Book Review: Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest by Crawford Gribben

The structure of this review will begin with a short bio on the author, move to a summary and analysis of the book’s thesis and salient points, and conclude with some personal reflection on both the book and its subject matter. For the quick summary (cliff notes version), scroll all the way down to Conclusions and Personal Observations.

Disclaimer: While my goal is to write an objective review of the work itself, some level of subjectivity is inevitable because I live in the region the author refers to as the American Redoubt; and, I currently attend the church in Moscow, Idaho, that is Gribben’s primary focus in the book.

As a matter of fact, I moved to North Idaho specifically for some of the chief virtues Gribben highlights about the Moscow community, though I knew little of its history, and even less about Christian Reconstruction at the time. Much of what I learned from Gribben through reading this work was novel revelation to me though I’ve been a member of the Moscow community for nearly six years. It has, in fact, however, explained many mysteries for me, things impossible to explore in this review, but things that will direct my research for some time to come. For that aspect alone, I’m better for having read it.

The Author

According to his personal profile at Queen’s University Belfast, Crawford Gribben is an historian of early modern religion, with a particular interest in Calvinist literary cultures, including works focusing on John Owen and John Nelson Darby. 

Gribben is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (2004), and held posts in early modern literature and history in the University of Manchester (2004-2007) and Trinity College Dublin (2000-2004, 2007-2012), where he was elected a Fellow (2011), before taking up his current position at Queen’s (2013), and acting as head of the School of History and Anthropology (2015-16) and Queen’s director of the AHRC Northern Bridge PhD program (2017-2020).

Given his history and focus of publication—having written at least ten books in addition to numerous academic articles and projects—his credentials for writing this particular book seem to offer good reason for interested readers to find his research viable on this subject.

The Book

The “book sets out to trace some important trends in evangelical views of politics, society, and culture at (what Robert P. Jones calls) “the end of white America,” and focuses primarily on one arm or manifestation of the religious right “known as Christian Reconstruction” (ix), which is mostly synonymous with American Theonomy, though it is sometimes inaccurately “described by its critics as a ‘far-right fantasy’ that they identify as ‘dominionism’” (47). 

Christian Reconstruction is “the belief, developed in the 1960s, that the postmillennial coming of Christ will be preceded by the establishment of “godly rule” on earth. This “godly rule” will be marked by an unprecedented revival of Christianity and the international adoption of the Mosaic judicial and penal codes” (151).

Wikipedia (for what it’s worth) says that

Christian Reconstructionism is a fundamentalist Reformed theonomic movement that developed under the ideas of Rousas Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen and Gary North; it has had an important influence on the Christian Right in the United States. In keeping with the cultural mandate, reconstructionists advocate theonomy and the restoration of certain biblical laws said to have continuing applicability. These include the death penalty not only for murder, but also for propagators of all forms of idolatry, open homosexuals, adulterers, practitioners of witchcraft and blasphemers.The Christian Reconstruction movement declined in the 1990s and was declared dead in a 2008 Church History journal article, although Christian reconstructionist organizations such as the Chalcedon Foundation and American Vision were still active in 2014. Christian reconstructionists are usually postmillennialists and followers of the presuppositional apologetics of Cornelius Van Til.

While many, if not most, scholars argue that the Christian Reconstruction movement “declined, and perhaps died, in the 1990s” (ix), Gribben’s thesis is that “Christian Reconstruction is not dead anymore,” but alive and growing in various splintered forms throughout the greater Pacific Northwest, and in a particularly successful way, at the epicenter of the Redoubt, Moscow, Idaho (139). 

The greater PNW region Gribben treats in the book is an area deemed by survivalist novelist and blogger James Wesley Rawles as The American Redoubt, a region which spans from the Canadian border to the southern borders of Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming; and, from Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon to the Eastern borders of Montana and Wyoming. 

---

As an interesting aside that demonstrates the political nature of the PNW, just this year several counties in Oregon voted (non-binding on the State) to secede to Idaho to become part of Greater Idaho.

