Difference between revisions of "Rousas J. Rushdoony"

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Revision as of 03:29, December 11, 2008

Rousas John Rushdoony (April 25, 1916–Feb. 8, 2001) was an American minister and teacher, the founder of American home schooling. Born in New York City to a family of mixed Armenian and Irish descent, Rushdoony moved to the Midwest as soon as he was able and set up a school for children whose parents didn't want them attending public school. His popular book Law and Liberty borrowed much from both Bahnsen's Theonomy and Christian Ethics and van Goorle's Philosophical Exercises, but it added something new to the mix: the concept of Mosaic law. In a gedankenexperiment, Rushdoony considered what would happen if the law of Moses was enforced in the United States, and didn't like what he saw.

The Western liberal pays lips service to a few Christian ideas, holds to a Marxist environmentalism, and an English parliamentarianism: like the mule, he is a hybrid and just as sterile.[1]

Rushdoony was a strident opponent of the system we have today in many countries, which he termed theonomy — rule in the "name" (nomos) of God — as opposed to theology — rule by the "word" (logos) of God. Many of his essays and papers referred to this "theonomy" in harsh terms.

We may say "In God we trust", but, all in all, who among us has a neighbor who can make the same claim and mean it?[2]

After his death in 1953, Rushdoony moved to Los Angeles, where he continued to teach and exercised expert witness status in several court cases. He had five children: Mark, John, Matthew, Luke, and Sharon. Sharon is currently married to Gary North, an activist and founder of the right-wing news site CredibilityWatch.org.[3][4] Mark runs an evangelical ministry in San Juan Capistrano.

References

  1. Law & Liberty, p. 117. Note that the evolutionary theory of the mule as a "hybrid" species may or may not be scientifically accurate.
  2. "In God We Trust", 1966.
  3. CredibilityWatch.org
  4. Gary North at nndb.com