Easy Chair Series

Questions and Answers

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 73-91

Genre:

Track:

Dictation Name: EC381

Year: 1986

This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 381, March the fifth, 1997.

At the beginning of the year we asked that you submit questions and we would try to understand them. And we are grateful to those of you who have sent in a few questions. The first one that we would like to consider this evening is from the Stauffers in Switzerland. The question: Could you comment, please, on the verse 1 Corinthians 5:11? What do we have to really do? Cut all relations with such people described in this verse? Or does Paul mean relations only in church meetings.

Well, I think it is important to begin by reading the text involved and to go back and get the whole context. The Corinthian church had a problem with a man guilty of immorality. And beginning in 1 Corinthians 5:9 he says, “I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? (that is outside the Church) Do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.”

Well, there was a man in the Corinthian congregation who was guilty of fornication. He prided himself, in fact, on the freedom he had and there were others apparently in the church who were ready to say, “We are not under the law. Therefore we can do as we please in certain areas. The only thing to do is to believe on the Lord.”

Well, Paul’s response to that is very, very blunt and emotional, too. There was a great deal of intense writing in this epistle because he is very much distressed over what has been going on.

So he tells them that you are not to have fellowship with those in the Church who are fornicators and also he lists others who are guilty of various offenses and have been found guilty of them by the Church. But then he goes on to say, “You are not to company with these people or have fellowship with them, yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters,” of this world, in other words. “For then must ye needs go out of the world.”

You would have to go out of the world to avoid such people. The problem is that is what you expect of the ungodly. That is what they are. But the Christian or the one who professes to be a Christian has to be different. As a result, what I am requiring of you is that you excommunicate such people, that you separate yourself from them. And that has, since then, been in most churches, those that are faithful at any rate, the stand of the Church. Now it isn’t a pleasant one because it very often involves separation from people close to you. But it is a moral requirement. We cannot tolerate evil.

Let me add that some churches have tended to require this kind of shunning, as it is sometimes called, when the violation is a violation of church law, not of God’s law. And that is all together wrong. Now, yes.

[Sandlin] I think, Rush, as you indicated, there are two extremes to avoid here. A lot of churches and not only liberal churches, a lot of evangelical churches they wouldn’t excommunicate anybody even though there are serious violations of the law of God. But then there is the other extreme, as you indicated, of churches who will excommunicate just because they don’t like something that the members don’t like something that the minister said or some minor point that does not deal with God’s law. Ad that is just as evil.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] I mean, it has to be a clear violation of the law of God and not only clear, but a contumacious one. The goal of the Church is redemption, not ultimately excommunication. It should be a last resort and some churches go hog wild on that and that is just as evil as those churches that would never excommunicate at all.

[Rushdoony] I am glad you mentioned that these sins have to be contumacious, because basically the healthy position of the Church has been that if it is a sin of weakness they take another stand. Very often dealing with new converts whose background is one of flagrant immorality. There are occasions when they fall by the wayside. They must be dealt with strictly and yet mercifully. And so the church has striven to temper judgment with mercy.

[Sandlin] I know of a man that attended our church in Ohio, Rush, that the previous church he was essentially excommunicated because he grew a mustache and refused to shave his mustache. Now that is an extreme, but there is some churches out there that are... that are like that.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] At the whim of the elders, you know. As one church we said, if, you know, if the elders tell you to have white wall tires or not, you know, and all that sort of thing. That happens all too often by...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] ...ecclesiacrats and... but then, again, there is the other extreme of the many of the evangelicals who would allow all sorts of adulteries and slanders and things go on and never address it. Both extremes are wrong.

[Rushdoony] Any other comments on that?

Well, let’s go to another question. This is from David England. Were... it is in the two parts. The first: Were the colonies of 1776 biblically justified to rebel against England?

