The New Yorker & Evangelicalism

With Republican presidential contenders lining up for a run at the party's nomination, Francis Schaeffer's name is once again in the air. In this week's New Yorker, Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza presents a ten-page exposé on Michele Bachmann, tying her to the man Newsweek religion editor Kenneth Woodward once called "the guru of fundamentalism." Lizza classes Schaeffer as an "exotic" influence on Bachmann's religious and political formation and links Schaeffer to Rousas Rushdoony. Rushdoony was the architect of Reconstructionist political theology (also called Dominionism by some). He argued in massive tomes that Old Testament law was normative and should and would someday be installed into American law. As critics never tire of pointing out, this would mean the death penalty for adulterers, homosexuals, and perhaps even incorrigible children.