Introduction... As Mike Huckabee's national profile has grown media scrutiny, concerning his past political associations, has intensified and a number of ties have emerged linking presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee to Christian Reconstructionism, a movement that has worked for several decades now to achieve a theocratic takeover of the GOP and which aided the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, played a considerable role in powering the 1994 Republican takeover of both branches of Congress and provided substantial support for the 2000 and 2004 elections of George W. Bush to the presidency. Mike Huckabee's association with notable Reconstructionists such as George Grant, Bill Gothard and Stephen Hotze has provoked concern and statements Huckabee has made along the campaign trail during his bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination-- such as a January 14, 2008 remark, prior to the 2008 Michigan GOP primary vote, that seemed to advocate amending the US Constitution to bring it into accord with what Huckabee called "the living word of God" --have only heightened suspicion that Mike Huckabee might be planning, as president, to "reconstruct" America along Biblical lines.

"Ronald Reagan issued a challenge to our nation: that we hold fast to our convictions as moral, freedom-loving people; and to the Republican Party: that we stay true to our conservative principles. Today, Rod Martin stands ready to accept those challenges, and I personally know he is up to the task. He served as Director of Policy Planning and Research in my administration, and he is a tireless worker for the Republican Party across the nation. Most importantly, he lives a balanced life that includes not only work but faith and family.

Rod Martin is the kind of dynamic leader we need...a man who...has the knowledge, ability and experience to lead [us] successfully into the 21st Century. His vision for America is compelling."

Rod Martin boasts many significant friends and associations. He's a member of the board of governors of the secretive, powerful Council For National Policy, a member of the Arlington Group and a faculty member of the Alliance Defense Fund's Blackstone Fellowship Program. He's a member of the Federalist Society and is closely affiliated with Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute. Martin is also Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the upstart National Federation Of Republican Assemblies and, more interestingly, associated with the National Reform Association. Further, Rod D. Martin appears to have ties to many powerful and influential people : Grover Norquist, Marvin Olasky, George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush. Jeb Bush, James Dobson, John Ashcroft, John Roberts, Alan Sears, Phylis Schlafly, Morton Blackwell, and.... Mike Huckabee.

Described as a "key movement insider" in a January 9, 2007 Media Transparency story, by Bill Berkowitz, entitled Rod Martin Unplugged that featured an interview with Martin, whom Mike Huckabee's endorsement suggests performed an important role in Huckabee's Arkansas Gubernatorial Administration as "Director of Policy Planning", Rod D. Martin has contributed articles to at least two leading Christian reconstructionist websites, the Chalcedon Institute [1] and the National Reform Association [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ],  served as a Fellow at two reconstructionist Institutes, appeared, in 2002 [PDF file], 2004 and 2005 as a leading speaker at reconstructionist conferences and has been called a "good friend", and a reconstructionist leader, by a former President of an institution that has historically led the Christian reconstructionist movement, the Chalcedon Foundation.

Other than Berkowitz's story, media scrutiny of Martin and TheVanguard.org-- which boasts as part of its senior leadership a former Executive Director of The Arlington Group, a member of the governing board of the Council On National Policy (Rod Martin), no less than four leaders of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (Rod Martin, Sherry Martin, Shawn Mitchell, DMD, and Thomas Dodd) and a significant figure from Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute (Thomas Dodd) --has almost been nonexistent.

Rod D. Martin's connections to Christian reconstructionism are not peripheral or casual. In his biographical information, listed at the end of a 2002 article entitled GOP left holds right hostage --fair comment-- Senate control, Rod Martin described himself as a "SENIOR FELLOW IN PUBLIC POLICY AND POLITICAL AFFAIRS AT THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL LEADERSHIP". The Center For Cultural Leadership was founded by P. Andrew Sandlin, a former Executive Vice President of the Chalcedon Foundation and editor of that foundation's Chalcedon Report. As Sandlin's biography notes, he has served as president of the National Reform Association as well. In one of Andrew Sandlin's writings that is mentioned in the NRA website list of articles, which has vanished from the NRA site (attributed to vandalism by "Turkish hackers") but still is available at the Internet Archive, Sandlin appears to have issued a call for reconstructionists to "infiltrate and subvert for the Crown Rights of Jesus Christ the present political system". Along with Sandlin's and Martin's appearance together at Reconstructionist conferences, their apparent ongoing level of congeniality might raise questions as to what sort of advice Martin dispensed, as adviser, to Mike Huckabee.

