From the Easy Chair

Dechristianization of Civilization

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 187-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161L21

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161L21, Dechristianization of Civilization, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 87, December 28, 1984.

Today we are going to deal with the dechristianization which is underway in our culture. And I have with me Otto Scott who suggested this excellent subject and John Saunders. And before we begin I want to deal with the subject in a general way.

First of all dechristianization is not anything new. No sooner was Christianity recognized in the Roman Empire by Constantine and given a legal status, made a licit, a legal religion, than his successors began the work of dechristianization. Thy did this not by attacking Christianity openly, but by adopting a number of heresies such as Aryanism which, in its implications, was comparable to the death of God movement, because it posited a God who could neither speak, nor had consciousness, nor in any way reveal himself.

Then you had, of course, over and over again during the medieval period various efforts to dechristianization culture. The witches movement was one such effort. We must remember when the Bible says thou shalt not suffer a witch to live the word which in the Hebrew means poisoner. And these were humanistic cults of people who exercised power through the use of poison and the like.

The Renaissance was an attempt at dechristianization. The Enlightenment, Romanticism and much more. So we have today the culmination of these efforts in the open and avowed Humanism of our time which is attacking Christianity in a variety of ways, trying to destroy any standing it has legally. For example, in one public school I believe eighth grade children were involved. A girl who brought Christmas cards to school to pass around to her friends in the class was told that what she was doing was illegal and all kinds of legal action and protests ensued.

Incidentally, they didn’t even call her cards Christmas cards. They called them Yule cards because to use the word Christmas today is anathema. If your community had decorations for the holiday season they probably said happy holidays not merry Christmas. The very word Christmas, because it refers to Christ is now being dropped.

Much more could be said, but before we begin our discussion, I am going to cite one area where I see this dechristianization far gone. It is economics. For example, the key factor in contemporary economics, ala Keynes and his successors, is money, to control the money supply.

Now the control of the money supply really has little to do with the heart of economics, especially when the control of the money supply is fiat money, paper money. Productivity is the heart of economics. You can flood a country with money as has been done, for example, in the German inflation, the Hungarian inflation, the Brazilian inflation and others. And it is worthless. It does not enhance productivity. It hampers it. And today economic thinking in Washington hampers productivity because its thinking is geared to the control of the money supply as though managing money is going to further the economy.

Now that is Humanism. It is anti Christianity because it says, first, that man as his own god can create his own law and his own values and therefore he can make money. And through his controls he can produce the successful society. Productivity is the factor that is left out.

Well, Otto and John, let’s hear from you now.

[ Scott ] Well, the whole question of dechristianization is, as you say, far gone. One of the things that has occurred, one of the stages that we have reached is that anti Christian dialogue is taken as a sign of liberty instead of as a sign of prejudice.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Now this is pretty unique. I don’t really believe that there is any precedent historically for any civilization that has decided that its own destruction is a sign of progress. And yet the Christian civilization has gone along with the argument that anti Christainism is merely intellectual freedom and not an attack.

[ Saunders ] Yeah, that ideas don’t have consequences.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] You know, it is just an intellectual exercise and it really has no consequences in the real world.

You know, I... I have... I was thinking about this... this subject for a long time, a great deal, from the time that it was ... we first agreed to do it and it seemed to me like the whole thing comes down to this ... this tension that exists between the... the sin nature of man and ... and God’s nature. It is like man must have fellowship with God. It is in...it is a part of his being and his nature put there by God himself. And when he denies that, then he must, by implication become God himself. And he starts to try to accumulate power. It is not enough that he be an individual self governing man. An Atheist is never content with keeping to his own business.

Well, my point is, is that if we don't have the real God in our lives and not... not just as a matter of personal contact or personal relationship, but as the foundation for everything we do, once that is missing them man on his own attempts to build... he attempts to accumulate power to emulate that God. One of the ways he does that is in the centralization of economic control. That is one of the ways in which he does it. The control of education through a massive centralized bureaucracy. It cannot tolerate the idea of the individual being on his own and responsible to himself and to some other god other than the Humanist. And, as a result of that, we think we... we find out as we go along that it is absolutely essential for Humanism to deny, to aid the dechristianization of society or it could never achieve a stronghold.