I am going to be selfish and answer that one also first. It is a question I have often been asked. And I think it is an important question because our text books don’t deal with the issue accurately. To begin, there was no rebellion against England. England was not the owner or the overlord over the American colonies. They had only one connection with England. They shared a common king. King George III was king of England, King of Scotland, King of Wales, King of Ireland, North Ireland, King of New York, King of Virginia and so on. He had a chartered or, to use the modern term, a constitutional relationship to each of those possessions that were his.

Now the Declaration of Independence is not a declaration of independence from England. They were already dependent of England in fact if not in actual practice, because you must remember that King George III for about 20 years of his long reign was mentally in competent. It was a hereditary problem caused by too much inbreeding.

Well, as a result, the king’s ministers took over and began to rule the colonies. And they, in effect, were putting them under parliament which had no jurisdiction. Now the interesting thing is—and I haven’t seen any work that deals with this—but for some time parliament was working to take over the royal prerogatives. Under Queen Anne a lot of this began. She simply appointed a minster who pleased her and he ran the country. And increasingly he allowed parliament to share the power with him, but parliament had no legal power even over England in some of the realms where they were governing and certainly not over the colonies.

Well, with George I who succeeded Queen Anne you had a king who was a German ruler of Hanover and whose language remained German. He never really learned to speak English.

Now with George III’s periodic incompetence mentally, the forces in parliament were ready to take over and govern these realms. This was, of course, illegal.

The Declaration of Independence, apart from the first paragraph which is series of philosophical generalizations using language of the time to appeal to the European powers, is a long document that lists one violation after another by King George or his ministers of their charters, their charters or constitutions. It is a very detailed and specific list of violations. And these violations rendered the charters or constitutions null and void and, in effect, dissolved the relationship. On top of that there were a number of illegal acts that marked the council’s activates towards the colonies, illegalities in the kind of things they did and taxes they imposed and also an attempt to supplant their right to name their judges and governors. On top of that, when the colonies continued to protest these things they sent troops to enforce their requirements.

Now troops in those days were quartered on the people. Quartering is something modern Americans know next to nothing about. Quartering was a very, very great evil in that they could put one or more soldiers into your house. You had to provide board and room and he was the law. He could molest your wife or your daughters and you had no possibility of doing anything about it. That was the step that earlier Louis XIV took to destroy the Huguenots by quartering troops on them and giving them total freedom to do as they pleased unless they turned Catholic.

Well, those that didn’t fled from the country or, in effect, fled into the hills. It was a vicious thing.

Now the Constitution felt so strongly about this that one of the things that it forbids is the quartering of troops. And the brief experience they had with it was a horrifying one about which the history books tell us nothing.

So the colonies did not revolt against England. They declared that their contractual relationship with King George III was rendered null and void. And this was it. They were subjected to an armed invasion. Of course, some of the troops were already there. And this also was illegal. So the whole thing was justifiable. The colonies used their legal prerogatives to resist parliament.

Now they put their lives on the line because parliament would have hung them if they had won. But that is the nature of the so-called American Revolution which was really the War of Independence.

[Sandlin] Well, one of the great myths is that the American Revolution basically sprang from the same fountain as the French Revolution.

[Rushdoony] ... which came later.

[Sandlin] Which came later, of course. Rush, as you were talking, I was writing down some points of contrast between the American and the so-called American Revolution, the War of Independence and the French Revolution. American Revolution was very principled and law based whereas the French Revolution was anarchic. The American Revolution was based on a long tradition whereas the French Revolution meddled in abstraction and philosophical things like that. The American War for Independence was basically issued from a Christian ethos, whereas the French Revolution issued from Atheistic ethos. And the American Revolution was trying to restore something old. So it really wasn’t a revolution. I think in your book This Independent Republic isn’t there a chapter on the War of Independence?

[M. Rushdoony] Yes, yes.

[Sandlin] ... as conserving a counter revolution.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] Whereas, of course, the French Revolution was trying to make something over new, which is pointed out so well in Billington’s Fire in the Minds of Men. It was a new religion they were trying to espouse. So it is really not fair to compare those two. There was very little of that sentiment in the colonies. There was Thomas Paine, of course, but beyond him and a few other radicals it was... it was a very principled Christian like approach to the situation which was certainly not true in the French Revolution.

