Chapter 28

Gary North

Narrated By: Alan Bailey
Book: Backward, Christian Soldiers?
Topics: Christian Life, Culture

Small Beginnings

“Frustration is basic to reconstruction.”

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Chapter Text

For who hath despised the day of small things? -Zech. 4:10a

One of the difficult things to imagine is a modern proponent of political liberalism standing up to pass the hat for some local social action project. What he will attempt to do is to create a grass-roots pressure group to promote the financing of the particular project with local taxpayer funds, or better yet, through Federal grants. The political liberal’s idea of social action is action to increase the power of the State over local affairs.

The political liberal wants to achieve his goals through political action. His religion is the religion of politics. He is skilled at gaining favors by the State for pet projects. His answers for almost every problem are political: pass a law, enforce a law, get a grant. He enjoys politics. He sees politics as the central activity of a civilization. The State is the central institution.

Conclusion

This book is both educational and motivational. If you have agreed with its overall perspective, then you owe it to yourself, your fellow Christians, the world around you, and most of all to God, to begin to rethink your theology. You have an obligation to determine for yourself whether or not you are responsible to begin a personal program of Christian reconstruction, beginning with your own daily affairs, and continuing for the rest of your life. And if you have this responsibility, then other Christians have it, too. Will you help them to come to grips with this responsibility by telling them what you have learned? Will you help to encourage your fellow church members to step forth and take a stand for the crown rights of King Jesus?

Where should you begin? With the Bible. Sit down and begin a systematic study of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Get one or two modern translations to help you understand what the Bible requires. Ask yourself, over and over, verse by verse: “What does this mean, and how does it apply to today’s society?” Try to make sense out of God’s word. This may require the purchase of Bible commentaries and other study guides, but it must be done. Little people have to do it. Then begin to share your thoughts tentatively. See if others are interested in finding out what God’s word requires for every area of life. Maybe you should set up a study group. Maybe your church would be willing to co-operate. (Then again, maybe not.) If you can get more than one person involved, you begin to make use of the intellectual division of labor.

Start subscribing to newsletters that explain some of these biblical passages in the light of today’s world. I am not referring to prophecy. I am referring to biblical law. Read my introductory book, Unconditional Surrender: God’s Program for Victory (2nd ed.) Read R. J. Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law.

You will at first encounter a wall of resistance. Count on it. But the steady, thoughtful, informed presentation of a biblical vision of victory will eventually produce converts. Others will begin to see some of the implications of what you are talking about. You will experience success, but not if you sit on your hands and do nothing.

If nothing else, buy spare copies of this book and begin to lend them out. Lend them out with a specific time limit, preferably a week or two. Ask the other person to report back and tell you what he thinks about it. Get together to discuss it. He may have insights that you missed. But the important thing is to see if the message in this book strikes a responsive chord in the heart of another person. If it does, you have become the first two members of a Christian Reconstruction Bible study group.

Bible lectures are informative, but a true discussion group should probably not be larger than three people. Three people can really discuss in detail. Also, the presence of a third person tends to reduce the likelihood of intense discussions (also known as shouting matches) between two members.

Your goal is to begin a group. Each member should do his best to recruit two people for a new group. Thus, each member ideally spends one hour per week with the group which first recruited him, and one hour with the group he recruited. A Christian Reconstruction Bible study is not to become any sort of initiatory secret society. But a tightly knit, highly personal, three-person group is just a good way to spread the message.

These meetings will not eat up a person’s time, because members agree in advance never to continue the meetings beyond one hour. This allows each member (along with spouses and other affected persons) to plan his day in terms of a predictable schedule for Bible discussions. If people indulge themselves and spend additional hours in unplanned discussions, someone will grow resentful: members of the group, spouses, children of participants, or others who are in some way dependent on the participants. Warning: Christian Reconstruction Bible studies already have enough people upset at the basic idea of broad Christian responsibility; there is no use in creating additional resentment.

Each discussion group member, after about six months, should begin recruiting his own group. Take what you have learned over half a year of study and begin to teach others. Get the division of labor going. Don’t rush into a leadership position until you are fairly confident that you will not embarrass yourself or the word of God. But don’t hesitate forever, searching for perfection. Start small. Despise not the day of small beginnings.

