From the Easy Chair

The Coming Nuclear Attack

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 37-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161AT83

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161AT83, The Coming Nuclear Attack from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair Number 200, August 11, 1989.

Otto Scott and I are now going to discuss a paper written by J. Shelby Sharpe, an attorney with Sharpe, Bates and McGee in Fort Worth, Texas, a very distinguished attorney and a very able man. Since I have been involved in a case where he was the attorney I have an especially high regard for his talents. The title of is paper which he wrote which will be published in the Chalcedon Report with other articles on the same subject is, “The Coming Nuclear Attack on Christianity in America.”

To read just a few of the paragraphs in order to introduce you to the subject:

“Christianity in America,” says Sharpe, “is increasingly coming under attack by civil government regulation and litigation. Recently, private litigants have begun to bring suit against the church and Christian ministries. All signs point toward a rapid escalation of these attacks on both fronts in the very near future. The primary focus at this paper will center on tort litigation, which was the subject of a seminar conducted May 4 and 5, 1989 in San Francisco, sponsored by the Section of Tort and Insurance Practice, Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities and the Division for Professional Education of the American Bar Association.”

Yes.

[Scott] Would you define a tort?

[Rushdoony] Well, he does that and I would rather get his definition.

[Scott] Page three.

[Rushdoony] Page three. “A tort is defined as a private or civil wrong or injury independent of contracts.”

Now to continue with this.

“At the top of the ABA brochure advertising The seminar was the very distressing statement that the seminar was for "Attorneys who want to be an the leading edge of an explosive new area of law. Christianity was placed on notice that there is a new area of law coming against it, and it is explosive. The new weapon is the tort suit, and it was described by several of the speakers as a nuclear weapon. Shockingly, it is the American Bar Association, the most prestigious legal organization in the United States, not the American Civil Liberties Union, that is taking the lead in training the trial lawyers of America, whose usual activity is seeking large monetary judgments in persona injury and wrongful death litigation, to fire this new weapon at religious organizations and individuals within those organizations,” end of quote.

Now I will stop there and let Otto describe something of what Shelby Sharpe has to say before I comment further.

[Scott] Well, what he ... what Mr. Sharpe is warning us about is that the courts are going to be the instruments, the courts and the legal profession are going to constitute the cutting edge of governmental authority against Christianity in this country. In effect, Christianity is going to be criminalized under the guise, of course, of taking care of the rights of the individual.

A tort, as Rush read to you a bit earlier, is supposed to be a private or a civil wrong or an injury that is inflicted by one person upon another. So a suit charging that you have been injured, wrongful death of defamation or so forth is a tort suit. A tort claim usually has several elements which Mr. Sharpe describes. First there is a legal duty to others to treat them justly, to treat them legally and within the law, if you breach that duty and finally damages as a result of the breach of the duty.

Now the lawyers that were assembled at this particular seminar were invited it and they first, of course, came because they were sent a brochure on how to expand the use of tort law against religions and tort law as the central restraint on religious abuses. And some of the topics that were covered were the liability of the clergy as spiritual counselors and liability for fraud, emotional distress, harm to reputation arising from religiously motivated conduct, liability for sexual conduct of the clergy and so forth. What happens here when you begin to analyze the report that Mr. Sharpe has provided us, is that the church will be held accountable for an errant minister much as a corporation is now held accountable for an erring executive. The church as a corporation will be treated exactly as other corporations are treated. And these arguments will say they have nothing to do with religion, but only with conduct or with the results of what somebody has done to some body else.

If you have not succeeded in dissuading somebody form committing suicide, then you might be held accountable and not only you, but everyone involved in the corporation which means everyone in the congregation of the church.

[Rushdoony] Or the denomination.

[Scott] Or the denomination. So that down to the individual who attends the church and who contributes to the church same as any other employee or supporter.

[Rushdoony] Yes. As he points out now some courts have already accepted the idea that the ... any kind of severe emotional distress constitutes a tort. And he ... Shelby Sharpe comments, and I quote, “An anti-Christian society will almost surely find a Sunday School teacher giving a lesson to young children on Jesus' teachings on Hell and eternal separation to satisfy the element. A proper understanding of Jesus' teaching in this subject should cause emotional distress. Anyone who properly understands the gospel message will experience emotional distress Therefore, this doctrine, like brainwashing, coercive persuasion, mind control and fraud, can be used to strike at the core of orthodox Christianity,” unquote.

