From the Easy Chair

Antichristianism

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 39-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161AU85

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161AU85, Antichristianism from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 202, September 2, 1989.

This evening Otto Scott and I are going to discuss a subject which is a rather touchy one, but a very, very important one, Antichristianism. We are living in a time that outdoes other anti Christian eras by a considerable margin. Perhaps one would have to go back to the Roman Empire to find the same hostility, the same desire to defame and to distort that now marks the world around us.

Now recently in another Easy Chair we dealt with the legal aspect of this, the attempt to declare war, as it were, against Christianity and Shelby Sharpe’s article we discussed at some length. Since then the word has come that in the West German parliament a bill has been introduced to destroy the legal status of the Saxon Lutheran Church, because it refuses to ordain women. If they succeed in doing this, their goal then is to go after the Catholic Church.

Now this kid of thing has been discussed in this country and elsewhere as well. Attempts in one way or another to damage or to destroy Christianity and the Church. Increasingly we see the separation of Church and state interpreted to mean that the Church and Christians in general have no legal rights, are not under the First Amendment and, therefore, cannot be given the privileges that are common to all groups. So we have a major problem today. And if we do not recognize the dimensions of this problem, we are in even greater trouble.

With that brief introduction, Otto, would you like to say more?

[Scott] Well, yes. I think the question here goes beyond western Germany. It goes beyond the United States. This is a development that affects Christians around the world. And in Europe, in North America, Latin America, Central America, Africa, everywhere, Christianity is somehow or another treated in this country as though it does not have equal rights in the public arena.

We are told, for instance, that we should not bring our religious values into the discussion of public issues. Why not?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] What sort of values are they that cannot be discussed in terms of public issues in the same way that people of other religions and other groups bring their values to bear? Why are Christians alone not supposed to bring their values into the discussion? Now this, of course, has been building for a long time. We are told that religion and politics at one time... I recall my father’s day was not supposed to be conducted in polite society. But I can’t recall a single dinner party in which they weren’t discussed. I mean, it was one of those clichés which no one paid any attention to. But I find it very interesting that we have here gone beyond Pantheism, you know, this secondary definition of Pantheism is an indifference to all the gods or the toleration of the worship of all the gods indifferently which is about where we are with the exception of the fact that our courts in particular seem to be obsessed with the idea that religion is somehow poisonous to the body politic.

I could never forget my astonishment when the Supreme Court of the United States supposedly staffed by men of learning actually outlawed ... outlined a four line nursery prayer on the argument that it constituted an establishment of religion. Now four lines cannot establish a religion. A prayer cannot establish a religion and anyone who doesn’t know that should go back to school.

[Rushdoony] Yes. We are also seeing as a part of this Antichristianism this kind of thing. For example, one of my daughters, about 20 years ago, when working for a very major corporation was told that it was the goal of everyone in the corporation that all employees contribute regularly to their chosen charities, to encourage benevolence on their part. So she immediately and... and they would channel the gifts of double them. So she immediately put down Chalcedon and gave. And the idea was to get 100 percent cooperation only to find that they wouldn’t pass it on to me. They did not want any gifts to go to religious institutions.

[Scott] Well, yesterday I think I referred in our previous tape to a debate that I had on the radio at a Los Angeles station. They have called me before to discuss various issues. I don’t know really where they got my name from, but they called to talk about El Salvador and the women who prescreened me was filling in for somebody and wanted to know who I was affiliated with and I said, “With the Chalcedon Foundation.”

And she said, “What is that?”

And I said, “Well, it is described by Newsweek as the Christian think tank.”

And her voice changed. And I thought, well.

She said, “I will... I will... we will... I will get back to you.”

And I thought, well, that is the end of that. I won’t hear from them anymore.

But she did come back and she said, “Could you tell me a little more? Is it... what denomination?”

I said, “No denomination. Unaffiliated. It is an educational organization, non profit.”

And she said, “And what does it do?”

I said, “Well, we discuss ethical issues.”