It may be that you are not ready to begin a discussion group. Maybe you just don’t have the time to read more newsletters. Maybe Bible reading is a chore for you. Perhaps you are just too busy making a living or whatever to devote time to a consideration of your responsibilities before God.

If so, please do yourself a favor. Don’t throw this book away. Put it on the shelf and keep it in the back of your mind. When the crisis comes, get it off the shelf and reread it.

“What crisis?” you may ask. The one which always comes to those who know what they are required by God to do, but refuse to do it. “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17). You have been warned about your comprehensive responsibilities. There is no going back. For all eternity, there is no going back. Whether you are required to start a study group is not the question. What is relevant is the question of your efforts to redeem the time-literally, to buy it back. What is relevant is for you to begin your efforts at bringing your portion of the world under the visible sovereignty of biblical law.

The political conservative tends to regard politics as simply one activity among many, and the State as one institution among many. His interest in politics is diluted, unless he is a professional whose calling is politics. The strength of the conservative movement lies outside of politics, unlike the strength of political liberalism.

When something needs to be done, the conservative tends to ask himself, “How can it be done at a profit?” A second question is: “How can it be done on a tax-deductible basis?” The third question used to be: “Can it be done locally?” The fact that the third question is not usually asked by conservatives today indicates the extent to which conservatism has been influenced by the reigning political errors of the day.

This leads me to the topic of this chapter, namely, the advantages and weaknesses of the non-statist approach to social problems. If we reject the premise of the statist, then we should have confidence in non-statists approaches to problems. But to overcome the statist ideology of our age, we have to be confident in our ability to succeed without appealing to the State.

RUNNING LEAN Herbert Titus teaches law at CBN University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. This is Pat Robertson’s school: Christian, conservative, and privately supported. In the Vietnam war period, Titus was a radical professor at the University of Oregon. He used to help students obtain draft deferments, as well as oppose the war in other ways. He noticed only years later that almost nobody ever offered to pay him for his assistance. It was assumed by radical students that such assistance was a free good, that it was somehow owed to the beneficiary. This is the typical mind-set of the political liberal.

The same phenomenon affects the bulk of the socialist-interventionist movements of our time. With the notable exception of the Communists, the Left has been generally unwilling to self-finance their programs in this century. They much prefer to get the State to finance them. This has been done, too; the conservative rallying cry, “De-fund the Left,” is valid. Ideologically radical organizations have for years been granted millions of dollars, from Planned Parenthood to the Legal Services Corporation.

But at some point, this dependence on the State backfires. Sources of private funding dry up, since everyone knows that the State is writing the checks. For instance, the Left has not developed successful direct-mail campaigns or mailing lists, unlike the conservatives. When public opinion finally turns against the religion of secular humanism, and voters start cutting off the funds, these organizations will lose access to perpetual funding. When the fiat monetary unit finally goes the way of all flesh, what will they use to pay their employees? The government supplies the money, but the money it supplies is Federal money; What happens if Federal money becomes worthless?

Non-statist movements start small and poor. They are decentralized. They must compete for the financial support of a limited number of donors. Most donors are on several mailing lists, and many ideologically conservative groups appeal to them for funding. They have to pick and choose among a large number of ideologically compatible organizations.

This competition tends to keep the conservative and religious groups lean. They cannot afford much waste. If they get fat, a downturn in the economy can cause a crisis. Thus, these groups learn to survive in a competitive market. This trains them in the realities of communication; if they have no message, no packaging, no mailing list, and no distinctive program, they are unlikely to survive, let alone prosper. This keeps them sharp. It keeps them relevant.

There is a price to pay for these benefits: uncertainty. Nothing is guaranteed. There is always the threat of disaster looming ahead. The fund appeals may take on a tone of desperation, of continual crisis. People who give money in. response to such appeals, and only such appeals, are not the kind of people who make effective long-term associates or backers. The organization which attracts and keeps such donors is hard-pressed ever to admit success. If it does, it risks lower income.