So he says many pastors are already refusing to do any counseling and he says if counseling is done it should be done with precaution. He says, further, for example, a male should not counsel a female without a third party female being present, preferably a more mature woman should counsel a younger woman. Precautions at every turn, in other words, become the order of the day.

[Scott] Well, now. The American courts—and we know that the American Bar Association and the American courts are simply synonymous—is beginning to do what other countries have been doing against Christianity. Christianity has been outlawed in many countries around the world in the post World War II period as the power of western countries began to diminish in large measure through the results of the American decolonization efforts and the efforts of the Soviet Union. It is illegal in Turkey, for instance, to persuade somebody to convert to Christianity. It is also illegal in Israel. It is illegal in many other countries.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Because the argument is that you are bribing them to change their allegiance, their proper allegiance to their own inherited religion and to abandon the traditions of their own people for a foreign religion. These are legal matters. Ministers and priests have been put in prison and worse has happened to them in other countries. And according to Mr. Sharpe, he feels that the character of the United States has become so secularized that a jury is likely to rule against church and not in favor of the church. Don’t forget also that what we have here and what the is really putting into short hand is that Christianity in the United States has been subjected to a whole series of adverse rulings by the courts. And he does point out that legislators, being responsive to the votes of Christians, are much more inclined to go along with a Christian position than the court. The court is removed from the voters. And therefore the court has been free to rule against the Christians, especially because it has the backing of the academy. It has the backing of the media. It has the backing of the arts.

[Rushdoony] Yes. One of the things that came to mind immediately was the statement by Saint Peter that judgments must begin at the house of God so that in every era of judgment it begins first with the Church, to prepare the Church for what is coming so that when the general judgment of the culture takes place, the Church is prepared and is able to stand, which is what Saint Paul or Peter says in that passage.

Now I think the Church does need—much as I hate to see anything like this happen—it does need to change its whole direction and to recognize the seriousness of the threat facing it. For example, I have often mentioned to you, Otto, the trial in a southern Bible belt state where the Bible was held aloft by the state attorney and declared to be a child abuse manual.

Well, the sad fact is that I think there were seven or eight churches on trial and their pastors in particular who were all in court. But none of the members, not a single member from any of the churches had bothered to attend.

[Scott] What does that say about that the relationship between the ministers and the clergy... and the congregation?

[Rushdoony] Yes. And the level of concern? On top of that I went there to be their witness. And the attorney said my testimony was very important and brought out points he had hoped he could get into the trial, partly because I irritated the state attorney and a number of leading questions were asked that enabled me to include in my testimony things that perhaps would not have been in otherwise.

But neither the attorney nor any of those ministers have ever notified me of the outcome of the trial.

[Scott] Isn't that interesting?

[Rushdoony] And that is not an unusual occurrence.

[Scott] That happens frequently.

[Rushdoony] That happens fairly regularly. And all these years I have been going to the trials I have asked first if they will pay me only by giving me a transcript. In almost all but maybe three or four instances Chalcedon has paid my travel expenses. But most of the time...

[Scott] Do they ever give you the transcript?

[Rushdoony] I have had it about four times.

[Scott] About four times, not even that, then, in most cases.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] And no... no follow up.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] No thank you note. No notice of what happens.

[Rushdoony] Just a few times, just a few times.

[Scott] Two times.

[Rushdoony] But in the majority of cases there isn't that, so obviously there is something wrong in the church.

[Scott] Well, there is a lot wrong in the church. The main thing that is wrong with the church in the United States is that it decided to forsake the world, excepting in terms of its own health and wealth. It wanted... There was somebody told me, mentioned to me one day, said there were more small, little church buildings across the United States than anyone has ever been able to count because every minister wants his own building, his own church.

[Rushdoony] Well, the point is there ... they made themselves irrelevant to the world. They don't face up to the problems in it. You can’t get them interested in this sort of thing. And this is why the Lord is going to have to rub their noses in it.

[Scott] I described our situation as residents in the largest ghetto in the world, the Christian ghetto of the United States which doesn’t want to be interfered with. It doesn’t want to emerge from behind its walls to look at what is happening in the neighborhoods around it. It doesn’t want to engage in political dispute. It doesn’t want to carry the Word of God anywhere outside the pulpit.

