The Modern State, an Ancien Regime

In “The Modern State, an Ancient Regime,” Rushdoony argues that the modern humanistic state is not a new creation but a revival of ancient pagan sovereignty, claiming to be both the incarnation of man and the ultimate source of law and morality, thereby usurping the role of God and mirroring—by inversion—the Biblical doctrine of Christ as the true Adam and federal head of redeemed humanity. By making itself the lawgiver, the state becomes the arbiter of good and evil, demanding religious allegiance and imposing moral reform through bureaucratic agencies rather than divine law, while steadily encroaching on family, church, education, and vocation. Although once trusted as a substitute for the church and a guarantor of freedom and security, the modern state has become increasingly oppressive, ineffective, and self-serving, an obsolete ancien régime whose power grows even as its usefulness declines. Like pre-revolutionary France, it survives largely by inertia and coercion, not by service. Rushdoony insists that its collapse is inevitable; the real question is whether Christians will be prepared to replace it—not with another statist order, but with a godly reconstruction grounded in Christ’s lordship, Biblical law, Christian education, and renewed scholarship.

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