In a satirical September 27, 2017 Washington Post op-ed, former Prairie Home Companion public radio show host Garrison Keillor wrote,
“The triumph of former judge Roy Moore in Alabama’s Republican Senate primary was a ray of sunshine for those of us who’d like to restore stoning to our legal system…
In Deuteronomy, God makes it clear that a rebellious child should be brought before the elders and stoned to death. It’s there in black and white. We ignore these things at our peril.”
But Keillor was much closer to the truth than he probably knew.
Roy Moore is getting a bit of attention (link to 11/29/2017 ThinkProgress story) due to a 2011 theocratic “Law & Government” course that he co-authored (or, at the very least, contributed to — depending on how one chooses to characterize Moore’s participation) which teaches that God and scripture are against women holding public office and suggests that women voting might be anti-biblical too.
Now, a wide range of mainstream media outlets including Time, Newsweek, the New Yorker, Salon.com, and the Huffington Post have covered the disturbing revelations broken in the original November 29 ThinkProgress story, but these stories have missed other equally problematic “Law & Government” course teachings — such as the doctrine that, per biblical law, under certain conditions disobedient children may be publicly stoned to death.
I know this to be true because that “Law & Government” course sits on my desk — One course book text, a CD of audio recordings, and 6 video DVDs.
The particular “Law & Government” course teaching in question comes from Pennsylvania pastor William O. Einwechter, who is well known within the theocratic Christian Reconstructionist movement for having spelled out, with clinical rigor — in a 1999 article titled “Stoning Disobedient Children” that was published by what was then the leading think tank for the movement — the conditions under which it would be permissible to execute an especially rebellious child by stoning.
The “Law & Government” course lesson from Einwechter includes, as suggested reading, the very book (The Institutes of Biblical Law) credited with launching the Christian Reconstructionist movement — a book which also advocates the stoning of especially incorrigible, “rebellious” children.
The course section of “Law & Government” that’s taught by William Einwechter immediately precedes the section taught by Roy Moore. In the course teaching book (pictured in stills in my video below), Einwechter teaches “Unit Six-Lesson One”, which immediately precedes Roy Moore’s lesson, “Unit Six-Lesson Two”.
(In the video below, pastor Einwechter discusses the issue of the “rebellious youth” during a question and answer period following his presentation for Unit Six-Lesson One. Footage taken from one of the DVD videos, contained in my copy of the “Law & Government” course that Roy Moore participated in teaching. The discourse on “the rebellious youth” starts at 4:40 into the video.)
Here’s what Einwechter says in the Q&A. But first, you need to know a bit about the basics of Christian Reconstructionism to adequately grasp Einwechter’s use of terms. As Frederick Clarkson described in his landmark 1994 exploration of the Christian Reconstructionist movement,
“Reconstructionists believe that there are three main areas of governance: family government, church government, and civil government. Under God's covenant, the nuclear family is the basic unit. The husband is the head of the family, and wife and children are "in submission" to him. In turn, the husband "submits" to Jesus and to God's laws as detailed in the Old Testament. The church has its own ecclesiastical structure and governance. Civil government exists to implement God's laws. All three institutions are under Biblical Law, the implementation of which is called "theonomy."
Now, to Einwechter’s discussion of “the rebellious youth” (what to do with one) :
“Wherein, the example of the rebellious youth, and so forth, there has been some sort of a breakdown here, very serious, the family’s — this is a situation where the family actually invites the magistrates to step forward and judge in this matter. We cannot control this child. He’s out of control. You come and judge this. Because that situation — there is a circumstance not where the son is brought forward to be executed, but to be brought to judgment. And then they will investigate the circumstances and apply remedies that might be necessary. And so, therefore, they could apply — many other remedies, than stoning, could be applied here.
So, there’s been a breakdown in the family government — but what that does teach us, though, is the other institutions should be humble enough, in the circumstances, to recognize they need help. There’s been a breakdown within our government, within our authority here, and we need you to step in and help. Which one you would appeal to would seem, to me, to be mostly church and family type things ; the state was, is such unique and limited authority. It’s rarely ever the solution to the circumstances. However, it may be, in a situation of total anarchy.”
