Articles
Browse our articles
Book Announcement – Reconstruct
The Recon Tavern is pleased to announce this very exciting development: The release of the book "Reconstruct: Recovering Christian Advance in a Culture of Retreat." The book is intended to be an introductory overview of Christian Reconstruction, it's foundations and...
Theonomy & Arguments From Silence
Do Christian Reconstructionists "argue from silence" when they say that civil government should not presume upon powers unless such powers are explicitly granted to them in scripture? If I'm understanding him correctly, in this article Peter Leithart claims that...
Theonomic Critics of Theonomy
Setting the Stage Events over the past several years have conspired to expose that much of the “conservative” evangelical pastorate has been asleep at the switch when it comes to the intersection of faith and civil government. These can be touchy subjects, and Pastors...
Stop It. Joy to the World is a Christmas Song.
Public Service Announcement: “Joy to the World” is a Christmas song. It is a song celebrating the first advent of Christ and not his future return. Don’t get me wrong, I’m for singing it all year round, but I think it is especially appropriate to sing at Christmas. To...
What COVID Revealed About Your Pastor
No one is a statist, tyrant, or coward in the abstract. Well, I shouldn't say no one, but if you are such a one, it's certainly easier to camouflage while your feet aren’t held to the fire. Such vices are rarely made obvious in “peace time”. They are revealed in the...
Biblical Law for Women: Blessing or Curse?
The twentieth and twenty-first centuries could be characterized as an era of liberation movements. Whether it be women's suffrage, civil rights, or more contemporarily, "LGBT" activism, many groups have emerged seeking freedom from discrimination and oppression...
Presupp Epistemology
“…but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and fear.” (1 Peter 3:15) In the Western world today reality as we know it is being...
Covenant Theology
The doctrines of Creation, Fall and Redemption give us a summary of what the whole Bible teaches. And not only that, but Creation, Fall and Redemption is what the whole of history is about. Everything revolves around Creation, Fall and Redemption. These doctrines...
Theonomic Ethics
In a perfect world, we could launch straight into a discussion of theonomy from the ground up, confident that it will be evaluated fairly on the merits. Instead, we face a mountain of long-standing prejudices that have successfully recast the three terms “theonomy,”...
Postmil Eschatology
Every year at Christmas many Christians sing a particular carol that has a theology long lost to the cultural pessimism of the twentieth century. Isaac Watt’s Joy to The World has a message of a hope that many Christians don’t even realize is there. Consider the third...
What’s In a Name?
No more Christendom Media? We hardly knew you! Christendom Media is now the Recon Tavern. A place where thinkers, pastors, and theologians can advance the aims of Christian reconstruction to the glory of God and to the edification of His people through their writing....
Demar-Gate: Five Needed Clarifications on Preterism
In the wake of the Gary Demar dust-up, kerfuffle, debacle, Demar-Gate, whatever you want to call it... let’s settle some things. A lot of terms are being bandied about and too often without precision. When dealing with matters of heresy, precision is important. 1....
The Avenger of Blood and Biblical Law
Recently, I heard a Christian friend say (something like): "People were allowed to avenge the deaths of their relatives under Biblical law." Is this statement true, or is it an example of Christian ignorance of Biblical law? A related statement that I have often heard...
Calvinist Soteriology
“Who’s in charge here?” Dr. Gary North was fond of asking that question as a way of pointing to the first part of the Biblical covenant. We’d be talking about transcendence at that point. That’s a five-dollar word nerds use to speak of being sovereign over everything....
Build a Biblical Trustee Family
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God...
Bad Reasons to Board the Titanic
I have previously written here and here about the need for Christian parents to undergo a mass exodus from the Public Schools ASAP. I believe much progress continues to be made in this regard however there are still the usual voices in the evangelical world that still...
Salt, Public Schools, and Naïve Christianity
The Gospel Coalition released an article detailing recent efforts to be salt and light in a community through involvement with the public schools. It sounds great—who could ever have a problem with helping children right? To this end, I have some thoughts which I...
Should Christians Support Government Schools?
“See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.” –Colossians 2:8 “I am as sure as I am of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and...
The Restoration of Israel Was Pentecost
There are a variety of viewpoints that are often raised regarding the following passage from Acts chapter 1 related to "the restoration of Israel": [6] So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” [7] He...
The Fruit of Eastern Orthodoxy in Greece
Here we have a lesson for those in the reformed church disguised as a slam against the Eastern Orthodox church. Be careful about the emphasis you place on your history and traditions. A recent popular social media posting was making fun of an evangelical pastor...
Why America needs a new kind of Christianity
Every now and again an article will pop up on some mainstream media company’s website which makes for some interesting reading (even if the proposed solution to whatever problem is almost always wrong). On August 1st, just such an article rose to the surface within...
