More than anyone else, Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) has been responsible for the burgeoning of theonomic thought among a small, but vocal, minority of Reformed Christians. He’s considered the father of reconstructionism and one of the seminal influences in the homeschool movement. In Law and Liberty, we get the seeds of Rushdoony’s ideas on biblical law and political theory, the flower of which came to bloom in his massive Institutes of Biblical Law (1973). Originally delivered as a series of radio addresses in 1966 and 1967 (though written for publication first), these essays are dated, frequently redundant, sometimes disjointed, and put together without much in the way of scholarly apparatus or footnotes. Still, they provide a popular level introduction to Rushdoony’s brand of reconstructionism.
INTRODUCTION
At the heart of Rushdoony’s analysis of American cultural and law (as he saw it in the 1960s) is a twofold prescription for what ails us as a nation.
First, Rushdoony believes that every law is the expression of one’s ultimate allegiance. American law is no longer based on biblical convictions or categories, but on humanistic, statist, and socialist principles. He argues that the only approach to civil law which is truly Christian is to
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