Was R.J. Rushdoony A Racist? Answering Carl Trueman

Regretfully it has been alleged by Secular Humanists that the leading Theonomist Rousas John Rushdoony was a racist. Indeed, we find that even Dr. Carl Trueman (of Westminster Theological Seminary) has publicly gone on record expressing the opinion that Dr. Rushdoony was ‘probably racist’. Consequently, it is necessary for this author to present the evidence to the contrary, in order to maintain Dr. Rushdoony’s good name. Before I begin, let it be said that most of the people who make such allegations are probably more concerned with R.J. Rushdoony’s commitment to Biblical law and his opposition to Statism, than they are with discovering the truth concerning his views on racism (Carl Trueman, for instance, is a defender of Statist and left-wing politics). First of all, let us consider the testimony of Dr. Rushdoony’s son, Mark Rushdoony:

My father was no friend of racism, having suffered some hurtful discriminating treatment for his Armenian ethnicity early in life. Less than a year before he died, I asked him for his feelings on the Confederate battle flag on the state flags of three Southern states, then the subject of attempts at removal. His reply was, “If I were black I would find it offensive.”

Considering that Dr. Rushdoony was himself part of a racial minority within the United States, and had actually suffered because of his ethnic background, the idea of him being a racist is strange to say the least. Furthermore, a man who was afraid of black people being offended by the presence of Confederate flags (which are not even racist symbols) hardly sounds like a racist bigot. Lest however, anyone think that Mark Rushdoony is simply trying to cover up his late father’s racism, let us examine a few of Dr. Rushdoony’s own statements on the issue. In one of his Chalcedon Position Papers entitled The New Racism, Dr. Rushdoony spelled out the anti-Christian nature of racism, blaming it upon the theory of evolution:

The theory of evolution fuelled this developing scientific racism and added still another important factor. Many theories began to hold to a multiple origin for the human race. Whereas in Scripture all men are descendants of Adam, in evolutionary thought, all men are possibly descendants of very differing evolutionary sources. Common descent in Adam meant a common creation, nature and responsibility under God. The idea of multiple origins proved divisive. The human race was no longer the human race! It was a collection of possibly human races, a very different doctrine.

Rushdoony observes here that evolutionary philosophy – as opposed to the Biblical account of creation – means that certain races may not be regarded as fully human. Dr. Rushdoony believed such thinking was evil and condemned those who ‘would export “the white mentality” and European modes of thought’ to other races. This was due to the fact that ‘no race born of Adam has a good history: this is the Biblical fact, and the historical fact.’

While it could (plausibly) be argued that Western culture is superior to other cultures, Dr. Rushdoony reminds us that ‘the Western mind and culture, in all its advances, is a product of Biblical religion. It is a religious not a racial, product.’ So, for Rushdoony, any superiority in Western culture was due to the influence of the Christian faith, not because of racial superiority. Such a notion was, for him, utterly foolish as ‘all talk of differing mentalities has a patronising perspective; it also says that race, not sin, is the problem of other peoples and their cultures.’ Judging R.J. Rushdoony in the light of his own words, it is clear that he was not a racist. Racism has no place in the movement for Christian Reconstruction.

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