Miscellaneous

Rushdoony Alder and Mitchell 9-23-89 01A

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 1-1

Genre: Talk

Track: 1

Dictation Name: Rushdoony Alder and Mitchell 9-23-89 01A

Location/Venue:

Year: 1989

[Bad recording, there may be errors] …It is perhaps 15 years old, it is a very small group, the word ‘churches’ in its title comes from Skilder, another great Reformed Theologian of the Netherlands. Skilder called attention to the fact that when any group calls itself ‘the church’ they are following an implicitly Roman doctrine of the church, as a super organization over the local congregations; and the New Testament pattern is of a church in Ephesus, a church in Corinth and so on, local congregations that came together to take council when there was a problem. And so Skilder felt that instead of calling an organization ‘the church’ the Presbyterian or Baptists or whatever, which implied a super organization as the church, the association or denomination or group should call itself ‘churches’ to indicate that the church was in the local congregation, not in a hierarchy or in a bureaucracy.

Another thing that the group has done is to avoid (stated?) meetings. We only come together when we have a problem, to take council together by prayer as to how to help. Then our point of unity is not in terms of polity, but theology. Our standard is the scriptures and subordinate standards, the several Reformed Confessions, so that if a group chose they could be Baptistic, and no attempt is made to govern the internal life of the church, we come together in terms of problems confronting a congregation to help.

This raises another point about which I feel strongly, the tendency has arisen, especially in recent generations, though it has deep roots. To regard, let us say in the Presbyterian tradition, the Session has the church court. Now, it is a court in cases of necessity, but it is primarily Fathers in Christ who have a pastoral concern. The Biblical pattern as given in Deuteronomy 1 to Moses was of captains or elders, both terms were used, one for every ten families in the congregation. These were to be men who could preach and teach, who could exercise a pastoral office.

For perhaps 2 ½ centuries there were no church buildings because the church was an illegal organization; they met in homes, groups of 10 or 20, so that the gathering would not attract attention by the authorities. While the apostles went from place to place as Paul, he since he could not be there but was continuing would ordain elders. These elders would teach as they trained others to start churches in their homes, they ordained elders. This is how both Presbyterianism and Episcopacy arose, because there would be a mother church training others to establish churches in their homes, so there could be a network of a number of churches created in this way, and one man leading each group of families.

Now, the elder is someone who meets once a month with a pastor to sit in judgement on the pastor or congregation, he does very little besides- he’d be at a loss to preach or teach in most cases. But this is the requirement in scripture. We have created, not fathers in Christ, but a Bureaucracy. We have imitated the Roman government, and the Roman pattern has spread through the church because the church grew up in the Roman empire, and this pattern has spread out. But the church is called the family of Christ, it is the family of God, He speaks of Himself as our Father; we are taught to pray to Him as our Father; our Lord calls Himself ‘the Good Shepherd’ and pastors are His under-shepherds. The very word ‘pastor’ means ‘shepherd’.

Well, to convert all that into a bureaucratic mode is to alter dramatically the character of the church as we have it in the New Testament, and from having men as fathers in Christ, who have a pastoral concern for these as their little group, ten per elder, we have them meeting as judges. Now in the church of Scotland the elders had a duty to visit all their families regularly to question the children regularly on their knowledge of the catechism, to deal with any problems that might exist in the family in any aspect of its life; so that they had a teaching ministry essentially, they were pastors of a given number of families.

But the modern world has become highly bureaucratic, and the church has followed in its wake; it has done a great deal of harm to the life of the church.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Audience Member] What makes the Anglican churches in America more attractive to you than other Presbyterian Reformed denominations?

[Rushdoony] Well, precisely the reasons I gave, I believe the church should be a spiritual fellowship, and our little group is that. I can pick up the phone to discuss problems with the other men, or they can with me, and we come together periodically, no necessary stated times, with our wives as a time of fellowship, of prayer, and of dealing with problems. Our business meeting takes about 5 minutes, we have to meet as a corporate entity, we have the meeting, we may discuss one little item of business which is purely technical, and then happily adjourn; then we have a real dealing with problems, a sharing of concerns. So we share our concerns, we share our problems, and that is very fruitful, very rewarding.

One of the things that used to mark the Presbyterian system even as it was still getting bureaucratic was that a committee of Presbytery would meet with every session once a year. Now about all they do is to ask them to bring their minutes, the meeting of Presbytery for the committee to examine. It has receded to that, to looking at the session records technically.

I can recall when I was a boy that session records were not even kept, I can recall in the early days of my ministry when they began to do so and make a fuss about them. We have become a bureaucracy, and we have lost something in the process.

