Faith and Action: The Collected Articles of R. J. Rushdoony, 1965-2004

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Faith and Action is the complete collection of the essays of R. J. Rushdoony written for the Chalcedon Report between 1965 and 2001 along with several transcripts of his recorded talks. The large volume The Roots of Reconstruction only contained his Chalcedon Report essays up until 1985, so most of the essays included in Faith & Action were unavailable to readers for many years until now.

  1. 4d ago

    Relativism

    This passage argues that fears of overpopulation and overpollution are largely myths. Citing Dr. Julian L. Simon’s The Ultimate Resource, it emphasizes that food production, farmland availability, and natural resources are increasing, not diminishing. Pollution has been declining, population density does not inherently create social or biological problems, and immigration contributes positively to society. The author highlights that claims of resource scarcity often serve as a pretext for statist controls and planning, which can threaten individual freedom. Rather than limiting growth, evidence suggests human ingenuity continues to expand resources and improve living standards. #OverpopulationMyth #ResourceAbundance #Freedom #PopulationGrowth #EnvironmentalRealities

    8 min

  2. 6d ago

    Moral Force

    In “Moral Force,” Rushdoony argues that all lasting authority rests not on brute power but on moral force rooted in faith, and that when societies abandon moral absolutes they inevitably replace persuasion, law, and justice with coercion, bribery, violence, and aestheticized destruction. He traces how relativism leads first to cynicism, then to the worship of power—whether through revolutionary violence, statist control, or an aesthetics that glorifies shock, perversity, and negation—until man becomes enslaved to the very state he trusted to save him. Political salvation, artistic rebellion, and force-based ideologies all fail because they cannot give meaning, character, or hope; they only accelerate moral collapse. Against this, Rushdoony insists that only faith in the sovereign God provides true moral force, purpose, and dominion, enabling men to fight evil without despair and to reconstruct society under God’s law, confident that while duties are ours, the ultimate victory belongs to the Lord.

    19 min

  3. Jun 12

    The Smiling Face of Evil

    In “The Smiling Face of Evil,” Rushdoony warns that evil rarely appears brutal or grotesque but commonly presents itself as kind, helpful, idealistic, and morally concerned, masking its true nature behind pleasant words, good intentions, and public-relations charm. Drawing on personal anecdotes and biblical examples, he argues that Satan’s most effective strategy is not open hostility but deception—using humanitarian language, visions of peace, and promises of progress to replace God’s law with man-centered hopes, as seen in movements that borrow Christian language while opposing Christian truth. Because people prefer comfort to truth, the smiling face of evil is often embraced while prophetic honesty, like Paul’s, is rejected as harsh or unloving. Rushdoony concludes that when churches and societies prize affirmation over truth, they become complicit in deception, forgetting that sin earns death and that genuine love is found not in smooth words but in faithful obedience to Christ and His law-word.

    5 min

  4. Jun 10

    Abominations

    In “Abominations”, Rushdoony explains that Scripture’s strong language about sin reflects God’s holiness and justice, not vulgarity or excess, and that the biblical term abomination consistently denotes what God finds utterly abhorrent because it is idolatrous, lawless, and spiritually corrupt. Drawing on Hebrew and Greek usage, he shows that abominations are actions and attitudes that despise God’s law while often masquerading as faith—ranging from sexual immorality and idolatry to dishonest worship, lying, and false weights—revealing the unity of moral, spiritual, and physical corruption. What God calls an abomination is not culturally relative or emotionally offensive but objectively repulsive to Him, marked by filth, stench, and rebellion, and barred from His kingdom. Because God does not change, what He abhors must also be abhorrent to His people; therefore, encountering this word in Scripture is a warning that demands clear obedience, moral clarity, and submission to God’s law rather than accommodation to cultural standards.

