A Second Look at Crawford's Book

 

In the latest Helm’s Deep, which received a healthy interest, I suggested that in Crawford’s book there is a treatment  of chapters of some of the forces that worked to bring about the culture of Christian Reconstruction in Moscow, Idaho in the last generation, in separate chapters. The first was entitled ‘Migration’, the second  ‘Eschatology’

Eschatology is the study of the last things. There are various schools of eschatology, and it means that the thinking of reconstruction takes place  in the jostling between postmillenarianism  and premillennialism, which requires that those who think and lead about Reconstruction have an view, and I suppose gives a  movement its Christian character for they are views  of the coming in glory Lord Jesus Christ, and the point of the two views that each have different views of human cultural and political conditions between a period of evident progress in which the church works towards a climax when the coming of Jesus will be visible for a long period of time, and the premillennial view which holds that the coming of Jesus will be sudden.  Gribben gives interesting vignettes of the varied positions held by individuals in his period 1970-2020.

 The interest in the imminence of the second coming is one thing that separates American evangelicalism from their British evangelicals. If evangelicals in the United Kingdom are agreed in one thing that the Second Coming is not coming soon, might be their position. ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers went asleep, all things are continuing as  they    as they from the beginning as they were from the beginning of creation (2 Peter 3. 4) ‘.....But by the same word the heaven and earth, that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the godly’ (v.7).  Peter’s words would have reminded the readers of Jesus teaching in Matthew 24, in which the words ‘Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at as hour you do not expect’ (Matthew 24.44) reverberate.  It is followed in chapter 25 by the Parable of the Ten Virgins’.

Gribben’s second chapter ‘Eschatology’ digs into the place such of eschatological  among the leaders,  in Moscow, Idaho, and other places. beginning with Rousas Rushdoony, a follower of Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Theological Seminary, though it is not clear that would have approved of Rushdoony’s eschatology or his theonomical emphasis on the law of the Old Testament, but emphasised its postmillenialistic tendencies But his fundamentalistic tendencies which were attracted by his punchy journalistic style of writing.  So the sum is that premillenistic eschatology is weakened in the face of Rushdoony, who wrote a great deal, and travelled copiously. Though for a while a darling among some of the Reformed, Rousas, educated at the Pacific School of Religion, and an honorary Ph.D. from Valley Christian University. He himself discovered and relished Cornelius Van Til, especially his idealist epistemology.

 The other factor was that Gary North, Rushdoony’s son-in-law and abettor, left Westminster theological carrying the postmillennialism of John Murray. Murray discovered postmillennialism in Romans 9 -11 in his commentary on Romans. North started the Journal of Christian Reconstruction in 1974, which has had a role of keeping Reconstruct in the news of those who favoured it. Combined, these raised interest in social renewal (48). As the millennium came to an end the reconstructioners,  becoming attracted to the ideals and strategies of a separate group, the ‘paramilitarity survivalists’ (48) who prospered in thinking that the end of the millennium must be of appropriate significance. In this mix of ideas North suggested Moscow, in Northern Idaho which  had a growing community  of similar outlook led by Douglas Wilson (48-9 ), who led a growing local group of survivalists who lived for the start of the new  millennium. As Rushdoony himself had stated , “Until there is Christian reconstruction, there will be radical decline and decay’.

One further strand was a dislike of big government, expressed in big taxes, in state education, and in the legality of abortion as a result of the decision in Roe v Wade in the U.S. Supreme Court. In Rushdoony’s mind, this compromised and required Reconstruction of the Christian character of the USA. Another impulse overturned the belief that the Federal government had shown it had upturned  the sacredness  of human life, as in judicial policy to make cases of capital punishment  less and less.  But the sun shone on the New Year of 2000 as it did always, from coast to coast, reconstruction was on the menu in Moscow, Idaho. Rushdoony died in 2001.

