September, 1995

Dear ICE Subscriber:

Every social order is the product of a four-way struggle to gain the allegiance of the broad mass of the people: the establishment, the accommodationists ("loyal opposition" vs. "principled withdrawal"), and the transformationists. The social order changes when the existing establishment and its outlook is replaced by one of the numerous transformationist groups. This happens only when the people at large change their minds and shift their allegiance to a new establishment. These rare events are called social revolutions.

In U.S. history, this has happened three times: during the American Revolution and its aftermath (from a decentralized Christian political order to a more centralized secular political order), during and immediately after the Civil War (from a decentralized Christian social order to centralized Unitarian social order), and during the Great Depression of the 1930's (from a decentralized economic order to a centralized economic order). All three were preceded by shifts in theological opinion within the elite: from Calvinist orthodoxy to Calvinist revivalism-Newtonianism (1730 to 1760); from Calvinist Newtonianism to Arminianism (1800 to 1830); from Arminianism to Unitarian moralism (1830 to 1860); from Unitarian moralism to free market social Darwinism (1860 to 1890); and from free market social Darwinism to reformist-statist social Darwinism-Progressivism (1890 to 1920).

Every social order has its establishment elite. The established order is, above all, the incarnated worldview of the society. The representatives of this order set limits to the kinds of questions that are deemed (by them) as legitimate, as well as the kinds of answers that are acceptable (to them). They establish the terms of social discourse. Without such rules, there would be social and intellectual chaos. In military terms, we would identify these people as senior officers. They have the final decision about what goes into the training manuals.

Accommodationists come in many forms, but they all accept the establishment's terms of discourse. They do not agree with all of the establishment's answers, but they do accept the existing institutional framework for asking questions and seeking answers. They reject much of the establishment's substantive conclusions, but they accept the formal procedures for debating the issues and deciding on the answers. They represent the vast majority of the public. They accept the system, but in two different ways: as loyal opponents who legitimize the system by participation, and as principled non-participants who follow the system's rules but refuse to accept its relevance in their lives. The loyal opposition accepts the outlook of Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn: they go along to get along. In military terms, these are the junior officers and non-commissioned officers. The principled non-participants adopt the phrase: "All politics is dirty." In military terms, these are the pacifists.

The transformationists accept neither the establishment's conclusions nor its framework for reaching them. They refuse to become part of the loyal opposition, nor are they willing to withdraw from the debate. They have a difficult task: to change the minds of leaders of the loyal opposition and also the people at large regarding the legitimacy of the existing establishment. (They can safely ignore the non-participants, as can everyone else.) They must do this from outside the accepted universe of discourse: with different rules of communication, with a different etiquette, with different ways of reaching conclusions. They must do this without much funding and with almost no acknowledged respectability. In military terms, these are enemy guerrillas and spies. They are tiny groups initially.

What are the civilians? What are the lowest-ranking foot soldiers? They are usually implicit accommodationists. They do not care who wins, so long as things bump along predictably. They are pragmatic almost to the core, but not quite. No one is a pragmatist to the core. There is always some flicker of principle in every person, some sense of justice (Rom. 2:14–15). These people are the final earthly court of appeal. They can vote out the establishment, or they can refuse to fund or join the army. They are generally non-participants, not out of principle but out of apathy. Their passive allegiance is crucial for the social order, and they rarely change sides — only at major historical turning points.

Consider Elijah's confrontation on Mt. Carmel. He was a transformationist. He was successful in persuading the number-two establishment representative, King Ahab, to allow a contest of Elijah's devising: the heaven-burned sacrifice. He changed the rules of debate, but only because God had softened up the king's resistance by three and a half years of drought. The establishment's priests were given the initial opportunity to call fire down on the sacrifice. The establishment always gets the first shot in every decisive public contest, which is always rigged by them to some degree, or else they refuse to participate. The accommodationists were the representatives of the people. They did not care who won; they cared only about being on the winning side: "And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word" (I Kings 18:21). But what of the great mass of the people who were represented by the accommodating rulers of Israel? They were not present on Mt. Carmel. Neither was the number-one establishment figure, Jezebel, who subsequently refused to accept the outcome of the contest.

What has this got to do with Christian Reconstruction? The same thing it had to do with the Christianization of Rome and the Protestant Reformation. In A.D. 290, Christians were either accommodationists — a few loyal oppositionists but mostly principled non-participants suffering persecution — or transformationists. They were surely not part of the establishment. A century later, they were the establishment. Augustine wrote The City of God (426) as a defense of the advent of Christian Rome, an attack on the immorality of pagan Roman culture. His book provided moral justification for the new social order.

Consider the time frame, A.D. 30 to A.D. 381, when Christianity became the official religion of Rome. During most of this time, Christians were outsiders, often suffering persecution. They had no thought of becoming the establishment. That happened only after decades of civil war, economic breakdown, religious confusion, and barbarian invasions. Christians became the establishment when no other group could or would exercise leadership.