Well, that got me through. But I noticed that when we got on the air the fellow introduced me as from a Christian think tank and he brought it up several times. And one of the callers in on the show wanted to know where we got our money. And I said we got our money from small contributors across the country. And while you are at it, I want you to ask the other debater where his organization gets its money.

[Rushdoony] Good.

[Voice] Good.

[Scott] And, of course, they did and he immediately said, “Well, we have 32,000 members across the country, et cetera.” But I suspect that he was getting federal money because almost all left wing groups do.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, just this week I received a gift from somebody together with a form to fill out which I cannot fill out because this corporation, a major one in the United States will not give to any group that has a religious or theological orientation. And meanwhile the pressure will be on him and others to do so.

Now this happens routinely. All kinds of corporation, the employee is encouraged to give and to send me a form only to find out that the cannot and then the pressure is on the employee to give to something that they can give a matching fund to.

[Scott] More respectable.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now...

[Rushdoony] More in the direction of the humanistic faith.

[Scott] More respectable.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Christianity is not respectable. It is not respected. There is a small group of actors, young men and women down in San Diego called the Lamb’s Players. They started out putting on little one act plays and acts and so forth on various college campuses. And then they managed to put together a regular repertory company in San Diego. And they applied to become part of the something about the arts. There was some sort of raising funds for the arts in San Diego and the San Diego ballet company and others were given shares. And the matter came up before the supervisors of the city. And the supervisors of the city, which is predominantly Christian ruled that the Lamb’s Players did not qualify because of their religious orientation, although the plays they put on ranged the gamut.

Well, I am happy to say that the Lamb’s Players went ahead anyway and that they finally made that successful enough that they have their own building and their own theater. So they are doing quite well.

But that is not really the point. The point is that Christians alone out of all the citizens in this great country are barred...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... from every public activity. They are barred from governmental funds, from federal funds, from county funds and from state funds. We are outlaws in a land in which we constitute the majority. And I must say that this is a very strange thing for millions of Christians to put up with.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, we have the fact that an ostensibly Christian candidate in the last presidential election made clear he would not act as a Christian as president because he would have to represent Christians and non Christians, homosexuals, everybody.

[Scott] Yes,. But when he says this he is saying I will not represent Christians, I will represent everybody else.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] That is really what it boils down to.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes.

[Scott] Now I would say that the clergy of the United States and other countries have allowed this to occur because although we have millions of Christians, these are people like everyone else that need leaders to express their positions, to rationalize their arguments and to lead them into some sort of representation in the community. By withdrawing from the political world, the clergy of the United States in particular made all its congregations non citizens.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, there is something very interesting in the September, 1989 The Word and I which is a more than book sized monthly magazine which costs 10 dollars. There are about 160, 70 pages on sex education in public education.

[Scott] I.... I looked at it. It is disgusting.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Very telling account, however, because the point they make very emphatically is that the argument of the educators is that they must teach without a religious bias. And therefore they cannot teach that homosexuality is wrong.

[Scott] Well, of course, when they say without a religious bias, they are lying, because they are biased against religion and that is a religious bias.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And the authors of this section in The World and I go on to deal with the textbooks that are used. And the interesting thing is that some of these textbooks that are used to teach that homosexuality has a great value and we must not be guilty of homophobia and so on and so on, are put out by the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Episcopal Church and various humanistic religious agencies.

Now that supposedly makes it neutral, if it is a humanistic agency.

[Scott] Is neutrality possible?

[Rushdoony] No, it is not. That is the great work of Dr. Cornelius van Til. He exploded the whole concept of neutrality. Man is not capable of neutrality. He can be honest, but he cannot be neutral.

[Scott] You have to have some position.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Today I received something from a public interest law firm. In the third paragraph of this very long paper some 16 pages, single spaced, reads, “Homosexuality is emerging as a fascist political movement. That political movement has displayed decided fascist and anti religious aspects. That movement seeks to play on the hysteria, the gullibility and compassion of the American people to bar reasonable efforts to stop the spread of AIDS.”

And he goes on to say that we cannot understand what it is unless we appreciate its anti Christian bias. It is an anti God political movement, this paper says. And so he said we have to face up to the full extent of the implications of homosexuality and the homosexual revolution.

