Statism as a Religious Fact (Part 1)

It proves to be engrossing listening. Each episode Rushdoony takes us through various aspects such as, Religion and the State, The Freedom of Christ’s Church, Freedom and the State, The State and Justice, etc., concluding with Towards the Rebirth of Government.

In our estimation R. J. Rushdoony will prove to be the “Augustine” of this epoch. Just as Augustine’s City of God was foundational for the emergence of Christendom from the ruins of Rome, so too Rushdoony’s body of work for the current era. It provides the biblical blueprints for the emergence of a new Christian culture from the West’s current implosion.

In this thirty-fifth episode, Statism as a Religious Fact (Part 1), Rushdoony observes that prior to the French Revolution (1789) the Western concept of the state was not applicable.

While, in theory, rulers claimed “divine right”, in practice their powers were limited. Their taxes never reached the proportions now exacted by the modern state. Administration and power were rather distributed among a variety of governments, from the individual Christian man under God, to the church, the monasteries, family, the local lord, guilds and more. In France, after the Revolution, the monasteries, with their extensive welfare and educational programmes, were suppressed. All sources of welfare were seized by the state between 1789 and 1793.

The development of the modern state is a religious and anti-Christian fact. The shift from the more basic forms of government to the state was a religious one. As Hellenic thought was revived through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the pagan doctrine of the state was introduced into European thought. This was set back by the Reformation, but by 1660 it was increasingly dominant.

Christianity was held to be the hindrance to the good life, not the means to it. Previously the Christian man was considered as the necessary unit for a good society, but now he was the impediment. In fact, it is ironic that the idea of the secular state is now dominant among most evangelicals, because it denies that personal conversion is necessary before a man and his society can become morally sound.

Van Prinsterer, Dutch statesman and historian, in his book, Unbelief and Revolution, shows that the French Revolution was anti-Christian to the core. It is the faultline creating the modern political landscape and the humanistic secular state. All politics since is at core revolutionary, only differing as to whether the revolution should be prosecuted as a slow burn (conservatives) or a fast one (radicals). Without the development of Christian political theory, modern politics and the secularised state continues to prosecute the anti-Christian revolution of 1789.

The French Revolution proclaimed a Declaration of Rights, but then proceeded to trample all rights underfoot as no previous regime had done. Equality, fraternity, the rights of the people, liberty, and more have been revolutionary slogans that have led to the denial of precisely those affirmations. Appeals to democracy and the common good in the present crisis are more of the same. In the 1790s conscription and income tax both followed in the wake of the French Revolution. In the name of the people and of liberation from the bind of Christianity, the totalitarian state has become our new master.

Nevertheless, the modern state is a “god that failed”. When Christians again see the total crown rights of Christ the King, the threat of the state will collapse.

Listen to Statism as a Religious Fact (Part 1). 

Postscript: As the occasion demands, we will intersperse Rushdoony’s instalments with timely teachings either from our own pen or guest teachers.