Review of Rushdoony’s “The American Indian” — Education

“One reason for the catastrophe which struck Indian tribes was that now, with the coming of the White man, there were alternative forms of education.”

R. J. Rushdoony
The American Indian — pg. 29

In the chapter on “Education” in RJR’s book we find Rush time and again writing about how damaging the White man’s arrival was to the American Indian and that culture.

“The White man’s arrival complicated education. It introduced an alternate lifestyle with many material advantages, including liquor…. One of the most devastating effects of the white man’s influence was that Indian children no longer grew into a set mold…. At an early age they (children) could work for the white men and be free of their people”

The constant returning to this theme by Rush reminds us that no civilization in history has been able to manage, for a sustained period of time, the presence of numerous different people groups, religions, and worldviews seeking to form one unified culture. A Diversity that has vast differentiation between people groups, religions, and worldvies is not a strength to social orders. Rushdoony reminds us repeatedly that the Indian was better served by remaining Indian. Of course Rushdoony insisted that the regenerated Indian builds a stronger social order and culture then the non-regenerated Indian but even then the Redeemed Indian culture will remain uniquely “Indian.”

As Rush continues to tell the story of the Indian and his Education, Rushdoony brings to the fore that the Indian idea of education was a education where the Grandparents instructed the children in the ways of the past.

“… that was education. It meant passing on the wisdom of the past and present to the future. These men saw the white man’s world as full of marvels. The radios were of interest to them and the white man’s guns and knives were wonderful. But for them the life link was gone. Their grandchildren were not linked to them but to the White man, and foolishly so.”

Clearly the American Indian, at least as represented by Rushdoony, had no interest in becoming white. Just as, doubtlessly, the white man had no interest in becoming American Indian. The Gospel of Jesus Christ can ameliorate the hostility that can arise from these people group distinctions as those distinctions are marked by the sinful dispositions of each. Further the Gospel will work so that differing Redeemed people groups work in harmony, but the Gospel can no more undo ethnicity any more than it can undo gender. Christ has come to save all the Nations and create a Spiritual Unity among them, but Christ did not come to erase the nations in favor of some New World Order amalgamation. Rushdoony’s book, by repeatedly noting and honoring these ethnic distinctions underscores this truth.

Rushdoony also criticized the American Indians for their faults. In this chapter he writes how the American Indian turned to his “whiskey religion.”

“The older men, who themselves often had problems with alcoholism, called drunkenness and alcoholism ‘the whiskey religion.’ I had never heard the term before. It was used by these older Indians very seriously, but some of the younger men used it as a joke. What the older men meant by it, they explained, was that what Christians looked for in Christ, Indians often found in a bottle. For them it was peace, and answer to problems, empowerment, escape, and more. There was another factor, too, as they saw it. Whiskey changed a man, like Jesus did, but in another direction. A bottle of whiskey was for them a religious solution.”

Further RJR notes the weakness of the American Indians in their refusal to frustrate their children through child rearing discipline.

“The saddest fact of my own experience with the Indians was the indifference of the children to the parents. The children were never chastised….frustrating the child seemed to them a white man’s cruelty…. Never to face frustration is no preparation for life. Not surprisingly, by the age of ten, alcoholism was common place; by thirteen or fourteen, fornication too. Self denial was an alien idea, and an inability to accept frustration was commonplace in recent years this had the highest suicide rate in the United States, a fact closely related to the nurture of children there.”

Rushdoony in this chapter is even handed in articulating the faults of both Whites and Indians as distinct people groups and in the doing so Rush demonstrates that while all men in all people groups are sinners not all people groups have the same predilections in terms of how that sinful peccadilloes manifest themselves. Different people groups have different besetting sins to which they are going to be more inclined. Similarly, upon Redemption, we can expect different people groups to have different strengths in terms of sanctification.

In the end though Rushdoony’s passion was for the American Indian to come to know Christ. In this Chapter he mentions pagan Anthropologists who came to study the Indian and whose only concern was to confirm a preconceived agenda.