At the beginning it was stated that Reconstruction could not be a consequence of the eschatology for the reason that belief in the imminent or distant is near to zero. But bearing the ethos of Moscow in mind, the odds of having a current or distant English outpost of Moscow might happen in England, perhaps as a westernmost congregation of the CREC, made possible by electronic, why not? When postmillennialism warrants such confidence in the future, who needs it? A trip to Moscow, Idaho anyone? ‘Jesus stated, after his disciples recognised him as the Lord’s anointed, and in their role of Christ’s  church on earth: ‘ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be shall be in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ (Matt 16.18)

After this interesting and entertaining tour of the changes of one congregation of Christ in its search for a Christian church and culture, it may be wise to steady ourselves with a fresh look at the church. So, next time, ‘The Church and the Future’ lowed in Crawford’s narrative by noticing that there came a growth in publications from Wilson and the people of his church, Christchurch, (49 f.) The led in due course to the creation as a Christian school and postgraduate College, St Andrews. Crawford comments of this stage that Wilson was not presenting himself as a Christian Reconstructionist, venturing that Moscow ‘may now be AmerIca’s ‘most postmillennial town’. (49) There are examples of self-promotion, with references to Moscow as the ‘Reformed capital’ and the ‘Reformed Mecca’, followers believing their own rhetoric about  the town. Their confidence in the future seems to take us back to the nineteenth century, with many congregations in all the parts of the U.S. were formed. For, yes, in this phase,  Moscow coalesced into the centre of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, (p.50) which at the time of Crawford’s writing embraces eighty congregations’. Where is the effect of post millennialism to be discerned? If anywhere in their confidence of the future , including the death of modernity and the planting of yet more confident congregations, and in ‘homeschooling families across the nation’.(56)

 At the beginning it was stated that Reconstruction could not be a consequence of the eschatology for the reason that belief in the imminent or distant is near to zero. But bearing the ethos of Moscow in mind, the odds of having a current or distant English outpost of Moscow might happen in England, perhaps as a westernmost congregation of the CREC, made possible by electronic, why not? When postmillennialism warrants such confidence in the future, who needs it? A trip to Moscow, Idaho anyone? ‘Jesus stated, after his disciples recognised him as the Lord’s anointed, and in their role of Christ’s  church on earth: ‘ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be shall be in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ (Matt 16.18)

So the sum is that premillenistic eschatology is weakened in the face of Rushdoony, who wrote a great deal, and travelled copiously. Though for a while a darling among some of the Reformed, Rousas, educated at the Pacific School of Religion, and an honorary Ph.D. from Valley Christian University. He himself discovered and relished Cornelius Van Til, especially his idealist epistemology. 

The other factor was that Gary North, Rushdoony’s son-in-law and abettor, left Westminster Theological Seminary carrying the postmillennialism of John Murray. Murray discovered postmillennialism in Romans 9 -11 in his commentary on Romans. North started the Journal of Christian Reconstruction in 1974, which has had a role of keeping Reconstruct in the news of those who favoured it. Combined, these raised interest in social renewal (48). As the millennium came to an end the reconstructioners,  becoming attracted to the ideals and strategies of a separate group, the ‘paramilitarity survivalists’ (48) who prospered in thinking that the end of the millennium must be of appropriate significance. In this mix of ideas North suggested Moscow, in Northern Idaho which  had a growing community  of similar outlook led by Douglas Wilson (48-9 ), who led a growing local group of survivalists who lived for the start of the new  millennium. As Rushdoony himself had stated , “Until there is Christian reconstruction, there will be radical decline and decay’.

One further strand was a dislike of big government, expressed in big taxes, in state education, and in the legality of abortion as a result of the decision in Roe v Wade in the U.S. Supreme Court. In Rushdoony’s mind, this compromised and required Reconstruction of the Christian character of the USA. Another impulse overturned the belief that the Federal government had shown it had upturned  the sacredness  of human life, as in judicial policy to make cases of capital punishment  less and less.  But the sun shone on the New Year of 2000 as it did always, from coast to coast, reconstruction was on the menu in Moscow, Idaho. Rushdoony died in 2001.

