I recently read and reviewed Michael J. McVicar’s fascinating biography of the late Rousas John Rushdoony, Christian Reconstruction: R. J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism (UNC, 2015). Rushdoony was many things, but readers who recognize his name from The New York Times or The Huffington Post likely know him as a Christian Right progenitor/guru. Critics of Rushdoony, who understandably have fixated on his liberal (which is to say, extremely *illiberal*) advocacy of Old Testament-style capital punishment, often use the term “dominionism” in place of Reconstructionism to describe his political theology. This was especially true during the George W. Bush presidency. As I put it in The Age of Evangelicalism, dominionism became a kind of “phantasm of the [mid-2000s] second evangelical scare—a nightmarish vision of the Christian Right’s presumed ultimate goal.”

As my review will suggest, I liked McVicar’s book quite a bit. I am still scratching my head at the high-wire act I imagine he undertook in order to gain access to Rushboony’s personal papers, let staffers at the Chalcedon Foundation (founded by Rushdoony) read drafts of the manuscript, and then publish a scholarly book that, while self-consciously not written as an expose, is far from un-critical. (Or maybe it was just a matter of being polite but honest throughout the whole process. Either way, kudos to McVicar.)

Here’s I bit of what I say (drawn from my un-edited submission to the Journal of American History): Michael J. McVicar’s biography of Rushdoony and the movement he spawned draws from “largely unfettered access” to the late theologian’s personal library, a cache of eminently quotable journals and letters (11). McVicar acknowledges “the kindness and openness” of the Chalcedon Foundation, which Rushdoony founded (xi). Those words will raise eyebrows. Yet the final product shows that McVicar managed to strike archival gold without surrendering his scholarly integrity. Intimate and richly contextualized, Christian Reconstruction is a model of critical empathy.