Imagine a world where fathers can legally have their children executed, by having them stoned to death because they are disobedient. Unfortunately, it is not the world of a bad science fiction novel, but the brave new world of Christian Reconstructionism created by R. J. Rushdoony and Gary North. It is important to understand how close this vision of the world is coming to be true. Gary North is the political consultant behind Ron Paul, his many political campaigns and his new home schooling education materials.
“….Now as Christians we believe that the basic starting point is the regeneration of man. Then man takes and applies that faith. For Christians the basic government is the self-government of the Christian man. Then the basic governmental unit is the family. This means that every father and mother will be more important in the sight of God than heads of state, because He controls children, property and the future. Then the third is the church as the government, fourth the school as a government, fifth your job governs you, then sixth society governs you with its ideas, beliefs and standards, and seventh, one among many forms of government, is the civil government.
Today, we are implicitly totalitarian. We speak of the state as the government. That’s totalitarian. So we have to rid ourselves of such things. The Christian theonomic society will only come about as each man governs himself under God and governs his particular sphere. And only so will we take back government from the state and put it in the hands of Christians….”
A woman is a sinner if her clothes outline her body. Why are women sinning? Well, they’re causing Godly men to look upon them with lust. Yep, if a man can’t control his normal male sexual urges, well it’s a woman’s fault.
Why don’t conservatives like the Girl Scouts? My first question of the day is the following. If FOX blond bimbo news readers were to get paid, exactly what they were worth, just how much would they be paying Roger Ailes to let them attempt to read the news and try to sound bright?
“…“Seen from the outside, housework can look like a Sisyphean task that gives you no sense of reward or completion. Yet housekeeping actually offers more opportunities for savoring achievement than almost any other work I can think of. Each of its regular routines brings satisfaction when completed. These routines echo the rhythm of life, and the housekeeping rhythm is the rhythm of the body. You get satisfaction not only from the sense of order, cleanliness, freshness, peace and plenty restored, but from the knowledge that you yourself and those you care about are going to enjoy these benefits.” ~Cheryl Mendelson, Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House …”*
According to a Washington Post article, first published in 2006, all women capable of conceiving a baby should consider themselves pre-pregnant, even if they don’t plan on having a child. In fact, we live in a world, where, to many, the fetus is more important than the life and well being of the mother.
“…New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves — and to be treated by the health care system — as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon. Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control. While most of these recommendations are well known to women who are pregnant or seeking to get pregnant, experts say it’s important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed….”
To put it succinctly, the possibility of a pregnancy is more important than the woman.
“…Not that this is a bad idea, but I’m wondering where men fit into the picture. The onus seems to be fully on women : you’d think that human reproduction came about by female parthenogenesis. The question here – for this forum – is : what, if any, are the points of connection between this new CDC position and Christian right ideology ? Is this the next stage, beyond even outlawing contraception, in the plans of some on the Christian right, to encourage women to think of themselves most centrally as mothers-to-be ?…”
Fast forward to 2014. The Christian Right does want to do away with contraceptives. They do consider women nothing more than wombs.
Talk 2 Action
All of this is based on the heresy of R. S. Rushdoony.
“…Rushdoony was the founder of Christian Reconstructionism and described as the father of the modern homeschooling movement. He was forthright in his teaching that the U.S. should be subject to Old Testament law in the most literal sense and mapped this out in his 800-plus page 1973 book Institutes of Biblical Law. He laid the groundwork for today’s theocratic libertarianism, or the belief that the ultimate freedom and liberty will be found through the elimination of most of federal government and the uniform imposition of biblical law. In other words, replacing “statism” with Christian dominion would provide a utopian society in which federal regulatory systems and central government are not required. Think of it as a marriage between Ayn Rand’s anti-religious, laissez-faire gospel of the free market with theocratic law. I described the timeline of the development of this ideology in my article Biblical Capitalism – The Sacralizing of Political and Economic Issues.
Rushdoony’s goal of imposition of biblical law on the U.S. did not neglect issues such as slavery, and he claimed that “some people are by nature slaves and will always be.” He argued that socialism tries to give the slave the benefits of freedom, and thus “destroys both the free and the enslaved.” …”
Part II continues tomorrow.