Either God is God or man is God. And that is... and the whole problem with... in terms of Humanism is that once they gain some kind of a foot hold by denying the real God, then they will sooner or later take on all that nature and attributes or attempt to acquire all the nature, attributes and power of God in every single area of life. And it is... it is not a matter of... of there being some kind of vacuum or some kind of neutral area out there in which these ideas have no consequence, it is the fact that every idea has a consequence. And the humanist cannot succeed without the dechristianization of culture. It is absolutely impossible, because the two cannot coexist.

[ Scott ] Well, the arguments that have been raised bring to me some need for distinctions. There is a distinction between non Christian and anti Christian. Obviously a great deal of the world is non Christian and the Christian regard this as areas to which we should bring the message of the gospel. Now there have been barriers erected against that sort of proselytizing.

Over the holidays I read in the newspaper an item from Greece. Three Christian ministers in Greece from the West have been arrested and given prison sentences because they had refunded a young Greek and in the course of helping him out discussed their faith.

[ Saunders ] This is in Greece?

[ Scott ] That is in Greece. Greece is, presumably, a European country, a member of NATO. At the moment it is in the control of a fanatical Socialist. And that brings up the fact that Socialism is anti Christian. Socialism is anti religion, but in particular it is anti Christian.

Now one of the ways in which this subject has been confused for a lot of people has been the tendency to say anti religious where they mean anti Christian.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Because they do not attack other religions. Other religions are treated respectfully. Only Christian, only the Christian religion and clergy and its believers...

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... are treated to expressions of open contempt.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Rush, that is... that is... that is very common because a... I know a... when I am functioning in.... in the film and television industry and there are a lot of other... other places, the term that commonly comes up when... when religious subjects come up, specifically Christianity is, “Well, I am not a religious person.” What they really mean is that I am not Christian. They are in fact religion. They are religious Humanism. But they won’t admit to that. But yet it is a very, very common term in what... and like, as you say, what they really mean is that I am not a Christian, because that is the cultural fabric of this country and that is what everyone... that is what everyone presupposes when they get into these subjects. And what you are really talking about when you speak of religion is Christianity. They don't’ see, for example, that Buddhism is a religion when we all know it is. Even though it claims to be a philosophy, it is nevertheless a religious world view. They don’t see it in those terms. The only religion, per se, is Christianity. All the rest of them are open, viable intellectual options and it is just a matter of opinion as to which one is valid. The only thing they agree on is that Christianity is invalid.

[ Rushdoony ] I think these forces of dechristianization are paying us a left handed compliment.

[ Saunders ] Oh, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] ...because ideas do have consequences. But they don’t believe that any idea has consequences as far reaching as those which are Christian. They are afraid of the slightest reference to Christianity even in the term Christmas. Any reference to Jesus Christ.

So, in effect, they are saying other ideas are not as deadly dangerous, but Christianity somehow is going to destroy us.

[ Saunders ] Yeah, I think.... I think the... I think they all sense in... in the same sense that Paul says that they are without excuse so they can see the things of God and the things that are made. I think that ... that non Christians or the anti Christian people, though they not... not be able to specifically ... I am talking about the average person now and not the... the intellectuals. They might not be able to specifically tell you why they oppose Christianity for... for a particular set of reasons. But they sense in anything that there is something challenging to them and to their own little secure world in Christianity even though they might not know what it is.

[ Scott ] Well that probably is due to a defect in the way Christianity has been presented to the secular world. From the beginning the Christian religion has been associated with individual liberty and freedom.

[ Saunders ] Yes. Dangerous idea.

[ Scott ] With the rights of the individual and not with the rights of the group or the city or the state or the government. Now by default the enemies of Christianity, the anti Christians—and I keep coming back to the difference between the anti Christian and the non Christian. There are lots of non Christians who are quite respectful of other people. And we have no argument there. There is no argument.

The argument is with those who go out of their way to attack Christians and Christianity and do it in a manner which would not be acceptable if any other religion or group were involved.

[ Saunders ] That is true.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. You both dealt with this issue of Statism and freedom. I would like to tell of an incident that occurred to a very prominent Christian lawyer in dealing with a case of freedom of the exercise of religion and Christianity before the U S Supreme Court. And one of the Supreme Court justices of the United States leaned forward and asked the question very earnestly and with no hint of cynicism as to why the Church could not be controlled. After all, we control business. And what makes the Church so different?

Now basic to that is the presupposition that because there is no God therefore every human institution must be on the same level, under the true god of the state.

[ Saunders ] The state, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] And, therefore, control is an necessity and freedom is simply a license that the state gives or withholds at its pleasure.

