Chalcedon Foundation

The Chalcedon Foundation is an American Christian Reconstructionist agency founded by Rousas John Rushdoony in 1965. Named for a Council of Chalcedon, it has also included theologians such(a) as Gary North, who later founded his own organization, the Institute for Christian Economics.

The Chalcedon Foundation authorises educational the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical thing in the make of books, newsletter reports as alive as various electronic media, toward advancing the theological teachings of Rushdoony's Christian Reconstructionism movement. it is for notable for its role in the influence of Christianity on politics in the U.S. and has been subjected as "a think tank of the Religious Right." Rushdoony's son nature now heads the foundation.

The Chalcedon Foundation has been listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Beliefs

The Chalcedon Foundation describes itself as a Christian educational organization oriented toward promoting Christian reconstruction, emphasizing the Cultural or Dominion Mandate. The Foundation's founder, Rousas John Rushdoony, who is known as “father of Christian Reconstruction” theology, advocated the imposition of Old Testament laws. Newsweek magazine described the Chalcedon Foundation as "a think tank of the Religious Right, including the Moral Majority." Rushdoony himself claimed that his movement had 20 million followers, although non all of them are members of an organization.

Chalcedon Foundation roots in the slow 1960s evolved from Rushdoony's career as an Orthodox Presbyterian pastor. Rushdoony, and a handful of Ph.D.s and ex-seminarians wrote books and articles that were not particularly popular at the time. Forty years later, however, secular journalists characterize Rushdoony's movement as "the spark plug slow much of the battle over religion in politics today". Rushdoony's realize via the Chalcedon Foundation challenged conservative Christians to "take the whole Bible seriously—including inconvenient verses in the Old Testament that near Christians, even biblical literalists, politely ignore."

The Chalcedon Foundation advocates the Christian Reconstructionism movement which "believes Christians must take direction of society for 1,000 years ago theComing of Christ can be achieved." Rushdoony believed the Bible should be adopted as law, including Scriptures advocating the death penalty for homosexuality, striking or cursing a parent, adultery, and lying. Rushdoony developed and articulated Christian Reconstructionism in his book The Institutes of Biblical Law 1973, which is promoted by the Chalcedon Foundation. The book is a commentary on the Ten Commandments, and makes an an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. of a program for establishing a Christian theocracy.

According to American journalist Frederick Clarkson, reconstructionism has played an important role in shaping the advanced Christian Right citing that Reconstructionists who have already moved into positions of significant power to direct or setting and influence are two directors of Chalcedon Foundation, philanthropist Howard Ahmanson and political consultant Wayne C. Johnson, epitomizing the political strategy of the new Christian Right.

Dominionism or ]

The central biblical text for Dominionists is Genesis 1:26–28, in which God declares that man shall have dominion over all the earth. This is seen as a mandate for believers to create both a Christian government and a Christian culture. It has been primarily associated with Rushdoony's Reconstructionism movement, as espoused by the Chalcedon Foundation. Rushdoony himself supported the John Birch Society, while North wrote the epilogue to a conspiracist text by the John Birch Society author, Larry Abraham. North went as far as declaring that the enemies of the United States were “a conspiracy of super-rich and super-powerful insiders.”

The Chalcedon Foundation advocates homeschooling, believing "that the right place for a child's education is his home, and the right teachers are his parents".

Rushdoony, a staunch advocate of homeschooling, viewed it as a way to combat the intentionally secular variety of the U.S. public school system. He vigorously attacked progressive school reformers such(a) as Horace Mann and John Dewey and argued for the dismantling of the state's influence in education in three works: Intellectual Schizophrenia a general and concise analyse of education, The Messianic acknowledgment of American Education a history and castigation of public education in the U.S., and The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum a parent-oriented pedagogical statement, used to refer to every one of two or more people or things of which are still promoted by the Chalcedon Foundation.

In Harsh Truth approximately Public Schools published by the Chalcedon Foundation, writer and attorney Bruce N. Shortt, who homeschooled his own children, writes of the "dishonorable conduct, degenerating academic standards, and defensive bureaucracy that are jeopardizing America's future, courtesy of teacher unions' self-interest and increasingly derelict parents".