“From my perspective, there was another problem with the anthropologists. Their framework of reference was evolution. They viewed Indian culture in terms of myth, not in terms of taking an interest in a people whom God created and who needed Jesus Christ to attain their true potential. The anthropologist’s impersonal approach bred an instinctive hostility. The Indian is a person, not a scientific specimen. The anthropologist’s laboratory approach irritated the Indians. As a result, even when they gave correct answers to the scientist’s questions, the meaning and flavor of their lives was missed. To the Indians those questions sounded artifact oriented, not concerned with people.”

Note here how Rushdoony sees the Indian as a distinct “people whom God created,” and who, as a distinct people, could only find their true potential by being attached to the Lord Jesus Christ. For Rush, all people groups, as people groups, became more genuine as to their ethnicity and culture only upon being united to Christ. Christ does not strip men of their ethnic identity upon Redemption. Christ, in Redemption, makes our ethnic identity more genuine even as only in Christ do humans find their genuine humanity, even as only in Christ both Men and Women find their genuine Femininity and Masculinity. Being united to Christ doesn’t erase our corporeal markers. Being united to Christ brings those God given corporeal markers into subjection to Christ that they may be increasingly what God intended them to be.

Katy Perry, Beyonce & Otto Scott On The Ascendancy of the Pornographic

In light of the recent Grammy Awards (which can be viewed easily enough on youtube) as well as the filth that comes out of Washington DC, I thought this quote from Otto Scott to be on target. An excellent book that teases this reality via a historical overview is Dr. E. Michael Jones

http://www.amazon.com/Libido-Dominandi-Liberation-Political-Control/dp/1587314657/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390930353&sr=8-1&keywords=libido+dominandi

“After their departures the pillars of the Age of Reason toppled sideways for lack of a sound foundation, lesser men came crawling out of the lower dark. Then the condition of France became different from the rest of Europe in a very real sense, and the enemies of the nation watched with some satisfaction. A great loosening began; the country slowly came apart.

For the first time since the decadent days of Rome, pornography emerged from its caves and circulated openly in a civilized nation. The Catholic Church in France was intellectually gutted; the priests lost their faith with their congregations. Strange cults appeared; sex rituals, black magic, Satanism. Perversion became not only acceptable but fashionable. Homosexuals held public balls to which heterosexuals were invited and the police guarded their carriages. Prostitutes were admired; swindles and sharp business practices increased.”

Otto Scott
Robespierre, The Fool as Revolutionary: Inside the French Revolution — pg. 8

Review Of Rushdoony’s “American Indian.” Introduction

“The American Indian is a standing indictment against the Christianity of this nation.”

R. J. Rushdoony
The American Indian — pg. 7

One of the books I’m currently reading is a short book by Rushdoony on the American Indian. I thought I would review it chapter by chapter in order to capture some of RJR’s thinking about ethnic and Statist type issues.

It is clear in RJR’s Introduction that Rush understood that different people groups existed. For example in one place he notes the attitude of American Indians in a quote from an Old Indian summarizing the Indian attitude towards the “White man,”

“The white man wanted what we had, our land, but he didn’t want us. We wanted what the white man had — his improvements, his guns, his modern conveniences — but we didn’t want him. And so we fought, each wanting what the other had but not wanting the other and trying to eliminate him; and we lost. That’s the story.”

A couple of paragraphs later Rush notes the differences between two non-white people groups as seen through the eyes of the American Indian,

“They could not subject him (the American Indian) to slavery…. it was impossible to enslave the North American Indian. He absolutely refused. If Indians were taken captive and enslaved, they either died or they fought and escaped To this very day, the Indians have a strong prejudice against Negroes. They say, ‘The Negro became a slave. You can’t say much for people who became slaves. You either die or fight for your freedom. We fought for freedom, and we were beaten, but we were never made slaves.’

