Faith and Action: The Collected Articles of R. J. Rushdoony, 1965-2004

In a 1993 Chalcedon Report, R.J. Rushdoony warned of rising anti-Christian hostility in America, tracing it to Supreme Court decisions eroding Biblical foundations of law since the 1950s, the rise of humanism as an unofficial established religion promoting moral relativism, media bias against Christians, and growing intolerance toward Biblical morality—while hypocritically accusing believers of judgmentalism. He called for prayer, action, and resistance, urging Christians to awaken rather than retreat, affirming we are called to be conquerors in Christ amid cultural persecution.#ChristianPersecution #BiblicalTruth #ReligiousFreedom #StandFirm #FaithInAction #HumanismExposed

This passage examines how well-intentioned social and labor programs can be exploited, often favoring the wrong parties. The “Burglar Cops of Hollywood” case illustrates law enforcement officers who committed theft while on duty yet received overtime pay during interrogation and even claims for disability due to the stress of being caught. Similarly, in a sex-discrimination lawsuit, the plaintiff received far less than her lawyers, highlighting systemic inequities in benefit distribution. The author argues that abuses in social programs, wage laws, and benefits diminish public trust and threaten the longevity of these initiatives. The solution, he suggests, is active civic involvement to eliminate abuses: if you value a program, work to ensure it serves its intended purpose rather than rewarding exploitation.

#SocialPrograms #AbuseOfBenefits #PublicTrust #CivicResponsibility #LawEnforcementAccountability

In “Doing Nothing” (Chalcedon Report No. 159), Rushdoony argues that Western society’s failure to resist tyranny is not intellectual confusion but religious apostasy, rooted in a shared humanism that unites both democratic and communist systems. Solzhenitsyn’s critique unsettled the West because he exposed the uncomfortable truth that Marxism and Western statism spring from the same faith: the sovereignty of man and the state rather than God. As a result, persecutions of Christians—whether in Soviet labor camps or American courtrooms targeting Christian schools and parents—are met largely with silence, apathy, or even opposition from fellow churchmen. Where humanism reigns, Christ’s lordship is denied, neutrality is impossible, and nonconformity is treated as a crime. Rushdoony concludes that this is a spiritual war over the reign of Christ, one in which believers must recognize that doing nothing is itself surrender, and that true victory belongs only to those who overcome the world by faith in the risen King.

#Humanism #Statism #Solzhenitsyn #ChristianSchools #LordshipOfChrist #NoNeutrality #FaithOverFear #SpiritualWar

This passage critiques the modern legal system’s focus on technicalities over substantive justice. Minor procedural errors, once considered irrelevant, now frequently overturn convictions, regardless of overwhelming evidence of guilt. Charles Peters cites cases in New York where a convicted burglar and a guilty dentist were freed due to procedural quirks, despite strong evidence against them. The author argues that such overemphasis on legal technicalities undermines moral accountability and erodes public confidence in justice. Courts increasingly prioritize the “game of law” over right and wrong, and without a return to a justice system grounded in moral and ethical principles, both freedom and justice are at risk of collapse.

#LegalTechnicalities #JusticeSystem #MoralAccountability #RuleOfLaw #FreedomAndJustice

In “Children’s Crusade” (Chalcedon Report No. 152), Rushdoony argues that the belief in the natural innocence and saving power of children is a recurring humanistic heresy with catastrophic consequences. He traces this idea from medieval theology to the Children’s Crusade of 1212, where faith in childlike purity led nearly 100,000 children into death, slavery, disease, and disillusionment. The same doctrine, he contends, reappeared in the student movements of the 1960s, which proclaimed youth as morally superior and society as the source of evil. These modern crusaders, convinced of their own holiness, produced not renewal but narcotics, sexual chaos, terrorism, and hardened violence. Rushdoony warns that this impulse continues in contemporary movements such as Children’s Bills of Rights, which seek to free children from parental and ecclesiastical authority in the hope that autonomous youth will redeem society. At root, all crusades search for a “pure class” to save the world—children, youth, workers, races, or elites—thereby denying original sin, rejecting Christ as the only Redeemer, and replacing God’s law with self-righteous activism. The result is always the same: moral blindness, disillusionment, and destruction, followed by renewed longing for another miracle-working savior instead of repentance and obedience to Jesus Christ.