And it is now paying the price for being so vulnerable.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That anyone would deem it possible to attack the largest single group of peoples in the country who are overwhelmingly in the majority means that these people are irrelevant and indifferent to what is happening around them.

[Scott] Well they will not protect themselves. They will not respond to insult. They will not respond to prejudice. The courts have ruled that, in effect, the Christian tax payers of the United States cannot convey their Christian principles into the public arena. I read not too long ago where a principal refused to allow a Bible in a school because he said it is against the constitution. Against the constitution to have a Bible... most school teachers... public school teachers believe it is. They really believe that it shouldn’t be allowed inside a school.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Or a school library. Well now, one of the implications that Sharpe talks about here is that the business of liabilities arising out of an employment relationship, not only that, not only will churches be forced, for instance, to answer a lawsuit based on charges of sexism if they don’t ordain women, but also charges of discriminating against faggots, because they don’t encourage them in the congregation or give them positions in their hierarchy. And for that matter, I can certainly see where it would be equally reasonable to insist that a church accept non Christians and anti Christians as members.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That is the case in Sweden. In fact, most of the church boards are controlled by Marxists because everyone has the right in church elections.

[Scott] Everyone?

[Rushdoony] Everyone.

[Scott] Everyone. Well, I remember when the early civil rights movement began in the 50s and if you recall the cameras would go down into the south and several black people would appear in a white church and demand entry. And there was quite an outrage when they were not accepted or invited in. Well, putting that to one side as to whether that was a good tactic or not a good tactic, I remember discussing it with some fellows of the overseas press club in New York at the time and one of them expressed great outrage. And I said, “Well, have you ever been a member of a church?”

He said, “Well, I have been to church.”

I said, “Do you ever join a church? Have you ever been a member? Have you ever paid dues? Have you ever said you would obey the rules of the church?”

He said, “No.”

Well, I said, “Are you under the impression that anybody that walks by attends church?”

Well, he said, “Yes.”

I said, “That is not true. Catholics go into their church. Protestants go into their various churches.” I said, “These are not public institutions. They are the most private of institutions. Why should any band of strangers come with a camera crew to demand admittance?”

[Rushdoony] During the 1930s California had a great many churches that were organized along nationalistic lines. The Japanese had their churches. The Chinese had theirs. The Assyrians of whom there are a number in California had their churches and, in fact, they are about the only group that has still been able to maintain that and one of the two or three groups.

But I recall that one of the strong groups that was immediately a target of dissolution was your Welsh churches. The Welshmen were quite numerous in this state at that time and they had a number of churches. They had their own presbytery. They would have annually since the Welsh are magnificent singers a concert of some of the massed choirs from their churches and someplace like Los Angeles often in a stadium with great throngs attending because the Welsh are magnificent singers. Those were destroyed.

[Scott] How were they destroyed?

[Rushdoony] Because it was felt that it was discrimination to have a Welsh church and, particularly, since the Welsh churches classified as WASP, they had to be destroyed.

[Scott] My goodness, well...

[Rushdoony] And a rich heritage was just wiped out.

[Scott] Could we say, then, that the Mohammedans are discriminating and violating the law in their mosques?

[Rushdoony] Good question. And in due time this will be the direction of things and has been proposed that there be no discrimination in churches with regard to race, color, sexual preference or creed.

[Scott] Well, do you...

[Rushdoony] ...meaning that any creed would have equal rights.

[Scott] Do you really feel diminished because you are not allowed into a Muslim mosque?

[Rushdoony] I am glad I am not.

[Scott] Nevertheless, it is discriminatory, is it not?

[Rushdoony] Of course, of course. Then something that people forget is that prior to World War II in the South there was a close relationship between black and white churches. They were segregated, but usually a white church would take a black church under their wing and help them with their building projects, with various activities and regularly the pastors who exchanged pulpits and have occasionally a joint service. Now this was routine. But both the ungodly bigots on the far out fringes as well as the liberal bigots helped destroy that.

[Scott] Well, I have always been interested in the fact that non Christians have very high standards for Christians.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] They feel that Christians should be perfect or else shut up. And when you hear or look at the people who making these ... drawing up these standards, you really have to marvel at how unselfconscious individuals can become.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I once told someone I... my patience was exhausted.... who never missed an opportunity to tell me what he thought of churches and he said on this one occasion he could never go to a church. They are all full of hypocrites. And I said, “Oh, don’t let that keep you from coming. There is always room for one more.”

