Rushdoony was born in New York City , the son of recently arrived Armenian immigrants . Before his parents fled the Armenian Genocide of 1915 , his ancestors had lived in a remote area near Mount Ararat . There are claims that since the year 320 , 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 Khachig Rushdoony , 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
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
R. J. Rushdoony