Chalcedon Blog

Stability in Troubling Times

2010-02-05T10:05:00.000-05:00

Twenty years ago, California experienced the Loma Prieta earthquake. I remember vividly sitting in a karate studio watching my daughter’s class when the ground began to shake. I gathered the children and moved them under the doorframe just in time to avoid being hit by all the trophies that were on a shelf above where I had been sitting. It was obvious that this was not your run-of-the-mill quake—something significant had occurred. In October of 1989, there were no cell phones so I was unable to contact my husband or find out how my elderly mother-in-law, who lived with us, had fared. Instability ruled the hour. Read the rest of this article...

What is the Glory of God?

2010-02-02T10:27:00.000-05:00

“What is the Glory of God?” I was asked out of the blue by a woman who has a knack for asking good questions. I was a bit surprised; not only had I never been asked that before, I had never asked it myself. References to God’s glory are so common in Scripture and the church that we do not think enough about what the word conveys. I sometimes wonder if our best understanding of God’s Word isn’t like that of a child who prayed to “Our father, who does art in heaven; Harold is his name.” Read the rest of this article.

Christian History Conference This Weekend in Atlanta

2010-01-26T09:16:00.009-05:00

1st Annual Christian History Conference

"THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY"

To highlight the Providence of God in America’s history and proclaim the truth about her founding

For more information, click here.

Date & Time

January 30, 2010 in Alpharetta, GA

8:30 am - 6:30pm

Location

Circa History Guild

8480 Holcomb Bridge Road, Suite 200

Alpharetta, Georgia 30022

(Map quest http://www.mapquest.com/mq/5-OFtgAUwc)

Cost

Adults $10.00

Students $5.00

AGES 5 AND UP ARE WELCOME TO ATTEND

Schedule

9:00 – 9:30 Introduction

9:30 – 10:30 Tom Tarabicos, “Exploration and Colonization in Early America” (Columbus, Cortes, Pilgrims and Puritans & Mayflower)

10:30 – 10:45 BREAK

10:45 – 11:45 Martin Selbrede: “Colonial Growth & The Great Awakening” (George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards & Calvinist theology)

11:45 – 1:00 LUNCH

1:00 – 2:00 Bill Potter, “Religious Causes of the American War For Independence” (Presbyterian Parsons Rebellion, Patrick Henry and the Christian nature of the founding fathers)

2:00 – 2:30 BREAK and BOOK SALE

2:30 – 3:30 S. Kelley Henderson, “Roman Catholic Influence and its Growth in America” (Immigration, integration and growth of the church)

3:30 – 4:30 Tom Tarabicos, “The Fall of Princeton and the Rise of Liberalism” (Princeton theology, rise of liberalism, fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial and John Gresham Machen)

4:30 – 4:45 BREAK AND BOOK SALE

4:45 – 5:45 Gary North, “The Rise of the Religious Right and the Present State of the Church in America” (Postmodernism, new church growth and the failure of the religious right)

5:45 – 6:30 Questions and Answers for Panelists

Speakers

Gary North - Garynorth.com. I am follower of economists Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. I am an Austrian School economic analyst. My formal academic training was in history (Ph.D). Since 1974, I have edited the financial newsletter, Remnant Review. I formerly served as Research Assistant for Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX). I also write the twice-weekly e-letter, Gary North's Reality Check.

Martin G. Selbrede - Vice President of Chalcedon, lives in Austin, Texas. Martin, a physicist, symphonic composer, orchestral conductor, and software engineer, has been involved with the Chalcedon Foundation for 30 years.

Tom Tarabicos - BA University of Delaware in History and Political Science. Post graduate work at Reformed Theological Seminary and Whitefield Theological Seminary (student) MA Christian Studies. Senior Financial Advisor of Covenant Wealth Group of Wells Fargo Financial Advisors in Roswell, Georgia.

S. Kelley Henderson - BBA Georgia Southern University, Finance. MTS Spring Hill College, Theology. PHD Social Policy Walden University (student)

Bill Potter - Historian and Curator of the Circa History Guild. MA, The University of Dayton, PhD, ABD, The College of William and Mary. Worked with Vision Forum Ministries.

Contact

Tom Tarabicos

Christian History Conference

P.O. Box 2026

Roswell, GA 30075

Email: tom@christianhistoryconference.org

x-msg://134/tom@christianhistoryconference.org

Mobile Phone: (678) 464-6409

Office Phone: (678) 884-8008

Bach: A Model for Christian Excellence

2010-01-20T08:40:00.001-05:00

Throughout mankind’s struggle for artistic excellence, a few individuals scattered through the centuries have made marks so indelibly definitive that none can fail to recognize that they have finally soared to the very height of their art. Their final works display no hint of the tentative, the provisional, the experimental, or the imperfect. Such works leave their hands as ultimate capstones complete in themselves, revealing an order more divine than human in both concept and execution. Such works become plumb lines against which others must inevitably be measured.

The music of Johann Sebastian Bach falls into this category. Bach’s subconscious recognition of this fact was shown in his last works, on which German composer Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) anchors his intriguing argument that Bach had become so confidently facile at solving the most intellectually complex musical challenges with such ease that Bach came to realize that there were no more frontiers to explore or musical “kingdoms to conquer”: he had already achieved the ultimate in his art form. Hindemith infers this from the uncharacteristically melancholy temper of the final two years of Bach’s output, and mounts a strong case to buttress his perspective. The fact that no contrapuntist since Bach has even come close to matching Bach’s capability suggests that the Master may indeed have been one of a kind. When Bach flew into the musical heaven of his own making, he flew solo. Read the rest of this article...

The Light of the World: Justice, Good Works, and Redeeming the Social Order

2010-01-18T08:30:00.002-05:00

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Matthew 5:14

According to the book of Revelation, the ultimate purpose is a realized city (Rev. 21–22), not a realized church in the institutional sense. For those bent on the establishment of liturgy over the establishment of justice, their conception of John’s apocalypse places emphasis upon incense, prayers, chanting, and angels. I find in this hermeneutic a strange twist on literalism where the practical nature of the Kingdom as proclaimed by Christ is lost in the sea of patristic speculation.

God’s temple is now His people, yet what occupies too many Christian leaders is what transpires within four walls whether they be gothic stone or sheetrock. Some believe that by refining doctrine to its most pure state, or by establishing the most orthodox liturgy, God will then do His work of revival and restoration. There is no other way to describe this than ecclesiastical pietism—it is an undue introversion into the depths of organized church order.

Is this the way we are to be the light of the world? Is the light of the world defined primarily by the rightness of church praxis? You should organize your doctrine, but do not make it your end. Sing the songs of the Lord, but do not rest thinking that you have thereby advanced the Kingdom. You have truly empowered yourself for works of service, but it is when we are extended to the oppressed and hungry that we become an illuminated city:

If you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as noonday. Isaiah 58:10

This is the great Sabbath that the Lord seeks. Not a day in which you “labor” over what exactly constitutes labor, but sharing your bread and covering nakedness (Isa. 58:7). Again, when these things are done, the end result is light:

Then your light shall break forth like morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Isaiah 58:8

Our calling is to be a city of light, and the light we provide is our good works resulting from faith. Without them, we are dead (James 2:20). Without them, we are as unsavory salt left with only one purpose: to be thrown out as road salt for tyrants and their beast systems (Matt. 5:13).

Read the rest of this article...

Chalcedon in Atlanta this Weekend!