I’m not saying that business like administration is wrong, but today too often seminaries- and I would say the Reformed Seminaries are less guilty here than most- train the ministers to be administrators, not pastors. I know that a few years back in one of the biggest churches in a west coast city, the pastor thought he was very clever and funny because he had a sign in the waiting room to his office, the back of the wall next to his door, next to the secretary: “Tell your troubles to God and give me your cash.” And he thought it was funny, I thought it was terrible.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] We have to begin by being effectual as Christians, and as Churches, and then taking an interest in the county government. It is the least interesting area of government for most people, and as a result it is the one that is most easily captured by the wrong people because of the indifference of most, in that this business of the local area as our sphere.

One of the things churches need to do is to be mindful of need within their own group. Now things have been happening here as against 30-40-50 years ago, such as if a young woman in the church, a young mother has a baby, and has maybe 1-2 children anyway, and her mother lives at the other end of the country and can’t afford to come, if some of the church women would go in and help her the first few days after she comes home with her baby, that would be an important Christian ministry. This is the kind of thing the deacons should organize. Then again, how many shut ins are there? Who is helping them? Does someone go in to say, if it is the wife who is sick and in bed: “We’ll come in or bring a dinner in once a day, we’ll organize and have a series of women help you.” Or, if they can’t drive and they are elderly: “We will take you to the market so you can do your shopping.” In other words, services to those within ones fellowship.

A good place to begin, and yet many churches don’t do this. But this is the kind of ministry that is most effectual, this is the kind of thing that marked the early church, there was this feeling of being a family, and this is where the rebukes came in, as in James Epistle, because James spoke against giving precedent to those who were well to do who visited the church. The early church was very mindful of need.

Now the early church had its problems, it had its heretical groups, it had many ignorant members who weren’t sure at points how to make the distinction between their paganism and their belief in Christ, so they carried a lot of pagan things into the church- Paul’s letter to the Corinthians gives indications to that, as well as Galatians. But, what the church was emphatic on was that they were to be a family, they were one body in Christ, they were members one of another, as Paul said: “Be ye members one of another.” This is an aspect we have forgotten. It is not an accident that it is the writings of Calvin about the work of Deacons that we are least familiar with, and which have not been translated; because we have lost that dimension of concern.

[Audience Member] Would it be proper to paraphrase and say the one way to take over the sphere, to capture for Christ the sphere we are talking about, one way to train us up in the law and government into …?...

[Rushdoony] Exactly, each of us has a calling, and we should utilize our calling for the Lord, and if that calling gives us skills and leads us into politics, well and good; if it leads us into other spheres, fine. But in each sphere Christ is to be served. This is the priesthood of all believers, it means that every vocation is to be made a Christian vocation, and in the Puritan era there were books about the Christian convert, the Christian farmer, the Christian seaman. The point of all these was that in every sphere a man could serve Christ. And they did not mean merely by witnessing to those round about them, but by their mastery of their profession and their use of it to further Christ’s kingdom. They were members of His body and His kingdom.

We put out an issue of our journal of Christian Reconstruction on Christianity and Business a few years back in the 80’s. One man, an engineer decided to go out and see, because in the course of his travels he was in various parts of the country, he decided to a see a number of the top Christian business men and corporate leaders, to ask them to write about the application of faith to their sphere of life. Most of them looked (?), and said: “Of course I am a Christian. But what the hell does Christianity have to do with my corporation?” It was a very, very hard experience for this man. He said he realized the extent to which the church was infiltrated by humanism, because these were all me who professed to believe the Bible from cover to cover, and were as far as their private, personal life was concerned devout people; but they never saw the relation of the faith to their sphere of life.

I’ve cited John Lofton’s experience. That happens over and over again.

[Audience Member] Going back to the Anglican church, would unaffiliated independent groups be inclined to join the Anglican church of America if it had more visibility?

[Rushdoony] I couldn’t quite get that…

[Audience Member] Would most unaffiliated churches be interested in joining the Anglican Church of America if it had more visibility?

[Rushdoony] We are not interested in visibility, we are interested in serving God, and we recognize that people today hunger for bureaucracies. They really do. We have had groups come in and show interest, and then drift off because they want a bureaucracy. We believe that simply by being a witness, in time we would like to see all the churches move in the same direction, stop stressing the bureaucratic side, stop feeling that there isn’t a valid meeting unless there is somebody taking notes and it is on paper, coming together because they believe that as Christians they should share a concern of (?) brother, praying about it, (?) going away. Now perhaps this will come about, let us say as men who are members of a presbytery and who are close to one another come together to pray and to share their troubles, they will begin to create a true government outside of the bureaucratic government, because they will be coming together in the Holy Spirit to concern themselves with the things of Christ’s kingdom.

