Christian Reconstruction: R.J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism

McVicar (religion, Florida State Univ.) provides an extensively researched and critical yet balanced history of the Christian Reconstruction movement and its founder, R.J. Rushdoony (1916–2001). The author relies on a multitude of resources, including Rushdoony's personal papers and correspondence, to demonstrate that the movement and its creator aspired to a powerful "restructuring" of individual lives and also of American society and politics as a whole through their variety of controversial "Christian" leadership, based in part upon Old Testament law. McVicar doesn't shy away from discussing some of the moral contradictions—mean-spiritedness and even cruelty, personal opportunism disguised as piety—of Rushdoony and his associates. Despite the movement's decline starting in the 1990s and beyond, McVicar finds many of its racist, patriarchal, antistate, and educational tenets (such as homeschooling) flourishing in newer movements (e.g., the Tea Party) and in much popular public opinion—especially about what constitutes good and bad religion.