[ Saunders ] I think that is ... the idea of the individual, the importance of the individual in Christianity, although I said it was a dangerous idea. And I think... I think that is the inherent... that is really the ultimate... ultimate enemy as far as human ... Humanism is concerned.

You see this in the school system. That it is now... in the public school system it is now a situation in which you have teachers feeding students’ minds full of a great deal of data, but they don’t teach the students how to organize that data in any kind of... and... and relate it to any kind of ultimate truth, you see? So what they do is they render the students dependent minds. And the reason why as... as... as many of the early educators in the progressive moment pointed out is that in an independent self sufficient thinker is a threat. A threat to who? Well, a threat to the Marxist, socialist state. And that is the whole problem. That is the... and... and when you talk about the dechristianization of culture, not only does it touch on economics, but it touches on... on education, on medicine, on social questions, et cetera. And we see this continued centralization of power and control in the hands of bigger and bigger government.

[ Scott ] Well, the question of government keeps coming up. I am not sure that it is widely understood that governments do consist of individuals. They consist of people. And in most instances a small inner circle rises to a position of power and influence in all governments. Now this is true across the board. It is true in democracies and it is also true in anti democracies. We have roughly five percent of the people of the Soviet Union who dominate and who own and control and run the Soviet Union. They call themselves the Communist party. There are, in other words, a party. There is a party that usually runs, operates a government. From time to time the parties may alter, they may shift. But there is always an irreducible five percent in control.

Now at one time the five percent in control of the United States, the founding fathers, and those who followed their influence, were Christian. Now we are confronted with a situation where the five percent is anti Christian. This is the crux of our situation and it is a very serious situation. Christianity has been rolled back from a global religion, accepted and admired, followed, emulated, believed. It has been rendered outlaw in over half the world. So we are not talking here about abstractions. We are in a position similar to the Christians in the first centuries.

[ Saunders ] Very similar.

[ Scott ] And...

[ Saunders ] Whereas you could... you could detail an awful lot of parallels between the Roman Empire and its dealing with the Christians and what is happening now, an awful lot of parallels.

[ Rushdoony ] In the next few weeks I hope the typesetting for my next book Christianity and the State will be underway. It... has it begun, Chuck?

[ Voice ] It is done.

[ Rushdoony ] It is done. Wonderful.

[ Voice ] We are just working on the... on the index.

[ Rushdoony ] Oh, very good.

[ Voice ] {?}

[ Rushdoony ] Well... now I have a chapter in there on a verse in the New Testament about praying for rulers. Christians have a false appreciation of that verse. They see it in rather sanctimonious terms without understanding what a revolutionary statement that was. In Rome to pray for the king placed you in the position of superiority to caesar. Because you were the intercessor with the powers of the universe then.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Whereas caesar was the intercessor as a god to be and eventually a god as Roman history developed for all the people. So these Christians were obvious subversives...

[ Saunders ] Yes {?}

[ Rushdoony ] ... because it was they who were the intercessors for caesar and not caesar for them.

Well, that is the situation we have now. The state feels that nobody has the power greater than the state. And any appeal or prayer must be to the state. Intercession must be to the state. The state alone has the power of control so that it denies that there is a power above and over itself to which appeal can be made from whence all law comes and to which the state must be responsible.

[ Saunders ] And yet the Christians today when they talk about praying for rulers for their rulers they... they think of it ... they cast it in a very pietistic, almost negative, well, it is about the only last resort that we have, et cetera, when, in reality the Christian ought to see himself as the prophet, priest and king before God on behalf of the ruler and he ought to approach the throne with boldness in his prayer instead of with this negative kind of ... of ... of pseudo humble piety.

And I think that is... that is characteristic of the whole internal life of the average Christian today who is ... who is... who is hung up in Pietism without knowing it. And he takes that whole attitude. He doesn’t realize the power and the strength that he has. And I am afraid that if... if... if he didn’t realize it, if he doesn't realize it, then things are only going to get worse, but if he does begin to realize it, even in only in a five percent, as Otto was talking about. Even if only a five percentile recognize their true power and position before God, then Humanism doesn’t stand a chance. And I think that is one of the things that we ought to talk about in terms of the dechristianization of culture is... is that that can only occur so long as the Christian does nothing, or, as Burke said, evil abounds when good men do nothing, but... And I think that when Christians begin to come back—and it doesn't take masses. We have never had masses to start a reformation or that Reconstruction or any thing of that nature. It ha always been a handful of people.