---

The Christian Reconstruction (CR) movement started by R. J. Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen and Rushdoony’s son-in-law, Gary North, Gribben argues, “has been revived, modified, and tempered, and, as its advocates develop savvy and strategic use of the tools of American mass culture, its ideas have a greater cultural purchase than ever before” (ix-x).

Excluding the Introduction and Conclusion, there are five chapters in the book, and each treat a particular feature of the CR movement, along with its various nuances, tools, and strategies. The Introduction lays out a map of the movement’s landscape, its chief leaders and influencers, its engagement with American politics, and the various controversies associated with American evangelical thought.

Migration

Chapter one, titled Migration, explains the various fountainheads of the movement and why the PNW became the new frontier for mostly Reformed Protestants “thinking about survival, resistance, and reconstruction in evangelical America” (32).  Also, in this chapter, Gribben identifies the various groups associated with American ReDoubt like the kinists, the survivalists, and even the white supremacists, who while being theologically miles apart tend to be lumped together in discussions about the American Redoubt because so many in the region share a revulsion for progressive modernist ideologies. 

In other words, the American Redoubt is filled with various stripes of people fleeing progressive political climates and seeking a place where, in some fashion, their own version of John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” might be realized after the final collapse of the declining American experiment. Gribben notes, “The communities described in this book offer an alternative modernity, which reinscribes the habits and assumptions of an earlier age, to craft a culture that must, by the logic of postmillennial eschatology, inevitably replace it” (32). 

Eschatology

Chapter two, titled Eschatology, treats the various eschatological theories within Christianity, explicitly developing the two that are most concerned with the religious right in America, and particularly the CR, even though the two views actually possess opposite goals: dispensational premillennialism and postmillennialism. 

Premillennialism is “the belief that the second coming of Christ will take place before the millenium. Historic premillennialism teaches that Christ will return after the tribulation (and is consequently designated “post-tribulational”); this was the view of, for example, C. H. Spurgeon and G. E. Ladd” (153). 

Dispensational premillennialism is a variety of premillennialism which emerged in the 1830s from the works of John Nelson Darby that argues for a radical disjunction between Israel and the church and which teaches that the “secret rapture” will proceed the tribulation (and is consequently designated “pretribulational”). This secret rapture will “catch up” believers in order to take them into heaven while the Antichrist rages on earth during the seven-year period known as the tribulation (sometimes called The Great Tribulation) (152-154). 

Dispensational premillennialism is the predominant view in broader modern evangelicalism—it’s the view espoused by the authors of the Left Behind series, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins—and tends to create what I call a “huddle and cuddle” culture because as Gribben notes, it focuses on “getting people saved,” and not at all on cultural renewal in most cases. 

Dispensational premillennialism was also the view of Hal Lindsey (Late Great Planet Earth) whose communal house for hippies, Jesus Christ Light and Power Company house, is discussed by Gribben due to its relationship to early cultivators of the religious right, culture warriors like Francis Schaeffer (an evangelical Calvinist with a dispensational premillennialist eschatology) and Rushdoony (a Van Tillian Calvinist with a postmillennial eschatology). 

Postmillennialism, on the other hand, views the future optimistically, and thus CR is a natural but particular outworking of postmillennial eschatology. (Gribben shows why leaders like Schaeffer and Rushdoony took somewhat divergent paths in the latter years of the religious right’s culture war.)

Quoting Gary North, Gribben explains, 

There is no doubt one’s eschatological views will influence one’s list of earthly priorities…If, as one dispensationalist leader once remarked concerning this pre-rapture world, “you can’t [shouldn’t] polish brass on a sinking ship,” then his listeners ought to conclude that passing out simple gospel tracts is of greater importance and urgency than developing a distinctly Christian philosophy, economics, or chemistry.