Of course we would disagree here. The Indian was eventually made a slave to the State just as the White men are now largely becoming slaves to the State. The forms of slavery have changed but we remain enslaved all the same. However, having said that, it is clear that Rush was not one who believed that real ethnic differences did not exist and RJR did not believe that those differences should not be noted. Throughout the Introduction there is constant referral to distinct people groups as people groups.

In this Introduction RJR also tells the story of how the White pagan Federal Government destroyed the Indian. In doing so, Rushdoony teases out the dangers of cradle to womb care as provided by a centralized State,

“… the Government didn’t try to teach Indians anything. For many years, the system was simply this; put the Indians on a reservation; tell them that if they leave, the army will go after them; and while they are on the reservation, tell them to report to the government office every Saturday or every other Sunday for a ration of goods, clothing, and necessities of life. Of course that meant that the Indians didn’t have to work. He had his living handed to him. After a few years of government handouts, the Indian Character was completely destroyed.”

A few pages later Rushdoony quotes a conversation with an American Indian foretelling that much the same thing is happening to the White man,

“Look at those people of mine. They’re no good. They’re like me, just no account. All they’re fit for is a reservation where someone puts a fence around them and takes care of them. That’s it. They’re not fit for anything else. But,” he went on, “I’ve been across this country two or three times now in the last few years, and I’ve learned something: the white man isn’t much better. He has reservation fever now. He wants someone to put a fence around the whole North American continent and take care of him. He wants governments to give him a handout. and to look after him just like Uncle Sam looks after us. And he’s going to get it. If some outfit doesn’t come in and do it for him, some foreign country, and turn the whole of the United States into a reservation, he’ll do it to himself. You wait and see. ‘Cause he’s got reservation fever.”

In these last two quotes we see that sin returns all men, regardless of their heritage, to conditions of slavery. It makes no difference if men are Black, Red, or White, men outside of Christ will beg for their chains to be placed upon them and will call “slavery,” “freedom.” However, men will, according to their lineage and heritage express their slavery differently. Slavery is slavery but not all slavery is identical and different people groups will express their bondage differently. Rushdoony captures this idea when he writes,

“… the Indian problem is basically one of faith and character.”

With this every right-minded Christian would agree. The problems of any and all people groups, as those respective people groups stand sundered from Christ, are problems of faith (the dismal things they believe) and character (who they are as that dismal faith integrates with and animates their people group dispositions.

According to Rushdoony the reason that the White man can’t help the Indian is that the White man has been such a hypocrite. According to Rush the Indian see’s the White men’s Christianity as just another White man hand-me-down. Rushdoony, notes that the American Indian sees the inconsistency and contradiction of so many of the White Churches in terms of affirming certain truths but then denying the necessity to live those truths out. One such example that Rush gives is the inclination of quiet Presbyterian Churches to not reach out to the American Indian and welcome them when they come to visit their churches in the city.

“At almost any Church they (American Indian) go to, they will be outsiders. That’s just the plain fact. And they know it; they’ve tried it. They are strangers in any Church they go to. Even if they are met with a glad hand by a handful of people in the church it means nothing to them. The Indians know that they (themselves) are weak in certain character traits espoused in these churches, but they also expect to see some of the practical application of those traits that have, in fact, characterized Indian life.”

Clearly the lesson here is to be reminded that the Gospel is for people from every tribe, tongue and Nation. God has designed to call all the Nations and we should do nothing to put non-biblical obstacles up between men from different people groups coming to Worship Christ.

In the Introduction RJR introduces the old character of the American Indian as being a rugged individualist and how that character was destroyed by pagan American visions of Socialism. RJR tells about the “Ghost Dance” and how this mystical practice was supposed to be connected to the rejuvenation of the American Indians and the destruction of the White people who oppressed them. A mental note might be made here to the end that when people groups are being enslaved and destroyed and are in a position of no longer being able to fight back they will turn to religions of irrational mystical encounters in order to do for them what they can no longer do themselves. The religion of the irrational and the mystical can sometime be traced back to being the last ditch means of attempting freedom by the vanquished and enslaved. RJR notes that once the Ghost Dance failed in what it promised the American Indian turned to the escape of peyote. Irrational activism (Ghost Dance) gave way to irrational passivism (peyote).