Chapter 2, ‘Eschatology’ is the book’s main narrative chapter of what came to happened in Idaho, and why. The only matter that seems defective in the history is that there came in the programme for the growth in Douglas Wilson and his congregation a point there was when they became distinctly  Reformed. It is a pity Crawford did go into this in detail. This was immediately followed in Crawford’s narrative by noticing that there came a growth in publications from Wilson and the people of his church, Christchurch, (49 f.) The led in due course to the creation as a Christian school and postgraduate College, St Andrews. Crawford comments of this stage that Wilson was not presenting himself as a Christian Reconstructionist, venturing that Moscow ‘may now be AmerIca’s ‘most postmillennial town’. (49) There are examples of self-promotion, with references to Moscow as the ‘Reformed capital’ and the ‘Reformed Mecca’, followers believing their own rhetoric about  the town. Their confidence in the future seems to take us back to the nineteenth century, with many congregations in all the parts of the U.S. were formed. For, yes, in this phase,  Moscow coalesced into the centre of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, (p.50) which at the time of Crawford’s writing embraces eighty congregations’. Where is the effect of post millennialism to be discerned? If anywhere in their confidence of the future , including the death of modernity and the planting of yet more confident congregations, and in ‘homeschooling families across the nation’.(56)

 At the beginning it was stated that Reconstruction could not be a consequence of the eschatology for the reason that belief in that is near to zero. But bearing the ethos of Moscow in mind, the odds of having a current or distant English outpost of Moscow might happen in England, perhaps as a westernmost congregation of the CREC, made possible by electronic, why not? When postmillennialism warrants such confidence in the future, who needs it? A trip to Moscow, Idaho anyone? ‘Jesus stated, after his disciples recognised him as the Lord’s anointed, and in their role of Christ’s  church on earth: ‘ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be shall be in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ (Matt 16.18)  That makes the future life of the Christian church sure. come what culture comes up with.

After this interesting and entertaining tour of the changes of one congregation of Christ in its search for a Christian church and culture, it may be wise to steady ourselves with a fresh look at the church. So, next time, ‘The Church and the Future’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gribben on Christian Reconstruction

                                                                        

                                                                         Crawford Gribben

Crawford Gribben is an historian and something of an entrepreneur in his discipline. He is interested in religion of a kind that will be missed by many an historian because it is of no interest to themselves, and, perhaps,  they think it is of no interest to their readers. For example, they have little patience for people who are interested in the likely occurrence of the Rapture amongst believers,  because they could not conceivably be interested in the Rapture themselves. There is something of a partiality, a bias, at work in this,  when it comes to writing histories of history.  Their history would not have any slots about the people who had beliefs in the Rapture, and how the believers in it articulate it. The historian’s fishing net does not catch the Rapture, and so it is expunged from the record. Academic history is of course a humanism, but that manifests and is shaped by the current interests of historians. The history of belief in the Rapture does not settle down in the historical record as anything that anyone was interested in, not even to the reaction of bewilderment, or what it was like in 2021 to be a believer in the Rapture. 

 Not the Rapture, then, but it is a fact that interest in politics is had by more people than the Rapture. Professor Gribben in this latest book, Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford University Press, 2021),  The idea that people with no interest in the Rapture nonetheless involve themselves in politics, so why not research a book on the politics of the Rapture had by those who believe in it, and the culture they produce, books and journals in particular, that are being written by its followers.That is a good idea

 It is not only the Rapture,  but several other convictions The result is – I think – that Crawford has an author’s ingenuity and works hard. For the book does not feature the Rapture alone - that was my way of this review getting going. But better, on the cultural setting of those who have among the people for whom the Rapture is an active belief. But it is an exercise in ‘Reconstruction’, another novel word, that is, a serious exercise in attempting a new cultural setting  for the faith of men and women to grow. That is nearer what historians may be interested in, for it denotes the re-siting of human groups in order to arrange a novel culture. The importance of reconstruction us given in the title of the first chapter, ‘Migration’.

