Rousas John Rushdoony-April 25, 1916 to February 8, 2001

The Rev. Rousas John Rushdoony, founder, long-time President and Chairman of the Board of the Chalcedon Foundation, died Thursday evening at his home in Vallecito, CA. He was 84. Rushdoony was born in New York City of Armenian immigrants to the United States and preserved a family legacy of Christian ministers going back to the fourth century. A graduate of the University of California (Berkeley) and the Pacific School of Religion, he was an ordained Presbyterian minister.

He was a missionary to Shoshone and Paiute Indians on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in northeastern Nevada for eight and a half years before severing two churches in Santa Cruz, California. Rushdoony, often considered the father of the modern Christian and home schooling movement, was a noted theologian and scholar who wrote scores of books on topics as diverse as theology, philosophy, law, economics, politics, science, history and education.

An omnivorous reader, he amassed a personal library of well over 40,000 volumes, often completing and indexing a book a day. The Chalcedon Foundation, which he started in 1965, was listed by Newsweek in 1981 as the "think tank" of the religious right. Rushdoony was an unflagging advocate of religious liberty; and during the 1970's and early 1980's, he was regularly called on as an expert witness and testified at scores of court cases on behalf of Christian day schools and home schools, as well as churches, Christian ministries, and parents whose religious liberty was challenged by government action.

He is survived by his wife Dorothy Rushdoony and five children: Rebecca Rouse and Joanna Manesajian of Angels Camp, California; Sharon North of Winslow, Arkansas; Martha Coie of Downey, California; and Mark Rushdoony of Vallecito, California; by eighteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren; and by his brother, Haig Rushdoony, of Danville, California, a Christian missionary.

Burial will be at Kingsburg Memorial Cemetery in Kingsburg, CA. Creighton Memorial Chapel in Kingsburg is in charge of arrangements. For any further questions, please contact Andrea Schwartz, telephone 408-997-9866. In lieu of flowers the family requests that donations be made to Chalcedon, PO Box 158, Vallecito, CA 95251, in memory of R. J. Rushdoony.