The Protestant Reformation arrived under similar circumstances of breakdown and despair. The Roman Church was morally corrupt and deeply in debt to German bankers. (John Eck, who debated Luther publicly, was also the agent of the Fuggers, the banking house that had loaned the Vatican huge sums that the sale of indulgences was designed to repay, or at least pay the interest.) Syphilis had spread throughout all of Europe's elite establishment and armies by 1510, beginning with Columbus' crew. This had undermined Europe's confidence. Meanwhile, the Renaissance was bringing a revived Classical religion to Europe's elite: occultism and power religion. Spiritual darkness was deepening.

Into this scene came Luther, who nailed his 95 theses to the church door in 1517. They were in Latin. But he had neglected to put a copyright notice on his paper, since there was no such thing as copyright in 1517. (A truly perverse economic system.) Without his initial authorization, the 95 theses were translated into German and sold widely. Several printers joined in this publishing bonanza. None of them paid him author's royalties. (God brings swift judgment on such a society, let me assure you.)

By the year 1530, Luther's writings accounted for approximately one-third of everything published in Germany. His Bible shaped the German language. His ideas swept through northern Europe. They caused a cultural and political revolution. Renaissance occultism had to go underground to survive, not re-surfacing openly again until 1965. (I discuss this occult revival in my book, Unholy Spirits.) Luther became the master of the new communications media, the greatest pamphleteer in Western history. Only Lenin has ever rivaled him in this regard, but who reads Lenin today? Who catechizes his children with Lenin's writings? Luther's writings still shape men's lives.

Yet all that Luther asked for on October 31, 1517, was to have a local debate in Latin on the fine points of a narrow topic in theology: soteriology.

Luther was not initially a transformationist. He began as part of the loyal opposition. He was willing to accept the establishment's framework for asking and answering questions. Nailing a challenge to debate in Latin onto the door of a church was an accepted practice among theologians. What had not been common practice, however, was for printers to translate the formal challenge into the vernacular and publish it. The printing press transformed Luther into a transformationist. Then it transformed Northern Europe.

Today, in the marginalized culture of non-mainline denomination American Protestantism, we see the dominance of loyal opposition accommodationists: neo-evangelical political liberals and fundamentalist political conservatives. The "Antichrist of the month" dispensational withdrawalists are fading fast, marching into the cultural wilderness behind Dave Hunt, now that Hal Lindsey, Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggart have disappeared.

Today, things are bumping along tolerably. The economy is not in crisis. The public schools in the suburbs are still training most students. Secular universities are training the entire elite and would-be elite. Christian colleges are totally accommodationist: either the "just about politically correct" loyal opposition — the Westmont-Wheaton-Calvin-Gordon College axis — or else principled withdrawalists: the Bob Jones-Bible college axis.

I would not be writing this, and you would not be reading this, if we did not assume that things will get a lot more bumpy: politically, economically, and biologically. AIDS is not so widespread as syphilis was in Luther's time, but it is clearly a disease of judgment, as all venereal diseases are. The recent book, The Hot Zone, describes the spread of a truly terrifying new disease, ebola, which is 90% fatal, in which one's insides disintegrate, blood pours forth from every orifice, and the skin falls off. It came and went in central Africa, but will it come back? Or something worse? A biologist recently told me this: "Medical science is today running neck and neck with killer diseases carried by bugs that have developed resistance to our miracle drugs. Science probably can't keep ahead much longer. One of the bugs will get loose. We have lived through a brief period of time in which men have faced no killer plagues. This probably will not last much longer."

I write as a transformationist. I assume that at some point, the rules of public discourse will change. New technologies are making this possible. The newsletter has changed the rules to some degree since 1965. Computer technology has driven this change: computerized mailing lists. Mailing lists have been in politics ever since Charles Bryan, William Jennings Bryan's brother, pioneered the technology a century ago. But no one systematically followed his lead until Richard Viguerie showed us the way after he bought the Goldwater mailing list in 1965. Call-in talk radio, which has been around for about as long as the alternative newsletters, has recently become a major platform for political conservatives: loyal oppositionists, not principled withdrawalists. The same is true of satellite television. Now CD-ROM's, fiber optic cable, and interactive TV all threaten the monopoly control over information that the establishment has exercised for a century.

Will the center hold? Not when the ride gets seriously bumpy. But without the center, the existing establishment will find it difficult to maintain its legitimizing majority. The loyal opposition will become increasingly disloyal or fragmented or both. Meanwhile, fundamentalist withdrawalists, incarnated by the career Jerry Falwell, have joined the loyal opposition since 1975. They have become the key swing vote in the U.S. When the system visibly begins to break apart, as it surely will, a percentage of these people will become transformationists. Home schoolers already are more than halfway there.

The public schools are America's only established church. Faith in this church is waning. When it loses its financial support, the day of transformation will have arrived. I am producing what I hope will be foundational documents for that day. It will take a Christian revival to move theonomy out of its present transformationist status. Christians will then move from the loyal opposition to the establishment. This is my goal.

Sincerely,