CR101 Radio - Podcast Network

In “The Fifth Amendment,” Rushdoony argues that the constitutional protection against self-incrimination is not a loophole or technicality but a deeply Biblical safeguard against tyranny, torture, and terror, rooted in God’s law requiring voluntary confession and conviction by credible witnesses rather than forced testimony. He warns that when Americans are manipulated into resenting or weakening...

Work matters to God. Wealth honestly created is not opposed to faith it enables charity and advances God’s Kingdom. “Charity begins at work.” When discipline and productivity are neglected, society decays, and lawlessness follows. Jesus is clear: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” (Matt. 6:33). When people put comfort and recreation first, both God’s work and their neighbors suffer. Right prioriti...

Peter Gay’s work is used here to frame the Enlightenment as openly anti-Christian a project to “erase the shame” of Christianity by replacing it with deism (God as distant watchmaker), then hardening that exile of God through Kant’s autonomous reason (reason as judge over everything). From there, Hegel “brings God back” only by redefining God as the historical process with the state as “the march...

Israel remembered Egypt’s food but forgot Egypt’s chains. Faced with hardship, they were willing to trade faith and freedom for the comforts of slavery (Num. 11:5). Scripture exposes a timeless truth: man often prefers security over responsibility. The question presses on us today. When we ask the state to provide our “leeks and garlic,” we surrender freedom piece by piece. Faith and freedom deman...

The seventh Beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God,” does not praise those who merely avoid conflict or seek peace at any price, but those who actively bring God’s peace into real situations of strife. True peacemakers do not dodge issues out of fear; they face conflict honestly and bring something real to it peace with God in Christ. A man cannot giv...

In “Two-Cow, No-Cow Justice,” Rushdoony exposes a false concept of justice rooted in envy rather than God’s law, illustrated by a missionary account from China where judgment was rendered not by guilt or restitution but by comparing who had more and who had less. The missionary was forced to surrender a cow simply because he had two and the offended farmer had none, revealing a system where inequa...

Scripture leaves no room for sentimentality: love is proven by obedience. God’s demand under both the old and new covenants is not feelings, but faithful action. “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Our age prefers to redefine love as emotion without responsibility, but Christ rejects that distortion. Obedience brings every thought and action under His rule, showing that grace has t...

Throughout U.S. history, there has been a recurring temptation to replace hard work and productivity with gimmicks or government schemes promising easy wealth, from Richard Schell’s 1874 plan to dig a transcontinental canal funded by printed money to Keynes’s 1936 theory that digging holes in the ground would boost employment and national output; such ideas have fueled nonproductive federal spendi...

When Jesus called His followers “the salt of the earth” (Matt. 5:13), He meant preservers, not mere flavoring. Salt restrains corruption. To belong to Christ is to stand against decay by bringing His truth and rule into every area of life. Scripture calls this a covenant of salt a lasting, preserved peace with God that also carries a lasting responsibility. As Christ’s people, we are to be both sa...

This session traces the “shapers of the modern mind” from Anselm to the Enlightenment, arguing that how we know (noetics) and how we live (ethics) are inseparable your faith quietly governs what you’ll accept as “facts.” Anselm’s core claim is simple but explosive: “I believe in order to understand,” because even our language of better/worse assumes an absolute. Then the lecture pivots: Joachim’s...

Aristocracy means “rule by the best,” but history shows that societies have defined “the best” in very different ways. From philosopher-kings and feudal nobles to country gentlemen, saints, and intellectual elites, true aristocracy has rarely rested on power alone. At its strongest, it ruled by moral authority, honor, service, and example rather than force. When aristocracies abandoned responsibil...

If millions of people have "gotten saved" over the past several decades, why has the culture continued its downward slide? In this episode, Andrea Schwartz and Pastor Charles Roberts argue that much of modern evangelism has been stripped of its full biblical content — reduced to a question about eternal destiny while ignoring the law of God, the call to repentance, and the lordship of Christ over...