[Rushdoony] Thomas Paine was an Englishman who came over when the trouble began here, hoped to command it and move it in the direction he liked. His two pamphlets were enormously popular, but as his general position became more and more known, he found he was less and less welcome so he left this country. He tried also to exert influence on the French Revolution and they threw him in jail. He apparently had quite an attraction for under age girls and that was the reason for his arrest and imprisonment.

Monroe, later a president, was our ambassador in France at the time and he got Monroe out of jail contrary to the advice of Washington who felt that Paine was not our kind of man.

[M. Rushdoony] When you mentioned that the ... the only connection with the England was that we shared a common monarch, when the ... when the explorers went out, back then you had real monarchs that were not only the head of state, but they were the head of government and they went out under the authority of the king and when they claimed land—this was true of the French, the Spanish—the claimed it in the name of the monarch. So that is why Jamestown was named after King James. That was... they were out under his authority and they named the land or their colony very often after their king. But when the first colonists were sent out they were guaranteed something. The English colonists were guaranteed all the rights of Englishmen in England...

[Sandlin] That is right.

[M. Rushdoony] ...which was very significant...

[Sandlin] That is right.

[M. Rushdoony] ...because the French didn’t do that. And so the people who went to New France were basically government employees. They were no families, very few women. And that is one of the reasons the British eventually overcame them, because there weren’t that many of them. They were government employees. There was no sense in resisting that harm. And so the British eventually overcame them, something we... that is still ... carried sometimes in history text books as about one of the real advantages the colonists had throughout the colonial period is that they had the power of the purse strings. The reason they had the power of the purse strings is that Englishmen had the right to approve taxation and English citizens in their legislatures. Now in England that was parliament. Parliament had the right to approve taxes. That was a hard won right of Englishmen.

Well, when they came over to this country, colonists of Virginia had that right. The colonists of all the different colonies. And, by the way, they didn’t consider themselves colonists. They were Virginians. And the Virginians called the people of Massachusetts foreigners.

[Sandlin] Right. That is right.

[M. Rushdoony] ... because they were a different colony.

[Sandlin] Absolutely.

[M. Rushdoony] They were... they were as different as different parts of the British commonwealth like United Kingdom and Canada that share the same monarch, but they are... they are separate.

Now when the ... the king had granted... all the kings had grand ideas and every royal governor that was sent over, because the king did have the right to appoint the governor of a royal colony. By the end of the colonial period most of them were actually had loyal governments.

The king would send over a royal governor with a long set of instructions and every royal governor would come over here and says, “It is time this legislature in this colony got whipped into shape and it did what the king wanted. Now here is my list from the king of what you ought to do.”

And the colonists would listen very politely and say, “Thank you very much. But all that takes money and you will do what we give you money for.” And the colonists won every time because the king did not have the right to force them to pay taxes to do anything they didn’t want to do. It is called the power of the purse strings. And it was very, very essential to the freedom of the colonists. And the legislatures won every time in the colonies.

Now during the 18th century you had several what we call, sometimes call the French and Indian wars. And these culminated with the defeat of New France. And Britain now took over what we now call Canada. And the king foresaw at this point that there was a British empire on the horizon. And the whole idea of the British Empire being completely independent didn't exactly work for an empire, not... not as they envisioned it. And they said, “We have to have more control.”

Parliament, being close to the king and at that point basically bought by the king, acquired by the king heavily, parliament was the logical one to be the instrument of controlling this... this emerging empire. And the colonists didn’t want any part of it.

Now to a certain extent the colonists went along with some of the trade laws. They figured there has to be some means of, you know, we will go along with some of that. But they always and every time resisted any idea of direct taxation, because that was unquestionably, I mean, who controlled trade between this colony and another colony. They kind of admitted that was a ... a grey area and as far as authority goes. But they always laid down the law when it came to paying taxes, because only Virginia’s legislature had the right to enact taxes with Virginians and only North Carolina’s had the right to pass it for North Carolina, et cetera.