Well, that’s important. The answer today is to set up committees. I recall the utter disgust my wife felt, which she expressed to a Presbyterian elder who some years back said that (?) homosexuality was legalized and homosexuals became local about their attitude, that their presbytery had appointed a committee to issue a report on homosexuality. And Dorothy said: “The Bible has already issued that report, what is the point of another one?”

[Audience Member] Is the organization or the denomination an important step in rebuilding America?

[Rushdoony] The importance is the individual believer. The church can’t do things that its members are incapable of doing. A church is made up of people; if those people are not witnessing, if they are not applying the faith, the church never can. The most it will do is to issue paper statements, and there is no lack of these already.

We forget that the Bible is one book, the laws that are contained in the Mosaic books are 600 some laws. These are for the government of every sphere of life and thought. But Congress and the various agencies of Congress produce a library full of books of new rules and regulations every year, every state, county, and city produces its own. Reams of them. And churches endlessly pass measures and feel that they have dealt with the problem when they pass a resolution.

Now, if they abolished all paper pronouncements for a time and said: “What have we done?” Maybe the church would wake up out of its slumber and become a living church. The Lord doesn’t say in the parable of judgement: “How many statements did you issue on poverty? Or on morality, or on anything else?” But: “What did you do unto the least of these my brethren?” Now we don’t understand that parable unless we understand that all those who are before our Lord on judgement day called Him Lord, but of some our Lord says: “As much as ye did it not unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me.” He was not saying that works was the test, he was saying that to all those who profess the faith: “Show me your fruits.”

[Audience Member] Churches need to quit pontificating and quit making their own pronouncements, and go back to the Lords pronouncements we find in the Bible.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] Then do, give us some actions, give us some work. I would then remark, how the question would be: How many Christians believe and then are taught that the Bible speaks daily to all areas of life, but we don’t, I don’t know how it speaks to Invitro Fertilization, or Foreign Policy, or pick out three or four or five topics. And how can I learn, how can I learn to group the 600 plus laws…

[Rushdoony] Well, foreign policy, the law clearly says that we are not to make leagues or covenants with ungodly nations, because a league or a covenant is a treaty of law, and how can two walk together except they be agreed? Laws are given by God or by pagan gods, by humanism, man as god. How can you, when you have two diverse ideas of what constitutes right and wrong, truth and falsity, come to agreement on anything? So in our foreign policy very clearly we are forbidden, if we are a Christian power to covenant with any other power. That was the reason behind Washington’s warning against entangling alliances. There was a strong sentiment among the preachers of the colonies and of the states in the early years against any treaty with a non-Christian power, unless it were a treaty of peace as after the Barbary Pirates war, whereby they agreed to respect our ships thereafter; but it was not an alliance.

We have forgotten those things which were once elementary, and for a lot of these new ideas all you have to do is to look at some of the consequences of some of this new technology as applied to birth to see how dangerous and evil they are. There was a book written by a feminist a few years ago, I believe The Mother Machine was the title of it, it was a book that a Christian should have written, not a feminist. It was a marvelous expose of what this new technology does to women.

[Audience Member] But you see my question is not you to specifically address either the foreign policy or… just how can we find, how can we find out what our being ignorant (?) and how can we find out what our Bible says about being a newspaper man or a college student, or a butcher in a shop? Begin in Genesis and reading through, or using somebodies work to correlate the different laws with, or how can we learn to live by God’s law in every area?

[Rushdoony] By saturating ourselves with the scriptures. Reading them over and over again. Then the Holy Spirit will speak to us.

I’ll continue that question, because it is a very important point. One of the most dangerous decisions was reached recently in the Geoffrey Masson case. Geoffrey Masson was a highly respected scholar, who became head of the (Foreign?) archives. He filed things in there that shocked him and disillusioned him with (?). He wrote a book about his discoveries and had to leave the institute. A woman interviewed him, I believe for the New Yorker, and I believe wrote a book as a result, in which she not only misquoted him, but slandered him strongly I believe, and yet she won the case as against him, and destroyed him. He hasn’t been able to find a position since. I read his book, I read their book. His book was an excellent scholarly work; hers was (gutless?), and it has destroyed him. But even though he apparently demonstrated in court that she had misrepresented his statements, she won.