2010-01-14T14:57:00.000-05:00

The Chalcedon Foundation will be in ATLANTA this weekend participating in the Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty event! If you’re in the Atlanta area, please come visit Mark Rushdoony, Martin Selbrede, Tom Tarabicos and Samuel Allison at the Chalcedon exhibit tables. Not only hear Ron Paul and other great speakers on liberty, get 50% off retail on the works of R. J. Rushdoony, expositor of the very roots of liberty.

Rushdoony on the Past

2010-01-11T08:06:00.003-05:00

"[T]he Christian, while respecting the past, cannot involve himself too deeply with the past. Too often, as we listen to others, and to ourselves, we find that the major concern of our lives, what we talk and think about, is what happened yesterday, the past. We grieve over the past, talk about it, rehash it endlessly, and thus sadden and distort the present and neglect the future. The problems of yesterday and today are very real, and they are inescapable in a fallen world. The test of a Christian is in part this: Christ having declared, 'Behold, I make all things new' (Rev. 21:5), do we work confidently under Him towards that goal, or are we endlessly troubled over who said and did what yesterday and today? Are we merely reacting to what others say and do, or are we acting to reconstruct all things in terms of Jesus Christ? Are we more concerned with the sins and imperfections of others than our duty to build for the future?" ~ R. J. Rushdoony, Revolt Against Maturity, p. 290

Will Atlas Shrug?

2010-01-10T08:07:00.000-05:00

James White on the Secular Backlash to Brit Hume

2010-01-09T15:58:00.001-05:00

Jack Cafferty Rips Obama on Failed Openness Pledge

2010-01-07T18:04:00.001-05:00

Brit Hume Preaches on Television

2010-01-05T18:15:00.001-05:00

Rushdoony on Victory Through Education

2010-01-05T10:07:00.002-05:00

Theonomy vs. Tyranny

2009-12-28T12:25:00.002-05:00

By R. J. Rushdoony

Man’s choice is between theonomy and autonomy, God’s law versus self-law. Man, being a sinner, a fallen creature, can only create laws and societies which, in their developed form, simply amplify man’s sin. The result is tyranny, rule without God.

The power to make laws is the mark of lordship, sovereignty, or explicit or implicit divinity. According to William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, “Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it, and this I know, my lords, that where law ends, Tyranny begins.” Edmund Burke, a year later, 1771, said, “The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.” Both men made their comments in response to the John Wilkes affair. Wilkes represented the unfettered will of the people as against a still lingering belief in a higher law.

The word tyranny comes from the Latin tyrrannus; it means normally rule by an oppressive power, but, very commonly, tyrannies have been popular. Thus, Adolf Hitler was clearly a man with a popular following, as was Mussolini, and others as well. A tyranny can be a popularly elected party, or group of men, so that a tyranny can exist without a single tyrant. The essence of the tyranny is that no absolute and God-ordained law and justice prevails, only the will of a man, a group or party of men, or a majority or a minority of men. The essence of tyranny is that it represents in some form the will of man, not the law of God. On the other hand, theonomy means literally the law of God. In our time, theonomy represents to all too many people the essence of evil, for the will of man is held to be the source of determination, of law, and morality.

As various areas of society, and its peoples, enthrone autonomy, they dethrone theonomy, and they replace God with man. Thus, in one church after another, to all practical intent God’s law has been replaced by man’s, and the rules and canons of the church tend to prevail over God’s law. In issues relating to sexuality, homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia, this has been especially the case. Tyranny in the church as in the state is tied to this substitution of man’s law for God’s law.

Tyranny, rule without God’s law, is inescapable where theonomy is set aside. The very statement of the need for theonomy nowadays inflames unbelievers and churchmen alike and the difference between them is often in name only.

The tyrants are earnest men, from the days of the Tower of Babel to the present. They believe that they are alone capable of saving the world by means of their planned world order. Implicit in their stand is the belief that the Bible is wrong, and Jesus Christ was wrong. As an instructor training car salesman in positive thinking as a means of increasing sales holds, Jesus was a negative thinker and a failure.

The Thirty Tyrants of Greece, pupils of Plato, wanted to save Greece, and they helped to destroy it. Much of the world’s evil presents itself as the true good, and a failure to recognize the moral earnestness of evil can be deadly. The new pornography does not see itself as the purveyor of dirty books but as the source of true enlightenment, as the basis of the liberation of man. Its fervor often is marked by a missionary zeal.

Tyranny is increasing the world over. The decline of the Soviet Empire made way for other and more extensive tyrannies. The moral warfare underway is more deadly than nuclear war.

Jesus Christ is our Redeemer King, our law-giver from the foundation of the world. The insane interpretations of Matthew 5:17-20 which seek to separate Jesus from the law tell us more about the blindness and/or depravity of such men than they do about the Bible. But all men must be taught. In Isaiah’s words, “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little” (Isa. 28:10).

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2009-12-24T08:57:00.001-05:00

The staff and families of the Chalcedon Foundation would like to extend the warmest holiday greetings this Christmas to you and your loved ones. Thank you so very much for helping Chalcedon continue it's mission of extending the reign of King Jesus in every area of life. God bless you!

Film: Waiting for Armageddon. A shameful exposè of a terrible doctrine.

2009-12-22T13:47:00.005-05:00

Teaching Teachers to be Leftists

2009-12-22T10:33:00.010-05:00

by Lee Duigon

“What health there is in kindergarten,” R. J. Rushdoony wrote in 1963, “has come, not from the educational philosophers, but from loving and healthy-minded teachers.”¹

This was true in 1963, but today healthy-minded teachers in the public schools are becoming an endangered species—thanks to the educational philosophers, who create programs like the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative (TERI) at the University of Minnesota College of Education.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has threatened to sue the university if the TERI program is implemented next year. Meanwhile, on its website, FIRE displays a fourteen-page document, drawn up by the university’s “Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group,” describing the goals of TERI and the means by which those goals are to be achieved.²

The document’s headline is revealing in itself:

“DRAFT. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION. For discussion uses within the College of Education and Human Development TERI project only.”

A Totalitarian Standard?

Reading the document from beginning to end, we find the Minnesota teacher training program to include features not likely to produce healthy-minded teachers:

*Setting impossible, self-defeating standards of “cultural competence” for all prospective teachers.

*Requiring teachers to adopt and promote a worldview stressing American “racism,” “oppression,” and perpetual victimhood for all “minority” students.

*Requiring a sense of racial guilt, constant self-criticism, and groveling—in context, that is not too strong a word for it—from all “Anglo” teachers.

*A mandatory allegiance to a left-wing worldview and political agenda.

*A rejection of any concept of an “American culture,” rejection of any kind of assimilation into a national culture, and teaching and preaching intended to lock “minority” children into racial or cultural identities.

*An overt hostility to Christian beliefs.

*A requirement to teach school children to be cynical and mistrustful of all things commonly labeled as “American.”

FIRE attorney Adam Kissel said the TERI requirements would make it “very difficult” for any orthodox Christian, Jew, or Muslim to get a license to teach public school in Minnesota. “This program lists very specific attitudes, values, and beliefs that you’re supposed to have, if you want to teach in Minnesota,” he told Chalcedon.