Elsewhere in the Introduction RJR communicates the three stages of Government policy pursued in terms of the American Indian once they were defeated. The first attempt in 1887 to the New Deal was to Americanize the American Indian. The second attempt from the New Deal to Eisenhower was to Indianize the American Indian. Rushdoony notes that this was an attempt turn the American Indian into primitive communists. The third attempt beginning with Eisenhower was to rehabilitate the American Indian and to break up the Reservation system. RJR insists this failed because of Government involvement.

“Government cannot create character, although it had destroyed it. It can no more create character in the Indian by acts of administration than it can create character in the American people by acts of Congress.”

In RJR’s Introduction there comes singing through his long war against the pagan state. Likewise, in the Introduction it is clear that RJR sees that distinctions between people groups are real. Further, it should be noted that in the Introduction, RJR, like all Biblical Christians, sees that the Church has a responsibility to disciple the Nations. There is no place in Biblical Christianity for any people group to block the way to the Cross
of any other People group.

May the Lord Christ grant us grace not to so befoul the Christian faith that we make it anathema to the distinct Nations He has ordained. May the Lord Christ reveal to us our own inclination, as a People group, to become slaves to the Pagan State.

Van Drunen on “Living In God’s Two Kingdoms.” McAtee on VanDrunen

[T]hough we are not little Adams we still have many cultural responsibilities here and now. God does not call Christians to take up the original cultural mandate of Genesis 1:26-28 per se, but calls them to obey the cultural mandate as given in modified form to Noah in Genesis 9. Through the Noahic covenant God formally established the common kingdom and commissioned all people — believers and unbelievers alike — to be fruitful and multiply and to exercise dominion on earth. The goal of this commission is not to provide a way to earn or to attain the new creation but to foster the temporary preservation of life and social order until the end of the present world.

David VanDrunen
Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, pg. 164-65; italics original.

A few observations from this quote,

1.) What DVD and other R2K acolytes are advocating here is the codifying of a particularly virulent strain of amillennialism as the definition of Reformed orthodoxy. If R2K is allowed its head then all postmillennial strains and many strains of amillennialism will be read out of the canon of Reformed orthodoxy. We observe this as true regarding postmillennialism because the assumption contained in the DVD quote is that any eschatology that promotes the idea of Christianity going from triumph unto triumph, as exhibited in every area of life, so that cultures are conformed to Christ, just as individuals are, is a eschatology that is out of bounds for R2K orthodoxy. If God has, in the words of DVD, “formally established the common Kingdom,” then any and every theology that understands that the common Kingdom was not formally established as the common Kingdom is by definition a theology that has woven sin into its essence and is a theology that is working against God’s intent.

We observe this as true regarding variant strains of amillennialism contrary to militant R2K amillennialism because of the insistence of many strains of amillennialism that cultural advance is to be made in terms of Christianizing the Nations.

Here is one such sentiment from amillennialist Geerhardus Vos,

“The thought of the kingdom of God implies the subjection of the entire range of human life in all its forms and spheres to the ends of religion. The kingdom reminds us of the absoluteness, the pervasiveness, the unrestricted dominion, which of right belong to all true religion. It proclaims that religion, and religion alone, can act as the supreme unifying, centralizing factor in the life of man, as that which binds all together and perfects all by leading it to its final goal in the service of God.” (page 194)

Geerhardus Vos
The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church

Read the DVD quote and the Vos quote back to back. Notice the distance between these two quotes. If DVD and R2K has its way there will not be room in the Reformed Church for amillennialists like Dr. Geerhardus Vos.