Anti Christianity is involved. It seeks to destroy everything that our faith has affirmed, to treat us as though we were bigots and to insist that everything is valid except the Bible and Christian faith.

[Scott] Well, you know, of course, that homosexuals in New York City periodically invade Saint Patrick’s cathedral.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] On Fifth Avenue and have set up stands and demonstrate in front of the place and have had an ongoing campaign to change the Catholic dogma to make homosexuality ... practicing homosexuality a permissible part of faith. They are trying to do to the Catholic Church what they have succeeded in doing to the psychiatrists.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] They... they invaded the American Psychiatric Association and terrified those brave men into saying that homosexuality was another variation of normal behavior. And, of course, I always liked Jeffrey Saint John’s response to Gore Vidal in that. Gore Vidal said to Jeffrey, “I suppose you are one of these conservatives who believe that all homosexuals should be burned at the stake.” And Jeffrey said, “No, of course, I don’t.” He said, “I don’t have that ill will against anybody.” He said, “I do think that they are biologically insane, though.”

[Rushdoony] That silenced him.

[Scott] Well, nothing would silence Vidal, but it threw him for a while. And not only homosexuality is being pressed upon the Christians, but other issues are being pressed upon Christians with a demand that they give up the various elements of their faith and accept what is being pressed.

Abortion, for instance. Christian physicians, Christian nurses are supposed to engage in abortions. And if they do not, they are going to be forced to suffer various penalties. So when you brought up the Roman Empire in Christianity you were back exactly, in my opinion, on where we are. This is a pantheist country in the sense that it officially says the worship of anything is equally valid whether it is Satanism or whatever. All gods are the same to the Supreme Court because basically the Supreme Court does not recognize God. Nor does it recognize the Bible as anything except a historic relic of this civilization. So we are living under the Roman rule. And one of the problems involved in a centralized, ambitious government of our type is that they cannot live, the bureaucrats cannot live with the idea that there is a sector that the government cannot penetrate.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It is going to penetrate on the name of the wages and hours act. It is going to penetrate on the wages of discrimination against women. It is going to penetrate on every level the churches.

[Rushdoony] And we see this strange fact now that AIDS is protected.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] But Christians are not.

[Scott] Well, a diseased monster is preferable to a Christian.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Increasingly we are given the propaganda that the AIDS patients are innocent victims and to assume that somehow they have suffered because of their sins, these homosexuals who have AIDS, is to be guilty of bigotry.

[Scott] Well, it is bigotry to be a Christian at all.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] That has been well established and we constantly hear it. We are told, I recall, Jerry Falwell in a dialog on CNN was immediately charged by that old buffoon Tom Braden with being a bigot because he claimed to be preaching the truth. What does that do to people who are not Christians? And Falwell said, “Well, when other spiritual leaders and other religions preach to their flock, what do they say?” Don’t they say that we are telling them the truth, that this is something they should believe. Do rabbis say Christians are welcome here? And there was a short sort of a pause. And the subject changed to something else.

But this is a valid response.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Why in the name of heaven or any other name should Christians be denied the right to have their own religion?

[Rushdoony] Well, what is happening today is that a kid of underground hatred is coming to the fore. Periodically I receive hate mail, anonymous, of course. And the appalling fact is not what they say about us, but the kind of mentality that is represented, sick, evil, dangerous, seething with hatred to whom anyone who is opening and forthrightly Christian is the ultimate evil.

[Scott] I recall in the enthusiasm of my conversion that I bought a tiny little cross and put it on the lapel of my suit. And I was astonished at the hard looks that I got. At one point I passed a bench on the street and a man half stood up and followed me with my eyes as I went by as though I was some kind of a monster.

[Rushdoony] Well, how many priests do you see now wearing clerical garb in public?

[Scott] No, none.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] They don’t dare.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] And the press never seems to discover these as victims.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] And, of course, the vandalizing of churches.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The attacks on nuns, the plays, the movies, the last temptation.

[Rushdoony] Well...

