet Union who wrote recently on the criminal underworld in the Soviet Union, was asked, “Is there a Mafia in the Soviet Union?” and he answered, “Of course there is. It’s the Communist Party,” and of course, he meant exactly what he said, because in effect, what you have is government becoming the super criminal, out to rob the people, out to exploit them par excellence.

Now, in order for the state to rule from God, under God’s power and authority legitimately, it must have, we must then say next, God’s law or else it has no law, no legitimate law. It must be a state that recognizes that God is the only law-giver, that good and evil, right and wrong, are defined by Almighty God, not by man nor the state, and therefore, it cannot depart from the word of God as it rules without peril of becoming no different than the outlaws it regards as criminals. God’s law must govern the state. God’s word must define good and evil, nothing else.

Not too long ago, a police officer was telling me of the multitude of regulations that are now on the books, and he said, “I can stop you at any time and issue a citation to you, because there are so many rules on the books that it is certain that you have, at some point, violated one or another.” Two or three days after he told me this, another young man who, together with others of his group of college youth, were picketing a house of prostitution, told me of an incident that took place. Let me say parenthetically, because we now have statute law, it becomes very easy to commit a crime if you know how to get around the statute, and all over the United States now, in the major urban centers, prostitutes are openly advertising and opening up shops, and they know how to do it and to do it legally, because the laws forbids soliciting for purposes of prostitution. How do they get around it? They don’t solicit. You simply pay an entrance fee and you walk in, and you solicit the girl. Therefore, no crime, according to the statute, has been committed, and the police can walk in and out and do nothing. The only way they are shutting them down in the San Fernando Valley right now is by picketing the places, because that brings unfavorable publicity. Well, they were picking this place and they noticed this one man who was coming and going in a car, and picking up the take. These things are operated by criminal syndicates, so they took down his license number, and when a police officer who was very friendly to them came by, they mentioned it to him and then they said, “Oh there he it. He just pulled up. He parked down there, the third car,” and so the officer said, “Just watch me,” and he went down there and issued three citations to the man. No problem. Very simple, but isn’t it a sick situation where a man can operate a house of prostitution under the law as it exists, but you can issue him three citations on a car when he drives a car better than we do. Where do we stand then? You see, this is what happens under man’s law.

But then, we must say next, a very critical point. One of the problems in Western history from the early days to the present, has been that a pagan view has consistently governed whereby an institution becomes the umbrella over society. Now, what do I mean by that? In terms of scripture, we believe that all things are under the government of God, that God is Lord of the family and of the individual, of our vocations, of church, and of state, of every area of life, of every discipline, of every sphere. So that God is the umbrella under whose jurisdiction all things exist.

Now, in Western history, you have had two institutions that have sought to claim and to exercise this prerogative of God. In pagan Antiquity, it was the state. The state was, openly declared to be God on earth in some form or fashion. Either the ruler or the office, or the state itself was regarded as divine. It was the divine human order, and therefore, all things were, of necessity, under its jurisdiction. For example, the very word “liturgy” is an echo of that fact. The word “liturgy,” if you’ll trace it to its origin, means “public work.” Religion was once a department of public works in the state, whereby it was another means of control of man and of society, and in the Roman Empire, the Christians were never persecuted for worshipping the Lord, but for failing to be recognized as a legal church. Now, this is an important point. This has been well documented by scholars like Francis Leg{?} and others over and over again, and if we miss that fact, we fail to appreciate something of the reason of the struggle and the persecution of the early church. If they had only applied to Rome for a license to function, and recognize the right of Rome to say yes or no to the existence of the church, and recognize the right of Rome and of the Emperor who would become a deified god on death, to say that whatever exists within the state exists by our will and by our sufferance, so that the church, as well as every other society and institution within the Empire exists by the permission and under the authority of the Roman Emperor, then all would have been well.

But, the early church refused to assent to that. They said Christ is not under Caesar, but Caesar is under Christ, and it is not Christ who must pay taxes to Caesar, but Caesar who must serve Christ, so they refused to pay taxes for the church or to seek recognition of the church as a legal institution, as a licensed, approved institution. That was the reason for the conflict. The state claimed to be the umbrella.