And if you look at the early documents, I believe it is from the first continental congress, they speak very heavily of the rights of the colonial legislatures to enact taxes and not parliament. Parliament was basically had no legal role in the colonies. It is like California deciding that Nevada is so small that they have the right to pass taxes over the people of Nevada.

They... the... the real reason parliament was doing this was because the king was helping them. So they declared their independence not from parliament. Parliament is not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[M. Rushdoony] The king was conspiring with parliament to do this. And ultimately they said the king is breaking the law, and so we sever our ties with ... with the king. And they never bothered to mention parliament.

[Sandlin] Yeah. That is right.

[M. Rushdoony] In... in the Declaration of Independence.

[Sandlin] And they pointed doubt the ways that he had broken faith with them and, I mean, weren’t they just actually really only asserting the rights of natural born Englishmen? I mean, that is all that they really had wanted and they said in their ... through a long train of abuses that they ... this wasn’t spur of the moment thing, of course.

[M. Rushdoony] And even after the war started, they sent what was called the olive branch petition which basically said... told the king, “Look, if you stop parliament, we are willing to be peaceful and obedient subjects to you, but not to parliament.”

[Sandlin] Right.

[M. Rushdoony] And the king basically said that is rebellion. And the king wouldn’t consider it.

[Sandlin] Yeah.

[M. Rushdoony] And so it was a year after the fighting began, remember, that the Declaration of Independence was signed. It was not the cause of the war. It came a year after the start of the war.

[Rushdoony] But it did explain their motivation.

Well, there is another part to the question from David England or a second one. The Declaration of Independence allows for the people to rebel against the government if it becomes tyrannical. How do we know when this state of affairs has arrived? And is it biblically justified to do so?

Well, that can get a person a long argument pro and con on the practical pragmatic side. Such a revolt now would be a disaster, because in most countries the firepower in the hands of the state is such that any resistance on the part of the people is absurd. However, the Declaration does so state and Jefferson held to this opinion of a justifiable revolution and went so far as to say that maybe every so often...

[Sandlin] I think he said every 20 years...

[Rushdoony] ... they civil government... yes, every 20 years should be overthrown and replaced. But he was just shooting off his mouth, I think, with that.

Now, nobody has ever bothered to go into the background of that particular aspect of the Declaration, the fact that Jefferson held that opinion would not have been enough to put it over where a good many hard headed men were present at the time that the Declaration was drawn up.

Plus the fact that you had a good Calvinistic minister, John Witherspoon present who, if this had been anti scriptural would have very quickly objected.

Now, where does this come from? Well, out of Calvin’s Institutes. Calvin was against lawless insurrections and revolutions.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Rushdoony] What he did say was possible and permissible he did not say desirable, but possible and permissible was this. That if conditions reached such a point that there were many lower magistrates, we would say public officials who are still important and they say that the central government has gone beyond its legal limits and call upon people to resist it, then, if you have a substantial body of lower magistrates who take such a stance, then it is permissible.

So there are those who would go further than Calvin in this regard. And others who would not go even as far as Calvin did.

Well, to continue, do any of you men have an opinion about the clause in the Declaration calling for periodic upheavals if the federal government or the central government goes astray?

[Sandlin] No, that was a historically conditioned idea, obviously, that was put in there because of the pressure of the times. I agree with what Calvin said, Rush, as you have expressed that if strong lower territorial magistrates are willing to protect those citizens under their control from the tyranny of higher powers, they are justified in doing so. But if there is to be any armed resistance it has to be very principled and according to law. It can’t be anarchy, just taking to the streets and gunning down people in front of abortion clinics and all of that murderous nonsense.

[Murray] Well, the lower... the lower magistrate thing has really started in a small way with this home rule.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Murray] ...effort, I think started down in Arizona. And, in fact, this county has adopted home rule. And many counties have in the western states because of the... the federal government’s taking over property within the United States boundaries.

