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Rushdoony was born the son of recently arrived Armenian immigrants in New York. He was educated at the University of California, Berkeley and the Pacific School of Religion.
Rushdoony's first focus was on behalf of homeschooling, which he saw as a way to combat the secular nature of the U.S. public school system, and he vigorously attacked the liberal philosophers who had influenced the development of said education system, such as Horace Mann and John Dewey. He also stressed that Christianity had always been present in U.S. history; and while he supported separation of church and state at the national level, he claimed that the First AmendmentThe First Amendment to the United States Constitution is a part of the Bill of Rights. Textually, it prevents the Congress from infringing on five rights. These guarantees were that the government would not: Endorse any given religion or establish a state was designed to protect the already existing "state churches" in each of the colonies—thus, the amendment had not been designed to wholly secularise society, as it had been used to do.
His first book in 1959 was an analysis of the philosophy of Christian Apologist, Cornelius Van TilCornelius Van Til (born 1895 in Grootegast, The Netherlands; died 1987) was a Christian philosopher, Reformed theologian, and presuppositional apologist. Biography Van Til was a graduate of Calvin College, Princeton Theological Seminary and Princeton Univ entitled, "By What Standard?" He also wrote several book reviews that were published in the Westminster Theological Journal. And wrote many other books applying the Van Tillian presuppositional philosophy to critiquing various aspects of secular humanism.
Perhaps his most famous work, however, was The Institutes of Biblical Law. With a title modelled after CalvinJohn Calvin ( July 10, 1509 May 27, 1564) founded Calvinism, a form of Protestant Christianity, during the Protestant Reformation. He was born Jean Chauvin in Noyon, Picardie, France, and French was his mother tongue. Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses in's The Institutes of the Christian Religion , Rushdoony's Institutes were arguably his most influential work. In it he proposed that biblical law should be applied to modern society—to wit, that there should be a theocracyTheocracy is a form of government in which the governmental rulers are identical with the leaders of the dominant religion. In a theocracy, governmental policies are either identical with or strongly influenced by the principles of the majority religion,; and discussed how to go about doing this. He also proposed great freedom in the economic realm of public life, following in this the ideas of Ludwig von MisesLudwig von Mises ( September 29, 1881, Lwow October 10, 1973) was a notable economist and a major influence on the modern Libertarian movement. He was born in Austria-Hungary and subsequently taught at the University of Vienna in the years 1913 to 1934, w and calling himself a Christian libertarian.