Now, as the Middle Ages began to develop, the Holy Roman Empire began to claim this same power of being the umbrella. For example, in the coinage of Otto I of the Holy Roman Empire, you find that Otto is portrayed with an imperial crown as world king, king of kings, holding a dove, the Holy Spirit, by which the imperial theologians said that, in effect, the emperor is the representative of God and Christ on earth, and God does not govern the earth apart from the Holy Roman Emperor, so that all church, all institutions, all families, everything, must exist under the jurisdiction of the Emperor, or it has no right to exist.

They, therefore, claimed the right to name pastors, to name bishops, to name abbots, to govern the church absolutely as a department of state. The state was the umbrella. Unfortunately, as the church fought that, it fought it on the same pagan grounds, and progressively, especially with Hildebrand and after, the claim of the church was that, “We are the appointed umbrella of God. It is we who are the continuation of the incarnation,” and that’s basic to Roman church theory, “so that Christ continues his incarnation in us, and we are the umbrella under which all things must exist.” So that, of course, the Holy Roman Empire, and the church of Rome, were locked in a life and death struggle whereby the Holy Roman Empire was finally humbled and placed under the jurisdiction of the church.

Now, this had, of course, fearful consequences for European history. I won’t go into tracing that, but suffice it to say that the Reformation enabled the Holy Roman Empire again to gain the ascendency through Charles V over the church, and it was Charles V who called the Council of Trent, and it was the Austrian Emperors subsequently, the Hapsburgs, who ruled Rome. So that when Napoleon destroyed the Holy Roman Empire, it freed the Vatican, and the Vatican resumed its claims, revived the doctrine of papal infallibility which had been suppressed by the Empire, and of course, you had Vatican I as a consequence.

Now, the church’s view, of course, is no longer determinative, but the state’s view, a continuation of the ancient doctrine of pagan antiquity, that the state is the umbrella, is very much with us, so that the state today rules in the economic domain. We no longer have a free economy. We have a political economy. The state has taken over education, and it claims that the children belong to the state and it is the state’s right to educate them. The state has taken over the vocations. It controls them. The state controls property and taxes it, which is not scriptural. The state claims to be the first born of every family because, by right, it claims the first in the inheritance through its tax. The state, in one area after another, claims the sovereign jurisdiction, and the word “sovereignty” which was once a theological term has become a political term.

It is very interesting that John Quincy Adams, although he was weak on certain points, recognized the heresy that was involved in the term “sovereignty,” so that when some southerners first began to talk not about state’s rights, but state sovereignty, in one of the great Fourth of July addresses, perhaps the greatest in the history of America, he struck out at the doctrine of state sovereignty. He said, from whence does that word come into politics? The word ye declares belonged to the Lord God of Hosts, not to any political order, and of course as late as the Versailles Treaty and the discussions that ensued, our Secretary of State, Lansing, who was not a particularly good man, expressed himself as uncomfortable at the treaty table with all the talk about national sovereignties, and he said the word sovereignty is not in our Constitution and is alien to our religious tradition. It’s not an accident that the word sovereignty was left out of the Constitution. It would have had the clergy of this country up in arms. It was a theological term. They would have recognized what it meant, that the state was presuming to be God. So there is never a reference to sovereignty anywhere in the Constitution, but today, sovereignty is a normal, unchallenged claim of states the world over, and because of this, they claim to be the umbrella and to have jurisdiction so that, increasingly, we see the progressive march of the state into one area after another without any real protest that is intellectually, theologically grounded, simply because Christians have forgotten the implications of the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, that the doctrine of God’s sovereignty says that only God is the umbrella over all spheres, the governor of all spheres, that neither state nor church, nor any other agency, nor man himself can exert that, that it is only God and his law that govern, and that these spheres have their limited spheres of jurisdiction under God and his word.

I think I have indicated sufficiently, although I recognize rather generally how far we have gone in our apostasy as a people, in that today, whatever the political persuasion of people, it does not occur to them that the function of the state as umbrella is invalid, and the main difference between conservatives and liberals is that the liberals want to exercise that umbrella power more fully and the conservatives say we must be very gentle and light in our exercise thereof, but essentially they are agreed on the sovereignty of the state. Essentially, they have a common, humanistic presupposition. Essentially, they have both discarded the overall sovereignty and jurisdiction of God, and we cannot thus have a restoration of true political order unless we have a theological restoration whereby the sovereignty of God is affirmed and in every area systematically developed in its implications.