Taxation is not morally neutral. From David’s census to modern tax policy, Scripture and history warn that the power to tax can become the power to destroy liberty. When taxation moves beyond justice and becomes a tool to confiscate property or reshape society, it crosses into theft something God plainly forbids (Exod. 20:15). The answer, however, is not revolt but repentance. Bad government refle...

The sixth Beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God,” confronts us with an apparent impossibility, since Scripture makes clear that the human heart is naturally corrupt and incapable of purifying itself; yet Christ does not mock us with an unattainable promise, but offers what He Himself gives. Purity of heart is not achieved by moral effort or self-discipline, for no man c...

Paul is clear: Christians must learn to practice honest work so that they are not unfruitful or idle (Titus 3:14). The church cared for the truly needy, but it never excused refusal to work. Responsibility and diligence are marks of faith lived out. Work matters to God. Honest labor honors Him; dishonest or idle living offends Him. Christians are called to be workers whose lives give credit to Chr...

You can carve an idol out of your hopes. God sets the terms of approach not you. When man designs the way to God, he ends up dictating the morality too. That's Hinduism. That's humanism. That's every parent "just praying" instead of applying godly discipline. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Stubbornness is idolatry. The only lawful approach is Christ, who kept every jot and tittle of the La...

Rushdoony and Scott examine pragmatism, the American form of existentialism, which defines truth by what “works” rather than by God or eternal standards. Pragmatism dominates education, politics, business, law, and even religion, leading to consumer-oriented, self-centered thinking, situation ethics, and the erosion of merit, permanence, and moral restraint. It fosters a society focused on immedia...

When church life becomes about managing people, filling pews, or meeting personal expectations, something vital is lost. Worship turns into pressure, and faith shifts from honoring God to fixing others. That false focus makes it harder not easier to come before the Lord. Christ’s church exists first for God’s Kingdom and His righteousness (Matt. 6:33). When faith is reduced to “what it does for me...

Rushdoony argues that memory personal and cultural is essential to being fully human: when memory collapses (as in senility), a person can remain socially polished yet be stripped of identity, continuity, and direction. He extends that to cultures: history is “social memory,” and when a society becomes present-obsessed and contemptuous of the past, it heads toward cultural senility barbarism becau...

In “Restitution,” Rushdoony argues that restitution stands at the very heart of Biblical justice, grounding both God’s law and Christ’s atoning work in the principle that wrongs must be made right. Scripture consistently requires offenders to restore what was taken often multiple times over so that crime does not pay, a standard fulfilled perfectly in Christ’s obedience and sacrificial death as re...

When civilizations lose hope, they fall back on the same lie: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” It’s an ancient slogan of despair, echoing from Babylon to Rome and still heard today. It reduces life to pleasure because it expects nothing beyond death. Paul answers with truth: Christ is risen, victory is real, and our labor is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:57–58). Man was not made for death...

At seventeen, Joseph was given the robe of rule, and before he opened his mouth his brothers said, "Let us slay him." Jacob was not playing favourites: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah had broken the commandments one by one, and no father building an inheritance for his children's children could hand it to the wicked. But the robe was never just a gift. It was a burden Joseph could not take off, th...

This talk argues we need a “map” to understand philosophy: the ancient world didn’t start with God at the top it started with the state as the “highest good,” treated truth as a tool of rulers (even the “right” to lie), and saw reality as one continuous chain where men could become “divine.” That worldview swings between totalitarianism (the One) and anarchism (the Many). The Christian breakthroug...

The fifth Beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy,” teaches that true mercy is neither sentimental softness nor indulgence toward evil, but a grace born out of personal repentance and forgiveness. Mercy is not forgiving wrongs done to others something that costs us nothing nor is it a denial of justice or a blurring of the distinction between good and evil; rather, it is...

Scripture teaches that God’s discipline is not cruelty but care. The Hebrew paquadh means both “to visit” and “to chasten” to punish and to care. Like a kite, we only rise when there is restraint. Without it, we crash. Our age confuses freedom with the absence of limits, but true freedom is found in obedience. “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth” (Heb. 12:6). God’s restraints are not bondage they...