[Scott] Some fellow said to me, “I don’t understand what you are talking about.”

I said, “Well, I can think of a number of worship areas in the world that would understand very quickly if the Christians were to desecrate them.”

[Rushdoony] In San Francisco one young pastor, Charles Mcilhenny, whom I know quite well, a few years back was able in court to overturn the application of their equal rights bill to the church whereby they could not refuse hiring a homosexual organist and so on. Since then he has continued his activities and currently the law legalizing homosexual marriages there has been the target of his attack and he has enough signatures to compel them to put that on the ballot.

He and his wife have been the object of death threats. There was an actual attempt made on their lives. The church almost steadily people go by homosexuals and throw buckets of paint against it and other things so that it is useless to try to clean up. They are going to do it immediately.

Now none of this is carried by the press, but there have been attacks in the press on him as a bigot.

[Scott] Well, this, of course, is the atmosphere from which Christianity emerged originally.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And originally it was, of course, even worse. Three hundred years, three centuries of deaths, of torture, of persecution was the growing pains of Christianity.

Now this is a very large and rough country. I think that the government has really forgotten that the roughest part of the United States is not the black ghetto. It is the rest of the United States. This is a democracy which once aroused is quite fearsome. I will never forget the fact that no prisoners were taken in the Pacific. No prisoners were taken. There were rewards put out and no prisoners were brought in alive. They were destroyed to the last man, because the Japanese had attacked us and not only had they attacked us first, but they beheaded our prisoners. They tortured our prisoners. They did not behave as a civilized nation and even 40 years afterwards or whatever it is, I have not forgotten what they are like, what they did in Shanghai to the Chinese and what they have done everywhere where they conquered.

So therefore the idea of bringing any of those men in with something that was not considered by the average fighter in the United States. And the government here, I think, is running a very peculiar course. It is voting. It is ruling. It is regulating against the majority of the citizens. Why? Do they really believe that the majority of the citizens would put up with that situation for ever?

[Rushdoony] Well, that is a very good question and we are going to have to go into that. Why do they put up with it?

One of the problems over and over again in history has been that people very often have not rebelled against the most incredible tyrannies and evils, the most monstrous kind of oppression. And the reason for that—and I believe a very important study could be made of this—has been that when people have a relativistic philosophy, then nothing matters. If there is no meaning to life and if good and evil are only relative, what is the point in making a stand?

Our majority today will make a stand when it, again, has a vital faith, but the majority has had for too long the relativism of the public schools, the philosophy of John Dewey and his pragmatism coloring its mind.

Now as it gains again a non relativistic and a vital Christian faith, then nothing will stand in its way. But I do believe that Relativism is a problem.

[Scott] Well, historic errors, of course, can resemble one another, but never precisely. The Christians in the Roman period believed that the end of the world was close and that faith kept them from rebelling, I believe, and it also marked them away from the pagans because they led a better life, a more satisfactory life. To quote the genius who coined this line—and I will never remember who it was—he said, “The man who still finds pain in virtue and pleasure in vice has not had enough experience of either.”

Now there is a lot of pain in the United States today and a lot of pain in Europe, a lot of fear, a lot of pain. There is an awful lot of lost people wandering around. The whole establishment of the understand is against the Christian religion. I think we should admit it. I think it is an obvious matter. I think the courts are anti Christian with rare exceptions. Judge Hand in the South and a few others, of course, are not. We can’t condemn all the judges, but generally speaking the trend of the court and the trend of the government is to eliminate the rights of the Christian churches to differ from what they have decided is the official culture. And, of course, this is going to lead to a series of collisions and each collision, like the persecution of the Puritans under James I and Charles I, each collision will create a greater and more serious reaction.

[Rushdoony] What we have seen, Otto, is that even the defense of ostensible Christianity has been made on non Christian grounds. For example, pornography has been an issue in recent years. And the court has made it possible for communities to rule against pornography, but the judgment has been that if it violates community standards. In other words, the community sets the standard. There is no objective truth.