Kissel is waiting for the university’s general counsel to reply to his letter. By any “nontotalitarian” standard, Kissel wrote, the university’s plans are “severely unjust and impermissibly intrude into matters of individual conscience … As a public university bound by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the university is both legally and morally obligated to uphold this fundamental right [to freedom of conscience].”³

TERI Speaks

We tried to get university officials to comment on TERI, but neither our phone calls nor emails were returned. However, the TERI document speaks for itself. And remember—this is a production which the people of Minnesota are supposed to pay for, but not see.

For instance: “Our future teachers will be able to discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression” (TERI document, page 4).

Let’s pause to analyze this. “White privilege” denotes an assumption that white people are privileged in America—never mind the benefits of affirmative action, which are not open to white people—and thus enjoy advantages over non-whites: something to feel guilty about.

It’s worse if you’re a man, because then you enjoy “hegemonic masculinity” at the expense of women, who therefore constitute a victim class. As a man, you just can’t help being an oppressor—another thing to feel guilty about.

Then there’s “heteronormativity.” This is a term coined by fools to attack the “social construct” that heterosexuality is normative and on a higher, more privileged plane than homosexuality. Thus homosexuals become yet another victim category, and all non-homosexuals become guilty of oppression.

“Internal oppression” is what supposedly happens to these tens of millions of victims constantly beaten down by whites, males, and heterosexuals, they succumb to a kind of tacit mesmerism and wind up beating themselves down, internally.

We presume a non-white lesbian teacher wouldn’t have to worry about any of this.

“Future teachers will recognize and demonstrate understanding of white privilege,” proposes TERI, and must cultivate “the ability to be self-critical” (page 5). “Future teachers will recognize that schools are socially constructed systems that are susceptible to racism” (page 9). Apparently none of the authors of this tripe has contemplated the likely consequences of having a white teacher stand in front of a roomful of black students and teach them that all white authority figures are tainted by racism, and therefore illegitimate. But education theorists never worry about how their theories play out in real life.

What Are ‘White Values’?

TERI wants future teachers to be critical of the “history of demands for assimilation to white, middle-class, Christian meanings and values” (page 12). “Assimilation” is presumed to be bad, a form of oppression. Presumably there are “white values” and “non-white values,” but we are not told what those may be—only that it would be wrong to teach non-white children to adopt white values. Nor should children who are not of the middle class—which is undefined—be encouraged to adopt middle-class values, whatever those may be. Are they saying that if a child comes from a neighborhood where gangs, drugs, and promiscuity are the rule, the child must never aspire to anything better? And of course, under no circumstances are children to be led on to embrace “Christian meanings and values.”

“Every faculty member at our university that trains our teachers must comprehend and commit to the centrality of race, class, culture, and gender issues in teaching and learning, and consequently, hone their teaching and course foci accordingly,” TERI concludes (page 14). Note the use of the word “must.” Must implies no option. If you don’t think “race” or “gender” should be central to teaching little kids that two and two make four, you are not conforming to the program.

TERI asks itself, “How can we be sure that teaching supervisors are themselves developed and equipped in cultural competence outcomes in order to supervise beginning teachers around issues of race, class, culture, and gender?” And answers itself:

“Required training/workshop for all supervisors. Perhaps as part of an orientation/thank you/recognition ceremony/reception at the beginning of the year” (page 13)—with emphasis on “required.”

The original stylistic monstrosity, as reported by Katherine Kersten of StarTribune.com, read: “Require training/workshop for all supervisors. Perhaps a training session disguised as a thank you/recognition ceremony/reception at the beginning of the year?”⁴ The TERI authors dropped the word “disguised” after Kersten reported on it.

Guilt-Ridden Teachers

Here is the first paragraph of TERI’s “Introduction,” which features quotes from new teachers:

“As an Anglo teacher, I struggle to quiet voices from my own farm family, echoing as always from some unstated standard … How can we untangle our own deeply entrenched assumptions?” (page 1)

Why should she be struggling? Why should she feel guilty about being an “Anglo” from a farm family? If she were from a family of illegal aliens living in some seedy section of Los Angeles, she would be expected to “celebrate” her heritage and never, never “assimilate” out of it!

Another teacher agonizes over her failure to know that Korean Buddhists “only write a person’s name in red at the time of death or at the anniversary of a death. Therefore, to see the names of their children in red terrified the Korean parents” (page 1).

Is anyone aware that America is not Korea? Why would anyone come here from Korea, if they expected America to be exactly like Korea? Can you imagine being a teacher, and having to walk on eggs among half a dozen exotic cultures represented in your classroom? What if someone else panics when he sees blue ink? But this is what happens when you insist that there be no assimilation into a broad American culture.

Writes a third teacher, fretting over racial “segregation” in schools as demonstrated by the amount of money spent on one school district compared to another, “Students are given a direct measure of their social worth and future chances by the amount of money they see being spent on education. When we look at the disparities in educational expenditures we have to acknowledge that most white students have tremendous educational advantages over students of color …” (page 1).

This is either monumental ignorance, and a mindless repetition of the teachers’ union mantra of “More money! More money,” or a brazen attempt to deceive the reader. In fact, fantastic amounts of money are spent on some of the least-white, poorest-performing school districts in America.

Case in point: the Newark, NJ, public school district, with a predominantly non-white student body, in school year 2008–09, budgeted for an annual per-pupil cost of almost $20,000—$19,182, to be exact.⁵ And no one would dare say the Newark schools deliver an education worth $20,000 a year to their students.

How much more money must taxpayers cough up before academics are satisfied that “social justice” has been served?

But Not in My State…

We could easily offer many more quotes from the TERI document, but we do not wish to weary the reader. Anyone with Internet access, and a strong stomach, can read the whole thing on the FIRE website.

The point is, are “healthy-minded teachers” likely to emerge from such a training program? Do you want your children taught by persons obsessed with racial grievances?

Chalcedon has for its entire history advocated Christian education, either at home or in a Christian school. Studying TERI has not made us change our minds. But if you’re still sending your children to a public school, reading TERI should surely give you second thoughts.

“Oh, but that’s in Minnesota! The teachers in my state don’t get trained like that …”

We are used to such objections. We think they are based on a powerful desire that the reader’s own local public school district really is different—not like all the rest of those wretched schools you read about. We regret to say we believe that’s wishful thinking.

But don’t take our word for it. Read your children’s textbooks. Ask to see the “sex education” textbook that they’re using: some school districts don’t allow those books to be taken home. Visit the teachers’ union websites—the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are the two biggest unions—and see how committed they are to pushing and promoting every item on the socialist wish list, from “gay marriage” to Global Warming and socialized medicine. See for yourself what their elected officers have to say about Christians and Christian beliefs.

Why should your local public schools be any different from the others?⁶

1. R. J. Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, [1963] 1995), 283.

2. http://www.thefire.org/public/pdfs/9239ef598b87a328c3240fccbf21c942.pdf

3. http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=117313

4. Katherine Kersten, StarTribune.com, Nov. 22, 2009

5. http://www.nps.k12.nj.us/District_Budget.htm

6. For a look at a privately-produced mis-education program, intended for distribution nationwide, see http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2009/12/11/hollywood_and_howard_zinns_marxist_education_project

Judge: Christian Must Film Lesbian ‘Wedding’

2009-12-18T15:31:00.003-05:00

A New Mexico court has ruled that a Christian photographer broke the law by refusing to film a lesbian “commitment ceremony.” The case was originally reported here on June 19, 2008.

