Rousas John Rushdoony publishes The Institutes of Biblical Law, an 890-page work arguing that Old Testament Mosaic law should form the basis of civil governance in all nations. The book — whose title deliberately echoes John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion — contends that secular law is inherently illegitimate and that Christians have a duty to reconstruct civil society according to biblical principles, including the reinstatement of Old Testament penalties for offenses ranging from blasphemy to homosexuality to "unchastity."
Rushdoony, an Armenian-American Presbyterian minister, founded the Chalcedon Foundation in 1965 as the institutional vehicle for Christian Reconstruction theology. His son-in-law Gary North extends the project through prolific writing on "biblical economics" — applying Old Testament law to capitalist free-market theory, creating an intellectual bridge between libertarian economics and theocratic governance that proves enormously influential in the emerging religious right.
The direct political influence of Christian Reconstruction operates through two channels. First, the theological framework: Rushdoony's argument that Christians have a mandate to establish godly governance — not merely to evangelize individuals but to capture institutions — provides the intellectual architecture for what later becomes the Seven Mountains Mandate and the broader dominionist movement. Second, the institutional network: Rushdoony serves as an expert witness in homeschooling court cases across the country, helping establish the legal right to religious homeschooling that becomes a cornerstone of the Christian right's educational infrastructure.
Francis Schaeffer, who brings Rushdoony's ideas to a mass evangelical audience in the late 1970s, acknowledges Rushdoony's influence while softening the theocratic edges for broader consumption. The Moral Majority (1979), the Council for National Policy (1981), and ultimately Project 2025 (2023) all operate within a framework of institutional capture that Rushdoony articulated first: the goal is not to withdraw from secular society but to reconstruct it according to biblical law, institution by institution.