He didn't take kindly to that.

[Scott] That is very good.

[Rushdoony] In other words, he had the right to say anything he chose...

[Scott] Yes, of course. He could level any charge. I talked to a couple in San Diego just before I left who had just returned from several years in Spain and who described rather eloquently the high mass in the cathedral of Seville and then said, she said, of course they don’t believe.

I said, “How many people were there?”

Well, she said, “Several thousand.”

And I said, “Impressing whom?”

And she was silent. She herself was not Christian.

And I said, “And why were you there?”

And she said, “Well, to see the ... just to see it.”

And I thought what a nerve. What a nerve. However, going back to Mr. Sharpe, we are going to get into some deep water here. You notice on page 14 of his report that one of the things that the trial lawyers will do is look of deep pockets.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] They are going to look for congregations and churches that have some money. Some of these court rulings have begun on the periphery, little, little church groups with little church schools that haven’t got much money and so forth, but they have laid down a road bed of precedent, of legal precedent. And they are going to move in and Sharpe says a trial lawyer will examine the assets of the individual who has committed the wrong conduct and look at the assets of the organization and finally at the assets of the individuals who are responsible.

Now just suppose that they apply the RICO Act, the wonderful RICO Act which seizes all assets before trial.

[Rushdoony] Well, on page 16 he says in the second paragraph, “The pastor of a local congregation fires a staff member who confesses to being a practicing homosexual. Suit is brought against the pastor, the church, the individuals constituting the leadership body of the church and the denominational organization to which the local church is accountable. This latter organization has insisted that the churches related to it must not permit any individual to be on staff of a local church who is a practicing homosexual.”

And then he goes on to give a case in which this type of thing has been applied.

[Scott] The court of appeals in California treated the United Methodist Church as an unincorporated association under California law.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And ruled that any form of agency sponsorship or controls suffice to subject it to liability for the activity of one of its affiliated agency. This ruling, says Mr. Sharpe, has awesome ramifications for the major denominations and other Christian organizations in the United States.

[Rushdoony] Yes. At will they can treat a major church as part of an unincorporated association.

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] And it will.

[Scott] Well, there has been a great deal of restlessness in the federal government and, I think, state governments as well. You remember when he was attorney general that Deukmejian seized the assets of one church.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...before charges.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Without evidence. Seized their assets. And I don't recall a single adverse comment in any newspaper or radio or television station or anywhere else.

[Rushdoony] He gave justification for that that depended heavily on federal guidelines and on the IRS. It was a small sized book and it was a fearfully ugly statement.

[Scott] Well, so the matte of employment, the matter of being a trustee or not and the thing that is most interesting about this is once they open these gates all kinds of people will see their way to becoming rich if they can get the jury to grant them heavy damages. There is no limit to damages.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And today everyone is ready to file a suit against anyone if they figure they can be paid off something. Nuisance suits are common place.

[Scott] Deep pockets is the phrase.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Sue the fellow with the deep pockets.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Richard Delgado, professor of law at the University of Wisconsin School of Law observed that coercive persuasion, quote “is a recognized category in the diagnostical and statistical manual of mental diseases which is considered to be the Bible of the psychiatric field,” end quote.

Eminent psychiatrists and psychologists, according to Delgado, describe coercive persuasion as involving guilt manipulation, indoctrination, fear inducement and peer pressure among several other elements. The scientists declared this can bring about behavior and evaluative changes. And they dismiss as a defense, voluntary exposure to indoctrination on the basis that such manipulation has occurred to persuade the individual to listen. In other words, you are going back to what you mentioned earlier, Rush. If you tell people about heaven and hell, if you tell people about sin and judgment you are creating guilt feelings. You are using coercive persuasion and you may damage their tender little psyches and be subject to great damages.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now that kind of teaching is going to be mandatory if some legislators have their way, because in several states it has been proposed—and it is now up for serious consideration, I believe, in New Hampshire—that all pastors and priests and rabbis be licensed by a board of psychiatrists, that they have training, specialized training in that field, which means, of course, that their standards would not be those of the Bible, but the standards of psychiatry.