Small religious and conservative. organizations are for years confined to a state of total dependence on voluntary contributions. They struggle just to stay alive. They come and go. They frequently do not survive the death of the founders. But they leave behind a legacy of dissent, and this legacy eventually makes itself felt when the bankruptcy of the existing establishment becomes obvious, when the State can no longer supply the vote-getting special privileges and funds.

The despair which sets in after years of frustrating losses is natural. It must be resisted. Frustration is basic to reconstruction. The seeming imperviousness of the existing social and political order is overwhelming at times. But Gandhi’s experience in India should remind us that a lifetime of seeming futility was rewarded with success, at least in the sense that Gandhi achieved his stated political goal, namely, independence from Britain. He ran very lean. Actually, he walked very lean. His march to the sea, his two fasts almost unto death, and his other public relations coups made him a formidable opponent of the entrenched ruling class.

VOLUNTARISM The strength of the non-statist groups, above all, is the commitment of their supporters to the cause. These people are willing to take their hard-earned money, and send it to a ministry they approve of. This is not characteristic of their opposition. They have real reserves – reserves of dedication, commitment, and the habit of regular financial sacrifice. The supporters are willing to take a stand. More than this: they are willing to finance a stand.

These groups stay small. They get their message out “by hook or crook,” but seldom with support from the established intellectual and religious opinion-makers. But the real opinion-makers are not those who are most visible at the end of a civilization. They are the people who are hidden in the historical shadows, working patiently until the day comes when a cultural crisis creates demand for new opinions.

Look at any urban public (government) school. It is bigger than any Christian school you have ever seen. A typical public high school has more students than any Christian high school in the country. But these schools, for all their bricks and mortar and football teams, are dying. Those inside are getting substandard educations. Yet it is tax-supported education, above all, which is the center of hopes, dreams, and schemes of the priests of humanism. The public school is humanism’s established church, and its influence is fading fast. State boards of education are literally panicking at the threat offered to them by home schools and small Christian schools. They have good reason to panic. In a century, tax-supported education may well be a relic of the past, swept away by the forces of voluntarism. What will the broken bricks and loosened mortar be worth then?

Defenders of the principle of voluntarism are going through a kind of wilderness experience today. This is the cost of abandoning the fleshpots of Egypt. No more leeks, onions, garlic, and Federal hand-outs. Perhaps no more tax exemption, as the warfare escalates. Perhaps even a bit of persecution. But the early church received no tax exemptions. Luther did not train future Lutheran ministers by means of vouchers for seminary education issued by the Vatican, either. The lack of such support slows down the development of a movement in its early stages, when it is learning to cope with the realities of life, but sparse beginnings enable it to deal with growth and success later on, when its principles become more widely accepted.

GRASS-ROOTS ORGANIZATIONS “Organizations”: The word is plural, not singular. The idea of establishing a single grass-roots organization is preposterous. It would be mowed down by the wide-blade power mowers of the opposition as soon as its sprouts were detected. Multiple organizations, on the other hand, can affect changes in many places, especially out of the way places where the opposition does not have its wide-blade mowers available.

Men tryout different types of grass in different environments. In one place it may be Bermuda grass (or Bahamas grass, or even Switzerland grass). In others it may be plain old crab grass. What it must not be is unwatered, unfertilized grass that will wither when the mid-day sun hits it. That is the grass which humanists have planted, and as the State’s restraints on freedom squeeze productivity out of the legal, visible markets, the end of cheap Federal fertilizers and cheap water will lead to a change in ownership of the field.

What we have is exactly what we need: alternative grass seeds, hidden from view in minor and seemingly insignificant fields. We are steadily raising up new, non-hybrid “seeds” that will survive the competition of new blights and new environments. The hybrid seed used by the State produces a lush lawn, but only under limited environmental conditions and only by continually returning to the monopolistic hybrid seed sellers. It is not a resilient variety of grass.

Grass-roots organizations are all around us. Not one; many. They may co-operate with others for limited ends, but they have their own timetables, resources, and goals. They are competitive. Not all will survive; some will. Those that do survive will replace the existing structures of society, all over the world. Humanism is a worldwide phenomenon; it will collapse as a worldwide phenomenon, to be replaced by numerous alternatives.