[Scott] Well, that is true. There is no objective truth in the American system. You made the comment and it was a very good comment, I thought, that our constitution is mainly the process. It is not a... there are no principles in the constitution. There is merely a mechanical description ala the founder of gravity. I have forgotten his name.

[Rushdoony] Newton.

[Scott] Newton, ala Newton of setting up a governmental clock that will tick along more or less on its own as long as you don’t change the machinery. And there is no... no principles there.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] There is no higher power there.

[Rushdoony] The... well, Corwin said that the constitution presupposed a higher power.

[Scott] I think it did, but it was...

[Rushdoony] ... because...

[Scott] ... implicit and not explicit.

[Rushdoony] Yes. They assumed that he people were always going to be Christians.

[Scott] That is right.

[Rushdoony] And the Bible would provide all the standards , the law, morality.

[Scott] Right. Yes, but it was an assumption which the... which has not been...’

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] Carried out. Now here we are with another set of assumptions. The assumption on the part of the American government having changed all sorts of our traditions and patterns of thought. In recent decades inspired by those collectives called universities in which little collective societies that the professors live in have devised various totalitarian ways to muffle conversation inside their own areas and everywhere else. The assumption of the government now and the trend of the government is that Christianity can be rather easily deflected from what it used to be into something entirely different, that it will accept women ordination no matter what denomination or church, that it will accept abortion, that it will accept euthanasia, that it will accept pornography, that it will accept perversion and so forth. It will, in effect, go along to the point of intellectual and spiritual extinction.

Well, I am saying is that the situation is not that way at all. What I am saying is that there is an irreducible core of the faithful that will not give way. And that we will repeat in the American style the experience of James I who sent the Puritans over there, who drove them out of England into Holland and into North America, with this country was colonized by people who fled from that sort of argument. Charles I pressed the Puritans right to the wall and he wound up, of course, losing his head.

Now the Puritans, what did they constitute? Two percent of the population? Something of that sort.

[Rushdoony] Of all their followers and associates and families perhaps four percent at their height.

[Scott] At their... ok, at the most. Now this, of course, was the culmination of the English Reformation. What we are talking about here, the Reconstruction is another Reformation.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And we... I have to believe that as the faith gets pressed that individuals will rise up within our own ranks who will provide intellectual answers, who will take their stand and who will bring these issues forward whether or not the media reports it, because the greatest communication in the world is word of mouth.

[Rushdoony] Yes. We are... I agree with you totally. The issue as it is lining up is what is going to prevail, public policy or Christianity?

[Scott] Right.

[Rushdoony] Biblical Christianity, undiluted.

[Scott] Absolutely.

[Rushdoony] I was recalling this past week in talking with some people in another state something I had forgotten, something a missionary told me in the 30s. A persecution had broken out in the land where he was working. Up until that point he had collected together through years of slow patient work a congregation of believers who while numerically beginning to be somewhat impressive were very discouraging to him, because what he found was they were too much like, well, a great many of the people here in the average church. They came indifferently. They believed but you didn’t know how much they believed or how seriously they took it. And this missionary, an elderly man then, told me he wondered whether any of them would stand under fire.

Well, the time of trial came. And he said the humbling thing was that the testing brought out the faith in all of his members.

[Scott] Oh, what a wonderful story.

[Rushdoony] Yes. He said some of them were buried alive, quite a few of them, tortured, brutally abused in ways that are almost pornographic to repeat or cite. But he said not a one of them surrendered his faith. And he said being an American citizen—and in that day that meant something still. You didn’t touch an American citizen—he was not hurt, but he was ousted from the country. And he said, “I wondered whether I would have stood as those people did.”

Well, I believe we are going to see that kind of thing again in many parts of the world, perhaps here.

[Scott] Well, in other parts of the world yes. It is happening in Africa.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It is happening, I think, and it could happen in Brazil and other parts of Latin America. It certainly... just the other day I received a ... a church magazine which described 600 Presbyterians being driven out of their homes in central Mexico and these are Mexican Presbyterians.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] So the persecution of Protestants in Mexico continues.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And that... that is very recent. Here the challenge is not so much physical as it is intellectual and moral. The ... of course there are consequences here of being a Christian. Jobs can be lost. Promotions can be lost. You can be barred from the university. You can be, as you and I both know, you can be denied a doctorate.