According to several biographical sketches attached to his various writings, Rod Martin has also been a fellow at the Kuyper Institute, a little known "Neo-Calvinist" Institute, founded to advance the theological views of one of the key forerunners of contemporary Reconstructionism, Abraham Kuyper. Along with Rod Martin, Marvin Olasky has also served as a Kuyper Institute fellow.

From 1998 to 2002 a series of articles [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ]  by Rod D. Martin appeared in The Christian Statesman, a publication of the National Reform Association. The list of authors whose writings have appeared on the National Reform Association website and in The Christian Statesman reads like a who's who of the leading theoreticians and activists of Christian Reconstructionism : Gary Demar, Gary North, Joseph Morecraft lll, Douglas Phillips, Howard Phillips, Larry Pratt, and Rousas J. Rushdoony. In 2002, one of Martin's op ed columns also appeared on the website of the Chalcedon Foundation, the Howard Ahmanson-funded Christian reconstructionist Foundation that was, for many years, probably the flagship institution of the Christian reconstructionist movement due to the prolific and monumental works of Chalcedon's founder, R. J. Rushdoony, in translating Biblical scripture into modern jurisprudence, especially in Rushdoony's seminal work The Institutes Of Biblical Law.

On the NRA's website on can also read writings by William Einwechter, whose advocacy for the stoning to death of rebellious teenagers caused a fair amount of controversy in 1998 and 1999 and who also appears to desire, along with many Christian Reconstructionists, the legalization of slavery. Einwechter, along with many NRA writers, has his own vision of what Biblical Civil Government would entail. One of the starkest artifacts on the National Reform Association site is a Table of Death Penalty Laws in the Pentateuch, by Daniel Lance Herrick - originally a "sidebar for Why Execute Murderers? which was published in the May - June, 2000 issue of The Christian Statesman." Herrick's piece appears to considerably increase  R. J. Rushdoony's existing, extensive list of alleged crimes and infractions demanding the death penalty (through various gruesome means including public stonings), as derived from scripture in the Old Testament books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

Rod Martin and The National Reform Association

On 2 minor Christian reconstructionist websites [1, 2] , one can find the same glowing review of a book entitled Explicitly Christian Politics, edited by William O. Einwechter with contributions from Anthony Cowley, John Fielding, Andrew Sandlin, William Edgar, William Gould, Jeffrey Ziegler, Kevin Clauson, Tom Rose, John Perry, Joel Saint and Daniel Herrick. The writer of this review is listed as Rod D. Martin, and if that were the only place "Rod D. Martin" appeared in conjunction with the names above, it would prove exactly nothing.

However, that is not the case. In fact, many of the names above, such as that of Rod D. Martin, appear listed as the authors of writings published on the website of the traditional flagship organization of Christian Reconstructionism, the Chalcedon Foundation. However, one can find all but two of the authors of "Explicitly Christian Politics" listed as contributors, along with the heavyweight theorist of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, on the website of the National Reform Association, and that is hardly surprising given that "Explicitly Christian Politics" was published under the auspices of the National Reform Association. As the previously mentioned review of the book, listed as being written in 1998 by Rod D. Martin, states:

"The National Reform Association is publishing its first book in many years under the imprint "Christian Statesman Press". In an age of pluralism and compromise, the NRA is calling for Explicitly Christian Politics in this collection of twelve articles that introduce the National Reform Association's vision of Christian politics for a new generation.

Because Christ is King, the duty of His disciples is to press His crown rights in every sphere of life. The National Reform Association's great passion is to press our Lord's crown rights in the sphere of politics.