CONCLUSION The apparent ineffectiveness of small, underfunded ideological or religious organizations is deceptive. All long-term social change comes from the successful efforts of one or another struggling organization to capture the minds of a hard core of future leaders, as well as the respect of a wider population. There is no other way to change a society. The hope of stepping into power overnight without planning is naive, let alone the hope of getting financial support from the existing leadership.

The Hebrews of Joshua’s generation wandered in the wilderness for 40 years until their parents died. They had to prepare themselves mentally and organizationally for the battle to come. They certainly did not bother to court the favor of the king of Jericho, nor did they worry too much that the Levites had not graduated from fully accredited Baal Theological Seminary. If we only recognized our wilderness condition for what it is, we might not continue to make the mistakes in strategy that the Hebrews of Joshua’s day didn’t make.

Glossary

Some of the terminology presented in this book may be unfamiliar to many people. A brief glossary showing how I am using the words may be helpful.

CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION A recently articulated philosophy which argues that it is the moral obligation of Christians to recapture every institution for Jesus Christ. It proclaims “the crown rights of King Jesus.” The means by which this task might be accomplished – a few CR’s are not convinced that it can be – is biblical law. This is the “tool of dominion.” We have been assigned a dominion covenant – a God-given assignment to men to conquer in His name (Gen. 1:28; 9:1-7). The founders of the movement have combined four basic Christian beliefs into one overarching system: 1) biblical law, 2) optimistic eschatology, 3) predestination (providence), and 4) presuppositional apologetics (philosophical defense of the faith). Not all CR’s hold all four positions, but the founders have held all four. The first person who put this system together publicly was Rousas John Rushdoony. He was my mentor during the 1960’s, and while I was working on the specific field of economics, he was developing the overall framework. The first comprehensive introduction to the Christian Reconstruction position was Rushdoony’s The Institutes of Biblical Law (Craig Press, 1973), in which three of my appendices appear. The easiest introduction to the position is my book, Unconditional Surrender: God’s Program for Victory (2nd ed., Geneva Divinity School Press, 1983).

DOOYEWEERDIANISM A philosophy pioneered by the Dutch Calvinist legal philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd (DOUGH-yeh-veerd), in the mid-twentieth century. His major work is A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. He argued with considerable erudition (and appalling verbiage) that there is no neutrality in any philosophical system. All philosophies and outlooks rely on what he called pre-theoretical assumptions about man, nature, law, and God. His shorter book, In the Twilight of Western Thought, presents a 3-part outline of Western philosophy. He categorically rejected the idea that biblical revelation can provide either the categories of philosophy or the content of Christian philosophy. His system therefore lends itself to various “common ground” appeals to the universally logical mind of man. Many of his younger followers have turned to some variation of socialism, most commonly medieval guild socialism, as an answer to the perceived

evils of humanistic Communism and humanistic capitalism. The movement centers in a large home in Toronto, Canada, which was made a graduate studies center in the mid-1960’s. The influence of this movement peaked, 1965-75.

ESCHATOLOGY The doctrine. of “the last things.” It refers to the second (or third) coming of Jesus Christ. There are three major schools of eschatology: premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism. The “pre,” “a,” and “post” refer to the timing of Christ’s return in relation to the millennium, an age of Christian victory.

The premillennialist believes that Jesus will return in person to set up an earthly kingdom a thousand years before the final judgment. Thus, Christ comes premillennially – before the millennium. A major dispute has divided premilIennialists for 160 years: the question of a period, if any, between Christ’s return to “gather His saints in the air” to transform them into perfect beings, and their return to earth with him to rule. Pre-tribulationdispensationalists say there will be a seven-year interlude, during which the Great Tribulation will come upon the earth, especially on a rebuilt national Israel in Palestine. Post-tribulation dispensationalists say that the seven-year Tribulation comes before Christ’s

premillennial return to gather the saints. The church will “go through the meat-grinder” in other words. There has been a revival of post-tribulation dispensationalism since about 1973. Historic premillennialism, represented best in our era by George Elton Ladd, is post-tribulationist, but argues that there are only two dispensations, Old and New. This was the common premillennial view from the early church until the 1820’s.