2.) R2K advocates like to say that they do not believe in Christian culture. This is, at best, a deceptive move on their part, even if unintentional. R2K advocates do believe in Christian culture. R2K believes that Christian culture is the absence of Christian culture. Any position on culture that advocates that the common square should be explicitly Christian is, per R2K, a non Christian position. According to DVD and R2K if culture is to be Christian it must remain non Christian.

3.) DVD’s reading of the Nohaic covenant is strained, at best, and twisted at worse. Keep in mind that,

a.) Noah was chosen as a new Adam, because “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” Does Noah sound, in that phraseology, to be a representative of all mankind or a representative of God’s elect?

b.) Noah offers sacrifice upon departing the Ark. Are we to understand that Noah is offering sacrifice to God as a representative, not of the Redeemed, but as a representative of all mankind?

c.) DVD misreads the whole context of the Nohaic event. God floods the earth because of his dissatisfaction with mankind and raises up Noah to be another Adam. God saves this second Adam through judgment and establishes him in a cleansed garden Mountain sanctuary in order to be God’s representative. As God’s subsequent representative Adam placed in a new post flood Eden, God repeats the same great commission given the first Adam before his own fall (Genesis 1:26-28). This great commission first given to Adam, and then to Noah is also given repeatedly to subsequent covenant heads throughout the book of Genesis thus connecting the story-line of God’s redemptive activity.

A small Whitman’s sampler of Genesis texts wherein the Adamic cultural Mandate (Gen. 1:26-28) becomes part and parcel of the Redemptive History as given to subsequent covenant contexts. Notice the repeated themes in the following texts of,

(1) God Blessed them
(2) Be fruitful and multiply
(3) fill the earth
(4) subdue the earth
(5) rule over … the earth

And take especial note that the Nohaic covenant, contra DVD, shares the language of the cultural Mandate that we find in subsequent Redemptive history unique unto God’s people, thus proving that the Noahic covenant was not a covenant that is unrelated to God’s Redemptive covenantal activity.

Genesis 1:26-28
English Standard Version (ESV)
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Genesis 9:1, 7
English Standard Version (ESV)
9 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth… 7 And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”

Genesis 12:2-3
English Standard Version (ESV)
2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Genesis 17:2, 6, 8
English Standard Version (ESV)
2 that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly….6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you…. 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

Genesis 22:17-18
English Standard Version (ESV)
17 I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, 18 and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

Genesis 26:3-4
English Standard Version (ESV)
3 Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you, for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. 4 I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,

Genesis 26:24
English Standard Version (ESV)
24 And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.”

Genesis 28:3-4
English Standard Version (ESV)
3 God Almighty[a] bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. 4 May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham!”

Genesis 28:13-14
English Standard Version (ESV)
13 And behold, the Lord stood above it[a] and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. 14 Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Genesis 35:11-12
English Standard Version (ESV)
11 And God said to him, “I am God Almighty:[a] be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body.[b] 12 The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.”

This cultural Mandate, first found in Gen. 1:26-28, and reiterated in Gen. 9:1, 7, to Noah, is a theme that winds its way throughout Redemptive history. For a Doctor of the Church to try to advance the idea that the Noahic covenant is firm ground to introduce the idea that God desires the hyphenated life is at best a contrived reading of the text and strains credulity to the breaking point. If, with the Noahic covenant, God established the common Kingdom, then that common Kingdom was established as well in the Abrahamic covenant as it too includes the themes of,

(1) God Blessed them
(2) Be fruitful and multiply
(3) fill the earth
(4) subdue the earth
(5) rule over … the earth

4.) Contra DVD, no Reformed eschatology teaches that we earn or attain the Kingdom as if the Kingdom has not already been freely given.

Rushdoony On Protesting Abortion Clinics

“In 1988, another revolutionary ploy became the methodology of many churchmen, the demonstrations at abortion clinics designed to violate the laws of picketing and protest and ensure arrest for impeding access. It is questionable whether or not these demonstrations saved the lives any unborn babies: the women seeking abortions simply went elsewhere. Even more, the demonstrators set a precedent in violating civil laws of various sorts. What is to prevent pro-abortion people from blocking access to churches, or even entering them to disrupt the services? If we allow lawless protest to one side, we justify it for all.