[Scott] Now the psychiatric profession has not been able to prove that it has ever cured a single mental illness. They admit that. And yet the courts are moving into the position of placing the psychiatric profession in a position of judgment and authority over the clergy.

[Rushdoony] Yes. As I have pointed out on other occasions, Sigmund Freud felt that religion could only be abolished when problems of guilt became psychiatric problems. So he saw the psychoanalyst and the psychiatrist as the supplanter of pastors and priests.

[Scott] So do our courts.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And so does our media.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] So does our theater.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now many rulings have recently been made on the basis of sociological studies. Some of these have later been shown up to be fraudulent, but that matters not. Listen to this. Psychiatric testimony, according to attorney Barry A. Fisher in his presentation which was entitled “Tort Law as an Ideological Weapon,” psychiatric testimony, says lawyer Fisher, is the most powerful and persuasive force in the courtroom on the issue of acceptable behavior, page seven. Thus, a genuine Christian salvation experience could one day cost a church a huge sum of money.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, page eight. Shelby Sharpe writes, “Another example of how the trial lawyers are working overtime to have religious matters decided by a jury was propounded by a Stanley Leo, a personal injury lawyer. He maintains that fraud can occur by a religious organization when it fails it disclose accurately its identity and what it teaches before a person attends any of its functions and submits to its teachings.”

[Scott] So in other words, you have to tell people in advance.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Before they appear.

[Rushdoony] Yes. This is totally impractical, Shelby Sharpe writes. “Consider the steps necessary to accomplish this. Liability is predicated on what is not said as opposed to the making of false statements. It is one thing to be liable for doing something wrong, but quite another for failing to do something you did not have the opportunity to do or even think about. Churches could find themselves being required to make disclaimers along the lines of manufacturers of commercial products.”

[Scott] Well, then, they should have a sign on the pulpit saying, “Warning, this sermon may upset your emotional stability. It has been ruled by the psychiatric profession that our religion is dangerous to mental health.”

[Rushdoony] In a number of trials that I have been involved in the method used to discredit any testimony, expert or parental or pastoral has been to ask them if they believe in the Bible, if they believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, if they believe in the virgin birth and miracles. And this is said with no small scorn. In other words, you believe that? Then you are hardly fit to be a witness in a court of law.

Now this is the mentality.

[Scott] Well, there has been a long effort to weld Christianity to redneckism.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] To illiteracy, to a suspension of reason. And, of course, we have here. I just got through typing up a chronology of the French Revolution. And there was a specific decree voted upon by the majority of the assembly in 1793 or four. I have forgotten which, to the effect that all religion was abolished and would be replaced by reason. We are now where they were.

[Rushdoony] You mentioned redneckism. That brought to mind a trial in a small county seat in rural Georgia and it was a trial of two rural farmers, real rednecks, wonderful people. And they were home schooling their children. And the retired county superintendent had detested them and found them to be far ahead of grade. But the new one was determined that the parents were going to jail and the children taken from the fathers and mothers of these two families, related families. And he could not have been more intense and vehement and that is a trial I remember with satisfaction, because in most instances the judges are cowards. They are afraid to say anything that will make them unpopular. They are afraid to do anything but be ready to let the state or local attorney for the schools have their way on everything, even to being grossly insulting, out of line to the nth degree.

But in this instance when the hearing as finished or the trial, the judge said, “I will have a written opinion very shortly, but I am not going to wait until then to speak my mind.” So he let it be known that he was not sustaining the charges, that he felt the parents should be commended for the obviously superior job that they were doing and he also went out of his way to express his contempt for the superintendent of schools for trying to extend his dominion over a couple that were doing a good job educationally, better than he was and to put them into prison for that. And he let that man have it. Now that type of judge is very, very rare, because they do not want to be overruled. They want to say that which will suit the powers that be and get them a promotion.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] They are political hacks for the most part. That was a joy to be there for that trial.

[Scott] Well, that was a ... that is encouraging. And, of course, there will be pockets. But I think if we really take ... and I take this warning, this report very seriously.

[Rushdoony] I do, too.

[Scott] This is the American Bar Association sitting in San Francisco. Listen to some of the topics that were covered. Liability of clergy as spiritual counselors. That was one lecture. Another was: Liability for fraud, emotional distress and harm to reputation arising from religiously motivated conduct. Fort... tort liability for brainwashing. Liability for sexual conduct of the clergy. Institutional liability for negligent hiring, slash, retention and liability arising out of the employment relationship.