[Sandlin] Well, Wyoming is a state largely like that. And, as you said, Nevada is. But that is the right way to do it, rather than just people getting their guns out and blazing.

[M. Rushdoony] I don’t know if anything has ever come of it. I did hear once, I believe it was Colorado had done, said that any further federal mandates had to come with ... be accompanied by constitutional justification for those federal demands which is an interesting position to take, because that is exactly what all the states should be requiring or we should be requiring of our congress as well is constitutional justification for what they are mandate, because in many cases there is no constitutional justification for any of this.

[Sandlin] Right.

[M. Rushdoony] A good example of this. Why do we have national parks and national forests when the Constitution gives very specific reasons for the ownership of federal land.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[M. Rushdoony] And they use... what they do is they use stretch, you know, that is what the courts always do. They stretch it. I believe they kicked around in courts for many years and some federal judge finally had to come up with some rationale for national parks and national forests and say, well, they are actually defense installations which is constitutional because they have minerals and resources which could be used in time of national crisis.

But since the original question was about the American Revolution and it has often been brought up that the continental congresses were completely extra legal assemblies which in actuality they were and the colonies even realized that and some of the colonies did what the continental congresses asked and some did not, especially when it came to supporting Washington’s army.

[multiple voices]

[M. Rushdoony] It was very... very spotty obedience to... to what they... what they asked. In effect, what they were is they were a group of foreign ministers, basically meeting to conduct an alliance and to organize an alliance, because the colonies were all strictly independent.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[M. Rushdoony] ...because they had separated from a king, but that was all they shared in king is... is the war.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[M. Rushdoony] And that is why the... when they... they unified, in fact, Patrick Henry’s proposal for independence, not Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, his resolution had two parts. Be it resolved that... I think it was that these colonies are and of a right ought to be free and independent states. The second part of that same resolution was that they investigate the union.

Now and that eventually turned into the Articles of Confederation. But everything they did and, in fact, even the Declaration of Independence, men signed it, but these men signed it for New Hampshire...

[Voice] Not New Hampshire.

[M. Rushdoony] Well, Maine.

[Sandlin] They were representing...

[M. Rushdoony] Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island.

[Sandlin] Exactly.

[multiple voices]

[M. Rushdoony] They represented the states. So they were.... they were very careful to be what ... what they did was not as Samuel Adams, John Hancock.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[M. Rushdoony] It was as representatives of the colonial legislatures under their authority.

[Sandlin] And there was a lot of disputes among them precisely because of that. I want to recommend M. E. Bradford’s book Original Intentions. He points out the in... the intense localism. The problem today is everybody thinks... almost everybody thinks in terms of very federalistically in terms of the central...central government in Washington, DC. He pointed out all of the differences between the states when they... and the representatives when they came to the constitutional convention. They had some very specific things they wanted to accomplish. They weren’t trying to make some huge, perfect, ideal, just social order or abstract rights or abstract equality. They just wanted to do the best that they could under the conditions.

And, Mark, you are exactly right. I mean, there were all these competing interests and they came up with a very sound document. But today that is completely lost when it is interpreted by liberal... a liberal judiciary is that they were interested sort of in abstract human rights. That is ... that wasn’t in their mind at all, Bradford points out.

[Rushdoony] We must remember, too, that we cannot understand this country unless we realize that it was created to be a federal union, not a centralized state, that for a long, long time there was very little in Washington, DC other than the White House and a handful of clerks. The Supreme Court met two weeks in a year. Congress didn’t meet much longer and there was very little control over the states and over the people. And if you were in a particular state even the state government did not have much power over you. It was truly very, very much a free country.

So it is difficult for people today to realize that even in this century Washington, DC began as a small community.

I have a picture which I haven’t been able to locate since we moved here 21 some years ago. It is a picture looking out from the White House steps in the years of President Taft’s presidency. It shows the Taft...

[Voice] Sorry about that.

[Rushdoony] ...family cow.

[Voice] I thought that phone was...

[Rushdoony] ...tethered out on what is now the front lawn.