The state “Human Rights” commission last year fined Elane Photography almost $7,000 for not photographing a lesbian “marriage.” The defendants, a husband-and-wife small business, were represented by the Alliance Defense Fund. The ADF has announced that it will appeal the case to the New Mexico Court of Appeals.

The district court judge ruled that Elane Photography “does not represent a particular point of view or association of like-minded people. A photography business exists simply to take and sell photographs.” The judge ruled that “a sincerely held belief does not justify discrimination based upon sexual orientation under the New Mexico Human Rights Act,” and that the photographer “is not being forced to participate in any ceremony or ritual; the only requirement is that she photograph the event.” (You can read the entire ruling)

We do not understand this ruling as anything but the state predictably taking the side of homosexual activists against Christians, and we are afraid we will see more of it in this country before we see less. How a photographer can film an event, thus memorializing it, without being a part of it, escapes us.

What kind of event would a Christian photographer not be “required” to photograph? Would the judge “require” a homosexual photographer to film someone trampling the AIDS Quilt? Would he “require” a Jewish photographer to film an Aryan Brotherhood picnic? We doubt it.

Probably the judge does not know that Christians are prohibited from taking any part in any event that holds God’s law up to contempt. “When thou sawest a thief,” says Psalm 50 (v. 18), “then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.” To witness an act of theft or adultery, and say nothing, is to give tacit consent to it and, indeed, to share in it. Even secular law recognizes this as “misprision of a felony,” and it may be prosecuted as an offense in and of itself. Here in New Mexico, then, we have a judge “requiring” a Christian to do against God’s law something she would be punished for if she did against man’s law.

Whether ADF’s appeal is successful or not, we pray for strength to weather the statist storm until Our Lord rises up and stills the waters.

Book Review: Occult America

2009-12-16T07:29:00.003-05:00

Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation

by Mitch Horowitz

(New York: Bantam Books, 2009)

Reviewed by Lee Duigon

“This prophet of the New Age [Edgar Cayce] introduced hope and dignity into lives and places where conventional messages and messengers had failed to reach. And this, in the end, was the highest legacy of occult America.”

–Mitch Horowitz (p. 245)

“All humanism is occultistic … Central to all occultism is man’s desire to be his own god; practically, this takes the form of trying to seize control over men and the universe by lawless and ungodly means. Occultism in its every form is thus rebellion against God and therefore against every godly authority.”[1]–R. J. Rushdoony

Almost everyone in America believes in God, and most of those believers identify themselves as Christians. Until very recently, it was taken for granted that America is a Christian nation.

Mitch Horowitz, “a well-known voice for occult and esoteric ideas” (according to his book’s cover copy), casts doubt on this assertion. Surveying occult trends and movements in America, from before the founding of the country to the present day, Horowitz doesn’t just question our status as a Christian culture. “At work and at church, on television and in bookstores,” he proclaims, “there was no avoiding it: Occult America had prevailed” (p. 258).

Occult “Core Beliefs”

Is it true? Has occultism “prevailed”? Fortune-telling, astrology, psychic healing, “past lives regressions,” reciting special prayers to harness “God power,” gurus and secret societies, etc.—is this as much a part of our culture, or more, than the Bible?

Yes, says Horowitz, it is. As proof, he lists five “New Age core beliefs” (p. 257):

–“Belief in the therapeutic value of spiritual or religious ideas

– “Belief in a mind-body connection in health

– “Belief that human consciousness is evolving to higher stages

– “Belief that thoughts, in some greater or lesser measure, determine reality

– “Belief that spiritual understanding is available without allegiance to a specific religion or doctrine.”

“Most twenty-first-century Americans,” adds Horowitz, “whatever their background, would probably agree with a majority of those statements” (p. 258). He offers no evidence to back it up—but can anyone be sure his claim is false, and that those beliefs, so strongly advanced by occultists throughout our history, have not seeped into the mainstream? What would be the results if someone took a poll?

A Rogues Gallery

Horowitz’s book is a rather superficial survey. It’s obvious that there’s just too much material to cover in depth in one volume. We learn enough herein to realize that the subject of Occult America might easily fill a library.

The writing is easy and breezy. Here and there the author pauses to give a fuller picture of some of the more important and intriguing personalities involved—Anne Lee, founder of the Shakers; Jemima Wilkinson, the “Publick Universal Friend”; Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism; “the Poughkeepsie Seer,” Andrew Jackson Davis; Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science; Frank B. Robinson, the king of mail-order, do-it-yourself religion; Professor Black Herman, the magician; Manly P. Hall, who wrote an encyclopedia of occultism; and, of course, Edgar Cayce, “the Sleeping Prophet” and long-distance psychic healer. These were all key figures in the growth of American occultism. We are also treated to a whole rogues’ gallery of outright quacks, exploiters, and even mental patients who also powered the engine of the occult. It’s quite a collection.

The information given is interesting and entertaining. But because there are more important issues to be discussed here, we cannot give space to it. Those readers who would enjoy a trip down a curious side-road of popular culture will enjoy this book.

What’s Wrong With It?

So what’s wrong with a little fortune-telling? Why shouldn’t a Christian dabble in numerology, or play with a Ouija board?

The most obvious answer is, because it’s all a lot of humbug. Occult beliefs simply aren’t true, and can be shown to be false—at least false to Christianity—by testing them against the Scriptures.

Let’s return to the New Age core beliefs, listed above.

Is there a “therapeutic value” to “religious and spiritual ideas,” and a “mind-body connection in health”?

Christians would agree that “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16), especially when it comes to healing the sick. In Acts 19, “God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul: So that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them…” (v. 11–12). There may or may not be a “mind-body connection” as New Agers understand it. But what the Bible is describing is a “faith-body connection.” Fervent prayer to a sovereign God who has the power and the authority to heal is not the same as obtaining health through positive thinking or ritual mumbo-jumbo.

Can we agree that “human consciousness is evolving to higher stages?” Not if we believe God’s Word, which tells us that the human heart is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer.17:9), and that “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). But occultists are talking about a “natural” process inherent in man. Nothing could be farther from the Biblical view of fallen man. Besides which, even a fleeting glance at the daily news headlines should dispel any wishful thoughts that mankind might not be fallen, after all.

God by His sovereign grace regenerates His whole creation, including man. “After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31:33). To believe that this “just happens” by some evolutionary process is to dismiss the grace and power of God. It doesn’t just happen: God does it.

Do “thoughts determine reality?” Here’s a simple way to test that proposition. Just find an open manhole, sincerely convince yourself it’s closed, and try to stand on it. Happy landings.

Is “spiritual understanding available without allegiance to a specific religion or doctrine?” Regardless of what liberal theologians in mainstream churches say, any Christian who believes this has set aside the words of Christ Himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).

“Spiritual understanding” that is devoid of God the Son, or God the Father, or God the Holy Spirit, is no understanding at all. As Paul said to the Athenians, who didn’t listen, “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent…” (Acts 17:30). Occultism is a willful return to the times of ignorance.

Even a superficial examination of Scripture rejects occult “beliefs” and brands them as apostasy.

Whose Fault?

Americans are famously fond of short cuts and quick fixes. On the surface, this would seem to explain much of the enduring popularity of the occult. Why rely on God—who may or may not grant your prayer, whose ways are not our ways, who alone is fully autonomous—when you can get whatever you want simply by wearing certain colors or reciting a certain “prayer” a certain way? But there’s more to it than that.