The amillenniaIist argues that the millennium is totally spiritual in nature, not external, and refers to the church age. Thus, there will never be an earthly victory for Christians before the return of Jesus at the final judgment. The Dutch Calvinist tradition, the Lutheran tradition, and the Church of Christ (fundamentalist) tradition are all amillennial in outlook.

The postmillennialist argues that Jesus will come in final judgment after a long era of peace – peace that is the product of the universal domination of Christians and Christian institutions across the face of the earth. John Calvin was usually “post,” but sometimes “a.” Historically, the Puritans were the most influential postmillennialists, especially the New England Puritans of the first generation, 1630-60. Jonathan Edwards was also postmillennial, as were many of his followers. There was a strong postmillennial undercurrent during the years preceding the American Revolution. The Presbyterians, North and South, were postmillennial – the Southern church until the South lost the Civil War (War Between the States) in 1865; the Northern church right up until the First World War. Humanists in the churches secularized the postmillennial vision, from 1830 onward, and ever since the era of the Social Gospel (1870’s), fundamentalists have asserted repeatedly that postmillennialism means theological liberalism. But it wasn’t liberal before the Arminian revivalists and then the Unitarians reworked its framework to conform with newer theological trends in the United States.

The Christian Reconstruction movement has been developed primarily by postmillennialists since the late 1960’s, but many of the premises of the CR position have been enthusiastically adopted by premillennialists. A handful of Dutch amillennialists believe in the principle of Christian Reconstruction; they just don’t believe we can ever pull it off before the day of judgment.

FUNDAMENTALISM The word was first used by a liberal critic, Harry Emerson Fosdick, in the early 1920’s. He was referring to theological conservatives. A mass-circulation series of 12 booklets by Christian scholars, The Fundamentals, had been sent to 300,000 pastors, missionaries, and Sunday School teachers, beginning around 1910. (These are still in print in a 4-volume set published by Baker Book House in Grand Rapids, Michigan.) It was common to define the fundamentalist faith by means of a series of creedal statements: 1) the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible; 2) the divinity of Jesus Christ; 3) the virgin birth; 4) the historical reality of miracles; and 5) the second coming of Christ in judgment. But additional aspects of the social and cultural views of the fundamentalists narrowed the definition (and excluded others who held to the first five positions, e.g., Lutherans, Presbyterians, and, for that matter, Roman Catholics): 1) total abstinence from alcohol (also dancing, moving pictures, and tobacco); 2) distain for (or fear of) higher education generally; 3) disengagement from politics, especially after 1925; 4) an increasing concentration on the physical return of Jesus Christ to establish a personal thousand-year reign on earth, prior to the final judgment (Le., pre· millennial dispensationalism). A good introduction to the subject is George Marsden’s’ Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford University Press, 1980), which covers the period 1875-1925.

HUMANISM This philosophy maintains that “man is the measure of all things,” a phrase attributed to the presocratic Greek philosopher, Protagoras (about 450 B.C.). The Roman poet Terence said, “I am a man, and nothing human is foreign to me.” (The founder of Communism, Karl Marx, was fond of this phrase.) The basic philosophy of humanism is that there is no God-created standard of judgment outside of man by which men may be judged or changed. Man either creates his own standards (a more common view since 1859, when Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published), or discovers the “natural” (uncreated) laws of nature and human society (an older, pre-Darwinian viewpoint). Secular humanism is a more consistent variant which categorically denies any sort of God who might intervene in the affairs (especially ethical affairs) of mankind. It is more straightforwardly atheistic and aggressive against religion in general and Bible-based Christianity in particular.

LAW-ORDER Another term for the comprehensive law structure of the Bible. This is a coherent system of law which applies to every area of man’s life. It is this law structure which provides man with his “tool of dominion.” Law gives men the standards of personal action, including their relations with each other, nature, and God. A law-order is an inescapable concept. It is never a question of law or no law. It is a question of whose law. Either the law of God is the ethical standard of all human affairs, or else some rival law structure is. In short, there is no neutral ethics, no neutral morality, and therefore no neutral law-order.

The opposite of biblical law is antinomianism, which invariably produces tyranny, for it leaves man unprotected by God’s law. The State or the Church become tyrannical, since they become more and more consistent to their philosophy that there is no God-revealed law-order to restrain them.