Gribben further notes, that while Douglas Wilson and the Moscow, ID congregation “maintain a critical distance from the broader Christian Reconstructionist project…their goals and presuppositions [are] in many ways… closely aligned with it” (50). The difference mainly being “The reconstruction of Moscow was to develop on a broader cultural base than the program of the Christian Reconstructionists” (50). 

Gribben explains, “Recovering a holistic life in family, church, and community, [Wilson] argued that ‘Christians need to start thinking more about plotting the rest of that story, preparing for the death of modernity over the next century.’ Like North, Wilson (who explained in 1998, “The nation which we call the United States has already been lost”) combined this vision of the future with a conspiratorial view of national political life in the present” (50).

Gribben concludes the chapter by explaining how the postmillennial view informs the various strains of Reconstructionists, saying, “Unlike Amillennialists, who, North has argued, believe that ’history is inherently ambiguous,’ postmillennialists believe that history advances with predictable effects…as Wilson has put it, that this world, ‘the one we live in now, will be put to rights, before the Second Coming, before the end of all things.’ The only enemy not destroyed through the advance of the gospel will be death itself (1 Cor 15:26)—and even that enemy will be in confused retreat (Isa 65:20)” (50). 

Explains Gribben, “Postmillennialists need to plan for the renewal of culture, but they do not need to plan for revolution…For all their differences, in strategy and objective, the small group of kinists in Coeur d’Alene, the community of several thousand church members in Moscow, and the tens of thousands around the world who read Rawles’s novels or website are all participants in a larger movement away from dispensational despair. For all their diversity, these strategies of survival and resistance are being driven by a new hope that sees on the other side of a short-term tribulation the reconstruction of America” (50).

Government

Gribben opens the third chapter, titled Government, by saying, “Driven by new hope, those born-again Protestants who expect to contribute to the long-term reconstruction of the United States of America agree that this renewal will have significant implications for government” (59). 

In sum, this chapter further develops the history of the various splinters within the broader movement of CR and unpacks their various views on government.

One notable aspect of this chapter is the way in which Gribben distinguishes between some of the more radical groups in the American Redoubt who advocate for “extra-judicial or even illegal means” when campaigning against things like abortion, as opposed to the CR who, instead of advocating for violence, strive for cultural renewal. He explains, “While they may use similar language, fully developed Christian Reconstructionists, politically engaged Southern Baptists, and racist paramilitaries work with incompatible values, distinctive aims, and competing strategies toward quite different kinds of political change, only a tiny proportion of which could be described as ‘revolutionary’” (62).

Another notable aspect Gribben treats is the argument that CR could only really have application in America because it boils down to how one interprets American history—whether or not it was ultimately founded by Deists borrowing from evangelical thought (Jefferson Cf. Rutherford, for example) or by Puritans seeking to establish a Christian nation. 

CRs, working from a postmillennial eschatology and belief that the founding of America is a result of Reformed Puritans aspiring under the providence of God, anticipate the day when American law will be completely based on biblical law, a view which was often misconstrued but nevertheless brought considerable criticism, not only from the dispensationalists but also from the Reformed community as well—historian C. Gregg Singer and theologian, John Frame, for example. 

Gribben notes, “Bahnsen’s Theonomy in Christian Ethics (1977), a manifesto of the movement’s key political and juridical ideas, was reportedly banned from at least on Reformed seminary bookstore.  It made little difference that theonomic ideals were shared by many of the early modern theologians and key confessional texts that had provided the Reformed tradition with its intellectual foundations in seventeenth-century England. It was simply no longer politic to hold these views in evangelical America” (72).

He further explains that while the CR movement at large was busy defending its positions and distinguishing the nuances through its prolific publications and public engagement, meanwhile “a community, gathering in Moscow, ID, was led by Doug Wilson” (74). 