[ Scott ] Well, yes. Perhaps part of our problem has not been the dechristianization so much as the distortion of Christianization. The new arguments which claim to be Christian which arose, the various heresies that Rush mentioned and we have the business of praying for the ruler. I recall that this was a subject of some disagreement between John Knox and John Calvin where Calvin took the more tacit view that you could outlast bad rulers. Whereas Knox took the Old Testament view that it was heretical. It was irreligious for a believer to live under an unbeliever and even more under an anti believer. And in that way Knox changed the government of Scotland.

[ Saunders ] And all its history.

[ Scott ] Now we need more Knox. And the fact that Knox has received such a terrible press is an evidence of his importance.

[ Rushdoony ] One or two scholars have said that John Knox was the real founding father of the United States and nobody has ever developed that thesis. I think, Otto, in a minute, perhaps, you should—since you have had a long background in journalism—deal with that very important issue of the use of the press to dechristianization this country, because that has been a very, very important factor at least in the United States if not elsewhere.

[ Scott ] Elsewhere also. The ... In the 19th century the... two things happened, first the rise of industrialization. People left the land and went to the cities. And they left their settled villages and their congregations and their churches and their ministers and they found themselves in this peculiar modern position of being isolated in the middle of a large crowd in the city. And concurrently the printing press came into being, the high speed press came on stream so that newspapers began to arrive in the period from about 1855 to 1890 the newspaper became the great link, the great connecting link for the people in the cities. And it replaced gossip over the back fence and it replaced family and everything else and it ... it... it just... to that extent, I think Mac Lewen was right. The global village came into being, the mental village in which people shared a certain cultural world with as they do today on television via the soap operas and the newscasts and so forth and so on.

And the... these organs of communication were largely in the hands of Socialists. The journalist is almost the prototype of the {?} of the individual who has nothing except what he considers his talents. The word free lance is really well chosen.

[ Saunders ] The {?} type.

[ Scott ] They are... they are mercenaries. They are... they are intellectual mercenaries for sale. And willing to engage in any kind of combat at all settled institutions repel them because these institutions have hierarchies in which they are not qualified to join. Therefore, all settled institutions have to go. And you had an outpouring through the pres of a vision of society in which higher motives and transcendental significance was totally ignored.

Now for 1900 years when Christians talked about a man they talked about the significance of his life. And when the press moved in they talked about the events of his life. And there is a lot of difference if you describe an event without the significance.

[ Saunders ] Yes. A great deal. Out of context. They can be interpreted by anyone anywhere they want to.

[ Scott ] Well, then it ceases to have significance. Then you can ascribe to all men the basest of motives so that you hear.... I... I have heard practically all my life that I have... I have mentioned, for instance, that such and such a person did such and such a thing and the other fellow has said, “Well, wouldn’t you do that, too, if you were in that position?” What an assumption. The whole basis of Christianity is negated by the modern media which feeds the revolution, which helps the revolution, which opens the gates of the revolution and which the revolution is the first to stop it because the revolutionary regime cannot endure if that particular pattern were to be continued under the revolution.

[ Rushdoony ] That is an interesting point. There is a new book by a Russian refugee who was highly placed in the regime there Nomenclatura dealing with the bureaucracy.

[ Scott ] Oh.

[ Rushdoony ] Have you read that?

[ Scott ] I haven’t read it. No.

[ Rushdoony ] Oh, it is a remarkable book.

[ Scott ] {?}

[ Rushdoony ] First he says, by the way, that the bureaucracy is a key to the Soviet Union. And he said this was Stalin’s rise to power. Before he took over he was known as Mr. Filing Cabinet, which is very interesting. And that this was the aspect of Stalin’s power that the West has never realized. It continued to the end. But the point he makes is that Lenin very early broke with Marxism except as a tool. And he despised all the Marxists who preceded him because they were true believers and to him there was one goal, power.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] And you were pragmatic in getting towards that and you had to be a total professional, totally ruthless so there was one goal only, power.

Now I submit that what Lenin represented was what was developing in the western world and a part of this tradition that was coming to focus in the press where truth was being replaced by pragmatism and power for its own sake was worshipped. So whether you take the Democratic or the Socialist or the Marxist versions, what Lenin represented in its purist form, this worship of naked power, the seizure and the control of it, it governs every country today.

So naturally you have got to be dechristianization the world because the emphasis is not on power, but on truth. You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Whereas for Lenin, you shall gain power and then ration the freedom. It is too precious for the people to have it.

