Rousas John Rushdoony (April 25, 1916 – February 8, 2001) was an American Calvinist philosopher, historian, and theologian. He is credited as being the father of Christian Reconstructionism and an inspiration for the modern Christian homeschool movement. His followers and critics have argued that his thought exerts considerable influence on the evangelical Christian right. Biography Rousas John Rushdoony () was born in New York City, the son of recently arrived Armenian immigrants, Vartanoush (née Gazarian) and Yegheazar Khachig Rushdoony. Before his parents fled the Armenian genocide of 1915, his ancestors had lived in a remote area near Mount Ararat. It is said that since the year 320 AD, every generation of the Rushdoony family has produced a Christian priest or minister. Rushdoony himself claimed that his ancestors "would perpetually give a member of their family to be a priest to perform a kind of Aaronic priesthood as in the Old Testament, an hereditary priesthood. Whoever in the family felt called would become the priest. And our family did so. So from the early 300's until now there has always been someone in the ministry in the family." Within weeks of arriving in America, his parents moved to the small farming community of Kingsburg, California, in Fresno County, where a number of other Armenian families had relocated. There his father Yegheazar founded a church, Armenian Martyrs Presbyterian. Rousas learned to read English by poring over the family's King James Bible: "By the time I reached my teens I had read the Bible through from cover to cover, over and over and over again". The family moved in 1925 for a short time to Detroit, where his father pastored another Armenian church. They returned to Kingsburg in 1931 and Rousas completed school in California. His father was pastor of Bethel Armenian Presbyterian Church in San Francisco in 1942. Rousas had a younger sister, Rose (named for their mother), and brother, Haig. His father died in Fresno in 1961. Education Rushdoony attended public schools where he learned English, though Armenian was the language spoken at home. He continued his education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a B.A. in English in 1938, a teaching credential in 1939 and an M.A. in Education in 1940. Rushdoony and Arda Gent married in San Francisco the week before Christmas, 1943. Rushdoony attended the Pacific School of Religion, a Congregational and Methodist seminary in