Perhaps the church has failed. Mr. Horowitz thinks so: “[M]ainstream Christian churches either had to address the problems of daily existence”—supposedly addressed by the occult—“or else risk irrelevance,” he writes (p. 115). And, “…Phineas Quimby’s mental healing, William Dudley Pelley’s reports from the afterlife, and Frank B. Robinson’s claims to have ‘talked with God.’ Each tore the lid off a yearning that existed just beneath the surface of popular religious culture” (p. 196). And Edgar Cayce “introduced hope and dignity into lives and places where conventional messages and messengers had failed to reach” (p. 245). Presumably this refers to Christian churches and the Christian message.

As Horowitz sees it, the church simply wasn’t meeting people’s needs, and they turned to the occult to fill the gaps. We presume he is talking about worldly needs; but he does not tell us exactly how the church fell short.

R. J. Rushdoony looked more deeply into the matter, going back to the “Great Awakening” and the rise of revivalism in the eighteenth century.

“[O]ccult practices,” he wrote, “returned as an ostensible Christian revival, in both Catholic and Protestant circles… The place of law in sanctification gave way to antinomianism [rejection of God’s law], and the Great Awakening saw militant free-love preaching as a part of the ‘revival’ and as ‘proof’ or salvation and freedom from the law. Although the main body of the clergy suppressed this antinomianism, it remained endemic to revivalism…”[2]

Rushdoony continues, “The Bible was put aside during revivals, because men wanted experience, not truth. Rampant humanism led not only to exalting man’s pretended sovereignty as against God’s, but to exalting man to ridiculous dimensions”[3]—by believing, perhaps, that man is “evolving to a higher state,” whatever that may be.

Certainly the church is not without blame, having failed to insist on truth, failed to defend the sufficiency of God’s Word, and even imitated its occult competitors. “Indeed,” says Horowitz, “books and sermons emanating from the twenty-first century’s ‘megachurches’ abound in the how-to appeal that marked the [Frank B.] Robinson approach” (p.115).

But before we assign all the blame to the church, consider St. Paul’s epistle to the churches in Galatia:

“I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel… O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you…?” (Gal. 1:6, 3:1)

Paul had barely left this mission field when tares of heresy and superstition sprang up among the wheat of Christianity. Had Paul made mistakes in planting those churches, whose congregations so readily lent their ears to the preaching of “another gospel”? Or is there something in the nature of fallen man that prefers the world’s lies to God’s truth?

They Want to Believe

Some people have a natural appetite for hogwash. Writer H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) invented a forbidden occult tome, The Necronomicon, as a literary device to tie together a series of his horror stories. Although Lovecraft himself frequently and publicly confessed The Necronomicon to be a product of his own imagination, to this day there are a plethora of websites devoted to the proposition that he was lying and The Necronomicon is real. People even claim to have seen it.[4]

What makes anyone believe in such claptrap? Horowitz does not answer the question—maybe to him it isn’t claptrap—so we turn again to Rushdoony.

“To seek the occultist route to the future is to say that the future is determined apart from God,” Rushdoony wrote.[5] And, “The occult is that which is deliberately concealed from observation or knowledge; it is so concealed because it is antinomian; it is at war with law because it is lawless.”[6]

Fallen man shies away from God: we remember Adam and Eve trying to hide their nakedness from God (Gen. 3:8). Even the destruction of Jerusalem, brought about by God after repeated warnings through His prophets, failed to convince the survivors of their folly. “But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven,” they answered the prophet Jeremiah, “and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine” (Jer. 44:18). They chase after false gods, and occult practices, no matter how badly they are burned.

Occultism Is Rebellion

“The rise of occultism,” Rushdoony said, “thus will foster rebellion in every area of society, and the rise of rebellion will likewise foster occultism.”[7] Anyone who doubts the accuracy of that analysis needs to attend his city’s next Gay Pride parade.

Throughout the history of the occult in America, notes Horowitz, the occult and political progressivism have grown closer and closer together. By “political progressivism” we mean the use of state power to break down the people’s allegiance to God’s moral laws as given in the Bible, purposely deconstructing and coarsening the culture to make men more dependent on the state.

“[New Thought minister Wallace] Wattles believed in using mind power to wipe away barons of industry and overthrow the prevailing social order,” Horowitz writes (p. 89), looking back 100 years, helping to set “a progressive tone that marked the metaphysical culture for the rest of the century” (p. 220).

It didn’t seem sinister at first, did it? In a 1941 speech, Frank B. Robinson said, “We meet here today not on a theological background, but on the foreground of a spiritual conception, the common meeting ground of every race, every creed, every color, every philosophy, and every religion on the face of the earth” (p. 113). Who can object to such robust pluralism? You can’t get more inclusive than that.

But it’s not possible to cleave to both Christianity and universalism: they are diametrically opposed. When you try to include all religions, you wind up throwing out the Christian religion. When you exclude “theology,” you build without a foundation. In its embrace of religious universalism, the occult reveals its antinomian core.

“Rebellion is thus not an isolated fact; it is part of a much larger pattern,” Rushdoony wrote. “In the history of revolutions, of cultural collapse, the occult plays a significant role. It is evidence of radical decay and a major influence for destruction.”[8]

Harsh words, perhaps: but Christ the King is exclusive in His claim to truth—“I am the truth”—and for the Christian, there’s no getting around it. You can’t have Christ and the I Ching, Christ and the “ascended masters,” Christ and anything or anybody else.

It may seem strange to give more ink to R. J. Rushdoony than to Mitch Horowitz, in a review of Horowitz’s book. But when Christian churches ape the self-help gobbledygook invented by occultists, when supposed Christian leaders like President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, consult astrologers to help them make important decisions (Horowitz, p. 221), and when a supposed Christian nation casually embraces bits and pieces of the occult while its culture deteriorates before our very eyes—well, there’s more at stake than just “How did you like the book?”

Even if the churches were to return wholesale to Biblical teaching and preaching, they would have their work cut out for hem. The occult has been with us since Old Testament times, appealing as it does to inborn sin. Long before Saul consulted the Witch of Endor, Moses said, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exod. 22:18).

We can only ask the churches to plant, and individual Christians to water. The increase, as always, must be the gift of God (1 Cor. 3:6–7).

1. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. II (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2001 ed.), 160–161.

2. Ibid.,157–158.

3. Ibid., 158

4. For example, see http://www.geocities.com/soho/9870/nechor.htm

5. Rushdoony, 162.

6. Ibid., 163.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

Chalcedon's Chris Ortiz Interviewed on Kevin Swanson's Generations with Vision Radio Show

2009-12-14T14:40:00.003-05:00

Listen to the interview here and remember to support the fine work of men like Kevin Swanson.

Usury and Cosmic Personalism

2009-12-14T09:05:00.004-05:00

By R. J. Rushdoony

The modern system of commercial credit has been traced back to Babylon, the great source of modern financial enterprise. As against this system and history, another concept early made its appearance in man’s records, the biblical law. The biblical concept was subverted steadily after the Babylonian Captivity, revived by the Christian Church, and is now again in eclipse.

There was a developed system of commercial credit in Babylon, but no such system in ancient Israel.[1] In normative biblical culture, it was always the poor who borrowed.[2] These were then debts of emergency and hence speedily repaid[3] when the emergency ended. The “emergency” might be, as with Judah, not a valid one, but only a temporary exigency normally led to debt. More usually, debts in Israel were the products of failures of crops and heavy foreign tribute.[4] Borrower and lender were cited by Isaiah as types in the nation,[5] but it is significant that the Hebrew had no clear-cut word for debtor, which fact appears in I Samuel 22:2. The reading here for debtor is “everyone that was in debt,” or, as the marginal reading gives it, “every one that had a creditor.” This would indicate that a debtor class did not exist, no word existing for it. Emergency situations, famines, wars, such things led to debt, and tragedy as well,[6] but normal times were relatively debt-free times.

