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[ by Charles Cameron — continuing discussion with Prof Kohen re Rushdoony, dominionism, and cherry picking of Torah laws for US implementation ]
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Prof. Ari Kohen at Running Chicken responded to a comment of mine about Fuqua and Rushdoony, suggesting he’s cherry picking which Old Testament / Torah laws he would like to see brought into US law:

I’ll admit I don’t know anything at all about Rushdoony, but I use cherry-picking because my sense is that people like Fuqua aren’t really concerned with all of the laws in the Torah and that, in fact, they don’t follow most of them. Instead, they gravitate toward the ones that speak to their own (political) positions and then use the Torah as “back up.” Do you think, for example, that Fuqua cares about shatnes or kashrut? If not, why not? If so, what makes you think that he does? Also, what makes you think that Fuqua is connected to Rushdoony? Is there some evidence for the connection?

This sent me digging — I don’t know nearly as much as I’d like about Rushdoony and his influence on the Christian Right — and since my response was was too long to go in Running Chicken’s comment box, I thought I’d post it here.

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Ari, if you’ll permit me to greet you thus, many thanks for your care in encouraging me to tease out the subtleties.

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First, let me say that while I cannot say for certain that Fuqua is connected to Rushdoony, the latter’s impact on strands of modern evangelical thinking has been considerable, both overtly and covertly, by affiliation and more loosely by influence. He is generally considered the father of the Dominionist movement, sometimes termed Theonomy or Christian Reconstructionism, and Frederick Clarkson’s coverage of the movement for the progressive Political Research Associates magazine, Public Eye, characterizes it as a “stealth theology”:

A key, if not exclusively Reconstructionist, doctrine uniting many evangelicals is the “dominion mandate,” also called the “cultural mandate.” This concept derives from the Book of Genesis and God’s direction to “subdue” the earth and exercise “dominion” over it. While much of Reconstructionism, as one observer put it, “dies the death of a thousand qualifications,” the commitment to dominion is the theological principle that serves as the uniting force of Christian Right extremism, while people debate the particulars.
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Christian Reconstructionism is a stealth theology, spreading its influence throughout the Religious Right. Its analysis of America as a Christian nation and the security of complete control implied in the concept of dominion is understandably appealing to many conservative Christians. Its apocalyptic vision of rule by Biblical Law is a mandate for political involvement. Organizations such as COR and the Rutherford Institute provide political guidance and act as vehicles for growing political aspirations.

In A Covert Kingdom, Part Four of his article, Clarkson writes:

Gary North proposed stealth tactics more than a decade ago in The Journal of Christian Reconstruction (1981), urging “infiltration” of government to help “smooth the transition to Christian political leadership. . . .Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure, and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order.”

and:

The Christian Coalition actually proposed something similar to Gary North’s notion of “infiltration” when its 1992 “County Action Plan” for Pennsylvania advised that “You should never mention the name Christian Coalition in Republican circles.” The goal, apparently, is to facilitate becoming “directly involved in the local Republican Central Committee so that you are an insider. This way,” continues the manual, “you can get a copy of the local committee rules and a feel for who is in the current Republican Committee.” The next step is to recruit conservative Christians to occupy vacant party posts or to run against moderates who “put the Republican Party ahead of principle.”

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The second issue you present me with has to do with shatnez and kashruth, and here I certainly need to be explicit in saying that there are some aspects of the Mosaic law that Rushdoony would not apply to Christians.

Brian Schwertley, who has published in Rushdoony publications, divides Jewish law into three categories: ceremonial law, now superseded in Christ; moral law, unchanging and “binding on all nations, in all ages”; and judicial, “civil laws which applied only to the nation of Israel” – though he quickly adds:

There are also civil laws which are moral case laws. These case laws are based upon the Ten Commandments and are moral in character, and as such, are binding on all nations, in all ages. Laws that reflect God’s moral character are as binding and perpetual as the Ten Commandments themselves. [ … ] The continuing validity and necessity of the civil laws is plainly seen in the case of sexual immorality.

I’d say that’s probably a widely-held breakdown, and my previous comment should have been less sweeping. To my mind, though, this is still very far from cherry-picking — cherry-sorting, perhaps?

With that under our belt, we can proceed to the issues you suggested, shatnez and kashruth specifically.

In his Institutes, p. 23, Rushdoony writes:

Men dress in diverse and strange ways to conform to the world and its styles. What is so difficult or ‘coarse’ about any conformity to God’s law, or any mode God specifies? There is nothing difficult or strange about this law, nor any thing absurd or impossible.
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It [the wearing of fringed garments] is not observed by Christians, because it was, like circumcision, the Sabbath, and other aspects of the Mosaic form of the covenant, superseded by new signs of the covenant as renewed by Christ. The law of the covenant remains; the covenant rites and signs have been changed. But the forms of covenant signs are no less honorable, profound, and beautiful in the Mosaic form than in the Christian form. The change does not represent an evolutionary advance or a higher or lower relationship. The covenant was fulfilled in Jesus Christ; but God did not treat Moses, David, Isaiah, Hezekiah, or any of His Old Testament covenant people as lesser in His sight …

So yes, I’d have to agree that Rushdoony does not demand the fulfillment of all 613 mitzvoth, any more than most of Judaism does, if I understand correctly — but just as Judaism sees a specific subset of commandments as at least temporarily suspended in the absence of a Temple in Jerusalem, so Dominionism sees certain commandments suspended as fulfilled in Christ – with Rushdoony’s position tending to be very strict in limiting their number.

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Kashruth is an interesting case, because here Gary North, one of the premier writers on Dominionism and Rushdoony’s son-in-law, differs from Rushdoony himself.

There’s a section titled Rushdoony on the Dietary Laws in one of Gary North’s books which addresses the issue thus:

Because of a theological division within the Christian Reconstruction movement, I need to devote a little space to Acts 10. In a vision, God announced to Peter His definitive annulment of the Mosaic dietary laws:
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On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven (Acts 10:0-16).
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Rushdoony’s comment on Acts 10 asserts, but does not prove, his opinion that the dietary laws are still in force in New Testament times. He writes: “Acts 10 is commonly cited as abolishing the old dietary restrictions. There is no reason for this opinion. . . . There is no evidence in the chapter that the vision had anything to do with diet; . . .” [ … ]
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Rushdoony insists that the Mosaic dietary laws are still mandatory as health laws. “The various dietary laws, laws of separation, and other laws no longer mandatory as covenantal signs, are still valid and mandatory as health requirements in terms of Deuteronomy 7:12-16.”
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It is worth noting that Rushdoony broke sharply with Calvin on this crucial covenantal point. Calvin stated emphatically in his comments on Acts 10 that anyone who today establishes distinctions among foods based on the Mosaic law has adopted a position of “sacrilegious boldness” …

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There’s also an eschatological angle to Rushdoony’s (postmillennialist) influence and its reception in circles that also tend to favor “soon coming” / “left behind” (dispensational premillennialist pre-trib rapture) expectation — but that’s another story for another day…

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2012 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Apocalyptic, Charles Cameron, christianity, judaism, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.