[ Scott ] Well, it is a privilege. The totalitarian winds are blowing around the world. And the United States being a part of the world is affected by these currents. The growth of regulations.... we have now so many regulations that nobody in the United States can remember their number. They come out by the tens of thousands every year from the governmental agencies which have the unconstitutional right to legislate, to administrate and to adjudicate their own regulations.

[ Saunders ] I... two things in reference to what Rush just said, the accumulation of power. The other... the other aspect about Christianity that is... that is a major threat is that with this idea of man being responsible to God first and everyone else second, that is the foundation of the decentralization of power. That is the... that is the hidden presupposition. With respect to the press that you were talking about a while ago. I think the real danger in the press, the real danger is what is happening not just what is happening to the press, but the fact that the press has promoted its own power as the Lichter and Rothman report has shown that it promotes its own power on false presuppositions. One of the things that very few people in the modern day and age have ever paid any attention to is if you do a historical analysis of the First Amendment, you see the right to assemble, the right to a free press, et cetera. All right? Those are all tied together in the same First Amendment along with Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. The ... the important thing to remember is that in the 17th century is when the theological and philosophical foundation and the price in blood was paid for a free press, because the Christians had to have a free press in order to publish their material. They had to have the right to assemble, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera in their churches, because they were being persecuted and forbidden the right to assemble, all right?

My point is is that only on Christian presuppositions is the First Amendment possible. Now if the press continues to attack Christianity and to seek to further the dechristianization of ... of American culture, than what it will eventually do is it will eventually cut the entire intellectual religious, philosophical and theological foundation out from under its own rights of free press.

[ Scott ] Well, the press freedom ends when the revolution succeeds.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Now the creation of minority rights and minorities, of course, have always had rights in the United States indistinguishable from the a majority. The United States as founded on the principle that democracy consists of majority rule. When you have a press that is against majority rule and promotes minority rule instead, you have an anti democratic movement. Now in the southwest, for instance, this particular pattern is beginning to develop between legal and illegal immigration we have a growing influx of Hispanics into the southwest. Most experts believe if this continues that by the year 2080, 100 years or so from now, these Hispanics will constitute the majority of the people in this particular area. Then you will be faced with what is is known as {?}, a movement to either create a separate new state, Hispanic state, or return to Mexico. And the disillusion of the United States in other words is foreseeable.

This fits in with a pattern developed in the Kremlin of propaganda in recent years arguing for the break up of the United States into three or four different countries on the argument that it is too large, too diverse and so forth to remain as it is one continental power.

So we see here between the building up of the Hispanic minority by the press and its complaints not what it is receiving and not what it is contributing, not the values of these immigrants, but the complaints which creates an atmosphere of division.

[ Rushdoony ] Ironically at the same time, though, the most rapid Americanization that has ever retaken place in any group of immigrants is taking place among the Hispanics. They have their professional leaders who are determined to promote everything of the old culture, but the average Hispanic immigrant to the United States, legal or illegal, has had it with the old country. And he is eager to become a part of the American culture.

[ Scott ] I think that is true of the overwhelming majority. What we are talking about here, though, is the activities of the five percent.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] I think.... I think that the ... the... the leaders of this... of the Hispanic community in the church, talking about the ones that... that lean to the left or anything else who are more self styled leaders, I think they are really... in spite of all of their rhetorical about moving forward and new ideas and everything else, they are, in fact, exploiting the very things that the central and South American has wanted to get away from, this idea of power being distributed from the top down instead of from the bottom up. And I think that is the reason why it is reaction against that... that autocratic top down power structure, I think, that is... that is ... that is taking so many of the Hispanics out of ... of the so called Hispanic movement.

I think that is the reason why Caesar Chavez is losing so much of his power. I think that is... I know one of the things that I found out in the election when is talk to Hispanic leaders is that there was two types of Hispanic leaders who differed as much as night and day. There was the one type who represented the old elite in once removed, the old elite in Central and South America who ruled from the top down. And there was the other type who didn’t... who no longer believed that and ...and in actually fought against it. And those in the second class were usually business men.

[ Scott ] Well, the...

[ Saunders ] ...and individuals of that type who were self made on the basis of doing it for themselves in America. And so they didn't need the top down elite telling them what to do.

