How Do You Preserve a Legacy While Looking to the Future?

When your father left Chalcedon in your hands, what sort of guidance did he give you for the vision he saw for the future of the ministry?

Well, to understand what he saw as the future of the ministry, you have to first understand what he considered important, which was the legacy of his writing.  Even his audio recordings, which many people find of high value, he personally did not consider of great importance, because much of what he spoke ended up as the content of his books. When he passed away, it was obvious that I needed to preserve his writings, many of which were unpublished. At the time, I had an entire shelf full of manuscripts to publish, and we’re just now coming towards the end of those documents.

In the last weeks of his life, he did give me specific instructions on what he wanted to prioritize, such as the articles he wrote for the California Farmer, a farming publication. His column was called “The Pastor’s Pulpit,” which he wrote for 25 to 30 years, and he considered these short articles as some of his best writing because each article was self-contained and he had to choose his words carefully.

In 2001, when he gave me his instructions, the archive of his column was not organized, and he wanted me to get those articles in order and have them published. This vast collection would eventually be published as the seven volume paperback series A Word In Season: Daily Messages on the Faith for All of Life.

I remember reading the three volume set Good Morning, Friends and being astounded that I had never seen those writings before. Did you know that those existed?

I knew my father had done a radio program when he was a full-time pastor in Santa Cruz, California, but I was very young at the time, and it was before he founded Chalcedon. To do the radio program, he had written out his short messages, which all began with the line, “Good morning, friends.”

I found folders of these written radio messages buried in his library, and at first I wasn’t even sure what they were. Fortunately, he kept records in his journal entries; although not well organized, he kept track of what he wrote and what he did. In his journals, I found the list of radio talks he did and cross referenced them to find out which ones I had and when they were done. These radio messages were over 60 years old, and they’re now published in the three-volume paperback series Good Morning, Friends: A Collection of Weekly Radio Messages by R. J. Rushdoony.

I’m amazed at some of the things I happened to find in my father’s library, such as a few manuscripts that have missing parts to them that I may never find, but for the most part we were able to assemble a good many of his writings together and publish as much as possible.

So would you say that publishing has remained a major focus for you as president of Chalcedon?

Yes, before my father passed away, it was pretty obvious that he was irreplaceable, and I knew that I wasn’t the person to do what he did nor lead the Christian Reconstruction movement in general. However, because of the priority of getting his books in print—and those that were out of print back in print—it became obvious what needed to be done, and my role was clearly defined. It was just going to take a long time, and emerging technology would soon introduce an expansion into digital publishing.

An example are the Journals of Christian Reconstruction—years worth of scholarly journals on multiple topics—which we are continually digitizing as we have time. In this sense, we’ve not only been keeping past books in print, publishing new books after my father’s passing, but we’ve also produced ebook versions and most recently, audiobooks. There’s been a great deal of progress.

The reason for all this is not just to create an archive of his writing but because I believe my father’s influence in the future will be more than it has been in the past, because he spoke to so many things the church still needs to address. I think people are going to have to fall back on some of his ideas, and so my father’s writings are going to be a tremendous resource for the future, and that’s why we keep going. It’s not just for the vanity of saying that my father’s work endures. We’re keeping all this alive, and we’re keeping his books available, because I believe the church will have to contend with these issues.

Did you have to battle with some people’s expectations of you? How did you come to decide on the lane you should be in?

There were people who thought that we needed to have a personality to lead Chalcedon. In fact, I was in a meeting once, after my father’s passing, where the question was actually raised, “Can anybody think of a Christian organization that has survived its founder’s passing and is still prominent?” Those in the meeting had trouble coming up with an example. Many major ministries fade after the founder passes, or they become different altogether.

I made it clear that I was not my father, nor could I assume his role. Some suggested we hire someone to lead Chalcedon, but this proved unnecessary. Our mission was already well-defined, especially in the realm of publishing. We didn’t need a figurehead to sustain the work; we needed to continue making my father’s writings available. While we haven’t abandoned the pursuit of new scholarship, with Martin Selbrede contributing significantly in that area, our immediate task was preserving and disseminating what we already had. This work, I believe, will serve the Kingdom in the years ahead, even long after our own time.

I’m glad you brought up Martin Selbrede because many times I’ve heard you say that you don’t consider yourself a scholar, and Martin certainly fits into that category. Do you feel comfortable that he has that role, and was it a difficult choice to say, “I think Martin should hold this position?”

No, it wasn’t a difficult choice. It was the obvious one—particularly to the Chalcedon staff who have worked closely with Martin for a few decades. Martin, by the way, is Chalcedon’s Vice President, and he works for us only part-time and then volunteers a lot more of his time. He has his own employment but chooses to dedicate himself in serving multiple needs at Chalcedon, especially in the area of research and scholarship. He is by far the most knowledgeable of my father’s writing than anyone else living, and I wish he was in a position to write and research full time, because he has a lot to contribute.

Like your father, you’ve mentioned that we are witnessing the collapse of humanism, and yet you remain hopeful and persistent in our duty and success in furthering the Kingdom of God. Is this a laborious task for you, or one that actually energizes you?

Well, I think it helps in any situation to be a realist, and if our cultural and spiritual conditions are serious, we need a realistic assessment of where we are. We know that the Kingdom of God continues to grow, but my father was clear that the forces of humanism were going to fail. In fact, that’s why he characterized our current age as the death of humanism. It is faltering due to the diminishing influence of Christianity and the abandonment of a Christian foundation for life and culture.

In a de-Christianized world, we’re going to have problems, but my father’s ministry began when things looked pretty good and people were optimistic. Since then, we’ve had a series of problems, but my father pointed out early on the coming failure of humanism. Some of his first writings in the late 1950s addressed these problems in the arena of public education. He saw where public education was going logically because the culture was abandoning Christianity in favor of humanism.

Fast forward to today, and why are young people rioting, renouncing the past, and trying to destroy what is good and stable with nothing to replace it? My father simply said it is the result of our rejection of God and the Christian faith while placing our faith in man, which is faith in nothing. 

And although things may get worse, my father wasn’t a defeatist. His eschatology proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is going to grow and that the Kingdom will outlast the secular state. We are nearing the end of the age of humanism. How it fails, how fast it fails, and what’s going to replace it, we don’t exactly know. This is because we can’t predict how and when the Holy Spirit moves. When God wants things to change, things will change. When people turn to God, that’s the work of the Holy Spirit, and we can’t really predict that.

What would you say at this point is Chalcedon’s greatest need?

Certainly, as I’m in charge of paying the bills, I’m always concerned about where we stand financially and what projects we’re even capable of undertaking. We do struggle financially at times and one of the things I hate spending money on is facilities. For example, we have a large amount of pavement that’s starting to look like a gravel road because it needs so much work, but I hate spending so much money on something like asphalt when we don’t know what our income is going to be like next year. Therefore, we have to often ignore certain needs on our facilities because we don’t have the income. So, knowing we had a strong financial base would be helpful.

However, I don’t think that our problems are always financial. We need to stay focused on what we’re doing, and we don’t always know what we are going to need to be involved in six months, a year, or two years from now. In that sense, we try to stay flexible as well while using what we have in the best way possible, in the most efficient way possible.

Lastly, I do very much appreciate our givers, and Darlene and I do pray for you on a very regular basis, and thank God for you.

Taken from the Out of the Question Podcast, Episode 305. Click to listen.