The Minimum Wage and God’s Law
The Federal Minimum Wage (FMW) is usually not thought of as a mechanism that oppresses the poor. Taking its intended purpose at face value (i.e. help low-skilled workers earn more income) would lead us to think the exact opposite. But that is exactly what the minimum...
What did Thomas Jefferson mean by “separation of church and state”?
Introduction The historical context of Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists is well-documented. This wasn't a hastily-cribbed response by a busy President who saw this as a minor communication from/to a small group of fringe religionists (Baptists were a...
Brothers, We are Not Exiles
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. Hebrews 12:22a I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. John 17:5 One of the biggest hurdles for Christians as they...
Public Health – The Trojan Horse of Modern Fascism
In September 2019 I posted the following comment on social media: “Many people are unaware that many of the philosophical and ideological precursors of Nazi ideology that became important elements of the Nazi programme itself are now well established in modern Western...
Christian Battlefields: Tactics
Engaging a Recon Mission This present life is a battlefield; that’s why the Church on earth is called the Church militant, and perhaps that’s why reconstructionists are so fond of military analogies. This present reconstructionist author is no different, which...
Does Biblical law allow you to own a number?
Should I be legally allowed to assert a government-enforceable property right in a number, the same way I might assert ownership over a piece of land, or an item of physical personal property? This is an important question. For example, consider the following number:...
Theonomy and Sharia, Friends or Foes?
“Theonomists” are those who affirm that civil magistrates today are obligated to rule in accordance with God’s law, including some (but not all) transcendent civil laws given under Moses. Those who oppose theonomy and Christian Reconstruction sometimes use the “boogie...
Are the Old Testament Blessings and Curses Relevant Today?
Introduction Every culture has some form of blessings and curses for how one behaves in their society. Chinese Taoism has “the way” (道; dào), Hinduism has the principle of karma, and Kabala has the Tree of Life. All these religious systems contain a...
Hypocrisy in War
War will never be given the adjective “beautiful” because the very nature of war is one of death and destruction. You won’t find a commander describing the advancement of his army towards the enemy as being the same thing as watching a sunset over the watery horizon....
Hyper-Credentialism & The Tetlock Effect
For four decades starting in the 1920's it was common practice in the medical community to perform radiation on the thymus glands of certain children because they thought that an "enlarged" thymus caused SIDS. If you didn't go along with the procedure you were thought...
Christian Reconstruction & Wealth
A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.”Proverbs 13:22 “A sluggard’s appetite is never filled, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.” Proverbs 13:4 When it comes to the topic of...
Churches: We Are Not Mini-Temples
Churches: We Are Not Mini-Temples Unmasking the most pernicious, entrenched and pervasive error in Protestantism “He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” 2nd Samuel 7:13 Some people are surprised when they see a...
The Kingdom Debate: Enduring or Transforming?
“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”Colossians 1:13 “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can someone enter a strong man's house...
Minimizing Heaven, Absolutizing the Local Church
I love the local church. At the local church in which I regularly fellowship I am recognized as a member of the church universal. I love weekly church services. We sing, we confess, we herald the gospel, we exhort, we pray, we hear the word, we learn about the law and...
Whiffing On Nero And Romans 13
Recently in the Theonomy Q&A group (a terrific resource!) we received a question that touches on an issue that comes up quite a bit. It relates to the oft repeated and oft mistaken notion that Romans 13 was written during the Neronic persecution. The idea is that...
Unbelievers Will Never Create a Just Society
Last year at George Mason University Pastor Jason Garwood and I were on the campus in the main square to speak on behalf of the unborn with the Gospel as the foundation of our calls for justice. In conversation with one bright young man, we began to talk about how...
Megalomaniacal Pastors And Faulty Ecclesiology
When it comes to interaction with various ecclesiastical authority figures throughout your life, how many times have you heard yourself thinking questions like: What’s up with this pastor? He’s always been a nice guy but where did that behavior come from? Man that...
Dialectical Maneuvering
“And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.” (Romans 1:27 KJV) Given the fact that we...
A Brief Word on Aversions and Our Need to Actually Fight
One thing the Church is good at is lobbing water balloons over the trenches during battle (thinking that somehow we are doing something helpful), all the while the enemy's .50 cal is mowing us down. Worse yet, many stand back thinking that they shouldn't even throw...
Reforming Tribalism
Normally a good eye-catching way to start out an article like this would be to rhyme of a bunch of examples of various tribes. The problem with this is that it immediately feeds into our minds tendency to want to "other" the problem away outside ourselves. Myself...
Why Might a Reconstructionist Vote Trump?
What is voting? Can the Christian reconstructionist vote for the lesser of two evils? Is Donald Trump the clear lesser of two evils? What about third party voting or not voting at all? How does localism fit into all of this? Amid these swirling questions, before we...
The Lockdowns Are Not Lawful Or Loving
When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice:but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn. Proverbs 29:2 Given all that has happened over the past four months, there is much that could be written with regard to government lockdowns and a dozen issues...