Here we are looking at a move by the American government, at the largest private sector in the country that is at this present time outside of its total control, the only area that is outside of its control.

[Rushdoony] The opening address by the program co-chair—and notice it doesn’t say chairman, but the program co-chair.

[Scott] Yes. Right.

[Rushdoony] ...was titled “Tort Law as an Ideological Weapon.” Now that tells the whole story.

[Scott] Yes. This is going... this... they are training lawyers.

[Voice] This is crazy.

[Scott] They are training lawyers to do this. This was a training seminar.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And the people who attended were then to select one or the other of these lecturers to study under to discover how to lead the jury into this deep damages. Now where does the government come in? Well, of course, the courts are the government. The judiciary rules. The judiciary, we know, is not fond of the Christian religion in this country. Then if they get the deep pockets they will not just get money, they will get land. And the government then can tax the damages. They can tax the land. All these things will pass out of the control of religious corporations into the control of the governmentally monitored areas.

[Rushdoony] Now what they...

[Scott] They could balance the budget.

[Rushdoony] Yes. We probably will not see the mainline churches unduly concerned. They are humanistic and they are hostile to Christian orthodoxy and it is Christian orthodoxy that is seen as the problem.

[Scott] Well, yes, because it is fixed. It is firm.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It has a position. It cannot be terrorized psychologically speaking. But you take the Episcopal Church and I think I have mentioned this before. At the corner of Broad and Wall—I am not positive now is the address in New York—Trinity Church, way down, way downtown. Alexander Hamilton buried in that little church yard and so forth. That church is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The land the is incalculably valuable. How many times in the tax collector’s walk past that and looked at it? How many times as the governor of New York and the mayor of New York and the head of the IRS looked at these enclaves of old, inherited wealth which allow the Anglicans to indulge themselves in New York City in some of their very strange rituals? And I don't say that to denigrate the denomination. We know that Bishop Moore and some others of that particular group have done some rather outrageous things, but they are sitting upon a great treasure.

There is a great big church for Saint Bartholomew’s I believe it is, just a few blocks north of Grand Central Station on Fifth Avenue. It is ... recently was speculating with the theory of selling the air rights over the church. And I was trying to figure out how much money they could make on that. Well all these... the whole area, the whole area where the government cannot enter is an area that makes every bureaucrat absolutely livid with anger.

[Rushdoony] The Church and the family are the last areas of freedom in this country. Everything else has been controlled. And now the controls are tightening on the family and the Church is the target.

[Scott] Well, the Church is always a target for a profligate government that is in deep financial problems. This government has not only spent everything it owns and everything that it expects to collect for the next generation, but it is living on borrowed time. Just imagine what the enormous church properties would mean to the American government. It would give it a new lease on life. The ones that are in office now could say like Louis XIV {?}. The flood can come after our time.

[Rushdoony] Yes. We in our textbooks have had for some time the prelude to this kind of thinking. And all the talk about the vast church lands of the medieval church and all that wealth that was sitting there doing nothing. Nothing is said about how that wealth took care of the poor and how the minute, for example, Henry VIII seized the church properties the convents, the monasteries, the streets were full of beggars and poor people who had previously been kept via these church foundations, elderly people, sick people, crippled people and so on.

[Scott] The same thing in the French Revolution.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Although the top level of the church was corrupt, the fact is the church did all the charity. When the revolution forbid the church to continue charity and undertook it, no charity was conducted.

[Rushdoony] I am collecting materials, little by little on Christian charitable activities here in the United States. I don't think I will ever be able to collect all of it.

[Scott] Of course not.

[Rushdoony] It is far more effective, far more extensive than anything the federal government is doing.

[Scott] But you will never hear that.

[Rushdoony] No. Nothing is said about it.

[Scott] The soup kitchens, the shelters, all the rest of it are treated as an annoyance.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I mean we just recently had the case of these people being put in jail for feeding the homeless without a license.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, what is coming to hit the religious community is ... is going to be a real... not just a test. The clergy of the United States having abandoned the commandment to carry the faith to everybody is now not able to apply the tools of defense. They are not individually capable of confronting the power of the state. Now, of course, we are going to see martyrs appear and I hope not in the terms of violence. Violence is not the faith. Intellectual stances, arguments, presentations and so forth will have to be greatly expanded. The churches are going to have to come out of the cave.

