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He then grounds community in the biblical covenant: covenant is a treaty of law, and God’s covenant is both law and grace atonement first, then God’s law as the way of life (Deut. 6:20–25). This covenant creates a “community of life” marked by works flowing from living faith; neglecting covenant theology produces antinomianism and irrelevance. He cites historical covenants in early American towns as examples of community built on mutual watchfulness, love, and promoting Christ’s honor. When covenantal community weakens, societies replace it with status “badging” and with the state treating Jesus as mere “fire insurance” instead of Lord so community becomes a tool for control, not shared life in Christ.

Finally, he contrasts Christian community (life) with humanistic community (death). He portrays Enlightenment naturalism as a revolt from Christ to “nature,” culminating in de Sade’s celebration of evil and destruction an emblem of humanism’s will to power and death. In his view, humanism cannot produce brotherhood; it trends toward domination (“a boot stamping on a human face forever”) and the “destroyer” spirit Scripture associates with Satan. By contrast, Christ is repeatedly identified as life (John 1; John 10; John 11; John 14), so only in Christ under His kingship and law can there be lasting community, whether on earth or in eternity."

He argues the early church governed itself and served society: caring for widows, orphans, the sick, and the poor; building schools and hospitals; and even running courts (1 Cor. 6) so just that pagans came for judgments. He cites thinkers like Aquinas and Calvin to stress that Christian fellowship requires sharing God’s gifts with one another. America’s frontier success, he says, wasn’t rugged individualism but neighbor-help rooted in Christian duty people weren’t “alone,” and communities rose quickly with farms and churches.

The “cornerstone” disappeared as Americans shifted from solving problems through Scripture and church life to solving them through state coercion a change he places especially in the Jacksonian era: institutional poor relief, prisons replacing restitution, asylums replacing family care, state custody of children, and the rise of state schooling. Sin became “environmental” (society/family blamed), while the state became savior. He blames pietism/revivalism for retreating into private devotion and leaving public responsibilities to government. His remedy: rebuild community starting locally assess needs in your congregation, practice mutual aid (even loan funds), and restore systematic preaching that produces self-government and active Christian service in every sphere.

At the heart of the crisis is a false view of man. Against the biblical doctrine of total depravity, modern religion and culture preach the donum superadditum gospel: man is basically good and only needs a religious add-on. Rushdoony insists fallen man hates God’s law and therefore seeks a world without moral limits one that endorses abortion, sexual perversion, and even the normalization of crimes in the name of freedom. Global movements toward a “new world ethic,” Gaia worship, and enforced moral uniformity reveal a unified hostility toward biblical Christianity, which they regard as intolerant and unfit to exist.

Yet Rushdoony’s outlook is ultimately hopeful and militant. Drawing on Berman, he argues that Western civilization rests on the doctrine of the atonement and biblical law; when these are abandoned, collapse follows but renewal also begins there. The task of Christians is not withdrawal or waiting, but rebuilding through self-government under God, then family, church, education, charity, and other institutions taking back one sphere at a time from the state. History shows pagan systems destroy themselves, while Christ’s kingdom advances. Christians, though opposed, are “more than conquerors,” the people of the future, called to act with confidence that what cannot be shaken will remain.

Rushdoony traces the church’s historic resistance through Gelasius I’s “two powers” doctrine church and state both under God, with rulers accountable to divine judgment. Medieval emperors and monarchs repeatedly tried to reclaim pagan-style supremacy over the church, while the church at times resisted and at times was corrupted. The Reformation renewed the struggle, and Rushdoony highlights Calvin’s Geneva as a key example of the fight for the church’s independence from civil control and for the state’s obligation to submit to Christ. From Calvin’s legacy, later thinkers like Kuyper and Van Til developed “sphere sovereignty”: every sphere (family, school, arts, business, science, state, church) answers directly to God, and no sphere may tyrannize another.

The core is self-government under God’s Word. An “enscriptured Word” was revolutionary because it placed responsibility on ordinary believers to read, learn, and obey treating Scripture not merely devotionally, but as marching orders for dominion service. Van Til’s contrast stands: theonomy or autonomy. Rushdoony ends by linking Joshua’s commission (Joshua 1) to the Great Commission: God calls His people to courageous obedience, meditating on His law day and night, moving forward in faith to occupy and disciple the nations confident that Christ’s kingdom will prevail.

