Free Christian Nation by Frederic C. Rich Page A

could say that I had “drunk the Kool-Aid,” but at least I remained aware that I had done it. During the rare times Emilie and I were not working, we tended to socialize with other bankers and lawyers who lived in the same world. They shared our experience and understood our lives. It was easier.

    O NE WEEKEND Emilie proposed to me that we ask Sanjay to dinner the following weekend.
    “I want him to meet George. He’s the cutest associate in Financial Institutions. I mean, really, really cute. I don’t know a girl who wouldn’t want him if he weren’t gay.”
    “You’re trying to set up Sanjay?” I asked.
    “Why not? He may be filled with yogic equanimity, but he’s still got to fuck.”
    “Jesus, Emilie. I wish you wouldn’t be so crude.”
    “Yeah, so what, you think he doesn’t want to fuck cute guys? He doesn’t want a relationship? I guess you think as long as he’s got you as his best friend, he doesn’t need another man? Is that it?”
    The long argument that ensued ended, like all arguments during that time, with Emilie doing exactly as she intended. She invited Sanjay and her friend George, neglected to tell either of them he was being set up, and then fussed to create a “romantic” atmosphere. To this day I don’t know whether this was the “good Emilie” actually trying to do something nice for two friends, or the “bad Emilie” desperate to drive a wedge, any wedge, between Sanjay and me. Although I was careful not to let her know, the later mission was unnecessary. I already was distracted by doubts that my closeness with Sanjay could survive my turning into the person I was becoming. Could I really talk to him about my life, which was now dominated by my work? And I just didn’t want to hear any more about the fundamentalist Christians. I was not looking forward to the dinner.
    Upon arriving and meeting Sanjay, the Credit Suisse associate, George, instantly deduced Emilie’s intentions and flushed with embarrassment. Sanjay later told me he found this most charming.
    Emilie painfully tried to steer the conversation to gay topics, and I, mortified, pushed around my plate the forty-dollar-per-pound white asparagus that Emilie had ordered from the most expensive market on the East Side.
    Sanjay, largely oblivious to everyone else’s discomfort, was excited by his most recent research. It was the first time that I learned about The Institutes of Biblical Law , a tedious text in excess of a thousand pages on which I later became expert, having been asked by Governor Bloomberg time and time again to search out clues about the strategy and behavior of our theocratic foes.
    “Have you ever heard of Rousas John Rushdoony?” Sanjay asked, “… usually known as R. J. Rushdoony?”
    We all looked blank.
    “Neither had I, but I have finally found what I was looking for … the intellectual underpinning of the more extreme parts of the Christian Nation movement. This is it. The Institutes is the Bible, so to speak, of reconstructionism. Rushdoony was funded by Howard Ahmanson, Jr., whose father founded and owned America’s largest savings and loan. The son was at one time a committed reconstructionist and provided much of the funding for Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation. These people don’t always completely agree with Rushdoony—for example, just three years ago one of them said that he ‘no longer consider[s] [it] essential’ to stone people to death for certain crimes of immorality. But it is Ahmanson’s money that allowed Rushdoony to promote—and successfully move toward the mainstream—what started out being viewed, even by evangelicals, as pretty extreme views.”
    “It always comes down to money, doesn’t it?” Emilie observed.
    “In this case, yes. The Chalcedon Foundation is still going strong, run by Rushdoony’s son. Gary North, who is Rushdoony’s son-in-law, carried the project forward with Jim Dobson, Tony Perkins, and the others we all have heard of. It all