Notice Einwechter’s somewhat misleading construction — he suggests that bringing the rebellious youth before the magistrates is not really about execution, but about judgment ; yes, they are indeed judging the rebellious youth — but execution by stoning may well be a consequence of that judgment.
In contrast to Einwechter’s attempt to defuse the issue by stating that the magistrates might instead choose “many other remedies” than stoning, in his 1999 article on stoning rebellious children Einwechter was quite direct ; and, that article carries much more force because it’s published by R.J. Rushdoony’s very own think tank, the Chalcedon Foundation. That’s about as close to official Christian Reconstructionist doctrine as it gets. Wrote Einwechter,
“In the case of such rebellion and riotous living, and after all attempts at discipline and control have failed, the parents are to bring their son before the magistrates for judgment. If the magistrates concur in the parents' estimate of the situation, they are to order the men of the city to stone the rebel with stones so that he dies”
As with all the other unit lessons, Einwechter’s lesson has suggested additional readings including one book that also, and quite directly, advocates stoning rebellious children. One of the three additional reading books is by John Adams, and two are written by R.J. Rushdoony, the very father of Christian Reconstructionism.
One of those Rushdoony books is his monumental 1973 tome “Institutes of Biblical Law”, which has been widely credited with having launched the Christian Reconstructionist movement. The book maps out, in excruciating detail, exactly how biblical law was to be translated into modern American government and jurisprudence.
In his book, Rushdoony detailed circumstances that merit the death penalty — by “biblical” methods such as stoning or burning at the stake. The list is long and includes kidnapping, rape, and murder but also, as a 2005 article in Mother Jones describes, “women who commit adultery or lie about their virginity, blasphemers, witches, children who strike their parents, and gay men (lesbians, however, would be spared because no specific reference to them can be found in the Books of Moses)”.
[In his Institutes of Biblical Law, Rushdoony also claimed that the widely accepted Jewish death toll in the Holocaust, six million killed, was considerably exaggerated. Rushdoony posited 1.2 million deaths (a figure he got got from a notoriously anti-Semitic author) and suggested that most of those were from disease, not from direct Nazi killing — as if that would have been somehow better. (Scholar of the Christian Reconstructionist movement Julie Ingersoll provides some perspective on this matter.)]
To give pastor Einwechter his due, it’s important to note that in his 1999 article in the Chalcedon Report, he does not propose that it’s somehow a casual thing to stone a child to death. He stresses that this is a last recourse, when all other remedies have failed ; and Einwechter emphasizes that by “child” he does not mean a young child. Writes Einwechter, in his 1999 “Stoning Disobedient Children” article,
“First, the person in view is a not a small child but a grown "son."
[...]
Second, the problems associated with this son are severe. This is not the case of a child who has failed to do his chores, spoke back to his parents, or even committed a serious act of disobedience, but of a son of dissolute character who is in full rebellion to the authority of his parents—he holds them and their word in contempt.”
So, what if both of Einwechter’s conditions have been met ? Well, then the child is brought before the magistrates and (see quote above), if they concur with the parents (that the child is a hopeless case), out come the stones.
Back in the late 1990s, the rise of the Christian Reconstructionism movement provoked considerable pushback from conservative evangelicals aligned with Jerry Falwell, and, responding to the ruckus, the libertarian magazine Reason published the deliciously sarcastic 1998 Walter Olson commentary “Invitation To a Stoning” which noted the zeal with which the Christian Reconstructionist titan Gary North (who married Rushdoony’s daughter) had addressed the subject:
‘Reconstructionists provide the most enthusiastic constituency for stoning since the Taliban seized Kabul. "Why stoning?" asks North. "There are many reasons. First, the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost." Thrift and ubiquity aside, "executions are community projects--not with spectators who watch a professional executioner do `his' duty, but rather with actual participants." You might even say that like square dances or quilting bees, they represent the kind of hands-on neighborliness so often missed in this impersonal era. "That modern Christians never consider the possibility of the reintroduction of stoning for capital crimes," North continues, "indicates how thoroughly humanistic concepts of punishment have influenced the thinking of Christians." And he may be right about that last point, you know.’