Our society today, therefore, is literally anti-God. You cannot talk about the sovereignty of the state without deliberately bypassing God and denying him. This is why, as I indicated in one of the other meetings, a prominent personage in Washington has told me that the unacknowledged battle in America today is between Christianity and anti-Christianity, that this is the major political issue, that there is no politician who wants to confront it openly, many of them who want to exploit Christians for their own ends, and he said, “I believe that by the 1980’s, this may become the open issue, because every issue at heart today concentrates on this question.” Well, if there is to be a confrontation, it can only come insofar as we, as Christian thinkers and leaders, begin to develop the implications of God’s sovereignty and apply it to every sphere.

Now, are there any questions? Yes?

[Audience] I think it’s worth noting that if one doesn’t grant the sovereignty of God with respect to politics and wants to hold to a basic independence of the various social institutions, eventually you’ve got one institution that eats up the other in terms of the {?} nature, in an attempt to expand the umbrella. I think particularly of the example recently brought in the State of Virginia where it’s come to a point where the state, which was once the center of Jeffersonian libertarianism, to a place where the state to hold that to stay separate from the church, is now a violation of the ordinance in Fairfax, Virginia, to hold a Bible study in your home without supervision, without a license of the state, and it’s probably good for Christians to be aware of that because that’s going to increasingly become the very {?} world issue for us.

[Rushdoony] This fact, no permission to have a Bible study in your home, is a problem in a number of states, and I regularly hear reports of someone being cited. It was very heavily used against a number of Negro groups in various areas, because one of the problems, you see, in the Negro churches has been that their pastors have been pretty well controlled by the left, have been trained largely by the left, have been subsidized and sent to the very liberal schools, abundant scholarships to send them there, and a great many very fine and godly Negros have been in protest against this, and have withdrawn to hold Bible studies in their own homes, and to have a little service there, and they are immediately cited. They’re immediately cited.

You mention Fairfax County. In Fairfax County now, the control is so extensive, and this is not unusual, but it just reminded me of it, so that you cannot even cut down a tree, although it may be a dead tree, on your own property, in your own backyard, unless you go down and get a permit. Well, the Reverend Robert L. Thoburn, who has a 30-34 acre campus for his Christian school did not like that at all, so he decided to take advantage of it, to beat them at their own game. So he went around his property and he saw enough dead trees, or trees with a dead branch of them. Even if you cut off a branch you have to have a permit. So he designated one tree as number one, and called in for some inspector to come by and give him a permit to cut it, and every two or three days, he sent for another inspector to come by, and in no time at all he tied up the inspectors coming by to approve of a branch here, and the next day a branch there, and so on, so finally they said, “Mr. Thoburn, cut any tree or branch you want. Please don’t call on us.” Yes?

[Audience] I just forgot.

[laughter]

[Audience] Well, one question I has is that if when people make a statement like this, which I happen to hold to what you’re saying, the immediate reaction from other people is that, “Well, that’s just a theological whitewash for you want to keep all these injustices in society and you just putting a biblical whitewash on, just doing nothing to change the situation.” How do we deal with arguments like that? Because from a Christian perspective, the philosophy that comes out is similar to political conservatism, although I recognize the differences. They say, “You’re just trying to put, sanction conservatism with the Bible.”

[Rushdoony] Alright, the answer to that is we must both affirm the political position and we must act. Now, we just mentioned Mr. Thoburn. Well, he has a Christian school there, perhaps the most successful single one in the United States. He is now working with a Negro football player of the Washington Redskins to establish a Christian school among the Negros of Washington, D.C. In other words, his attitude is this: I want a Christian future here, and one of the best ways I can get it is to help to mold the minds of the intelligent Negros in the black community. Now, who’s going to criticize him for that? You see, he’s acting and others are not.

[Audience] Another question. You refer to the government as a group of robbers.

[Rushdoony] St. Augustine did. I cited St. Augustine, but I’m not dissenting.

