I've been reading a bit of stuff by Christian Reconstructionists. It's a strange world.
One thing I find really hard to take is the dead certainty with which they write. They comes across like they are so convinced that they have understood God's word correctly and are so convinced that they have teased out its correct and only applications correctly. More than this, they seem to read Scripture really tightly. Romans 13, for example is taken to explicitly limit the role of government to the administration of justice. I think this is reading too much into the text.
One thing about them that is often misunderstood, is that many of them believe that you cannot force a society to adopt God's laws. It is only through successful evangelism that their reconstructionist program will be realised.
One thing that is uncomfortable to admit, is that many of their goals are legitimately biblical, if not necessarily biblical. That is, I don't think their case that they have figured out God's economics and God's politics is correct. But many of their principles are legitmitately derived from biblical principles and so we can't be biblically opposed to much of their project. The death penalty, for example, was truly commanded by God in his good and right law. Therefore, however much we may believe that the death penalty should not be applied today, we cannot be absolutely opposed to someone else who does.
Christian Reconstructionism is spooky