In “Innocent III” (Chalcedon Report No. 151), Rushdoony examines how well-intentioned but misdirected efforts at moral renewal can deepen rather than cure civilizational decay. He portrays Pope Innocent III as an able and forceful leader who rightly recognized Europe’s spiritual indifference but disastrously sought renewal through dramatic, external action especially crusades rather than regeneration and obedience to God’s law. The Fourth Crusade, the sack of Constantinople, the Albigensian Crusade, and the Children’s Crusade illustrate how moral causes pursued by unregenerate men unleash greed, violence, and hypocrisy. Rushdoony argues that this “Innocentine” logic persists in modern politics, where secular crusades wars, global institutions, reform movements are launched in the name of humanity rather than Christ, yet produce similar destruction. The core error is faith in action, innocence, or programs instead of regeneration. True reform, he insists, begins with new hearts under God, continues with obedience to His law, and works patiently through restitution, Christian education, family faithfulness, and godly dominion never through crusading power.

In “Science and Magic” (Chalcedon Report No. 370), Rushdoony argues that both science and magic, despite appearing opposed, share a common foundation: they treat the world as impersonal, amoral, and subject to manipulation for power. Both seek control rather than moral obedience, and both thrive where God is excluded as a personal, sovereign Lord. Biblical faith, by contrast, begins with a personal God to whom all men are morally accountable, emphasizing redemption, obedience, and service rather than power. When science abandons God while continuing to rely on His created order, it depersonalizes man and reality, dissolving moral categories and reducing crime to mere technical violations rather than rebellion against God’s law. This moral vacuum fosters both tyranny and criminal culture. True dominion, Rushdoony insists, is not amoral power but righteous rule under God’s law, bringing all things into submission to Christ. Without this reordering through Christian faith, science becomes a modern ally of ancient magic, and society drifts steadily toward lawlessness and fear.

IThis passage describes a common problem with federally funded local projects: well-meaning federal grants can incentivize unnecessary construction, often at the expense of local residents. The anecdote of the hill-country homeowner illustrates how a simple bridge-widening need was expanded into a full road-widening project, costing land, money, and public resources unnecessarily. The author argues that the real issue is not the federal government itself, but a moral and systemic failure at all levels local officials eager to seize funds and citizens willing to go along with wasteful projects. The result is twofold: financial strain on taxpayers and the erosion of the moral foundations necessary for freedom. Federal aid, in this view, amplifies preexisting corruption rather than creating it.

#FederalGrants #WastefulSpending #LocalGovernmentCorruption #MoralResponsibility #PublicWorks #FinancialAndMoralDecay

In “Experience” (Chalcedon Report No. 107), Rushdoony critiques the modern elevation of personal experience and mass appeal over objective, God-ordained truth. He argues that since the late seventeenth century Western culture—and the church with it—has increasingly treated experience as the test of truth, displacing doctrine, law, and God’s purposes with individual feeling and subjective validation. This shift has produced experiential religion, antinomianism, and a fixation on numbers: conversions are counted rather than lives transformed, popularity is confused with faithfulness, and quantity replaces truth as the measure of success. Rushdoony contends that this mindset inevitably leads to relativism, crowd-pleasing politics, and socialism, because truth is made dependent on mass approval rather than God’s Word. Both mass-man, who worships popularity, and the elitist, who worships obscurity, share the same humanistic error: man becomes the standard. In contrast, Biblical faith judges all things by God’s law and purpose, values small beginnings, and recognizes that reality is not created by human belief or experience but by God’s sovereign order.

This passage critiques the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit granting the Communist Party special privileges in campaign reporting, exempting it from the disclosure rules required of Republicans and Democrats. The author questions the rationale, arguing that donors to the Communist Party rarely face persecution, while donors to mainstream causes like United Way sometimes do. He frames this as an example of “reverse discrimination,” where the law favors certain groups over justice. The broader concern is that justice requires impartiality “no respecting of persons” yet legal favoritism toward specific groups undermines true justice. The passage concludes with an example of jury bias favoring a wealthy company, illustrating how prejudice, rather than fairness, can dictate outcomes.

#ReverseDiscrimination #JusticeAndBias #Impartiality #LegalFavoritism #JudicialCritique #FairnessInLaw