There are professions that a Christian, I don’t think, would have an easy time getting into now.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Certain professional ranks and levels. You know that CBNs school of law is having a great deal of trouble with a group inside the ABA who is trying to organize a boycott against its graduates on the theory that the graduate of a Christian law school should no be able to practice law in the name, of course, of tolerance.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] In the name of saving the community from this criminal religion. So these are challenges. And, of course, like all challenges the more you give up the more you are asked to give up until finally you are asked to give up everything. And this is the trend of the Christian community in the United States. It has given up a great deal.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] In the last few elections some evangelical groups... now the evangelicals are interesting. They make more noise. They sing louder than other Christians do, but they do not comprise the majority of Christians in this country. Evangelical groups are a minority. And yet that was enough to shake the whole political structure that evangelicals dared to enter the political arena. The main line churches, which are losing all the time, have still put their blessing on every anti Christian ruling the courts ever put out.

[Rushdoony] Well, I don’t need to tell you that in recent years one Christian group after another has been brutally persecuted and murdered in various parts of the world. And in spite of the fact that Christian missionaries in those countries have told the state department about it, nothing has been done.

[Scott] I know.

[Rushdoony] And yet right now we have a major protest underway and I believe we are recalling the ambassador to Bulgaria because of what is being done to the ethnic Turks.

[Scott] Oh, really?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, you see, that proves how tolerant we are.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] We would much rather protest about Turks than about Christians.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] After all, there is how many million Turks compared to a billion Christians?

[Rushdoony] Of course, nothing in the way of a protest about what was happening to Armenians in Azerbaijan. Of course, the Armenians are Christians.

[Scott] Well, we are not going to protest to the Soviets about anything.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] I mean Gorbachev could run for the United States Senate and... and apparently get in by acclamation.

[Rushdoony] Well, there is an interesting development here. Turkey doesn’t want those Turks that are being ousted from Bulgaria.

[Scott] From Bulgaria, yeah.

[Rushdoony] Unless they have got money.

[Scott] Sure.

[Rushdoony] We may take them. We are already taking a lot of Turks from Turkey.

[Scott] We should take everybody.

[Rushdoony] That seems to be the policy. Everybody but Christians.

[Scott] The Wall Street Journal every... as regularly as a dinner bell comes out with an editorial saying that it is an eternal disgrace that we have border guards and that we don’t have open borders for anyone and everyone to come in.

[Rushdoony] They are dreamers...

[Scott] Yes...

[Rushdoony] Not very healthy dreamers.

[Scott] Well, that is... they ... that is one of their religious principles.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And it is a semi religion.

[Rushdoony] Yes. It is more than a semi religion. It is a full blown Humanism, a fanatical Humanism.

[Scott] Well, of course, the idea that the schools can teach all these humanist values and bar from their teaching Christian values, some of the school teachers have gone so far as to rule that Bible is not permitted in the school library or to be carried in or read by a teacher on their recess time.

[Rushdoony] There is a trial underway of a teacher who had a library in his personal library in the classroom a Bible. He lost the case, but it is under appeal, I believe.

[Scott] He lost the case.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, apparently, then, to be a school teacher means that you must be anti Christian.

[Rushdoony] Or very, very quiet about your faith so that nobody will know.

[Scott] So our schools are officially anti Christian.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And anti Judaic, too, because the Bible has the Old Testament.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, there is no question what the federal policy is in this country and the state and urban policies. The real question now is: What are Christians going to do about it?

[Scott] Well, it depends upon, I suppose, the extent of the penalties. In the case of the high commission, as you remember, that was applied against the clergy and it was, of course, under Charles II. It was against the law to preach without a licenses. The state licensed the preachers and John Bunyan, for instance, was in jail for years for preaching without a license.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now why would we not expect licenses to be issued to the clergy here? Why would we not expect that the government would eventually say, as it is beginning to say now, that there are a great many unqualified clergymen in the country, that the psychiatrist must testify as to their competence to family counsel and things of that sort. And that in order to be absolutely certain that the individual is properly qualified, he should have a license and that in order to get the license he has to go through an examination which the psychiatrists and the judges and the lawyers will set up in which those who are not licensed will then become labeled as a menace to society, as people who are injuring the tender psyches of children as they do in the Soviet Union.

