“The basic argument of the book is that Christian Reconstructionism isn’t dead. It has been renewed. It has been simplified. A lot of the rough edges have been removed. A lot of the really controversial claims of the first generation have been either downplayed or denied and as Doug Wilson put it in an interview I did with him; ‘What is being so successful now in North Idaho is not so much Christian Reconstruction 2.0 but Christian Reconstruction 0.5.'”
Gathered from Canon Calls Interview with Crawford Gribben
Author — Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America; Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest
Canon Calls: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest / Crawford Gribben on Apple Podcasts
This makes a point that I’ve been screaming about for some time. Wilson, in his usual attempted clever fashion, admits that he is not advancing Rushdoony. Wilson admits that he has watered down Rushdoony and sanded off the supposed rough edges so as to make Christian Reconstruction more palatable.
But more palatable to whom? What other answer can there be to that but to say that Wilson has made it more palatable to the left. Those on the right side of the left who would never have embraced Rushdoony have been gathered in by Wilson’s watered down version. If Wilson is Rushdoony 0.5 it means he is closer to Mitt Romney than he is to Rush.
The way that I’ve tried to say this in the past is that Wilson is not on the right but rather Wilson is on the right side of the Left.
By reducing the potency of Christian Reconstructionism to 0.5 Wilson is offering up an unstable product. The only way Reconstructionism’s potency could be cut is by denying the anti-thesis and by adding elements foreign to the original expression.
If Wilson is successful in his Rushdoony 0.5 pursuit he will have done for the Christian church what William F. Buckley did for the conservative movement. Wilson, like Buckley, will have successfully locked out that expression of Christianity that the Church most desperately needs in order to foment Reformation. Just as Buckley tamed conservatism by his work of being the gatekeeper of what he thought constituted safe conservatism so Wilson is taming the Church by his work of being gatekeeper of what he thinks is safe Christianity.
By calling his version 0.5 means he has not improved it at all, but in reality has made it a pre-version. Just like people say we live in a Post Christian world, have in actual fact gone back to a Pre-Christian world.
I would love to see Rushdoony debate Wilson, I would say that he would have been used to sweep the floor.