Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest

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Abstract

Deemed dying or dead by many in the late 1990s, Christian Reconstruction – or ‘theonomy’ – has not only been resurrected dynamically in northern Idaho, it is also influencing Evangelical culture nationally, argues Crawford Gribben. Gribben makes a compelling case that theonomy's postmillennial goal of shifting America away from an Enlightenment-based democracy into an Old Testament-grounded legal system has gained footholds within mainstream culture. However, unlike traditional conservative Evangelicals who have relied on partisan politics to remake America via policies, theonomists are developing strong countercultural communities, complete with counter-hegemonic institutions like schools, colleges and publishing arms that then reach into the mainstream to transform hearts, minds and eventually systems. Christian Reconstructionists do not trust politics to accomplish the national transformation they seek. Only cultural reformation germinated within ‘city-upon-a-hill’ type countercultural communities, that then spread their influence outward, will eventually swamp and sweep away the old liberal order. Idaho's frontier-like remoteness, long inviting to iconoclasts, provides their main staging area. But Gribben's book is not focused on political or culture war issues. Rather it is an ethnographic intellectual history of Christian Reconstruction's 1960s-era birth, revival and expansion to 2020. Gribben strives to explain Christian Reconstruction's intellectual and theological evolution from R. J. Rushnoody to the present, as well as usher one inside its most successful community in Moscow, Idaho, to show its tactics of survival, resistance and worldly transformation in action. His tone is explanatory, not polemical or evaluative. And given his expertise in Puritan history's reformed tradition, Gribben is the perfect tour guide into the worldview, literary legacy and operations of this quietly burgeoning movement.
Original languageAmerican English
JournalThe Journal of Ecclesiastical History
Volume73
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2022

EGS Disciplines

  • History

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