You know, I don’t believe they have changed the law there. You cannot teach anything from the Bible to a person in the Soviet Union until they are past the age of 18. Montague Ashley, a man who picked those two names from two noble English houses... it is a wonder he didn’t call himself Plantagenet Windsor, Montague Ashley, an anthropologist used to ... started the beginning of his lectures with the announcement that all American children were poisoned by the religious attitudes of their parents and that it was the duty of education to unpoison them and clarify their minds. He was simply saying what most university me really believed.

But what I started to say is that if we get to the point of the licensed clergy and we get to the point where they will have to be a cash register of some sort to give you an electronic recording of the collection plate so that the proper sums will be verified. There is lots of things that our government will and can do that will wake the Christians up and I don’t think that any of them are out of unthinkable.

[Rushdoony] I received a notice this week that the IRS is going to investigate the fund raising tactics of churches and Christian organizations all over the country. This will reach into places high and low. The excuse, of course, is the Bakker incident and like things. However, they will start quibbling over a church and its fund raising dinner or its rummage sale, various devices used by the women or the young people to raise money.

[Scott] Bingo games.

[Rushdoony] Yes, anything and everything so that it will be a means of waging total war. On one front after another the news that is coming down is there will be investigations here.

[Scott] Well, investigations lead to charges and charges lead to trials and trials lead to penalties.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And each one of these sequences carries the Christian community a step further or father toward the realization that its government has decided that this religion is going to be controlled by the government. Now the courts are doing it because the courts don’t have to respond to votes. But this is a sometime thing, too, because judges can be impeached. Good judges can be removed. Politicians can be impeached and removed. There are, I will say that the founding generation was very well aware of these things. They were defended from the people who had fled that sort of behavior on the Church of England. That is the reason they didn’t want a national church.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And they were... they knew what they were doing when they said that the First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion. It doesn’t say if you change your mind. It doesn’t say if you agree, if you give up your religion.

[Rushdoony] A point you made in a conversation the other day I was reminded of it when you referred to the First Amendment. I think it is very telling and important. The First Amendment now is applied to freedom of the press and as though the Church has no part of its protection.

[Scott] Absolutely. It is only the press. The press itself doesn’t give religion the same right that it gives itself.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] And it has the nerve to quote he First Amendment. I mean to tell a newspaper what to print and to tell a journalist what to think and what to write is well considered beyond the province of the government. But to tell the clergy that they cannot tell the congregation that they are against abortion...

[Rushdoony] Well, Otto, maybe we should agitate for a special licensing board for all the media men.

[Scott] Well, they have that in many countries.

[Rushdoony] Made up of...

[Scott] Of clergy.

[Rushdoony] Clergymen.

[Scott] Christian clergymen. Christian clergymen.

[Rushdoony] And that they cannot function as media men until they are approved.

[Scott] Well, you know...

[Rushdoony] Wonder how they would like that.

[Scott] Well, of course, if you object to the last temptation of Christ you are trying to censor Hollywood.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Heaven {?} that Hollywood should be openly criticized.

[Rushdoony] Well, there was a list put out of the schools down in the valley that are exercising censorship. All that meant was that some of the farmers on the school board said, “This or that book is too foul for my kid. I don’t want it in the school curriculum.” That constituted censorship rather than parental discretion.

[Scott] Or choice.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, our time is about over, Otto. Do you have a last comment or so to make?

[Scott] Well, I think that the government of the United States and the media and the universities are going to do something that no group of clergymen have ever been able to do for a long time. I think they are going to awaken, arouse and organize the Christian community.

[Rushdoony] I think you are right. Well, as our faith tells us to wake thou that sleepest and Christ shall give thee light. So wake up everybody. Thank you for listening.

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