Well, it was very much a small town atmosphere. It was after Taft with Woodrow Wilson, World War I, the creation of a vast bureaucracy that we began to have the kind of federal government that we have now. The seeds of it go all the way back, of course, to Abraham Lincoln. But it was with Wilson that we have the modern federal power.

And, as a result, you have to realize the founding fathers never even remotely imagined any such power as now exists in the central government.

[Sandlin] Well, the constitution itself says that whatever we don’t deal with, of course is the... to be dealt with the people and the states. It reserved the right to the people and the states. That is something that is not often understood. Or that Congress should be a full time job, you know, was... was ... was fairly recent, really recent development.

[Rushdoony] Well, let’s go on to another question. This is one of a series from the reverend Byron Snapp. Well, Byron, I am going to start with the last and the easiest and maybe I will deal with the others in another context or some other way, but perhaps by mail.

The easiest question for me is: Provide an update on Armenia. And as I give my answer, don’t hesitate to interrupt if you want to ask some questions about it.

Well, the Soviet Union with its ostensible break up divided into its constituent units. Supposedly we have a free society. But there are a number of serious questions. There are reasons to believe that this perestroika was planned as a way to delude the west and move as Golitzen said towards a convergence of the US and the USSR. It is a curious fact that in every one of the constituent countries it was a member of the Communist party who was elected to be president. Then and since in every election it has been only the Communists who win. Sometimes because they are the only names that are permitted on the ballot.

Well, the situation is no different in Armenia, but with a peculiar twist. The president is Levon Ter-Petrosyan, which translated into English is Lord Peterson. Curious fact. He is a descendant of the ancient nobility. And even though he was a member of the Communist party, the very fact that he in preference to other Communists got the nod indicates a bit about the temper of the people there.

It is a country that is divided into two parts. What Stalin did when he saw the somewhat vocal at times yearning for independence in Armenia was to break up the country. He separated {?} and {?} two ancient centers of Armenia with a 60 mile corridor which had every army in it removed and sent to a slave labor camp. And the intervening area peopled with {?} Turks or Azerbaijan peoples.

Now the peoples of {?} the first opportunity they had rebelled against Azerbaijan. They were, in fact, whipping the Azerbaijanis totally when the U. N. stepped in and issued some threats and ultimatums so that they had to stop the effort to regain some of the land, particularly the connecting land. They set up their own country and while working closely with Armenia have to be an independent realm.

Now there is another interesting fact about Armenia. The Russians, somewhat reluctantly have provided troops to help defend the army in area. It is not because they are partial to Armenia, but because Armenia has an importance to them, even though it is the smallest in population of any of the so-called former Soviet republics. The reason is simply this. If you go all over the old Soviet Union to the areas that are, oh, Turkish or Uzbek or Russian or whatever, the main engineering in every one of those is done by Armenians. Armenian engineers were the backbone of whatever was at all viable in the old Soviet Union. They still need them. And they are not willing to be too harsh on Armenia. So as against a threat from Azerbaijan or Turkey or Iran, they are ready to be moderately helpful and the army is basically behind that, not Yeltsin.

The problem there is that the army is now without pay and hasn’t been paid for a long time. And it is falling apart and the equipment disintegrating.

Now there are some reasons why there are pressures upon Armenia, not only by the Turks, because the Azaris of Azerbaijan are Turks. Up north the Chechens of Chechnya are Turks, most vicious. And, of course, there is Turkey. Then you have Kurdish peoples on the section of northern Iran who want independence and who are also Moslems.

So Armenia is surrounded, mainly, by Islamic countries. The only other Christian country in the area has very little remains of Christianity, Georgia.

Well, some of the countries to the east of Armenia have so much oil according to estimates that they will make Arabia look like just an oil puddle. They want this oil to go through Armenia, but they don’t want to have it of any benefit to Armenia. There is a blockade of oil and other things. We have supposedly said that Turkey will receive no aid as long as it is aiding and abetting and supporting the blockade and prohibiting supplies of getting through to Armenia. But right now we are about to disregard that which is there for surface appearances.

