“What we face today is the rapid growth of the state, encroaching on the powers of various spheres: the family, the individual, business, Christian and home schools, charities, and more. A negative approach, i.e., mere opposition, is not sufficient; many old Romans saw the problems of the empire tellingly, but negatively. Only the early Christians came up with new alternatives, creating schools, welfare agencies to care for old and young, hospitals, arbitration courts, and more.” ~ R. J. Rushdoony (Taken from a private letter)
Dear Friend of Chalcedon,
What’s the fastest way to establishing Christian dominion? It’s by godly service. What is godly service? It’s when Christians work to create alternative means of government, education, justice and welfare to that of the state. In short, it’s faith and action!
Think about it. Sinful, humanistic man incarnates his will in the power of the state, but how does God’s government come? We know “the government is upon His shoulders” (Isaiah 9:6), but how does God’s reign come in history?
God’s Kingdom comes when His will is done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:10), and the very basics of God’s will is to both govern and provide for mankind. Remember, the one who provides is the one who rules. This is why the state is passionate about increasing taxes—to fund the welfare state—and the Christian should be passionate about the tithe—to fund the Kingdom:
“Only by the self-government of the Christian man under God and His law can the forces of the tyrant state be pushed back and overcome. Only by God’s tax, the tithe, can we finance God’s Kingdom.” (R. J. Rushdoony, Roots of Reconstruction, p. 105f.).
Christian Dominion by Godly Service
Our Lord said, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). This powerful verse has been reduced to a children’s song that justifies their being sent into public schools in order to “let their light shine,” when in reality, this verse is an explicit mandate for Christian dominion.
It’s when fallen men behold our good works that they’ll glorify God. Much the same as with Israel in Deuteronomy 4:5-8, where the heathen nations would behold the wisdom and understanding of God’s law in practice and declare, as it says in verses 6-7, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for?”
As Israel was to demonstrate the wisdom and love of God’s law to the nations around them, so we are to manifest our good works “as a city set on a hill” in order that men may glorify our Father in heaven. This is Christian dominion by godly service, and it is a much neglected form of evangelism. Men want more than messages—they want justice, welfare, education, good health, and more.
What’s Needed Is a “Think-Tank for Christian Self-Government”
Herein lies the great misunderstanding of Christian Reconstruction: dominionism is not the taking over the national government but rather the taking back of government in the form of self-government in terms of God’s law. In short, Christian theocracy is the creation of alternative means of government, justice, and welfare based upon God’s law and funded by the Christian tithe.
I hope this makes clear why I’ve often said that the Chalcedon Foundation is essentially “a think-tank for Christian self-government.” In other words, the massive bureaucracy of the federal government has an untold number of think-tanks feeding it with research and policies from which the state multiplies its legislation, and the Chalcedon Foundation is called to sponsor a resistance and overcoming of the tyrannical state by educating and equipping Christians to create alternative means of government, justice, education, and welfare.
Since 1965, no other Christian organization has done more to this end than the Chalcedon Foundation, and moving forward, there are little to no other organizations operating with this mission of Christian education. Chalcedon is an educational ministry, which means we are publishing and promoting the message of Christian Reconstruction through every means possible with only the support, work, and prayers of a faithful few.
Extending the Reach Through Live Events
Reaching Christians requires two things: relentlessly pushing the single idea of Christian Reconstruction and then leading them to the educational resources to equip and develop them in the application of that idea. It’s a simple methodology, but it requires great effort.
Here’s the challenge. It’s difficult to push the single idea of Christian Reconstruction through books alone because it takes a great deal of reading and thought for someone to grasp an idea so foreign to them. That’s why it’s imperative that we utilize tools like social media, video, and live events because they are effective means to introduce these ideas in short, simple terms. Once someone embraces an idea, they can develop themselves in terms of it through our vast educational resources. Here’s just a few of the highlights of how we’ve done this in 2014.
Law & Liberty Tour
For a second year, Chalcedon has helped to sponsor Law & Liberty Tour events throughout the U.S. In June, our team traveled to Campbell, CA for a Law & Liberty special event entitled “The Law in the Gospel” featuring myself, Martin Selbrede, Jeff Durbin, and Andrea Schwartz.
On September 5-6, we made our way to North Houston Baptist Church for a Law & Liberty event on the theme “The Law of the Kingdom” once again featuring myself, Martin Selbrede, as well as Bojidar Marinov and Peter Allison. Because next year is our fiftieth anniversary, we’ll be hosting special celebration events in 2015, so stay tuned for more information on those! I’d love to see you attend!
Extend the Reach
For several years now, Chalcedon vice-president, Martin Selbrede, and his team of volunteers have logged thousands of miles criss-crossing the U.S. to set up large booths and book tables at key homeschooling and family conferences. The opportunity to speak one-on-one with people at these events—as well as show them our books and resources—is an important part of reaching Christians with our message.
In May of this year, Martin and Dr. Paul Raymond landed in St. Louis for the Family Covenant Ministries Conference at the St. Charles Convention Center. What better place to share with others about the self-governing Christian family than at a family conference!
While Martin was speaking at the Law & Liberty event in Houston, Chalcedon friends, Scott and Angie Head, stepped in to host a Chalcedon booth and book table at the Kerrville FORGE Conference in Kerrville, Texas. As you might imagine, we rely heavily on the support of our volunteers. Thank you to the Head family!