Biblical law cannot save man from sin, but it does offer him guidelines for reconstructing the world to conform to God’s standards (social ethics), just as it provides redeemed men with guidelines for personal ethics. We are not under law as a death-dealing judge, but we are under law as a standard of performance. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” Jesus said. Christians are under law as grace-protected, grace-redeemed people.

Fundamentalists whose doctrine of salvation and doctrine of eschatology are both antinomian – “We’re under grace, not law” – have in the past denied the continuing applicability of Old Testament law in the church age. Leaders of the “new fundamentalism” have attempted to return to biblical law through the back door by using such terms as “biblical principles,” or “biblical ethics,” or “the moral standards of the Bible.” But if the principles are morally binding, they must be regarded as laws.

If there is no neutrality anywhere in the universe, and biblical standards apply universally, then all academic disciplines of the modern university are to be governed by biblical revelation and biblical law. On this point, see the book which I edited, Foundations of Christian Scholarship (Ross House Books, P.O. Box 67, Vallecito, CA 95251).

LIBERATION THEOLOGY Popular among liberals in all denominations since its development by a Harvard professor in the late 1950’s, liberation theology adopts the language of socialist wealth redistribution, Marxist revolutionary rhetoric, and out-of-context Bible quotes. It has become extremely popular in Latin America among radical Roman Catholic clerics. Not all of its adherents are openly revolutionary. Some of them are vague. Others are chicken. Baptist theologian Ronald Sider is probably best classified as a non-revolutionary liberation theologian (as of early 1984). His book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, was co-published by the liberal Roman Catholic Paulist Press and the neo-evangelical InterVarsity Press. The best refutation of liberation theology by a Protestant (or anyone else, for that matter), is David Chilton’s Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulators (2nd ed., Institute for Christian Economics, 1982). It is also the best introduction to Christian economics.

PRESUPPOSITIONALISM This term refers generally to any philosophy which argues that the conclusions men draw from all evidence is governed by their operating presuppositions concerning God, man, law, and nature. More specifically, the term refers to the writings of the Dutch-American Calvinist philosopher, Cornelius Van Til, who is still alive as I write these words. His major books include Christianity and Barthianism, The New Modernism, The Defense of the Faith, and A Christian Theory of Knowledge. He is generally regarded as the “patron philosopher,” if not the patron saint, of the Christian Reconstruction movement. Van Til categorically denies all applications of the idea of neutrality, which is at root a philosophy of the self-proclaimed autonomous man. In contrast to Dooyeweerd, Van Til has always argued that the Bible provides both the framework (categories) and content of Christian philosophy. He never pursued this thesis with respect to specific biblical revelation concerning biblical law, a task which was taken up by his disciple, R. J. Rushdoony, especially in The Institutes of Biblical Law, and by a younger disciple of Van Til, Greg L. Bahnsen (Theonomy in Christian Ethics).

SYNCRETISM An application of the doctrine of neutralism. It is a mixed philosophy which attempts to combine biblical revelation with the insights of human philosophy, most notably Greek philosophy. This characterizes the philosophy of the medieval Roman Catholic scholar, Thomas Aquinas (“Thomism”). It also characterizes the philosophical defenses of the faith offered by Lutherans and almost all other Protestants, including fundamentalists. Such a defense usually involves four or five “proofs of God” that supposedly demonstrate the inescapable nature of God – though not a God who possesses all of the characteristics specifically revealed in the Bible.

Van Til is the most important critic of syncretism. He says that if we begin with the presupposition that fallen man’s mind is logically capable of coming to faith in a god, then that god cannot possibly be the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible has revealed to men in His word that all the earth is totally dependent on Him, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Therefore, man is not autonomous, and man’s speculations are not autonomous. We must start with the presupposition of God and His revelation, or else we cannot logically end with such a God. If we start with the logic of autonomous man, then the “god” produced or discovered by autonomous man’s mind cannot be the omnipotent God of the Bible. Thus, all attempts to mix Christianity with autonomous man’s philosophies must result in the abandonment of biblical Christianity.