So it is quite a crisis. The winters are cold there. It is high mountainous country. There is virtually no fuel. And it is a country in perpetual crisis, because its neighbors are all dedicated to its destruction.

Also it has been without any real contact with the western world and Christendom since the beginning of this century, 1914. As a result, it is in a critical situation.

I was interested, two, three years ago to learn how backward medicine in Bulgaria and Romania and Yugoslavia was. They had been cut off only since World War II. And yet the great leaps forward in medicine, both in surgery and in wonder drugs and the like have come since then. So the isolation is a devastating one. At the same time it is likely to increase, because our policy in Yugoslavia is total support for the Moslems, none for the Christians.

Now, by the wildest estimate, you can only say there are 40 percent Moslems in Bosnia. And yet we have decreed, together with the UN, that the civil government has to be in the control of Moslems, even though they are the minority. And we have received a viciously false picture of the situation there with regard to Serbia and a great deal of white washing of Croatia. It is a very grim picture. And we have tried to do some broadcasting of the gospel, right there in {?} in Armenia. I don’t know how long we will be able to continue.

It is very difficult to get in and out, very difficult to take things in and out. You can only fly in and you are flying over enemy territories and it is always risky.

So the situation is a very, very grim one and it is like other critical spots in the world. It gets no attention, because it is Christian and the goal of Islam is to wipe out all Christianity in the Middle East. There are pockets of it in Syria, a fair population there and Lebanon. But elsewhere it is gone.

Are there any questions you would like to ask about this?

[Murray] Why do they fear it?

[Rushdoony] What?

[Murray] Why do they fear it? Why do the Moslems fear Christianity in such small pockets if they are no major threat to them as far as numbers or amount of territory?

[Rushdoony] It is a good question. First, they hate it. Second, although in the early years of the... or generations of the spread of Islam it was able to overrun and conquer a great many areas, although at that time not Armenia nor Georgia. They now have an intense fear of Christian power, Christian military ability. They can’t compete with it.

During World War I General Antanik, an Armenian general with only a bare handful of men at every turn defeated the Turks. One of the British officials said that he was certainly one of the greatest military strategists in all of history. But he is not very much known.

Well, with very, very poor weaponry the Armenians of {?} whipped the Azari Turks again and again and again. They don’t trust Christians. They realize that Christians now are the people with the faith and power to stand and fight. So there is an intense hostility. Everything is being done, by the way, in Lebanon, to wipe out the Christians there.

[Sandlin] What about the state of the Church today in Armenia and as a result of all this, Rush?

[Rushdoony] Well, the Church of Armenia which is not one of the Eastern Orthodox churches, but whose general position is more like what the Church of England was at the beginning of this century, was for a long time under the control of the Soviet Union. The church is a rather strange one in its government because it has a presiding bishop called {?} who is comparable on the lower level to the pope or the orthodox patriarch. However, the problem with his office is that the Church of Armenia in its origin was a compromise between the apostolic Christianity, the Church established in the New Testament age in Armenia which was, we would say, semi congregational, semi Presbyterian. And then the Episcopal Church, which, in the early 300s was established by the crown under the leadership of Saint Gregory the Illuminator. The two groups finally came together with some compromise on both sides so that to this day the elders of every local congregation in the Church of Armenia send delegates when there is a need for a new {?} to be elected to elect him. The elders elect the bishops. The elders elect the {?}. Well, that is unlike any other Episcopal or Catholic or Orthodox Church. The power is there on the lowest level, the local congregation. And this made it very difficult for the Marxists to control the Church.

They did to my knowledge execute one {?} by smothering him. That way no marks show. You smother him to death. But, by and large, the Church has a background here again, like the old Church of England, high church, low church, that is evangelical and broad church. So those three strands have been present.

What has happened with the new {?} and what the future will be, I can’t say.

Well, our time is over. Please send in any questions that you have and we will do what we can to answer them. Thank you all for listening and God bless you.