The Kingdom-Driven Family
What we can’t do in person, we’re seeking to do online, and one effective way we’ve been reaching new people is by empowering our resident education expert, Andrea Schwartz, to launch her Kingdom-Driven Family web site, and Facebook page, where she is targeting Christian families about living a Kingdom-driven life in all that they do.
This project rose after the 2014 release of Andrea’s latest book A House for God: Building a Kingdom-Driven Family (see more new releases below). We felt that she could give authoritative expression to the idea of the “Kingdom-driven family” to wives and mothers who need a greater vision for their families and the education of their children.
She launched her web site (TheKingdomDrivenFamily.com) over the Summer and has successfully grown her Facebook page to over 1,400 followers! Without the faithful support of friends like you, we simply could not make this possible. The more Chalcedon invests in reaching and equipping a new audience, the more we’ll need your help to do so.
Books and Books!
Still, our greatest outreach will always be printed books, which makes sense, since active Christians understand the need for self-education. This is why publishing books remains the central part of our work at Chalcedon, and this year brought some new titles to print as well as to Kindle!
Four new titles were released this year including Andrea’s A House for God, as well as the fifth volume of the devotional series A Word in Season: Daily Messages on the Faith for All of Life. There are three more volumes still to be published in this set, so keep that in mind as you consider your year-end support of Chalcedon. Help me publish these books!
Our fiction label, Storehouse Press, released The Palace—volume six of the Bell Mountain Series by novelist, and Chalcedon writer, Lee Duigon. As a note, back in August, Lee Duigon’s second volume, The Cellar Beneath the Cellar, received the Silver Medal in the 2014 Global Ebook Awards. Congratulations, Lee!
The seventh volume The Glass Bridge is now in production, and Lee recently completed the manuscript to volume eight, The Temple.
As I’m writing, we’re awaiting shipment on a book I’m very excited about. It’s entitled Our Threatened Freedom: A Christian View on the Menace of American Statism by R. J. Rushdoony, which is a huge collection of transcribed radio commentaries that my father delivered many years ago (349 pages) on the absurdities of American statism.
Not only that, there are three more important print projects coming up for 2015 that I’ll specifically need your help to fund. First, is the three volume set entitled An Informed Faith: The Position Papers of R. J. Rushdoony, which is an organized, indexed collection my father’s many position papers on topics ranging from history, to theology, to economics, to statism, to Christian living. These three books will soon go to press, so I’ll need your support before the end of this year!
Also set for production are a bound collection of medical reports written by R. J. Rushdoony tentatively entitled Faith and Wellness: Resisting the State Control of Healthcare by Restoring the Priestly Calling of Doctors and a republication of The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum that will be re-titled The Quiet Revolution: Taking Back Government by the Self-Government of Christian Education.
Other books in process are a collection of radio talks called Good Morning, Friends by R. J. Rushdoony as well as his short works on Zechariah, Zephaniah, Haggai, and First and Second Corinthians. Wow!
Kindle Books
Lastly, Chalcedon staff member, Jill Rouse, has labored tirelessly bringing many of our print titles into ebook format for Kindle readers. This year she successfully formatted ten titles for Kindle including: The Atheism of the Early Church, Intellectual Schizophrenia, The Flight from Humanity, The Palace, Numbers, The One and the Many, The Messianic Character of American Education, The Great Christian Revolution, andA House for God: Building a Kingdom-Driven Family.
Jill has eight more upcoming titles for Kindle that include Infallibility and Interpretation, Roots of Reconstruction, Christianity and the State, Deuteronomy, Noble Savages, The Nature of the American System, Institutes of Biblical Law Vol. 3, and Systematic Theology in Two Volumes.
There’s just too much to include in even a letter of this size, but I want you to see just how important your financial support of Chalcedon is. In fact, I need something special from you. In order for me to create an aggressive budget for 2015, I need you to send the most generous tax-deductible financial gift to Chalcedon you can before December 31, 2014. Please, we urgently need your support!
Please take a few moments right now to prayerfully consider what you can before the end of this year. I have to be bold enough to let you know our need is great because our work is great, and I know you understand that. Please use our online donation service and include your generous offering right away. Thank you for making our work possible. We simply could not do it without you!
In His Service,
Mark R. Rushdoony
P.S. We must push back and overcome the forces of the tyrannical state, and that can only be done by self-governing Christians committed to establishing alternative means of government, justice, and welfare. Chalcedon is solely dedicated to this mission, and I need your help. Please send your most generous tax-deductible gift before the end of the year.
- Mark R. Rushdoony
Mark R. Rushdoony graduated from Los Angeles Baptist College (now The Master’s College) with a B.A. in history in 1975 and was ordained to the ministry in 1995.
He taught junior and senior high classes in history, Bible, civics and economics at a Christian school in Virginia for three years before joining the staff of Chalcedon in 1978. He was the Director of Chalcedon Christian School for 14 years while teaching full time. He also helped tutor all of his children through high school.
In 1998, he became the President of Chalcedon and Ross House Books, and, more recently another publishing arm, Storehouse Press. Chalcedon and its subsidiaries publish many titles plus CDs, mp3s, and an extensive online archive at www.chalcedon.edu.
He has written scores of articles for Chalcedon’s publications, both the Chalcedon Report and Faith for all of Life. He was a contributing author to The Great Christian Revolution (1991). He has spoken at numerous conferences and churches in the U.S. and abroad.
Mark Rushdoony lives in Vallecito, California, his home of 43 years with his wife of 45 years and his youngest son. He has three married children and nine grandchildren.