Against this background, Christianity was radically subversive. Paul’s command to pray for rulers (1 Tim. 2:1–2) challenged the belief that rulers were divine mediators. Even more explosive was the Christian confession “Jesus Christ is Lord,” which directly contradicted Rome’s required confession “Caesar is Lord.” This alone made Christianity a threat to the entire pagan order and explains the fierce persecution of the early church.

Rushdoony argues that pagan “freedom” was actually licentiousness leading to slavery. Ancient cultures used moral chaos ritualized in festivals like the Saturnalia to control people. Such chaos-worship is ultimately self-destructive, and modern society is repeating the same pattern. The ancient world was bankrupt when Christ came; likewise today, the only real hope is a return to Christ’s total lordship over all of life, not merely private belief.

Obeying Scripture, especially 1 Corinthians 6, Christians built alternative institutions under God’s law. They established church courts to adjudicate disputes, so just that even pagans sought their rulings. Alongside these courts came schools, hospitals, and charities forming a genuine counter-government that Rome feared as “an empire within the empire.” Rushdoony contrasts this with modern states, where law increasingly reflects injustice and elections cannot cure moral collapse. Law works only when people are inwardly governed when it is written on the heart.

At the center is atonement and authority. Believers are “bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19–20), redeemed from slavery to sin into service under Christ’s rule. Modern statism attempts to replace God as sovereign, leaving no higher court of appeal. Drawing on legal historians, Rushdoony argues that Western law arose from the juridical doctrine of the atonement and the reality of final judgment. Therefore, the regeneration of man requires the regeneration of society. Because God alone is Creator-King (Isa. 40; Ps. 2), only His law has a future, and the church’s calling is to live and rebuild under that law.

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He insists that persecution is a sign of effectiveness, not failure. When Christian schools, homeschooling, and applied faith grew, hostility increased. Faith must be tested, refined by hardship, and lived out publicly; “salvation-only” or privatized Christianity has no future. Christ is not merely a means of personal security but Lord over every sphere of life, requiring obedience in money, work, justice, and culture.

Rushdoony concludes that Christianity either governs all of life or withers. Tithing, freedom from debt, and active dominion are essential for renewal. Drawing on Calvin and the Reformation, he calls for a return to applied, militant faith one that confronts secularization, brings every area under Christ’s authority, and accepts conflict as inevitable. The real question, he says, is not whether a battle exists, but whether Christians are ready to fight it faithfully."

He then sketches a long shift from Christianity to politics as society’s “savior”: Vatican I, the rise of the German Empire, nationalism after WWI, Marxism/democratic imperialism after WWII, and modern humanistic statism. Even though church numbers grew in the U.S., Christian influence declined because many believers became salvation- or church-centered rather than kingdom-centered (“seek first the kingdom,” Matt. 6:33).

He warns that judgment begins at God’s house (1 Pet. 4; Heb. 12): persecution and legal pressure will increase, exposing lukewarmness. Yet he sees hope in Christian schools, homeschooling, and renewed hunger for serious theology, pointing to an approaching Reformation aimed at rebuilding society under Christ’s lordship, until “the kingdoms of this world” become Christ’s (Rev. 11:15).

He shows that the early church lived this out long before it had buildings or legal status: establishing courts, schools, charity, hospitality, hospitals, and disciplined welfare rooted in work and responsibility. In doing so, the church functioned as a government under God, an “empire within the empire,” which Rome rightly feared. This comprehensive obedience flowed from biblical law, not political ambition.

The church’s later loss of influence, he contends, came from corrupt theology especially Greek dualism and spiritualization which despised history, law, and the material world. This produced an irrelevant church, retreating from culture and society. Christian reconstruction, grounded in creation and providence, restores the Bible as God’s governing Word for all of life. Because Christ is Lord of all creation, believers are not called to defeat but to victory through faith and obedience to every word of God.

Tracing Acts, he shows how rulers and even religious leaders resisted the apostles because fallen man wants to define law and morality for himself. Rome treated the church as a rival government, responding first with bans and licensing, later with state control of the church, and eventually with “toleration” that allows Christianity only if it stays irrelevant. When relevance returns, persecution follows through defamation, lawsuits, and legal pressure. Paul’s sermon in Acts 17 provides the answer: God is Creator and sovereign, nations exist by His decree, and Christ’s resurrection guarantees judgment. That certainty provokes rage in the ungodly. Rushdoony concludes that persecution is not surprising; lukewarm faith is. Empires pass away, but Christ endures and the church must choose obedience under Christ rather than safety under Caesar.