He recounts how “Wilson had moved from charismatic spirituality and dispensationalism to the Calvinistic reformation  through ‘a small hill of Rushdoony’s books,’ eventually coming to embrace his distinctive system of ‘postmillennial Calvinistic, Presbyterian, Van Tilian, theonomic, and reformed thought’” (74). Wilson repackaged his Rushdoonian theology “with a much stronger emphasis on evangelism and cultural engagement” (75). Maintaining a “radically libertarian view of government, which was modified by his theonomic instincts,” Wilson’s “political theory drew on the literature of classical liberalism ‘in a thoroughly jumbled way,’ with Augustine, Anselm, King Alfred, John Calvin, John Knox, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke, Robert E. Lee, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, G. K. Chesterton, Russell Kirk, and Rushdoony being among the writers he valued most” (75).

A third notable aspect of the chapter—and these three are certainly not the only notable aspects—Gribben explains that while during the 1980s, “as evangelicals elsewhere linked up with the consolidating Religious Right, the Moscow community stepped out of the binary of the American political mainstream to argue against the supporters of both parties that ‘politics is no savior.’ This stepping away from the political binary was a movement out of the tradition of evangelical activism, the ‘most disturbing feature’ of which, according to one member of the community, was their ‘trust in princes,’ as the history of the Moral Majority would prove” (76). 

Gribben emphasizes the fact that the Moscow community held, in counter distinction to the religious right, that “Politics is not our Savior, but politics will be saved” (78). And, simultaneously, they held the theonomist position that “Christians were not to advocate the ‘forcible imposition of God’s law on an unwilling society,’ but to preach unbelieving individuals into voluntary submission to Scripture, allowing the political consequences of religious ideas to take care of themselves” (76).

Education

The fourth chapter, titled Education, unpacks the history of home education in America, a movement predominantly led by Christian Reconstructionists. Gribben explains, “In the 1960s, home education was illegal in almost all states, but concerned believers nevertheless began to withdraw their children from the public education system, often finding themselves in serious trouble as a consequence. Harried by the courts, these pioneers in alternative education found a champion in the most important leaders of the Christian Reconstruction” (97).  

Gribben further highlights the birth and rapid growth of the Classical Christian Education renaissance and the various initiatives, philosophies, and institutions which stemmed, in large part, from the burgeoning Christian community in Moscow, Idaho. Though much of this chapter is fairly common knowledge in the Classical Christian Education world, of note is Gribben’s highlights of the various ways in which not only Moscow, but the CR movement at large, “has contributed to the fundamental reorientation of American education,” namely the exponential growth of home education since the 1980s and the revival of the classical liberal arts education (112).

Media

Finally, the Conclusion aside, the final chapter, titled Media, treats the “inventive use of media” which made the new growth of theonomy in particular, and the significant migration to the Redoubt more generally, possible. Gribben explains, “Entrepreneurial writers, including pastors, homesteaders, and survivalists, have created and then supplied an audience by means of paper and electronic publications that have encouraged individuals, families, and entire congregations to travel to Idaho while allowing others, who still live outside the Redoubt, to participate in its life” (116).

One serendipitous, and quite personal, anecdote about the effectiveness of the CRs’ use of media is worth recounting. Gribben says, 

“Indeed, the variety of materials that are produced and sold within the Moscow community…may lead some readers to believe that life within the community is more fully reconstructed than is actually the case. The elders at Christ Church, for example, have encouraged potential migrants to ‘realize that no one out here walks on water. For many of you, your knowledge of our area has been gleaned from our publications, and under such circumstances it is sometimes possible to find yourself with a set of unrealistic expectations. Moscow may seem better in print than it actually is’” (116).

On a personal note, my family moved to Moscow to enroll our son in Logos School, regroup as a family after twenty years of ministry, and be part of a classically-minded, robust Christian community while I worked on my doctorate. 

After two independent recommendations were made to me about the Moscow community, we decided to visit. (I had been to and through Moscow a couple of times in the early 90s when I was stationed at Fairchild AFB in Spokane, WA, and later served on staff at a church there. But I knew little of the town—and nothing of the Christian community—save that it was the home of UI and part of a distinct geographical region known for its agricultural production called the Palouse.) 