[ Scott ] Well, what we are seeing, though, regarding the Hispanic world, visa vie the traditional American culture is now in Central America. We were at that conference not too long ago that the alive and free people put on regarding Marxism at our doorstep on Central America. Marxism obviously only affects a minority in Hispanic America, which has always been, by the way, very religious, very Christian community. And still is. But for various reasons there is now the intellectual argument, the... the tithe, the press, all the media, the world wide Marxist propaganda, the anti Christian drums are rolling throughout Hispanic America wherever it is located, in north, south or central. And we have, as Christians put up a relatively limited response to this challenge at home in front of us.

[ Saunders ] We haven’t even done it in Central America, let the Mosquito Indians down there. The reason why the Mosquitoes were driven out of Nicaragua by the Sandinistas is because their protestant Christian perspective gave them a sense of independence, being a self governing man. They wouldn’t knuckle under and go along with the program. And the Sandinistas couldn’t very well murder 200,000 of them. The only ended up, I think, killing about 20 or 22, 000 of the Mosquitoes and the rest of them they drove into El Salvador and eastern Honduras. So now they are all refugees.

[ Scott ] Well, they are...

[ Saunders ] Well, the Mosquitoes ... simply because the... of that idea of a self governing individual person was so strong in the Mosquito Christian perspective that it prevented them from being integrated into a totalitarian state.

[ Scott ] But there has been progress. I think Rush has the statistics on that, don’t you?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. In he Central American countries between 25 and 28 percent now are evangelicals and they are providing quite a militant minority for dramatic changes. When I give that data I will have to exclude Panama. We don’t have any data on that.

One of the areas of problems is also the media and the films and television, your department, John.

Now Solomon tells us that God declares he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. All they that hate me love death. Shafarovich in Solzhenitsyn’s book Under the Rubble analyzes the philosophy of Marxism and says it is a will to death.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Mass suicide.

Now anti Christianity because it sins against God is involved in this will to death, this love of death. So what do you see? Well, I would say in our day that forefathers of the move towards perversity in literature were Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. With them it was mild. But since then it has become a necessity to dirty up things, to have a bad ending, to force one on it.

Now previously there was a lot of sentimental literature that insisted on a happy ending. Now there is the most vehement insistence in the history of literature on a perverse ending, on things working out badly. Anything else is considered unrealistic.

I know that a while back in a film review I glanced at I saw an arresting line. Some new Disney film was felt to be a bit more mature and the reviewer went on to say that when Disney produced a film that could have an R rating we would know that the Disney studios had come of age.

Now that is an interesting standard. The perverse ending, the deliberately perverse ending as alone constituting realism. Now the thought is not original with me. I never saw any of the Star Wars films and I know from what I have seen about them that they were dualistic and not Christian, Manichean in essence. But they had happy endings. And people lined up to see them because they were hungry for some kind of triumph over evil.

Well, I submit that the forces of Christianity ... of anti Christianity are so willfully suicidal that if Christians but awake we are going to triumph. These people are determined to kill themselves and everybody else with them.

[ Scott ] Yes. I think God loves the brave. And my feeling is that if you won't fight for God, you are failing in your duty and you will be held to account.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] I think that the cold campaign to make Christianity synonymous with surrender is probably the most dangerous anti Christian weapon ever devised.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] This is why so many people, pardon me, so many people now attach themselves to peace. And their only avenue toward peace is to accommodate their enemies. Now this is a very sinister development. I have forgotten and I never... well, I really never knew who coined the phrase the devil can quote Scripture for his own ends. But the peace movement is a pretty good example of how that operates.

[ Saunders ] Well, there is one o... one passage that... that is very interesting in Scripture that always comes to mind when... when Christians start talking about peace in the sense that you re talking about. It is a passage in which the Lord commands... I think it in Galatians, is it, where the Lord commands through Paul that the... the ... the husband is to defend the wife even as Christ defended the Church, i. e, to giving his own life for it.

Now you only do that in fighting an active an vigorous defense which could involve combat, you see?

But I think there is a whole area of Christian resistance, the theology of Christian resistance, I don’t think, has been worked out and propagated on a broad enough scale that there are... are people who understand that. Going back for just a second, though, to what Rush said about the... about the media, you know, it is... it is interesting because Shaw and Wilde, because of who they were their little tittering on the edge of pornography was accepted because of who Shaw and Wilde were. And then later on it was confused with that was the key to their success. And so people took the inherent evil in the pornography and began to abstract that and utilize that more and more and more.

