<\/p>\n
Although many pundits think the religious right is waning, McDonnell’s ties to the Christian Right were not an issue Bob McDonnell responded<\/a> that he wrote the thesis twenty There is, however, a problem with these claims.\u00a0 <\/span>McDonnell’s thesis is not a benign Christian Reconstruction is, according to Professor Julie Professor Ingersoll argues that “the ideas of The Post<\/i>, the What they don’t understand is that McDonnell’s work closely I am a Christian–and Christians have every right to bring Is this the sort of government Virginians really want?\u00a0\u00a0Do they understand or care about the implications of McDonnell’s own writings? \u00a0<\/span>Whether McDonnell still holds these \u00a0<\/p>\n (The \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Although many pundits think the religious right is waning, Republican Bob McDonnell, whose political views were shaped by radical right-wing beliefs–those of Christian Reconstruction–appears poised to win Virginia’s upcoming gubernatorial election.\u00a0\u00a0 McDonnell’s ties to the Christian Right were not an issue until the late summer when a Washington Post reporter obtained a copy of McDonnell’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,431,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christians","category-elections-off-year","category-religion-in-the-public-square"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nRepublican Bob McDonnell, whose political views were shaped by radical
\nright-wing beliefs–those of Christian Reconstruction<\/a>–appears poised to win
\nVirginia’s upcoming gubernatorial election.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nuntil the late summer when a Washington
\nPost<\/a><\/i> reporter<\/a> obtained a copy of McDonnell’s M.A. thesis<\/a> in public policy
\nwritten for the College of Law at Pat Robertson’s Regent University.\u00a0 <\/span>In a series of articles, the Post<\/i>–and a good number of liberal
\nbloggers–reported that McDonnell’s thesis attacks working women, birth control,
\nand public school education.\u00a0 <\/span>Critics
\npointed out how “conservative” these views are and that McDonnell is associated
\nwith Robertson (McDonnell also served as a Regent trustee until recently)–implying
\nthat such views and associations should discredit his campaign.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nyears ago, that he doesn’t really remember much about it, and that he can’t
\nreally recall the lectures of his thesis supervisor, Regent’s Law School dean
\nHerb Titus<\/a> (whose views were so controversial that he was eventually removed
\nfrom the faculty).\u00a0 <\/span>He also claims
\nto have moderated–pointing to his own family as evidence of his broadmindedness
\n(he has several successful grown daughters).\u00a0 <\/span>Mostly, however, he sidesteps the issue, implying that the
\npress is out to get him, and that he is a genial jobs-and-economy\/law-and-order
\nsort of guy–not a Christian Right culture warrior.<\/p>\n
\nChristian intellectual piece or slightly biblically goofy. \u00a0<\/span>Rather, it is a detailed argument for
\nthe Republican Party to embrace a specific philosophical worldview called
\nChristian Reconstruction, an interpretation of the Bible, politics, society,
\nand the family that has proved so controversial that even some who hold these
\nideas will not admit to them in public.\u00a0
\n<\/span>It is difficult to imagine writing a M.A. thesis based on Reconstructionist
\nthought and not knowing exactly what you are doing.<\/p>\n
\nIngersoll, a leading expert on the topic, “a label for a small group of
\nconservative Christians who advocate ‘reconstructing’ society to conform with
\nbiblical law.”\u00a0 <\/span>The founder of this
\nmovement is the late R.J. Rushdoony, whose influence on the Christian Right has
\noften been minimized by some of its leaders (because he advocated such things
\nas stoning disobedient children) but whom others claim was the single most
\nimportant intellectual influence on conservative Christianity in the twentieth century.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nReconstructionists helped to frame the worldview of the Christian Right, and helped
\nweave together the issues that have dominated the Christian Right’s political
\nagenda while grounding those issues in a specific understanding of the ‘family.'”\u00a0 <\/span>Indeed, at the center of Rushdoony’s
\nthinking–and that of his disciples, such as Herb Titus, Bob McDonnell’s thesis
\nadvisor–stands the idea of the authoritative, patriarchal family.\u00a0 <\/span>McDonnell’s thesis?\u00a0 <\/span>“The Republican Party’s Vision for the
\nFamily: The Compelling Issue of the Decade.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nVirginia Democratic Party, and liberal bloggers have looked at the thesis but have
\nfailed to really understand it–partly because they don’t understand
\ntheology.\u00a0 <\/span>They see Pat Robertson
\n(whom they don’t like); they see a lot of anti-feminist language (which they
\nalso don’t like); they see some sort of narrow version of Christianity (that
\nappears to scare them); and they see conservative politics (and, of course,
\nthey don’t like that).<\/p>\n
\nfollows that of Ray Sutton, a Rushdoony disciple and the author of Who Owns the Family?\u00a0 <\/span>God or the State?\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span>Published in 1986 by Dominion Press, Sutton’s book is an influential
\nReconstructionist work–outlining a “statist” attack on the family through
\nhumanistic education, oppressive taxes, sexual perversion, women’s rights,
\nabortion, welfare, and national healthcare policies–and arguing that the family
\nneeds to be reconstructed to the biblical image of the Old Testament patriarchs
\nin order to build a theocratic society.\u00a0
\n<\/span>Indeed, McDonnell’s analysis of the contemporary family follows Sutton
\npoint-by-point (a dependence that is clear in both the body of the thesis and
\nin the footnotes).\u00a0 <\/span>If the analysis
\nis the same, does McDonnell also want to reconstruct the “biblical” family in
\norder to create a Christian America?\u00a0
\n<\/span>He certainly said that he wanted to “restore” a “proper balance of
\nchurch, family, and state authority” to the nation (McDonnell, p. 61)–and
\ncalled the separation of church and state “conventional folklore” (McDonnell, p.
\n62).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\ntheir moral convictions into the public sphere.\u00a0 <\/span>But faith convictions need to be held in tension with the
\nseparation of church and state, laws of equality, and religious diversity. McDonnell’s
\nthesis does not support separation, is not pro-gender equality, nor is it religiously
\ninclusive. His thesis outlines a specific theological agenda–that of Christian
\nReconstruction, an overt movement to, in the words of Rushdoony, “subdue the
\nearth and exercise dominion over it . . . Man must bring to all creation God’s
\nlaw-order. . . This government is particularly the calling of the man as
\nhusband and father, and of the family as an institution.”<\/p>\n
\nconvictions–whether or not he will completely denounce and renounce (and not just avoid) them–is
\nan important matter for both Virginia and the nation.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
\nquotes about Reconstruction and Rushdoony are from Julie Ingersoll, “Mobilizing
\nEvangelicals:\u00a0 <\/span>Christian
\nReconstruction and the Roots of the Christian Right,” in Brint and Schroedel,
\neds., Evangelicals and Democracy in
\nAmerica, Volume II:\u00a0 <\/span>Religion and
\nPolitics, <\/i>2009.)\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n