He insists the family must be understood biblically, not through humanistic or evolutionary categories. Humanist thought assumes conflict, autonomy, and self-fulfillment, turning marriage into bondage and freedom into indulgence. Scripture teaches the opposite: true freedom is found in responsibility under God, where husband and wife are “heirs together of the grace of life.” The family is not biological accident or social convenience, but a God-ordained religious institution reflecting Christ and the Church.The Reformation proved that family reform reshapes civilization altering education, economics, charity, and even the church itself. Today’s revival of homeschooling and Christian family life signals real hope, even as secular families collapse under statism and moral decay. The call is not political but covenantal: re-Christianize the family, live out God’s law in daily life, and trust that faithful households small though they seem are God’s chosen instruments for commanding the future.

Rushdoony argues that this reclamation fails unless families are intellectually and spiritually grounded. Worldviews built on chance, evolution, or inevitable conflict make struggle metaphysical and unavoidable turning marriage, society, and economics into battlegrounds that require state control. By contrast, creationism affirms God’s sovereign order, so conflict is moral, not inevitable, and can be governed by God’s law.

The family is therefore not merely biological or social but a religious institution, created to serve God’s kingdom. Husband and wife are “heirs together of the grace of life,” called to harmony and obedience. The future of society depends not on politics but on re-Christianizing the family, restoring its God-given authority, and living out covenant faithfulness.

He calls for Christian reconstruction beginning with individuals and families reclaiming God-given responsibilities—education, welfare, property, inheritance, and child-training—using the tithe to fund Christian institutions rather than compromise. Through real examples (church-run schools, rescue missions, homeschooling families, community care for the needy), he shows how grassroots Christian obedience outperforms state systems. As believers obey God, power naturally shifts from the state back to the people under Christ, provoking resistance—but he ends confident that faithful action will prevail: “trust and obey,” for Christ overcomes the world.

They also stress that homeschooling strengthens families and even improves parents, since teaching pushes adults to keep learning. Legally and politically, they warn that the education establishment will try to regulate or restrict homeschooling, so parents must organize and defend their rights. Their conclusion: Christian schools and homeschools cultivate a more independent, capable generation with real leadership potential.

Their proposed response is to remove children to Christian schools or homeschooling and then withdraw financial support from the public system, even through legal action if needed. They close by urging Christians to accept real sacrifice to preserve faith, freedom, and strong families."

Because Christian hospitality creates a real community outside the state, it has always provoked hostility. Just as Rome persecuted the early church for its independent charity, modern governments increasingly regulate, restrict, or criminalize Christian care whether feeding the poor, disciplining members, or educating children claiming exclusive authority over welfare, morality, and judgment. Legal persecution, he warns, is often meticulous and “lawful.”

At root is a conflict between two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. Biblical freedom flows from Christ’s atonement and self-government under God’s law; statist “freedom” relies on coercion and control. The choice before Christians is stark: conversion or coercion. Either society is re-Christianized through faith and action, or the church will increasingly be pressured into silence and submission.

Rushdoony argues that the Bible must be taught as a subject and function as the integrating foundation for every subject, because Scripture is not a “devotional add-on” but God’s authoritative “command-word” that alone gives meaning, coherence, and true knowledge in a created, law-governed world. Drawing on Van Til, he insists that without the God of Scripture facts become “brute” and ultimately meaningless, so education that treats God as optional collapses into relativism, autonomy, and cultural barbarism—“every man doing what is right in his own eyes.” He contrasts theonomy (God’s rule) with autonomy (self-rule), warns that atheism logically ends in anarchy (as even Marx feared in debating Stirner), and concludes that a Christian curriculum must move in a single, unified direction under Christ’s kingship: we do not “prove” God or the Bible as if we were judges over Him; rather, we teach from the presupposition that the Triune God is Lord of all truth, so mathematics, history, law, and every discipline are properly understood only in submission to His revealed Word. #ChristianEducation #ChristianSchools #BiblicalWorldview #VanTil #PresuppositionalApologetics #Theonomy #Curriculum #ChristIsKing #ScriptureAlone #FaithAndLearning #KingdomOfGod #Rushdoony