 Migration is a feature of Protestantism, when medieval Christian groups transferred to new urban centres, such as Geneva, and other Swiss cities, Strasburg, and Zurich, then London, Edinburgh, Utrecht. and so on. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews celebrates the migration of the Israelites (ch.11) and made it characteristic of Christians in chapter 12. In this  short review the reader is introduced to the last twenty years of activity in which Christian people have striven  to survive, and to resist the prevailing culture, through the era of President Trump. Other current ventures in the writing of thinkers, for example, Rod Dreher, in his The Benedict Option, and the activity of the Reformed pastor Douglas Wilson, ‘one of the most erudite and controversial  of the evangelical of the theorists of American cultural decline,  and one of  the most and one of the most important of religious migration, and of other familial, ecclesiastical and cultural strategies for survival , resistance and reconstruction’. (11) Those who came and to join his congregation in Moscow, Idaho,  the crucial part of the ‘’Redoubt’, an enclave in the North-West of the United States  including Idaho and the adjoining states of Montana , Wyoming, eastern Oregon and eastern Washington, in which a new community of religious conservatism could derive and resist an impending crisis in American culture’s “Impending crisis’ which has to do with abortion and the growth of the size and reach of the federal government, including state education. Education is important, and there are Christian schools and also a the writing of Rousas Rushdoony also  among the Reformed constituency, and his son-in-law Gary North. Rushdoony’s books, such as Intellectual Schizophrenia (1961) The messianic character of American education (1963),  The politics of guilt and pity (1970) and the Journal of Christian Reconstruction edited by Gary North, were one of the means that ideals and proposals  that were a part of the mix during this period, and through the influence of who many families migrated in numbers, and bought land and houses and businesses in the area. The change had an important strand of eschatology, though this has seemed to have weakened over the years.  Other literary influences were the novels of J.W.Rawles, which have had a broad reach, novels such as….. and Hal Lindsay’s The Late Great Planet Earth (1970), which sold 28 million copies. And  Douglas Wilson has been  the editor of periodical Credenda Agenda  since 1995.

 The above details have been taken  from chapter one. There are other chapters titled ’Eschatology’, `Government,’  ‘Education’,  and ‘Media’, and copious bibliographies covering Crawford Gribben’ s researches. They give an idea of the many-sided of this new Christian culture. It must be stressed that this is an academic book, writing about what is the case, rather than what the author ought to be rather is. It is a work in the history.  The prose is clear but condensed and detailed. In the book there are several references to the Reformed character of this development, but it struck me that originally the Reformed did not occupy emptiness at first but to the cities of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Geneva, Zurich, Strasbourg, Utrecht, London, Edinburgh. In contrast, the author seems to think that their model might have in common with the Mormons, who predominate in Southern Idaho, who have grown from  the 26 settlers of 1855 to 456,495 currently residing (19). (Gribben is strong on figures, and on noting the sources of his every claim he makes, reminding us all the while that this book is the work of a professional historian.) Such settling in Idaho was helped by the work of James Wesley Rawles, his novels and other writings. These writings joined those of Rod Dreher, of how to live as Christians in an increasingly anti-christian culture.

 Gribben  has put all this together this by hard work: visiting Idaho, conducting interviews, reading house magazines, indulging some philosophy, the details of eschatology, (on which has written previously) apologetics, and institutional growth in the Christian faith in Moscow, Idaho and its trends in education, particularly home education,  In putting these together he has moulded a body of data which is foundational in the history of this    culture. The upshot is greater than its parts. Like archaeological find. serious and intrigued, where other historians are typically disparaging. There is not only a Christian church, but also in the formation of schools,  and a college, St Andrews.

 This review does not do justice to the sweep and the detail into a book of modest proportions. I have said nothing of eschatology about which Gribben has dealt in other books, nor about homeschooling which is how Christians in the UK would come closest to the busyness of this venture in Idaho and its motivations.  Perhaps there should be other  blogs on it.