The problem in the media is that there is no content. There is no meaning for life that ... or the universe, because there is no God. And when you take content out of art, its meaning...

[ Scott ] Well, you have..

[ Saunders ] ... all you have left is the form to manipulate.

[ Scott ] I think... I think the word perversion that Rush used is a very apt one, because it isn't simply a perversion in certain areas. It is a perversion of all value. So that we have something which almost turns the stomach. We have the most degraded people elevated over the worthy.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] We have a complete inversion, a complete perversion of values. Now there is a historical theory to the effect that when the average man can no longer see the workings of justice in the system that surrounds him, when he can no longer see virtue regarded and evil punished, that system is in trouble, because he then begins to ascribe success to luck, to contact, to accident and so forth, even sin. And what he cannot rationalize when he can’t see any... any logic in who succeeds and who doesn’t succeed that civilization is doomed because what cannot be rationalized cannot be defended and what cannot be defended cannot be maintained.

Now what we are talking about here is the defense and maintenance of Christianity. And Christians as a group—and this is a sweeping generality—are not defending Christian principles. And therefore the Christian community is in peril.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. You made a point earlier, Otto, about the need for courageous Christians, courage in virtue which reminded me of a saying that I cited to you recently by Martin Luther. Martin Luther was a man who sometimes charged into too quickly and he is very easy to praise and very easy to condemn, because he was so open and blunt about things.

But at one time he did make a statement which expressed his disgust for people who were practicing virtue in a sniveling cowardly way, if it could be called virtue. And practicing their vices in the same way, for the façade of respectability and with a pretense that this was really the right thing to do. And he said very bluntly, “Sin bravely. God loves a lusty sinner.”

So we need to tell Christians, “Be virtuous bravely. God loves a vigorous and a strong Christian, not a sniveler. And sin bravely. God loves a lusty sinner. Be what you are.”

[ Saunders ] Yeah. That... that is... that... that is... there is no more... I couldn’t... I couldn’t agree with you more. I think one of the problems, though, is that a lot of people are going to interpret that as.... as... as evangelize bravely and not do the work...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] .... of ... of ... of your calling bravely and being willing, for example, as... as a politician would say, I vote the way I vote because it is biblical and being willing to stand up and defend that bravely. That is... to... too many times people talk about being great soldiers and warriors for the Lord when what they... when what they really mean on when they talk in those terms is that they managed to each 126 more people this week with the gospel and they got four more conversions this week than they did last week, when, in reality, evangelism is, as we all know, is only one part of the whole Christian world view. And what we are talking about, though, in the sense that you... just so that we clarify this is in this... is in the sense that in everything that you do, whether it is economics, business, government, science, what have you, be bold in terms of applying God’s laws and principles to what you do.

[ Scott ] Well, if the Christians were to do that, they would start behaving more the way citizens of the country behaved on political issues. Now Mrs. Schlafley discussed what to do about a hostile press. Ands he said, “Well, it is very simple.” She said, “I just get a bunch of girls together and we march into the television station.”

[ Saunders ] Yeah.

[ Scott ] “And we say to the manager, ‘We heard those complaints and heard those arguments and criticisms and we want the right to reply.’ And she said, we get it.”

Now, there isn’t anything to keep a church group from getting up and marching into the newspaper, into the city room and talking to the editor. Their doors are open, or into the television station or the radio station and get off their ass and start doing something.

[ Saunders ] Yes. I agree. Agree.

[ Scott ] That is how Mrs. Schlafly became so successful.

[ Saunders ] Exactly.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] But nobody is fighting that way of Christianity.

[ Saunders ] Do something even if it is wrong. Do something. Well, you know, at least you an learn by your mistakes and... I have had so many people come up to me and... and say, “But, John, how do I get involved in doing those kinds of things?”

And I said that, you know, what are the... what are the procedures. How do I go about it? And I said, “I don’t... I can’t give you a... a handbook. You know, you open the television station door with the left hand and you go in and you see first the secretary and you say these words to her. And then after you get past her, why, then, you see the assistant manager and gradually you work... That isn’t the way you don it. There isn’t any manual written for resistance. There isn’t any manual written, should be a manual written in terms of propagating the Christian message and being able to resist, you know, other than the Scriptures. Just go in and do it. And if you make mistakes you learn from your mistakes. Don’t give up and keep doing it and eventually, why you can teach other people how to do it and expand and develop the numbers and the... and the movement will grow in a local community.

