“Neither had I, but I have finally found what I was looking for … the intellectual underpinning of the more extreme parts of the Christian Nation movement. This is it.
The Institutes
is the Bible, so to speak, of reconstructionism. Rushdoony was funded by Howard Ahmanson, Jr., whose father founded and owned America’s largest savings and loan. The son was at one time a committed reconstructionist and provided much of the funding for Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation. These people don’t always completely agree with Rushdoony—for example, just three years ago one of them said that he ‘no longer consider[s] [it] essential’ to stone people to death for certain crimes of immorality. But it is Ahmanson’s money that allowed Rushdoony to promote—and successfully move toward the mainstream—what started out being viewed, even by evangelicals, as pretty extreme views.”
“It always comes down to money, doesn’t it?” Emilie observed.
“In this case, yes. The Chalcedon Foundation is still going strong, run by Rushdoony’s son. Gary North, who is Rushdoony’s son-in-law, carried the project forward with Jim Dobson, Tony Perkins, and the others we all have heard of. It all fits together now.”
“I haven’t heard of any of them,” Emilie said, with an inflection that signaled boredom and the hope that Sanjay would change the subject. He was oblivious.
Sanjay continued. “Rushdoony started out as a fairly traditional Calvinist but then promulgated the simple and powerful view that no law made by man can ever have authority or legitimacy. Instead, the civil man-made law must be replaced with, or at least be subordinated to, the law of God as revealed in the Bible. They argue that man cannot create law; man can only embrace or reject God’s law. Under this view, of course, the idea of individual rights is anathema or, as one of them said, ‘an assault on God’s sovereignty.’ Is that not fascinating? Within their frame of reference, it makes perfect sense. If God is supposed to be omnipotent and rule all things, then to speak of men as having rights is nonsense. And of course you will appreciate the other implication.”
No one answered, but George had the courtesy to say “What?”
“Democracy, of course. Democracy is rule by the majority, not God, with the minority protected by inviolable individual civil rights. So democracy too is anathema. As Rushdoony himself has said, ‘Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies.’ ”
George looked shocked.
“And here is the most important thing,” Sanjay continued. “This isn’t just a philosophy or political ideology. Rushdoony believed that living in a society ruled solely by God’s law is so important because this in turn is required as a condition for the return of Jesus, for the second coming of Christ. Do you understand? No theocracy, no second coming. Before Rushdoony, most evangelicals were, and I believe still are, what is called ‘pre-millennial,’ believing that when Jesus returns, all born-again Christians will go up to heaven, physically, in the rapture, leaving the unbelievers to endure the tribulation and the apocalypse. But Rushdoony believes in ‘post-millenialism,’ meaning that Jesus will come only
after
Christians succeed in establishing Christian rule over the earth. This urgent imperative for Christian rule over civil institutions in order that Jesus can come again is at the heart of what they call dominionism. Dominionism simply means that Christians have a God-given right to rule, and that in preparation for the second coming of Christ, Christians have responsibility to take over every aspect of society and to govern solely in accordance with biblical law. The pursuit of secular power, of control over the legislature and the courts, is a theological imperative, and the most important one there is. And all this with its roots in a man you never heard of, R. J. Rushdoony.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” said Emilie, impatient at the turn of the conversation, “please Sanjay, not all the theology. Although I like his name. Rushdoony. Rhymes with looney. Rushdoony is a loony. Easy to remember.”
“We also have Rushdoony and his followers to thank for home schooling. It is hard to get a precise number, but some scholars estimate that 10 percent of American children are either homeschooled or taught in fundamentalist Christian private schools. As a percentage of all children, this is significantly higher than the proportion of Pakistani children attending fundamentalist madrassahs. That translates into roughly two million children in homeschool, almost all from evangelical families. And it was largely Rushdoony’s idea—he argued that establishing Christian rule required little more than indoctrinating a couple of generations of children. It is not just about filling them with Christian doctrine and protecting them from immorality; it has the effect of undermining reason and science as a mode of knowing the world. Children are taught that faith and acceptance of the revealed wisdom of God are the highest values and the only legitimate and reliable ways to know the world. With children thus trained, it is an easy step to get them to accept as true the things that are manifestly false, such as that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that Iraq was behind 9/11, or that Senator Obama is foreign born. As one writer said, they are ‘redefining faith as deliberate blindness to big lies.’ ”
Emilie interrupted. “Greg, that can’t be legal, can it? I mean, you cannot pull your kids from school and fill their heads with bloody nonsense. Why doesn’t someone do something?”