To borrow meant tragedy, and hence the necessity of graciousness on the part of the lender.[7] The blessing of God meant a debt-free economy.[8] Mercy toward the needy was to be exercised even when the jubilee year was nigh, loans being made despite the nearness of cancellation time.[9]

Debts were limited by the sabbatical year and jubilee. Debts of money, if not repaid, were cancelled on the seventh year, not of issue but in cycles of forty-nine. The fiftieth year, the jubilee, led to a restoration of foreclosed lands, so that foreclosures were valid to the middle and end of each century (when this law was observed). The land was to rest, to lie fallow, on each seventh year, this being the release of the land as well as of debts.[10] The Babylonian Captivity lasted seventy years because seventy sabbath years were due to the land,[11] the captivity coming “To fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept the sabbath, to fulfil three-score and ten years.”[12] The release of debts every seventh year[13] did not apply to foreigners, nor did the jubilee, foreigners here meaning unbelieving foreigners.

At this point, the biblical law is often severely criticized as being partial. The criticism is unjust. The law required justice to all men, Leviticus 19 making clear that our neighbor is every foreigner. To all such, the second table of the law is strictly applied. We must expect all men to keep it, and we must abide by it ourselves. To love our neighbor or enemy means to keep the second table of the law.[14] To love in the biblical sense here used is not an emotional attitude but a keeping of the law in relation to our neighbor. This means respecting his right to life (Thou shalt not kill), the sanctity of his home (Thou shalt not commit adultery), and of his property (Thou shalt not steal), and of his reputation (Thou shalt not bear false witness), and finally, respecting these things in thought (Thou shalt not covet) as well as in deed.

This is the general law of justice. Beyond that, our conduct is to be regulated by relationship. We must render honor and justice to all men wherever due, but we have a particular responsibility to care for our own. This means first of all our families, for the man who fails to care for his own is worse than an infidel.[15] No special gift could be dedicated to God and accounted acceptable if a man meanwhile failed to provide for his parents.[16] Next in order of concern are fellow believers, true believers. Here, however, no false charity was allowed to prevail.[17] The biblical laws forbad false charity. But, to the deserving, in addition to gleaning permission, and emergency relief, non-interest loans were made. There was a duty of lending and of paying.[18] Pledges or security could be required to protect the lender, but the law restricted the type of security which could be exacted.[19] The creditor could not enter the home to remove the security but had to wait outside.[20] Some pious men required no pledge[21] or else would promptly restore it.[22]

Biblical conduct is regulated by relationship, and to subvert this is to lead directly into welfare economics and socialism. If a man must exercise towards all men the same care, oversight, and charity he does towards his own family, then an impossible burden is placed on him. Statist foreign policy places this burden on men, a form of enslavement. Biblical ethics, by calling for justice to all men, brotherly love among believers, and full care for one’s own, is an ethics of freedom and responsibility. Every system of “universal” ethics is at one and the same time a system of universal slavery. A man’s relationship to his wife is ethically different from his relationship to all other women, and the same applies to his children, parents, and relatives. To universalize the relationship is to communize man and the family and to destroy the church. And today the family is weak, and the church very fragile, because of this unbiblical universalism.

Usury to the believer is forbidden,[23] first, because this poor man belongs to the people of God and has lost a measure of freedom through troubles and needs help, and second, usury adds to his burden. The believer is to avoid debt, because, as God’s servant, he cannot be men’s servant. Leviticus 25:36, 37 held to no interest on loans to a believer, and no limitation on interest to an unbeliever. This is restated in Deuteronomy 23:19,20 with reference to foreigners, i.e., unbelievers.

Thus, years 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, and 50 of each fifty-year cycle called for sabbaths of the land and of debts. Two very important principles are clearly apparent here:

1. The believer cannot mortgage his future. His life belongs to God, and he cannot sell out his tomorrows to men, nor bind his family’s or country’s future. This means that long-term personal loans, deficit financing, and national debts involve paganism. What we cannot do to ourselves we cannot permit either our families or our fellow believers to do to themselves. A country which is Christian is similarly to be governed. But we cannot expect unbelievers to live by our faith or by God’s law; and to allow them the liberty of their way is no sin, providing we deal justly with them.
2. The land also belongs to God. As Scripture repeatedly affirms, “The earth is the Lord’s.” The land therefore must be used in conformity to His law.

The believer lives in a world of unbelievers, and commercial credit is the order of the day. Interest is not condemned in the New Testament,[24] but debt on the part of believers is to be avoided.[25] However, the intrusion of Babylonian practices into the temple met with Christ’s whip.[26] The believer must be in the world but not of the world.[27]

The modern system of commercial credit is, like the Babylonian, a form of slavery. The Civil War saw the abolition of limited private slavery, involving three million people, and the imposition of slavery to the state and the furtherance of slavery to financial interests. Some people are by nature slaves, demanding total security of a master, employer, or of the state. But to impose slavery on our children is no less a sin.[28]

The Sabbath and Jubilee Years again are central. These were types, as was the weekly Sabbath, of the restoration of paradise and the work of Christ. Man ceases from working because he knows it is God’s work of grace that saves him. All days of rest in other religions are imitations of biblical faith. No day of rest existed otherwise. Other religions, Babylonian and Pharisaic, are in essence and practice works religions. Christianity, as was true Old Testament faith, is not; hence, it rests in worship to indicate that salvation is not man’s work. The rest of the land involved confidence that God’s bounty would more than replenish what was lost by man’s inactivity. DeTocqueville commented on the importance of the Christian Sabbath in the American republic. The decline of that day of rest has gone hand in hand with the rise of a works religion and a credit economy which mortgages man’s future. The deeper significance of this external parallel is that civil slavery is the analogue of spiritual blindness and bondage. But, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek may face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”[29]

The difference between the Babylonian and biblical outlooks has been cited; it remains now to develop it briefly. Economic man had high authority in Babylonian culture. War was seen in essentially economic terms and as a means to economic power. To the Babylonians of Nebuchadnezzar’s day, “What mattered to them, so far as the king’s victories were concerned, was not the glory of battle so much as the fact that it was a means of consolidating their economic supremacy.”[30]

The roots, however, lie deeper, back into the Old Babylonian period of Hammurabi and earlier. There was a class known as tamkaru (singular tamkarum). The word tamkarum can be translated as merchant, broker, merchant banker, money-lender, and government agent.[31] Fulfilling all these functions, he was an able instrument of imperial power, in that, long before any armies marched, he had bound foreign powers to himself both hand and foot. This same policy characterized Assyria, and Nahum cited as a central sin of Assyria before God that it had “multiplied merchants above the stars of heaven,”[32] i.e., exercised economic slavery in one area after another. The Babylonians were money-lenders not only out of dedicated policy but with fervor, zest, and relish. One of their proverbs expresses this outlook clearly: “The giving of a loan is like making love; the returning of a loan is like having a son born.”[33] They were thus a breed of proud and happy Shylocks. Their whole world of business moved in terms of credit financing, and their whole concept of social control and of imperialism rested on usury. It is not surprising that Babylon the Great, the harlot, is the type in Revelation of the one-world order which shall seduce all nations.