No Scriptural justification is offered by these demonstrators. The closest thing to a text to justify them is Acts 5:29, the answer of Peter and the other apostles, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” What does this mean, however? There is no civil government anywhere which does not disobey God at some points, and, for that matter, there are no perfect churches either. The best of churches fall short of perfect obedience. Are we then justified in obeying only when we believe that God’s Word is faithfully observed? Then are those around us or under us entitled to rebel against our authority whenever they feel we fall short of or neglect God’s Word? Nothing in Scripture gives warrant to that. David’s respect for Saul, despite Saul’s sin, gives us another model.

Where freedom of God’s Word in the church, its schools, its families and members is denied, then we must obey God, not the state. We do not disobey to save our money nor even our lives but where God’s Word and its proclamation is at stake.

The moral anarchy which revolutionists advocate is being brought into the church by some men. Not surprisingly, they impugn the Christian character of those who criticize them, men such as Dr. Stanley, and Rev. Joesph Morecraft III.

To believe in the efficacy of violence to change society means to abandon peaceful means. Not surprisingly, peaceful, legal action is being neglected. A pro-abortion justice on the U.S. Supreme Court has said that, in a new case, abortion would lose. Such a case would require much funding and highly competent legal help. The money to do this is being spent in sending people from one end of the country to the other to take part in demonstrations, to bail them out of jail, so on.

The methodology of such demonstrations has been borrowed from non-Christian and revolutionary sources. From one end of the Bible to the other, no warrant can be found for this methodology. To us ungodly means is a way of saying that God’s grace and power are insufficient resources for Christian action. It means abandoning Christ for the methods of the enemies….

Such methodology can be effective, but not for the triumph of grace….

There is a long history of injustice at the hands of mobs. There is no Christian calling to create mobs and to violate laws to achieve a purpose.

The sad fact is that, once we adopt a position, the logic of that faith carries us forward. Thus, I am finding that those who approve of demonstrations, and of the violation of the properties of abortion clinics, find it easy to justify violence against the property (bombing) and against the persons who are abortionists (which means murdering them).

… Just as we believe that the spheres of the church and of the family should not be violated by the state, so we should avoid trespassing on the state’s sphere. The early church faced many evils in the civil sphere: abortion, slavery, and more. Paul spoke against a revolutionary move against slavery but counseled the use of lawful means (I Cor. 7:20-23). The early church took a strong stand against abortion and disciplined severely all who were guilty of it. It organized its deacons to rescue abandoned babies (who had not been successfully aborted earlier), and it took strong stands without ever suggesting violence.

Humanism gives priority to man and the will of man over God, and His Law-Word. If we place saving babies above obedience to God, we wind up doing neither the born nor the unborn any good, and we separate ourselves from God.

It is amazing how many people on all sides of issues are so prone to violence as their first and last resorts. They believe, when they see a serious problem, in taking to the streets, getting their guns, fighting the Establishment, and so on and on, without even using the many peaceable means which are at hand. For them, violence is not a last resort when all other means have been exhausted, but a first resort. Instead of providing answers, resorts to violence mean the death of civilization. The use of violence, whether by Christians or non-Christians, is a way of saying that voting, the law courts, mean nothing, or, that faith and the power of God are irrelevant to the problems of our time.

The resort to revolution or to revolutionary tactics is thus a confession of non faith; it means the death of a civilization because its people are dead in their sins and trespasses. They may use the name of the “Lord,” but they have by-passed him for ‘direct action.’… By assuming that everything depends on their action, they have denied God and His regenerating power.

And they have forgotten our Lord’s requirement: “Ye must be born again (John 3:7).” Regeneration, no revolution is God’s way.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Roots of Reconstruction
Chapter — Revolution or Regeneration, pg. 427-428