[laughter]

[Audience] How do we deal with St. Paul when the 13th chapter of Romans refers to the civil magistrate as the minister of God for righteousness? If they were also robbers, because it was {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, that’s very, very easy. I can regard them as ministers of God called to be a terror to evil-doers, and I can still see them as robbers, because I know a great many ministers of God in the church that I consider no better than robbers and a lot worse, but they’re still ministers of God, and they’re going to be under his judgment for their faithlessness to their calling. Yes?

[Audience] As, if you come toward the political issue in an actual conversation between the Christian and non-Christian world, who should take the initiative? Should we be quiet until they start confronting us on all these issues about whether we can hold a Bible study, or do we take the initiative ourselves, you know. How do we do that?

[Rushdoony] You take the initiative by doing what you can where you are. This means that you, as a pastor, begin to educate your community, your church. You work to establish a Christian school, so that’s another area where you do something. You work to strengthen the meaning of the Christian family, another central area. You work then, to see what there is at hand that you can do. Then another thing that needs to be done. Here we’re going into the area of the church. The deacon’s fund, the deacon’s fund was once a very important thing and the deacons were a very important function in the life of the church. What’s being done? Even in the circle of the church itself, I like to tell church groups when I meet with them and I have an opportunity to talk along these lines. “Have you forgotten your mission to your own church? How many elderly people are there who need help? Who are shut-ins? Who need somebody to go in and clean house for them, because, for example, the wife may be bedridden or crippled, and the husband is handicapped, or they can’t go shopping? What mother is there who has the care of her children and needs help with babysitting once in awhile. You see, there are so many needs in every church, and the church should organize to minister to them, and it can always find other needs if there are not enough nearby whereby it can reach out to people in need with the grace of God, and also with a helping hand.

Now, one of the things that the early church faced as it confronted Rome was that they were not only taking care of their own, but they were reaching out and taking care of pagans, nursing them, rescuing, this was a tremendous thing, rescuing babies that were abandoned under the bridges of Rome and other major cities, and rearing them in the faith. This became such a tremendous means of increasing the numbers of Christians and the power of the church, and the witness of the church that, for awhile, Rome forbad it, and they made it illegal for them to do it, because it was bothering their conscience. None of them wanted to do anything like that, but how could you persecute a people when everybody had to say, “Well, they’re doing more for our kids than we’re doing ourselves. They can’t be all bad,” you see? Now, that was a persecuted church. It was a suffering church. It was a church under trial, and yet consider the manifold ways they were operating. Rescuing babies, caring for the discarded elderly and sick, and so on. We’ve lost all that, and we are so much better off than they ever were.

So, you see, if we begin first of all to take the word of God seriously, and the sovereignty of God, and then if we take the tithe seriously and recognize that the tithe says that one percent goes to the priests, that is, for worship, and nine percent goes for the work of the Lord, why we’re going to pour a tremendous amount of money into what you have to say is some form of evangelization in the community, ministering to people’s needs in the name of Christ and for evangelical purposes. That sort of thing we no longer do, and we wonder why nothing happens. Yes?

[Audience] So, I’m struck with one or two things. Firstly, {?} conspiracy that seems to be running through all that you say is threatening to overtake society, and then comments, the other day, regarding the opportune nature of man’s functioning, so Existential, so pragmatic, so short-sighted, and how much what you are saying then bespeaks of a sort of long-sightedness and planning, and how {?} again, I was wondering how much all of this you see is part of the self-conscious policy of politicians, or how much is there the sense, that the idea that the city is more than the {?} that somehow, a man that has quest for efficiency has become subordinated to something which has {?} in the spirit of {?} , that because of the sheer nature of that which he is part of, he is just taken this way. I just find it difficult to {?} some of the things you’re saying {?} so much self-conscious policy here, and as some sort of {?} ability that just taking society {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, first of all, you refer to a conspiracy. There is one. It began, and it’s basic to all human society, with the tempter when he said, “Ye shall be as God, knowing, determining good and evil for yourself.” That’s the conspiracy. It’s man’s desire to be independent from God. Now, men are concerned with salvation. We must not think of salvation as merely something Christians are concerned with. All men are concerned with salvation. The tragedy is that it is the non-Christians that are working harder to attain it, and their concept of salvation is a false one. So, they are intensely, very earnestly, very zealously concerned with salvation. Their plan of salvation is a humanist program, it is a statist one, but they believe in it with all their heart, mind, and being.