The Statement Of Purpose of The National Reform Association is as follows:

"The mission of the National Reform Association is to maintain and promote in our national life the Christian principles of civil government, which include, but are not limited to, the following:

   1. Jesus Christ is Lord in all aspects of life, including civil government. Jesus Christ is, therefore, the Ruler of Nations, and should be explicitly confessed as such in any constitutional documents.
   2. The civil ruler is to be a servant of God, he derives his authority from God and he is duty-bound to govern according to the expressed will of God.
   3. The civil government of our nation, its laws, institutions, and practices must therefore be conformed to the principles of Biblical law as revealed in the Old and New Testaments."

"We are looking for a godly decentralized theocracy"

"We must be cautious in multiplying civil law to enforce cultural standards. But in this case, we must, because if our society permits homosexuals to marry, we will soon not have a society at all.

Homosexuality is a moral blight that invites God's judgment and undermines the social order. It is worth discriminating against." - P. Andrew Sandlin, from "In praise of discrimination", published July 16, 2004 at World Net Daily

It is difficult to locate the NRA statement of purpose -  links to a number of pages on the site, including the website's "statement of purpose", and other key pages including the index page to writings from "The Christian Statesman", that the National Reform Association has published bi-monthly for over a decade and half , now all lead to identical pages with indentical statements explaining that "Turkish hackers" have attacked the NRA website and wiped those pages.

Fortunately. the Turkish hackers did not think to attack the mirror copies of most of the NRA writings contained in the Christian Statesman's digital archives and, in any case, the Internet Archive maintains a more or less complete backup of the entire NRA site, along with about eight billion other website pages the Internet Archive collects regularly from the Web - so we're still able to access the writings of former Mike Huckabee adviser, the Huckabee-endorsed Rod D. Martin, on a website whose writers advocate the creation of a "godly decentralized theocracy" with the re-imposition of slavery and the stoning to death of active homosexuals, rebellious teens, women who have abortions and doctors who perform those.

The Turkish hackers seem to have an especial dislike for the writings of Rod D. Martin and leading reconstructionist writers associated with Martin who also have written especially scandalous material - such as the writings of William O. Einwechter, whose advocacy of stoning as a form of capital punishment caused minor scandal about a decade ago, or P. Andrew Sandlin, a friend and associate of Rod D. Martin, who seems to have written a piece that called for Christian reconstructionists to "inflitrate and subvert" American government.

Below is a video of P. Andrew Sandlin, "good friend" of Rod Martin, explaining his interpretation of what a reconstructionist theocracy would look like:

As stated in the video above, Andrew Sandlin isn't at all bashful about the goals of Christian Reconstructionism, and he seems to be trying to counter considerable confusion about what the reconstructionist project is all about. Many outside the movement seem to think that a reconstructionist theocracy would feature Orwellian big government mandating Biblical Law from the top down. Actually, reconstructionists typically loath centralized government. Explains Sandlin, "We are looking for a godly decentralized theocracy" :

We're not looking for an ecclesiocracy. We are looking for a godly decentralized theocracy, the rule of the law of God. We certainly do not want the rule of the institutional church over society. We don't support medieval notions like that. We simply believe that the law of God should govern in society.

...we believe it should be Christianity -- within the narrow limits of the law of God not a heavy top-down bureaucracy.

The purpose of civil government is to enforce the Law of God appropriate to its sphere....  When we start talking about "inalienable rights," although in some sense that terminology is permissible, it's not specifically biblical. Therefore, I think we have to go back to what the Bible specifically says. I am not in any way attacking the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, we can have certain refinements.

How central to Christian Reconstructionism is Adam Sandlin  ? Sandlin served as the editor of A Comprehensive Faith, a 1996 "top secret" book produced for the 80th birthday of R. J. Rushdoony with contributions from a number of leading reconstructionists, and the Chalcedon Foundation currently sells, among other offerings, the JCR: Vol. 14, No. 1, "Symposium on Reconstruction in the Church and State" which is introduced as a product with "The re-emergence of Christian political involvement today is spurred by the recognition not only that the Bible and Christian Faith have something to say about politics and the state, but that they are the only unmoveable anchor of the state." and features writing by Andrew Sandlin, William O. Einwechter, and Rousas J. Rushdoony. Chalcedon currently  lists 86 different tapes, pamphlets, and books edited by, written by, or delivered as lectures by Andrew Sandlin who, needless to say, probably stands in good favor with Chalcedon's currently leadership.