Having driven through some of the most beautiful country in the world to visit the community, and after being met with gracious hospitality, then witnessing a humble but robust, intellectual Christian community, I admit we were a little star-struck with Moscow before actually moving there. 

That said, I can attest that while we are no longer star-struck (and we no longer live directly in Moscow), people in Moscow are human beings just like those living everywhere else I’ve lived. While the Christian community is certainly not perfect, we received some of the greatest blessings, worshipped with some of the dearest saints, and experienced some of our most profound growth, spiritually, after moving to Moscow.

In this chapter, Gribben, himself, seems bedazzled, and perhaps even fawns a bit, noting that while it may seem better in print than it actually is, there is real Christian reconstruction going on in the Moscow community. And, specifically, to the point of the chapter, “the reconstruction of Moscow [is] being driven by a distinctive media culture” (126), a “striking literary culture,” the publications of which range from Canon Press, the local “gatekeeper” and “intellectual clearinghouse within the Moscow community,” to “mainstream publishers, such as HarperColllins, Random House, or Oxford University Press” (126-127). 

Further, “For all that the project of the Moscow community has been advanced by didactic accounts of theology, biblical commentary, and family life, and by their purpose in ‘defining, recruiting, and challenging’ and ideal community, the interest in creative writing that has continued from the earliest issues of Credenda Agenda may provide it with its most impressive successes” (129).

Finally, Gribben contrasts the literature of those writing in the broader Redoubt movement, like Rawles and Shaw, with those of the Moscow community. He asserts, “With its whimsical air, its gesturing toward G. K. Chesterton, P. G. Wodehouse, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien, the literature of the Moscow community could not be further removed from the paramilitary forces of the novels that done the most to promote the idea of the Redoubt, even though the Moscow community (unknowingly, as it was discovered) features within its literature” (130). And as for literature of the broader Redoubt movement, he explains, “This writing draws from a long tradition in literature and historiography that assumes the ‘center of American history…was actually to be found at its edges. Redoubt writing intends to reopen that frontier, and to reinscribe the qualities of Turner’s theory of the West” (130).

Conclusion

In the Conclusion, Gribben reasserts several notable points which I believe are worth listing for further contemplation:

• that “Christian Reconstruction is not dead” (139),
• that the “history of the (broader) evangelical movement has (always) been bound up with a ‘struggle to shape America’” (140),
• that “Sadly… young men who combine high hopes for the future of America and who can identify those responsible for its short-term decline will likely continue to seek redress for the cognitive dissonance by assaulting scapegoats in acts of redemptive violence” (141),
• that (and very importantly) “It is not inevitable that conservative evangelicals should escalate resistance into violence… that [for the Christian Reconstructionists] “the vehicles by which… national revival would be accomplished were not the constitutional tools of politics, and were certainly not the extra-constitutional tools of revolutionary terror…[but have argued consistently] that the ‘weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds’ (2 Corinthians 10:4)” (142),
• that Christian Reconstructionist movement is a “distinctively American Vision…in their decision to move to this frontier (Redoubt), those born-again Protestants who aspire to withdraw from the American mainstream articulate their reasons for doing so in terms that it understands. After all, the foundational myth of the programs for action…is that human society can be improved, and that a ‘city on a hill’ can be created. The vision is as old as America—and it is shared by the programs’ critics” (144),
• that “if these communities should be regarded as American fascists—which categorization [Gribben] resists—it might only be because of their location. Only in America can there be The Handmaid’s Tale” (145),
• that while “the radical Right is certainly on the rise…descriptions of born-again Protestants as participants in a new American fascism are becoming [within mainstream media] very effective click-bait” (146),
• that “genuine social change can only be achieved as a consequence of individual regeneration” and “the experience of history suggests that all efforts tending toward the perfection of human society will eventually fail” (146),
• that “it is telling that the advocates of postmillennial social reconstruction feel the need to temper the expectation of their converts” (147),
• that “the migration to the Redoubt will likely continue [because]…the communities that they establish, discover, and promote offer the affirmation of normality to those who cannot find it anywhere else; these migrants buy into the ideals of the communities with which they affiliate long before they ever leave their home. These migrants understand that, for all that this book has used the labels, there is in reality no mainstream culture, and no ‘evangelical movement,’ just as there is no single kind of evangelical who is trying to escape from it” (148),
• And most significantly, that “One of the most significant structural problems in American politics relates to the fact that these diverse and contradictory cultures with to share a common infrastructure of law” (149).