Even though Emilie had addressed the question to me, Sanjay answered.
“No, it is perfectly legal, and the Christian right defends home schooling most energetically. The Home School Legal Defense Association litigates anything that could limit the right of parents to cut their children off from mainstream society and fill their minds with superstition and hate. I believe it is child abuse, I really do. In America last year more than a billion dollars was spent on homeschooling texts. These texts are increasingly political, emphasizing a Christianized American history, with little basis in fact, to emphasize the divine destiny of America. Wait—”
Sanjay pulled a wad of paper scraps from a pocket.
“Did you know that much of this is not online? I spent today at the library. They actually have these homeschooling books. Here’s the one I remembered from a high-school-level history text. I was really struck by this: ‘Who, knowing the facts of our history, can doubt that the United States of America has been a thought in the mind of God from all eternity.’ I mean, talk about American exceptionalism. The essential lesson of history is that America was invented by God for the sole purpose of being the vehicle by which godly Christian rule will be imposed on the earth in preparation for the second coming. Just think, please, what it will mean for our futures if one in ten American children believes this absolutely.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Emilie. “One in ten? That’s not so bad. Has there been any time in American history when at least ten percent of our people
haven’t
been utter lunatics?”
“Perhaps,” answered Sanjay. “That is an interesting perspective. But I fear that this may be something different. That their influence may be greater than their numbers. The evangelicals call these cadres of homeschooled children Generation Joshua after the military commander of Moses. You know, the one that marched seven times around the walls of Jericho? That’s what they call them, GenJ for short. A generation of little soldiers. There is a homeschooling video titled
Putting on the Whole Armor of God
, which asks, ‘Boys, are you ready for warfare?’—and they mean warfare against secularism and warfare to obtain control of all civil institutions. And when they are teenagers, these kids are made to join GenJ clubs that focus on political action. They are organized by congressional district, and they do things like getting their older brothers and sisters to register to vote. And in addition to homeschooling, Mr. Rushdoony promoted the organization of the Christian so-called colleges, like Patrick Henry.”
At this point George, who had been extremely quiet, interrupted. “I was a White House intern.”
This seemed to be a non sequitur. We all looked at him, puzzled.
“I had never heard of Patrick Henry College. But during 2004, my year at the White House, 7 percent of all the White House interns were from Patrick Henry.”
Sanjay looked at George with new interest. “How do you know that?”
“We calculated it from the intern program facebook. It tells you where all the other interns went to college. Almost one in ten—for perhaps the most competitive position for young people in Washington—were from the same small school we had never heard of.”
“And a school whose stated purpose is to train ‘warriors to take back the land,’ ” Sanjay reminded us. “I suppose the White House is a good place to start.”
“It wasn’t just the White House,” said George. “Evangelicals are everywhere in Washington. There are prayer cells in the Senate and almost every federal department. My year there was a bit of a scandal because senior civilian and military leaders at the Pentagon appeared in a video for a group called Christian Embassy talking about the platform that their jobs provided for doing evangelical work. But lots of people were not even surprised, and it blew over quickly. Many federally paid congressional junkets are really evangelistic missions. I went to a talk by a congressman who described a recent trip to Africa by saying he was there to represent the Lord, that he went to tell the people about Jesus. I
was
surprised by that.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “That’s hard to believe. Not with federal funds. That wouldn’t be legal.”
“G, you are not often naïve, but you have been working hard,” Sanjay said.
I gave him a dirty look.