For biblical economy, loans are not the basis of normal operation as with Babylon, but of abnormal circumstances. As such, and definitely as such, they have their place, but they operate in terms of implicit as well as explicit restrictions. Two kinds of loans were recognized: to the believer without usury but with security, and to the unbeliever, with usury and security. But in both instances the presupposition is that something real, in goods or in money, is transferred, a tangible asset involving only the two parties to the contract. Modern banking, however, is radically different. Banks “create” money by fiat and by the unilateral action of simply recording a loan and a deposit on their books. The consequence is, not the personal and limited action of a biblical loan, but inflation, the dilution of the prior relationship of money units to total goods and services. As a result, there is a dilution of all money, and such “loans” mean an element of robbery in that they reduce the value of all other money units previously in existence. Fractional reserves and modern central banking (i.e., the Federal Reserve System) are modern applications of the old Babylonian principles and are equally conducive to the dream of empire.

Prior to the introduction of central banking, the ability to create fiat money was relatively limited, and it depended in large measure on the confidence of individuals in the local bank. Today, the instrument of control has passed to the larger units, and the Federal Reserve System, its directors and stockholders, the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and other agencies are engaged in manipulating the money supply. In 1959, “Federal Reserve notes comprised 90% of paper money in circulation and 84% of total money in circulation.”[34]

Biblical law is hostile to this pyramiding of credit. It is premised on immediate responsibility, whereas the Babylonian and modern systems evade immediate responsibility. Today, the law penalizes the individual with almost unlimited liabilities, so that every kind of insurance is necessary for the individual as homeowner, driver, and parent (in the event that his child blackens a bully’s eyes). On the other hand, corporate irresponsibility is fostered by limited liability laws which, over a period of time, separate property from control, ownership from management, and management from responsibility. Social irresponsibility is thus furthered, and the responsible man hamstrung. Biblical faith declares that a personal God created every fact in the universe, so that every fact is a personal fact. Impersonality is thus ruled out of the universe. As we deal with ourselves and everything under the sun, we deal also with our very personal Creator. Any attempt to introduce impersonality into the universe is to that degree an attempt to separate the universe from the government of God.[35] The impersonal economics of Babylon and of today are thus anti-biblical and are attempts to substitute fiat “creations” of man for the absolute government of God. As such, they incur the wrath of God, whose advance judgment Scripture proclaims: “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen… And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her…”[36] In terms of this comes the summons, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”[37]

In conclusion, in Scripture interest was legal for loans which were not charity loans. Debt was not to be a normal thing or a way of life. Debt was an emergency, or “need,” matter, not normally a consumption loan, and only a severely conservative production loan.

1. See W. H. Bennett, “Debt,” in James Hastings, ed., A Dictionary of the Bible, vol. I (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1919), 579f.

2. Exodus 22:25.

3. Genesis 38:18.

4. Nehemiah 5:3, 4.

5. Isaiah 24:2.

6. II Kings 4:1-7.

7. Deut. 15:7-11.

8. Deut. 15:6; 28:12,44.

9. Ps. 37:26; 112:5; Prov. 19:17; Ex. 22:25; Deut. 23:19,20; Lev. 25:36,37; Ps. 15:5; Prov. 28:8; Ezek. 18:8-17; 22:12; Neh. 5.

10. See Ex. 23:10ff; Lev. 25:lff.

11. Jer. 25:9,12; 26:6,7.

12. II Chron. 36:21.

13. Deut. 15:1-6.

14. Matt. 19:18,19; Rom. 13:8, 9.

15. I Timothy 5:8.

16. Matt. 15:4, 5, 6; Mark 7:11,12.

17. II Thess. 3:10, 11.

18. Luke 6:34,35; Rom. 13:8; cf. Matt. 6:12.

19. Deut. 24:17; 24:6; Job 24:3.

20. Deut. 24:10-13.

21. Job 22:6; 24:9.

22. Ezek. 18:7-16; 33:15.

23. Ex. 22:25.

24. Luke 7:41,42; 19:11-27; Matt. 18:23-35; 25:14-30; Luke 16:1-13.

25. Rom. 13:8,9.

26. Matt. 21:12f; Mark. 11:15-18; Luke 19:45-48; John 2:12-17.

27. John 17:14, 15.

28. Ex. 21:16; Deut. 24:7.

29. II Chron. 7:14.

30. Albert Champdor: Babylon, (New York: J. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958), 114.

31. H. W. F. Saggs: The Greatness that Was Babylon, p. 287f. New York: Hawthorn, 1962.

32. Nahum 3:16.

33. Saggs, p. 290.

34. Thomas C. Cochrane, Wayne Andrews, eds.: Concise Dictionary of American History. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962), 711.

35. In 1664, Thomas Mun, in England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade, espoused usury in terms of its purely impersonal values to England. This scientism and impersonalism were commended without any attempt to deal systematically with the Christian issues involved. Mun was republished in 1949 by Basil Blackwell, Oxford, and is an excellent example of good, non-theistic economic thought.

36. Rev. 18:2, 11.

37. Rev. 18:4.

Socialism as a Perpetual Civil War

2009-12-09T08:28:00.000-05:00

By R. J. Rushdoony

Socialism and communism presuppose that their system represents the true order of the ages and is the answer to man’s problems. This assumption is one that assumes man’s problems to be not spiritual but material, not sin but environment. Change man’s environment and you will then remake man, it is held. The answer to man’s problems is therefore not the spiritual regeneration of man by Jesus Christ but the reorganization of society by the scientific socialist state.

Basic to the theory of scientific socialism is its infallibility concept. Every system of thought has an infallibility concept, but few are honest enough to admit it. Ultimate, final, and inerrant authority is vested somewhere in the system as the basic and assured arbiter of truth or reality. The scientific socialistic state sees scientific socialism as the infallible truth of history; its application ensures the perfect social order. If failures occur in scientific socialist states, it is not the fault of scientific socialism, which is by definition infallible and true, but of the hostile people, remnants of the capitalistic class, or traitorous members of the party. Because the scientific socialist state cannot blame itself, it must wage civil war against some portion of the state. Thus, first of all, socialism’s answer to every problem is civil war. Someone is guilty, but never socialism itself.

Illustrations of this are many. The Soviet Union has faced a situation of continual purges. The purges of the 1930s stand out merely as being more dramatic than the routine ones. But every crisis in the Soviet Union demands a scapegoat, and war is therefore waged against some portion of the Party, the bureaucracy, or the masses.

In Communist China, according to a news report of Friday, March 24, 1967, pestilence broke out widely, with many contagious diseases spreading across the country. The Communist regime’s answer to an already serious crisis was to threaten the doctors of China with a purge. The doctors were responsible, the Shanghai Radio declared, because they “had ignored Mao’s health policies.”1 The consequence of such a policy, the purge of doctors in a country with a serious shortage of medical men, only aggravated a serious situation, but anything is preferable to admitting that socialism can make mistakes and be an erroneous theory.

In the United States, inflation is a product of the federal government’s departure from a hard money standard, from gold to paper, and a product of its debt living or deficit financing. The guilt for inflation is essentially the federal government’s guilt. But the blame is instead shifted by federal officials to the private sector: labor is creating inflation by demanding higher wages, and business is inflationary because it demands higher prices for goods, and threats are made of wage and price controls. The demands of capital and labor are, of course, the results of inflation and their steps to protect themselves against it, but the policy of socialism is to ascribe all guilt to the people, and all wisdom to the state, in every crisis.