[Rushdoony] Right now the churches are hungering and thirsting and salivating to get voucher funds from the California legislature.

[Scott] That is the destruction of private education.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes.

[Scott] It would totally destroy private education.

[Rushdoony] I dealt with that in the current Chalcedon Report.

[Scott] Well, I can remember Lyndon Johnson swearing on the whatever grounds he took his oaths that the federal government would not interfere with education when it began to pour money toward all the public schools. Look at the results.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The thing that marked Johnson and Kennedy and those who proceeded them and followed them was a belief that the federal government had inexhaustible resources.

[Scott] There is also a later belief and that is that the courts have the right to rule the country.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes.

[Scott] That the court, you know, that Theodore Roosevelt when he ran on the Bull Moose Party in 1912, was it? Had a plank in his campaign platform called the right of judicial recall. Every time the Supreme Court made a constitutional ruling he said the matter should be put to the people and the people should vote it up or down, because otherwise, he said, we will be at the mercy of nine appointed men.

Now that was in 1912. And that was a public issue, a national issue at the time, because the courts had already gone too far. And it was ironic because Roosevelt was one of the people who pushed the courts too far.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] But now, of course, we are at the mercy of the courts. Women are running around saying they have the right to murder their children because it is the courts have made it constitutional. They have a constitutional right now. Some letters today in the Wall Street Journal. You will be interested to see on that topic, on the origin of life, of human life. And a fellow said, “Well, what appears? You know? Does a human appear?”

And... and when does it begin? Well, it begins, of course, when it begins. It doesn’t begin at a certain stage in its growth.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes.

[Scott] But we are going to see some very hard times.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Because not only are the courts going to rule and the jury is going to rule and people are going to have to pay and go to prison, but it will be accompanied by an avalanche of acid on the whole idea of Christianity.

[Rushdoony] Well, when our Chalcedon Report comes out with Shelby Sharpe’s report, your article and mine and John Lofton’s on this general issue, I am going to be very interested to see what the reaction of people will be to that issue. Will it arouse them? Will it wake up some who have never supported us? Will they be ready to go out and tell their churches and various groups we have a battle?

[Scott] Well, you know, Shelby Sharpe wants to help organize a defense.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And I think we need to think seriously about that, because we can’t wait until we are hit....

[Scott] No.

[Rushdoony] ...before we...

[Scott] If you wait until you are called into court, you are going to lose your case.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Because we are not up against an objective judiciary.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] The judiciary went to the same schools as the lawyers have gone to.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And you don’t see very many schools of divinity being interviewed. You don’t see any clergymen being asked what they think of this or that. It is always a professor. It is always a psychiatrist. It is always a social commentator or that wonder term, a social activist.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, our time is drawing to an end. Is there a general statement you would like to make, Otto, before we finish?

[Scott] Well, of course, I think we have brought this on ourselves by ... although not even my generation, your generation, Rush, is responsible for all of it. It began several generations back. My parents generation broke away from any kind of faith. And my grandparents kept up the façade. This has been a long slow decline and I don’t think because we are sitting in such comfortable circumstances the average American realizes how far the decline has descended.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, you know, for more than decade I have been going to trials all over the country. I have gone to Australia, in fact, on such things. The trips to Australia were paid for from Australia and they were most gracious and helpful, a marvelous group of people. But the money that has been spent by Chalcedon in to help in these cases we could have had a building if we had put it just to the building. So we have put a lot of our time and effort over the years into the battle and it has been more than one of us who have been involved myself, primarily. But there are others of our staff. And I believe that while we have often not been thanked God is going to reward us for that, because we raised the banner on this, I believe.

[Scott] Well I also think the this discussion and Mr. Sharpe’s report...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Is a very serious warning. And he who is forewarned is forearmed.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And Shelby Sharpe is as brilliant a lawyer as I have ever seen.

[Scott] Well he wrote a marvelous report.

[Rushdoony] Yes. In the courtroom he makes Perry Mason look like an amateur.

Well, thank you all for listening and God bless you. Be in prayer about this and as things develop in this area, we will keep you informed.

[Voice] Authorized by the Chalcedon Foundation. Archived by the Mount Olive Tape Library. Digitized by ChristRules.com.