The Charlottesville-based Rutherford Institute, a public interest law firm that assists conservative Christian causes, is the subject of a new book, Suing for America’s Soul. Given the "red and blue" nature of America’s political consciousness, many potential readers will wonder if the book is biased in any way. "For a historian like me I think that objectivity is, at best, a goal to be sought but never reached. I always try to be fair in my scholarship," says author R. Jonathan Moore.
 John Whitehead, founder of the locally based Rutherford Institute, gives a new book about the public interest law firm an "A" (with a few asterisks) |
Quite a few things surprised Moore as he researched the book. The media often lumps Rutherford founder John Whitehead together with Christian Reconstructionism and other religious conservatives who want America to be a Christian theocracy. "However," Moore says, "his goals are much less ambitious, much more realistic and—from the perspective of outsiders—much less threatening. He wants Christians to have a fair shake in the marketplace of ideas."
Moore also found that Whitehead’s critique of Western culture, however debatable his opinions might seem, is broader than is often assumed: "When The Rutherford Institute takes up the cause of, say, a school teacher who has been told she can’t wear a crucifix necklace, this reflects Whitehead’s alarm about the encroachment of secularism upon personal freedoms." Moore says the Institute’s lawyers are disposed to argue that their client deserves to win his case because Christians are "just another special interest group—such as racial minorities, or women—that deserve equal rights in the public sphere."
So what does Whitehead himself think of the book? Though he doesn’t agree with all of Moore’s conclusions, he welcomes how the diligent scholarship illuminates the Institute’s uncommon impact on evangelical Protestantism. "It’s important," he says, "because it’s the first book that documents how it all began. It’s accurate in how it details the growth." He does wish that Moore had interviewed him, so that, he says, a few aspects of the book would have been more fine-tuned, such as how the Institute, founded in 1982, had a direct influence on some of the mirror groups that have formed around the country. "They’re more than clones," he says. Whitehead also strongly declares that Moore mischaracterizes the Paula Jones lawsuit against Bill Clinton, which first brought the Institute into the public eye, as an act of desperation.
But a few criticisms don’t stop Whitehead from recommending the book. "If I were a teacher," he says, "I would give it an ‘A.’"
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