George continued. “Not only are public displays of religion ubiquitous in the military and civilian services, but federal money is flowing directly to evangelical causes in large amounts. When I was at the White House, we bragged to the base that we dedicated a billion dollars for abstinence education alone, with the result that a third of US public schools have so-called sex education that teaches only abstinence. And this solely for reasons of religious doctrine. You know about Bush’s so-called faith-based initiative, which seems fairly innocent in its funding of church-affiliated social service agencies doing charitable work, and yes, sometimes more efficiently than the federal government. But you know I discovered that there are faith-based offices not only in the Department of Health and Human Services but also in Education, Commerce, and many other agencies. Why? There is no conceivable proper reason.”
Sanjay was listening intently but stayed quiet. George continued.
“How much of this money do you think goes to Presbyterian churches or Catholic congregations or synagogues? Virtually none. And did you know that evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which receive nearly all faith-based funding, are free to discriminate against non-Christians and gays on the grounds that it would conflict with their own religious freedom if they were not free to do so? I found that strange.”
“Where the hell is the
New York Times
?” asked Emilie.
“You know,” answered George, “they do sometimes cover these things. We just don’t always notice, or quite believe it. I mean, Emilie, really, Sanjay is right. None of this is news to anyone who lives in DC or works in the federal government. People are almost beyond noticing; it’s—sorry to use a cliché—the ‘new normal.’ ”
“So did it bother you?” asked Sanjay.
George answered carefully. “I was brought up to respect people and be tolerant of differences. I try not to be too judgmental. I always thought that devout religiosity was something to be admired, not feared. But after 9/11, I started to see parallels between Islamic fundamentalism and what I had seen in DC. And yes, as a gay person I felt threatened by their … well, I felt there could be some real hatred there. I was not ‘out’ when I was at the White House, so …”
Sanjay looked thoughtful and then smiled warmly at George. Emilie was suddenly looking pleased.
“You know,” continued George, “I just remembered another thing that did surprise me. Do you know who I was told had a weekly conference call with the White House while I was there? Ted Haggard. I mean, every Monday. I don’t think anyone else did, except maybe Cheney.”
“Wait,” asked Emilie, “which one is Haggard? Is he the one who tried to get a blow job in the Minneapolis airport?”
“No,” answered Sanjay. “He’s the crusader against gay marriage, married with children, who was accused in a scandal involving allegations of drug use and gay sex. He was head of the National Association of Evangelicals, representing forty-five thousand churches with thirty million members, and pastor of the New Life Church—a mega-church in Colorado Springs with over twelve thousand parishioners. And a confidant of the US president.”
“Yes,” added George. “You know that most of the evangelical leaders who get caught just say the devil made them do it, that they regret their sin, and that they now accept Jesus totally and that Jesus has forgiven them. Their fellow pastors usually cry ‘
alleluia
!’ and let them be. But the Haggard case was unusually egregious. He lost his job.”
“Well, George,” Emilie responded, “I hope all this talk of gay sex has put you in the mood.”
Sanjay rescued him by interrupting, “Emilie, I am very happy that you have introduced me to George.”
Until the next day, we didn’t know whether that meant that Sanjay was happy to have met George as a source or whether he had taken Emilie’s bait. Emilie called me the next day at the office with the news that Sanjay had spent the night at George’s apartment. She was very pleased with herself. I should have called Sanjay but didn’t, and then got deeply immersed in a deal and didn’t speak to Sanjay again for a couple of weeks.
He and George were together for almost a year, and it always seemed highly improbable to me that Sanjay was dating a banker. But I recall George as a thoughtful and gentle person, and as sympathetic and supportive of Sanjay as he could be, given his own work life. When they finally split up, I was sorry for Sanjay but not surprised. I realize now that I never really liked George, but I cannot put my finger on why. I do wonder now, writing these words and thinking about the man for the first time in many years, where he is today. I never saw him in New York during the siege. He was not at Governors Island. Had he married and kept his position as a banker? It was possible. Or fled to Canada or Sweden after 2016? He certainly would have had the money to get a visa. Or perhaps I’m not giving him enough credit. Perhaps he fought with us and died, or languishes even today in one of the gay reorientation camps scattered in remote locations around the country.