 

 

Assurance(s)

 

Assurance(s) 

For any Christian it is no hardship to sing

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine
Heir of salvation, purchase of God
Born of His spirit, washed in His blood

 The early Reformers confessed justification by faith, full sto. As for example, in ‘The Justification of Man’, Article 11 of the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England;

We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works and desertings; Wherefore,  that we are justified by Faith only, is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily A Short  Declaration ‘’Of the True, Lively and Christian Faith” The homily discusses ‘dead’ faith (James 2.17), and emphasises the fruit of faith.  ‘Assurance’ is not mentioned. This is dated 1547 

Move on a century, to the  time of The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647)’ the chapters on Justification, Chapter  11, and Chapter 18, ‘Of Assurance of Grace and Salvation.’ There are two elements,  justifying faith and its assurance. Ch.18 is among the most sophisticated chapters  in the Confession. Here are parts of that chapter.

Having distinguishing certainty from having a probable persuasion  the Confession  states -

 

II. This certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion, grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible assurance of faith, founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God: which Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption.

III. This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may without extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto. And therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure; that thereby his heart may be enlarged in peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience, the proper fruits of this assurance: so far is it from inclining men to looseness.

This is the Puritan version of justification, the outcome of a century’s preaching on the consequences of true faith, while being careful not to make any of those grounds a case of  justification by works. An experimental (or experiential) approach to the matter of justification , and of the application of the doctrine at the centre of many a Puritan sermon on justifying faith. From  this development the evangelical stress on assurance, such as the hymn ‘Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine’ is a  development.

 (For those who wish to study this seventeenth century development in justification of faith, there is no better book than Joel Beeke’ s dissertation, Assurance of Faith: Calvin, English Puritanism, and the Dutch Second Reformation (Peter Lang, 1991), and The Quest For Full Assurance, (Banner of Truth, 1999.)

II

 Apart from all this , and keeping to the importance of justification by faith, here I want to stress that in the New Testament ’assurance’ has a wider usage than an attachment of saving faith. (The fact that in the King James what for what is ‘assured’ sometimes  the ESV uses the words ‘conviction’ or ‘firmly believed’ or ‘reassured’,  is unfortunate.

 

Here is ‘assurance’  in order of its occurrence in the New Testament - 

 Paul

The resurrection, Acts 1.31 ‘given assurance to all’.

Coloss. 2.2 ‘full assurance’ 

I Thess. 1.5 ‘full conviction’ ESV/’much assurance’ KJV

2Tim 3.14 ‘assured’, ‘firmly believed’(ESV)

Hebrews

  6.11, ‘full assurance’

 10.22, ‘full assurance’,

11, I  ‘assurance’, ‘substance of’

 1 John

 1. Jn. 3.19, assure/reassure (ESV)

III 

Summing up,  ‘assurance’ has degrees, and it means  in the New Testament the making aware of the  evidence of spiritual realities, depending of the context 

2. degrees, ‘much’, ‘full’

 giving conviction, evidence

3) it is desirable for disciples to grow to possess it, and therefore it is the subject of the Apostles’ prayers, bringing this to a belief which is made so strong until it is ‘full’ or  the ‘form’ of it.

So, in the New Testament ‘assurance’ has not only a qualifier of faith but also of other spiritual realities. For example in Colossians 2.2 Paul prays to the church that their hearts to more and more love between them ‘the full assurance of understanding, and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ ‘in whom are hidden all the riches of full understanding’. (v.3), and this is continued in verse 4, and put negatively in v. 8 and continuing…

 So here ‘assurance’  refers to a Christian grace that is a rich pearl, having to do with the growth in the Christian’s understanding of Christ which the Colossians ought to benefit themselves, the nature of Christ, what it is and what it isn’t, which they ought to petition the Lord in their prayers for more assurance.

 This is a significant window into the apostolic view of prayer, a church praying for ‘God’s understanding in Christ’. This is another ‘blessed assurance’ about which we may sing, and in a disciplined way come to an increased understanding of who and what is Christ, freeing our minds of false and inadequate views of him, who was ‘raised with him [believers] through faith in the powerful working through faith in God,,,,. who raised him from the dead’ (v.14) triumphing over rulers and authorities in him. (v.15)

When did you last pray for such assurance? Are these matters important items in our daily prayer list?