Personal Observations

For the most part, I have tried to let Gribben speak for himself and those he quotes do the same.

Written in a very accessible academic style, it is easy enough for anyone with basic theological and cultural knowledge to cruise through the book. Though I suspect this subject might not be as interesting to some who are unfamiliar with the political and religious movements engaged in the modern culture wars, I do think, given the cultural climate of our day, it is worth the read.

Though this work is mostly focused on a particular movement (the Moscow Community) within a larger collection of movements (The American Redoubt), Gribben includes a reasonable, fair, and mostly nuanced perspective of the broader issues that will help non-Christians understand where Christians are coming from, and help most Christians navigate the tumultuous waters of the modern culture wars.

I have further tried to highlight what I believe are the most salient aspects of this work but, obviously, one will have to read it to get the full gist and make their own conclusions.

Personally, I found it a delightful read, not only for the obvious reasons of my affiliation with the Moscow community, but because I feel Gribben did a considerable job of delineating between the various movements that are often mischaracterized by the mainstream as being connected philosophically merely because of their close proximity in geographic location. 

Finally, I would echo Gribben’s assessment that the Moscow community really is seeing significant progress toward reconstruction in its own microcosm of the world, as well, having some national influence. 

But, as he quoted members of the community as saying, expectations about its progress should definitely be tempered. The Christ Church community deals with the same sins as every other church community. Though most often mischaracterized and frequently exaggerated, some of those sins have even been given national attention.

Yet, in the more intimate setting of the local community, because of the strong theonomist vision of Christ Church and its affiliated enterprises (i.e., Logos School, New St. Andrews college, etc), I have to admit there tends to exist some cliquish impulses and even tendencies to silo. Even then, I have discovered a graciousness within the Christian community in Moscow regarding those disagreements that is unmatched in my twenty years experience pastoring in a different, let’s just say, less gracious, denomination.

Lastly, I most heartily agree with Gribben’s exuberant assessment of Moscow’s literary community. While Canon Press has an exclusive publishing agenda, its development, prolificacy, and reach, is an impressive feat that has left a permanent mark on the culture. As an example, long before I knew anything about Moscow, ID, or who Doug Wilson was, I had some of his theological works in my library in Las Vegas, and had been helped by them.

After I began to search for a graduate program that would propel me toward my goal to become a writer and classical educator, someone gave me a copy of Wordsmithy, by Douglas Wilson. After connecting some of the dots and later visiting the community while still pastoring in Las Vegas, it was the literary and academic aspects of the Moscow community that were the biggest draw for our family. Christ Church, as it so happened, was an unexpected secondary blessing. 

But Canon Press is not the only contributor to the striking literary and academic culture. Far from it, actually. Numerous other Christian publishing and academic enterprises have likewise taken root here and flourished: Romans Roads Press, Bulrushed Books, New St. Andrews College, White Horse Hall, Jubilee School, and, of course, Kepler Education are all flourishing enterprises making a local, national, and often international impact.

If there could only be one takeaway from Gribben’s work, I would hope readers would glean from Gribben’s quotation of MacIntyre: Since

“the ‘continuation of civility and moral community’ can no longer be identified with the ‘shoring up’ of what might be considered to be the social, cultural, and political mainstream…More than ever before, American evangelicals are thinking about the relationships between faith, politics, and the question for community. At this social, cultural, political, and demographic ‘turning point,’ at the ‘end of white, Christian America,’ what matters is the ‘construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us” (149).