As I indicated, I speak from time to time to state legislatures and even more often to congressmen in Washington, D.C., and I heard of one man speak of his colleague who was to the far left, and he said, “You know, I can talk to him as a Christian and a conservative far more readily than I can to any conservatives who are on my side of the fence politically,” and he said, “because that man is ready to put his neck on the like politically, because he believes in what he’s doing. He is working for the salvation of man,” and he said, “I can sit down with him and talk about principles, and we can differ radically, but we can understand each other. But so many others,” he said, “are pragmatic. They’re pure politicians.”

Now, the main thrust of politics today is the leadership of men who have this salvationist bent. You probably have not heard the name of Phil Burton. He’s a congressman. Phil Burton is the next thing to a Marxist if he is not a Marxist. He is a very dedicated man. He controls the democratic caucus. He is the most powerful man in congress, although very few people know him. He is powerful because he is not interest in making a name for himself, but with all the passion of his being, and he’s a dying man now. Apparently, I think it’s cancer or something, or perhaps it’s the heart, I’ve forgotten. I was told by someone there, but at any rate, he not holding back and trying to regain his health. He’s got to win. The cause is important. Man has to be saved. That’s his dedication. He’s a very dangerous man, from our perspective, because he is anti-Christian to the core, but you have to recognize the integrity of the man in terms of his premises. He is a logical, consistent, covenant-breaker who has a plan of salvation. So we’re not going to deal with the issues at hand unless we say, “Yes, these people are putting a plan of salvation into effect.” Now, isn’t it time we applied God’s plan, God’s government, to every area of life? There is no other answer.

It was Warfield who once said that there were two systems between which all others would be crushed as rotten ice. The Reformed faith on the one hand and logical, consistent atheism on the other. That’s the confrontation we’re facing. We had better wake up. Yes?

[Audience] How or to what degree do you think, Mr. Rushdoony, there is a self-conscious conspiracy among politicians, philosophers, artisans, whatever it may be in our society, of this sort? Do you believe there is in any sense the sort of thing that the previous questioner was asking about?

[Rushdoony] Well, yes and no. If we say by self-conscious conspiracy, I would prefer to say conspiracies, I believe there are many, many groups all aiming at world control. What we think about when we say conspiracy is self-conscious, deliberate evil, but these men see what they do as good. They believe in what they’re doing just as we do, so you have to say, well, you can call them conspiracies, but you have to also say they are missionary causes to these people who are self-consciously and deliberately engaged in trying to conquer the world for man.

If I may document that a bit. When I was some years back, in the old Presbyterian church, U.S.A., I was invited to a meeting, and it was a meeting, I was told, these men are the inner circle, the ruling clique, and they read papers and these papers, in effect, set the line for the next program. Now, I was very impressed by the group. They were very earnestly and sincerely analyzing the issues from the standpoint of a liberal theology, and I was there, in effect, to play the Devil’s advocate. They appreciated my critique. Of course, they didn’t appreciate it on the floor of Presbytery subsequently, but they did want to sharpen their thinking in order that they might more effectively conquer the church for their cause, for their god, for the sake of mankind.

Now, I think we misunderstand the whole picture if we say, “Aha, it’s a conspiracy.” Well, they can say, “Aha, the Christian church is a conspiracy,” which is what the Romans did. We have to recognize it as a rival contending religious faith, or various sects of humanism. All of which are working for their particular variation of the humanistic plan of salvation.

[Audience] I think the reason I asked the question {?} I think that perhaps the question in many people’s minds {?} was whether this conspiracy is a matter of common goals that are shared in a general sense among those of the mentality you’ve been speaking of in your lectures, or whether the conspiracies can be seen in the form of back room plots. Is it the sort of thing that they’re being driven by the same aim, and using some of the same methods, or is it a matter that self-consciously there are people in back rooms that are plotting things. In what sense is a conspiracy to be understood, {?} this question {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is up. I think we’d better adjourn.

End of tape