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.
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)
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)
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’.