I don’t know how many times we have seen local single individuals who just got fed up and began to go out and ... and... and propagate the truth and the Christian message and all of the sudden within a matter of three, four, five years, they become a nationally recognized leader of some sort. And you say, “How did this happen?” Because they made a commitment and they stuck to it.

[ Rushdoony ] I have on my desk perhaps the most prominent evangelical magazine in this country open to a page that really got me angry and I am going to deal with it one of these days. It is an account of a police officer in a Midwestern city whose wife prayed for him and the friends of the wife and the church of which she was a member prayed for him and he was converted. So what has he done now? He has resigned from the police force, because that is such a world of dirty work.

Now that is the kind of thing that has dechristianized us even more than what the opposition has been doing. Christians on the retreat, Christians who haven’t got the courage to take their faith into the difficult places of life and apply it to their work.

[ Saunders ] It is like you are not in full time service of the Lord unless you have a 501c3 non profit foundation and you are 200,000 dollars in debt and have a mailing list of 15,000 people. Then somehow or another you are in full time service for the Lord, because you are working seven days a week, 24 hour hours a day trying to raise enough money to keep the foundation open or to keep the church open or something. And ... and only if you are engaged in an active ministry and it has got to have the right kind of name for it and everything else and all the right symbols on the literature. Then somehow you are in full times service of the Lord, only if you are involved actively in a, quote, ministry, unquote when, in reality, the... full time service of the Lord begins from the moment of creation until the final consummation and you are either on God’s side in full time service for the Lord or you are in full time service for the opposition.

[ Scott ] Well, I think, to me, of course, Solzhenitsyn will always remain a great example. His entire life is almost biblical in the analogies that can be drawn. First of all, he was totally on the side of Marxism, totally Totalitarian. Then by mischance he was sent to Siberia where he met God. When he came out of Siberia he had cancer and was told that he was going to die and his faith improved and didn’t decline. He recovered and he wrote these famous books. Now the interesting thing to me as a writer about Solzhenitsyn's books is that none of them promote Christianity overtly. They all are suffused with Christian presuppositions, but they don’t say it and they don’t have to say it.

[ Saunders ] No.

[ Scott ] But they do it so well that by the time he was world famous all... none of the anti Christians pegged him as a Christian until he came here and was interviewed. And then, of course, when they discovered that the was a Christian then we all know how the press changed.

[ Saunders ] Oh, yes.

[ Scott ] How his reputation altered.

[ Saunders ] Oh, yes.

[ Scott ] But what an example.

[ Saunders ] Yeah, yeah.

[ Rushdoony ] our time is almost up, but by way of conclusion I would like to say that I think one of the major forces for dechristianization has been the Church with its cowardice on the side of those who profess to believe the Bible from cover to cover and with Modernism in the other churches. Now I see that changing. The Modernist churches are dying. The cowardly churches are being pushed to the sidelines and a new, strong and faithful Christianity is emerging.

Do you have any last comments, John?

[ Saunders ] I think... I think every major movement or every... every movement of significance that Chalcedon has been involved in for the last two to three years as well as my own personal contacts in the last three to four years is ... is proof of exactly what you say. I see that the churches that are liberal, modern, the churches that have a... a coward... a cowardly strain to them, you are, indeed, correct and we see now individuals starting churches that all of a sudden seem to grow like wildfire for no apparent reason when the real bottom line is they simply took the stand in every area of life and were willing to go to jail for it or... or to whatever extent it took and it is that kind of courage that people need in this day and age. And it is the courageous pastor and the courageous church that is going to become the leaders in the next decade.

[ Scott ] I think that is true. I think there is a great revival underway and I think the core of it is ... has not been seen for many centuries. I think really we are ... I started out saying with... our situation is comparable to that of the first century Christians, because our lives are at stake. I can’t over emphasize this, that most of the people who hear us will be very lucky if they die in bed, because we are going to face very serious challenges of which our faith is going to be tested. Right now it is easy to stand up. It is easy to stand up. The time will come when it is going to be hard to stand up and the longer we wait, the harder it will be.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, we are told by the apostle John that this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. And it shall overcome. And I believe that we are going to see some of the roughest times in all of history within the next 10 years perhaps, but we are going to emerge out of that as the victors.

So we have a glorious faith, a great God and the assurance of victory. It is a question now of the Church the sleeping giant waking up. It is beginning to awaken and I expect great things to happen as a result.

Well, thank you all for listening. We will be with you again in a couple of weeks.

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