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R J Rushdoony Biography & Facts

Rousas John Rushdoony (April 25, 1916 – February 8, 2001) was an Armenian-American Calvinist philosopher, historian, and theologian. He is credited as being the father of Christian Reconstructionism and an inspiration for the modern Christian homeschool movement. His followers and critics have argued that his thought exerts considerable influence on the evangelical Christian right. Biography Rousas John Rushdoony (Armenian: Ռուսա Հովհաննես Ռշտունի, romanized: Rrusa Hovhannes Rrshtuni) was born in New York City, the son of recently arrived Ottoman Armenian immigrants, Vartanoush (née Gazarian) and Yegheazar Khachig Rushdoony. Before his parents fled the Armenian genocide of 1915, his ancestors had lived in a remote area near Mount Ararat in what is now Turkey. It is said that since the year 320 AD, every generation of the Rushdoony family has produced a Christian priest or minister. Rushdoony himself claimed that his ancestors "would perpetually give a member of their family to be a priest to perform a kind of Aaronic priesthood as in the Old Testament, an hereditary priesthood. Whoever in the family felt called would become the priest. And our family did so. So from the early 300's until now there has always been someone in the ministry in the family."Within weeks of arriving in America, his parents moved to the small farming community of Kingsburg, California, in Fresno County, where a number of other Armenian families had relocated. They then converted from the Armenian Apostolic Church to Presbyterianism. In Kingsburg, his father Yegheazar founded a church, Armenian Martyrs Presbyterian. Rousas learned to read English by poring over the family's King James Bible: "By the time I reached my teens I had read the Bible through from cover to cover, over and over and over again". The family moved in 1925 for a short time to Detroit, where his father pastored another Armenian church. They returned to Kingsburg in 1931 and Rousas completed school in California. His father was pastor of Bethel Armenian Presbyterian Church in San Francisco in 1942. Rousas had a younger sister, Rose (named for their mother), and brother, Haig. His father died in Fresno in 1961. Education Rushdoony attended public schools where he learned English, though Armenian was the language spoken at home. He continued his education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a B.A. in English in 1938, a teaching credential in 1939 and an M.A. in Education in 1940. Rushdoony and Arda Gent married in San Francisco the week before Christmas, 1943. Rushdoony attended the Pacific School of Religion, a Congregational and Methodist seminary in Berkeley, California, from which he graduated in 1944. Through letters over the years he kept up his friendship with his Pacific School of Religion mentor, theology professor George Huntston Williams, who saw in him the "heir of a great national Christian heritage" who would "enunciate anew the Gospel which seems to have been forgotten for a season." In 1944 he was ordained by the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.He was later awarded an honorary Ph.D. from Valley Christian University for his book, The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum. Gary North stated that Rushdoony read at least one book a day, six days a week, for fifty years of his life, underlining sentences and making an index of its main ideas in the rear. Ministry Rushdoony and his wife Arda served for eight and a half years as missionaries to the Shoshone and Paiute Indians on the remote Duck Valley Indian Reservation in northern Nevada. They lived in the reservation's primary town, Owyhee. It was during their mission to the Native Americans that Rushdoony began writing. Arda taught at the reservation school and at Sunday school, led a Girl Scout troop, coached the girls' basketball team, and visited with families. In 1945 they adopted Ronald, an orphaned baby from the reservation. Between 1947 and 1952 in Owyhee, four daughters were born to them. In late 1952 Rushdoony took an American Presbyterian Church pastorate at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Santa Cruz, California and the family left Duck Valley in January 1953. Their son Mark was born the next month in Santa Cruz. In Santa Cruz, Rushdoony became a reader of the Christian libertarian magazine Faith and Freedom, which advocated an "anti-tax, non-interventionist, anti-statist economic model" in opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Faith and Freedom's views on government aligned with Rushdoony's fears of centralized government power, given the Rushdoony family's memories of the Armenian Genocide. Rushdoony contributed articles to Faith and Freedom, including one describing his observations of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, arguing that government support had reduced residents to "social and personal irresponsibility".The Rushdoonys separated in 1957 and later divorced. About this time, Rushdoony transferred his church membership from the American Presbyterian Church to the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church's newsletter, The Presbyterian Guardian, reported in July 1958 that "the Rev. Rousas J. Rushdoony… was received and a new Orthodox Presbyterian Church organized, consisting of [sixty-six charter members] who had separated from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in Santa Cruz." In their petition the group asked that Rushdoony be ordained as their pastor and stated, "[W]e cannot abide in any church which seeks to define righteousness or sin, salvation or sanctification, except in terms of the Word of God. We have witnessed, here in Santa Cruz, against modernism, man-made perfectionism, and church bureaucracy". The newsletter article goes on to report, "The Presbytery in receiving the church also examined Mr. Thomas Kirkwood and Mr. Kenneth Webb as prospective elders, and they with Mr. Rushdoony were constituted the session of the church", and announced the publication of Rushdoony's By What Standard? later that year. Later life The May 1962 edition of The Presbyterian Guardian reported Rushdoony's resignation, noted as "reportedly to devote his time for his writing and lecturing." Rushdoony also married his second wife, Dorothy Barbara Ross Kirkwood, in 1962. She died in 2003.Rushdoony moved to Los Angeles in 1965 and founded the Chalcedon Foundation; the monthly Chalcedon Report, which Rushdoony edited, began appearing that October. His daughter Sharon later married Gary North, a Christian Reconstructionist writer and economic historian. North and Rushdoony became collaborators and their partnership lasted until 1981 when it was ended due to a dispute over the content of one of North's articles. Following the dispute, North and Chalcedon continued to independently promote each other's views, but they did not reach a "truce" until 1995.Under Rushdoony, the Chalcedon Foundation grew to twelve staff members with 25,000–40,000 people on their mailing lists dur.... Discover the R J Rushdoony popular books. Find the top 100 most popular R J Rushdoony books.

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  • Good Morning, Friends Vol. 2 synopsis, comments

    Good Morning, Friends Vol. 2

    R. J. Rushdoony

    From 1953 to 1956, Reverend R. J. Rushdoony gave weekly radio talks at Santa Cruz, California station KSCO that reveal a perfect blend of strong theology with poignant pastoral cou...

  • Good Morning, Friends Vol. 3 synopsis, comments

    Good Morning, Friends Vol. 3

    R. J. Rushdoony

    From 1953 to 1956, Reverend R. J. Rushdoony gave weekly radio talks at Santa Cruz, California station KSCO that reveal a perfect blend of strong theology with poignant pastoral cou...

  • Good Morning, Friends Vol. 1 synopsis, comments

    Good Morning, Friends Vol. 1

    R. J. Rushdoony

    From 1953 to 1956, Reverend R. J. Rushdoony gave weekly radio talks at Santa Cruz, California station KSCO that reveal a perfect blend of strong theology with poignant pastoral cou...

  • Christian Reconstruction synopsis, comments

    Christian Reconstruction

    Michael J. McVicar

    This is the first critical history of Christian Reconstruction and its founder and champion, theologian and activist Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001). Drawing on exclusive access ...

  • The Luxury of Words synopsis, comments

    The Luxury of Words

    R. J. Rushdoony

    Rousas John Rushdoony is primarily known as a theologian, scholar, and author. However, Dr. Rushdoony (Rush to his friends) also wrote the occasional poem often personal and trans...

  • An Informed Faith synopsis, comments

    An Informed Faith

    R. J. Rushdoony

    Our faith should be an informed one because the God who created all things speaks to every sphere of life, and all facts should be studied in light of the revelation of God in Scri...