Well, when you lose a Christian perspective, when ‘thou shalt not bear false witness,’ when the law of God no longer has validity, journalism becomes an area where the lie is as good as truth. Because you have destroyed the standard whereby you say: “This in the sight of God is wrong.” If man is the standard, if man is the measure, what difference does it make? If we are, as Nietzsche said “Beyond good and evil,” Then as Nietzsche also said, a lie is sometimes better than the truth. This is why we have problems in journalism today, this is why the courts have gradually destroyed the libel laws, we are seeing the destruction of integrity in our culture; the most terrible lies are routinely told, and no one pays any attention, nor do they feel any compunction about it.

For example, I was interviewed recently, and the interviewer, the religion editor of a daily paper wrote that I was in… believed in the sacrificial laws of the Bible, which I do not, that I believe in slavery, that I believe in a power state ruled by Christians which I do not, I am against the powers of church and state, I believe that God requires His people to be self governed through various independent spheres. Now, he never heard a word of anything he reported from me, he just felt that this was what I believed if I believed in the Bible, or he read something, they have a file, and each one adds to the file the lies. And it doesn’t bother them, and that is right; why should you be bothered if you don’t believe in God?

So without faith in God you are not going to reclaim journalism, or the church, or the state, or the family, or your drug culture youth, or anything else. It is only the power of God unto salvation that is effectual in any sphere of life and thought; and if we go after other forms to gain power, we are forsaking God’s appointed way. We cannot then have the blessing of God, we will have His curse.

[Audience Member] Did you say that in the Reconstruction movement in the past year that Christians have become involved in existing structures, for a time they were …?... because they went into the structures that were already existing, such as politics is one, you know, working within the two party system; um, so I was thinking: “Well, I can work in the public school system.” It seems to me from what I have heard you say today that you are steering people away from that because the system is corrupt, so basically are you encouraging Christians to build a sub culture?

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes. The Christians within the Roman Empire built their own institutions. That is why Rome hated them, because they were a government within the government, an empire within the empire. One of the interesting books to read is by Colonel B. Doner, The Samaritan Strategy. Colonel who are very dear friends of ours, Colonel Doner was once one of the most powerful men of the Christian political Right, in fact in most of the Presidential campaigns of Reagan he was a key figure in the victory, had an office in the Whitehouse, was given a million dollars by the Republican party to help with the Evangelical vote for Reagan, and he was promised after the first election that he would get the power to name Christians to various offices. They reneged on the promise, and before the second election they apologized and said: “We will allow you to name the second echelon figures in Washington, not the first, but the second echelon.” After the election was over they did not pay any attention to him.

Then when in (?) with the congressional election facing them they were in trouble, they called the Colonel to the Whitehouse in desperation in July, they needed his help; the evangelical vote was drifting away and probably wouldn’t vote, and they were going to lose Congress (which they did). Wouldn’t he please come back and help them? One of the Colonels friends, Dennis Peacock was there, and Dennis spoke for Colonel, he said, these were his exact words: “We Christians are not about to be the house niggers of the Republican Party.” They turned around and left. And Doner realized the emptiness of what he had been doing, so he set up this relief organization, a Christian relief organization, and it is doing remarkable work all over the world.

Well, this is a kind of strategy. Others of us may be called to do other things. But Christians functioning as Christians, going out and changing something, where we can, beginning with our family life, beginning with our church life, our work.

This is the key. This is how the early church did it. And consider what figure a Catholic Bishop, Saint Charles Borromeo. He was in Milan a little after Calvin, a very militant Catholic, but a very godly man and had a lot of opposition from Catholic rulers and corrupt Catholic Bishops. But what Charles Borromeo did was to look at what the early church had done and what Protestants also were doing elsewhere, Catholics as well, but he took it to a little higher degree, he had schools, he had welfare work, he took care of widows and orphans and had homes for them, homes for elderly homeless men, but he also realized that a lot of very poor girls could not marry because the Italian Dowry system made it impossible for their parents ever to provide them with a dowry. So, he set up a fund to provide dowry’s for these girls, because otherwise they would wind up as prostitutes. Then he set up a home for abused wives to run to with their children, and then Bishop Charles Borromeo would send a priest out to deal with the husband, and only when they had dealt with him and had gotten his agreement to certain things and to their supervision did the wife and family go back. That was the kind of thing that Saint Charles did. This is the kind of thing that the church has done over the centuries, but we have forgotten about it- it is almost impossible to get any histories about it. I am writing a work on this aspect of the life of the church, and it is appalling how little has ever been done on this very important subject, and this has been an important aspect of the life of the church whenever it has been vital. Both Catholics… [Tape Ends]