Berkeley, California, from which he graduated in 1944. Through letters over the years he kept up his friendship with his Pacific School of Religion mentor, theology professor George Huntston Williams, who saw in him the "heir of a great national Christian heritage" who would "enunciate anew the Gospel which seems to have been forgotten for a season." In 1944 he was ordained by the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. He was later awarded an honorary Ph.D. from Valley Christian University for his book, The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum. Gary North stated that Rushdoony read at least one book a day, six days a week, for fifty years of his life, underlining sentences and making an index of its main ideas in the rear. Ministry Rushdoony and his wife Arda served for eight and a half years as missionaries to the Shoshone and Paiute Indians on the remote Duck Valley Indian Reservation in northern Nevada. They lived in the reservation's primary town, Owyhee. It was during their mission to the Native Americans that Rushdoony began writing. Arda taught at the reservation school and at Sunday school, led a Girl Scout troop, coached the girls' basketball team, and visited with families. In 1945 they adopted Ronald, an orphaned baby from the reservation. Between 1947 and 1952 in Owyhee, four daughters were born to them. In late 1952 Rushdoony took an American Presbyterian Church pastorate at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Santa Cruz, California and the family left Duck Valley in January 1953. Their son Mark was born the next month in Santa Cruz. In Santa Cruz, Rushdoony became a reader of the Christian libertarian magazine Faith and Freedom, which advocated an "anti-tax, non-interventionist, anti-statist economic model" in opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Faith and Freedoms views on government aligned with Rushdoony's fears of centralized government power, given the Rushdoony family's memories of the Armenian Genocide. Rushdoony contributed articles to Faith and Freedom, including one describing his observations of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, arguing that government support had reduced residents to "social and personal irresponsibility". The Rushdoonys separated in 1957 and later divorced. About this time, Rushdoony transferred his church membership from the American Presbyterian Church to the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church's newsletter, The Presbyterian Guardian, reported in July 1958 that "the Rev. Rousas J. Rushdoony… was received and a new Orthodox Presbyterian Church