In these and other cases, the answer always remains the same: the socialist state wages war on the people. Whenever the scientific socialist state makes a mistake, the people suffer.

The second aspect of this socialist civil warfare is that it is perpetual civil war because of perpetual failure. Socialism is incapable of solving any problem it addresses itself to in the economic sphere. Because its premises are unsound and wholly in error, its conclusions are consistently failures. But, since socialism is by definition the scientific answer to problems of society, socialism cannot blame itself. As a result, it wages perpetual civil warfare as its answer to perpetual failure.

Third, the consequence of this perpetual civil warfare is an ever-deepening crisis. Propaganda works to disguise the crisis. We are always told that the Soviet Union is making economic and industrial progress and is becoming a milder dictatorship, but the reality is that it has merely gone from crisis to crisis and has faced a growing food shortage as a tribute to its incompetence. The other socialisms of the world have similar troubles. The little Fabian Socialist State of Great Britain is sinking steadily into the economic consequences of its own policies, and other Fabian states face a growing monetary and economic crisis. Socialism is never the way out for socialism, but simply the guarantee of an economic dead end.

Fourth, this perpetual civil warfare can and will terminate in the death of the state, and possibly of the civilization as well. It is destructive of the public and private resources of the state; the socialist state can sometimes build stone monuments and edifices, but it cannot perpetuate a living social order; it can only kill the order it seizes or inherits. It has often been observed that it is only when a civilization is dying that it begins monumental building constructions. Prior to that time, its concern is more with life than show. We cannot therefore misread socialism’s predisposition for monumental construction as a sign of life; it is tombstone construction.

Fifth, perpetual civil warfare means in some form perpetual violence or repressive force, and as a result, the use of terror is not only accepted but is often justified and exalted. Terror is defended and upheld as necessary to suppress the enemies of the people and to protect the state from destruction. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his Critique of Dialectical Reason, spoke of terror as “the very bond of fraternity.” Terror is made a moral principle and an inevitable requirement of history. As a result, “total terror” is practiced as a necessary and moral requirement of scientific socialism. Incredible brutality, barbarism, savagery, and degeneracy become the products of scientific socialism.2 Thus, the perpetual civil warfare that the scientific socialist state wages against its people is also a form of total warfare. It is more radical than total warfare, in that normal total warfare is for a stated period of hostilities, whereas the socialistic civil war and its terroristic total warfare have no end. It is a perpetual threat to the people, and, in varying degrees, continuously practiced. The more the state approaches total socialism, to that same degree it also approaches total terror and total civil war. It is this aspect of perpetual and total warfare that has made socialists like George Orwell, author of 1984, turn from socialism in horror, without believing really in anything else. Theirs is not a conversion but simply revulsion from terror.

Such a situation, of course, breaks down the will to work and the will to live of the subject peoples. Hope of escape, or hope that the socialist regime will end, begins to grow weaker, and the result is all the greater slow-down in agricultural and industrial production. This decline in productivity creates a major crisis, and the socialist leaders must give the people some reason to believe that there is hope of a change, a “thaw,” in the socialist terror and oppression. A cow, after all, will finally give no milk if it is not fed, and so the masses, like human cattle, are given enough fodder to make them productive again. Their previous sufferings are blamed on bad underlings, poor managers. Stalin, for example, placed the blame on minor officials who were supposedly too eager to attain perfect socialism overnight. In dealing with enforced collectivization of farms, in a Pravda statement of April 3, 1930, Stalin declared that the policy was a “voluntary one,” but unfortunately some officials were using threats and pressure.3 It was after this statement that millions were starved to death for resisting collectivization, but Stalin in advance had cleared himself publicly of responsibility and also encouraged those who were hostile to feel freer to make a stand. Khrushchev also gave promises of a thaw, and then launched into the vicious terror in Hungary, and the still-continuing and greatest terror against Christians.

The purposes of these brief thaws and breathers are strategic: they serve to give a despairing populace hope for a change. This, then, is simply a sixth, aspect of socialism’s civil warfare against its people. The thaw creates a deviation from socialist policy only for the purpose of reinforcing that policy.

This points clearly to a seventh aspect of socialism’s perpetual civil war: truth is at all times a central casualty. Since there is no truth apart from the scientific socialist state, any device, any lie, any strategy which will further the socialist experiment is valid. The lie is spoken to delude the masses and the enemy; speech has as its purpose not the communication of truth but utility to the dictatorship of the proletariat as a weapon of warfare. Semantics therefore becomes a major concern of socialism. Language must be used; it is a superb weapon. Certain words have powerful meanings to many men, and one way of using men’s minds against themselves is to misuse the words that have a particular meaning to them. To expect language to have the same content to a socialist as it does to a Christian is a delusion. For the socialist, language is instrumental; it is a tool of revolution. Instead of representing a means of communicating an objective order of truth, language is basically an instrument of power. For the socialist state to neglect to use language as an instrument of power is for it to be guilty of bourgeois sentiments and illusions.

This, then, is the course of action, perpetual civil warfare, required by the scientific socialist state to maintain its delusion of infallibility. This perpetual civil warfare is a consequence of its departure from God and its socialism. It is a suicidal course, one well described by our Lord of old, when He declared, “He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death” (Prov. 8:36).

1. Oakland Tribune, “China Hit by Outbreak of Pestilence,” Friday, March 24, 1967, 1.

2. Albert Kalme, Total Terror (New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951), and Harold H. Martinson, Red Dragon Over China (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1956).

3. W. R. Werner, ed., Stalin Kampf (New York, NY: Howell, Soskin, 1940), 252-257.

Political Saviors

2009-12-02T15:30:00.001-05:00

By R. J. Rushdoony

In describing the events of Palm Sunday, St. Matthew wrote:

1. All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet saying,

2. Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. (Matt. 21:4-5)

This formula, “All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet,” appears in nearly the same words twelve times in Matthew’s Gospel, three times in Mark, six times in Luke, and eight times in John. It is also common in Acts and the Epistles. Even more common is an expression declaring that it was thus written by a prophet: such references are almost too numerous to cite. Read the rest of this article...

Don't Preach the Gospel in School

2009-12-01T11:58:00.001-05:00

Are the "Death Panels" for Real?

2009-11-30T12:35:00.003-05:00

Sarah Palin struck a nerve this summer when she said, on her Facebook page:

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

Does the House of Representatives “health care reform bill,” HR 3200, really propose government “death panels” that would decide who should live and who should die? Read the rest of this article...

Holy Barbarians: The Push for Nationalized Academic Standards

2009-11-23T09:53:00.001-05:00

“The time has come for a serious consideration of national academic standards,” says the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten.

“A coalition of education leaders, advocacy groups, and teachers’ unions is pushing for the development of nationalized common academic standards,” reports U. S. News & World Report.

The plan, warns the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), is “to potentially eliminate virtually all state control over the education system and centralize education in Washington, D. C., through nationalized standards, which would lead to nationalized curriculum, tests, and textbooks.”

What’s it all about? Does Congress intend for federal bureaucrats to impose a “one-size-fits-all” public education regime on all fifty states, covering thousands of local school districts? Will the feds be content to micromanage public education, or will they try to corral Christian schools and family homeschools, too? Read the rest of this article...