    6 min

  5. Jun 5

    Blind Faith

    In “Blind Faith” (Chalcedon Report No. 419), Rushdoony argues that Darwinism functions not as proven science but as a massive act of blind faith, embraced because it promises liberation from the God of Christianity rather than truth. From its rapid acceptance in 1859 to its dominance in modern education, culture, and even churches, this faith in humanistic evolution has shaped a civilization that rejects Christ’s authority and substitutes man-centered autonomy for God’s order. Rushdoony warns that such civilizations have always ended in death, noting that the twentieth century—deeply shaped by this worldview—became the bloodiest in history, with the twenty-first poised to be worse unless there is repentance. He critiques a truncated gospel that treats being “born again” as the end rather than the beginning of faith, arguing that redemption restores man to Adam’s original calling: exercising godly dominion under Christ. When the church abandons this calling, faith collapses into self-centered spirituality, leaving the world under the dominion of the fall and forcing the church to confront a decisive question about its future direction.

    3 min

  6. Jun 3

    Humanism and Education

    In “Humanism and Education” (Chalcedon Report No. 54), Rushdoony argues that modern vandalism, campus unrest, and the collapse of public education are not random social failures but the visible signs of a dying religion—humanism—which once enthroned man as god and the state school as his church. He traces this faith to Horace Mann’s belief that public education could save society and usher in a utopia, a promise disproven by rising crime, cultural decay, and deep hatred toward schools and educators, now attacked by humanism’s own children. As humanism fails to deliver peace, moral order, or meaning, its institutions—schools, universities, churches, economies, and even paper money—enter crisis and disintegration. In contrast, Rushdoony presents Christian education as evidence of new growth amid destruction: men of living faith build rather than burn. He warns against trying to restore dying orders, as Stilicho and Theoderic did with Rome, and calls Christians instead to reconstruction under Christ’s lordship, declaring that the future belongs not to man-centered systems but to the sovereign and living God, whose authority alone can give meaning, stability, and renewal to history.

    16 min

  7. May 29

    Exaggeration and Denial

    This passage argues that the courts, rather than serving justice, have increasingly become instruments of relativism and majority rule, often harming victims more than criminals. It highlights Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s philosophy that the law is a game to be played according to its rules rather than a pursuit of justice, suggesting that justice is no longer viewed as absolute but as subject to human whims. The author warns that when courts treat law as a game, human lives and freedoms are at stake, and both moral and civil order suffer. The broader critique is that divorcing law from objective standards of good and evil leads to a destructive legal system that undermines true justice. #JusticeVsLaw #CourtCritique #HolmesianLaw #Relativism #FreedomAtRisk

    3 min

  8. May 27

    The Disastrous War

    In “The Disastrous War” (Chalcedon Report No. 369), Rushdoony argues that the American Civil War was the greatest tragedy in U.S. history, not only because of its immense human cost but because it entrenched a worldview of irreconcilable conflict that still divides the nation. He contends that the war was driven less by Biblical moral reasoning than by Enlightenment humanism shared by influential leaders on both sides—especially Unitarian, Transcendentalist, and Hegelian ideas that exalted revolutionary conflict as the means to justice and progress. Slavery, though real and evil, could have been abolished peacefully, as it was elsewhere, but extremists North and South demanded confrontation rather than resolution. Rushdoony shows that Southern secessionist leaders were largely non-Christian in outlook, while Northern abolitionist rhetoric was often anti-Christian and revolutionary, united by a belief in the “conflict of interests” rather than the Biblical doctrine of moral reconciliation under God. This philosophical shift transformed a legal dispute into a revolutionary war, inaugurated the doctrine of total war (seen in figures like Sherman and Quantrill), and replaced Christian moral antithesis—resolved by repentance and regeneration—with annihilating conflict. The legacy of this war, he concludes, is the ongoing fragmentation of American life, rooted in a humanistic worldview that seeks peace through destruction rather than justice through God’s law and grace.

    15 min
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Faith and Action is the complete collection of the essays of R. J. Rushdoony written for the Chalcedon Report between 1965 and 2001 along with several transcripts of his recorded talks. The large volume The Roots of Reconstruction only contained his Chalcedon Report essays up until 1985, so most of the essays included in Faith & Action were unavailable to readers for many years until now.

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