Since the death of leading reconstructionist thinkers Rousas J. Rushdoony and Gregory Bahnsen, Reconstructionism has fractured into many competing spheres and the Chalcedon Foundation is no longer exerts the same overwhelming gravitational attraction in the movement as it once did and a number of reconstructionist spheres of influence, run by Howard Phillip, Gary Demar, and others now jostle for dominance as ideological attractors. In "Saying Goodbye To Christian Reconstructionism", Andrew Sandlin presented the expansion of Christian Reconstructionism, beyond its historical bounds as a specifically Presbyterian doctrine, in a positive light - the movement's sphere of influence was spreading out widely, through most of Christendom:

...movements are often successful in influence while they fail in their wider objectives. This has surely been true of the CRM. At its inception, for instance, it was an almost exclusively Presbyterian phenomenon, but that has all changed in the last 20 years; and many of its tenets find greater reception today among Baptists and charismatics than among Presbyterians. My own work with the Center for Cultural Leadership is strategically catholic. Our recent conference in Santa Cruz was addressed by a charismatic (Craig Dumont), a Presbyterian (John Frame), a Southern Baptist (Rod Martin), and a neo-Calvinist (P. Andrew Sandlin)

Rod D. Martin, Movement Reconstructionist

Political Friendster's page detailing Rod Martin's significant friends and associations heavily underlines Bill Berkowitz's characterization of Rod D. Martin (as does the list of Martin's co-signatories [PDF file] to a petition of the Free Speech Coalition, Inc.) as a "key movement insider", and one of Martin's key influences seems to have been Morton Blackwell and Blackwell's Leadership Training Institute.

As a simple way of describing Rod D. Martin's chosen role in movement politics, Martin works to motivate Christian reconstructionists to seek political power and to train them in how to achieve that power. In a column published in the May-June 2001 issue of The Christian Statesman, Rod Martin wrote:

"In Morton  Blackwell's words, "Power means you can make things happen. Influence means that those with power will return your telephone calls and seriously consider what you suggest. Only those with power govern."

The aim of any political party or movement is power, power for the purpose of implementing the movement's beliefs. All the influence in the world will not replace this power. In the 1990s, many conservatives became highly disillusioned with their leaders, who seemed to constantly compromise. They failed to understand that though Republicans held the Congress, conservatives were still a minority. They had gained tremendous influence, but only a share of the power. Having a seat at the table, they could dicker, but they could not dictate. They needed numbers.

There's only one way they will ever get those numbers: they must elect more conservatives."

Putting aside the fact that Rod D. Martin has devoted his career to advancing a real-world version of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale that would feature imposition of an extensive new array of capital crimes to be punished in the fashion described in Shirley Jackson's 1948 New Yorker short story The Lottery, there's a certain wry humor inherent in Rod Martin's following complaints in a column titled A Turnout Effort is Not a Message" and published November 9, 2006 column at Martin's TheVanguard.org site,

"For most of my life, a small minority of us Republicans (notably Newt Gingrich and Morton Blackwell, plus acolytes such as me) agitated, cajoled and worked for the day when our party would take seriously the "ground war": not just running high level ad campaigns and hoping that ideas could motivate more people than the liberal unions and big city machines could turn out, but actually putting "boots on the ground" ourselves, precinct by precinct across the nation.

Virtually all of our fellow partisans laughed at us. It will never work, they said. It's all about TV today: the unions are going away. And anyway, volunteer efforts are hard: ad buys are easy. Why make more work than necessary?

And so the conventional wisdom went (encouraged by highly-paid consultants who made their money on ad buys and didn't want anyone thinking about grassroots). We argued this point year after year...

But for his political ideology, Rod Martin could easily be plucked from his paleo-conservative, reconstructionist matrix and plunked down at any political  training session session organized by MoveOn or Wellstone Action and he'd fit right in, even to the point of being able to gripe about the corrupting influence of professional politicians and political consultants.

Rod Martin is a movement activist, working to pull the politics of the Republican Party further and further to the right, and Vanguard PAC, Rod Martin's political action committee that preceded his TheVanguard.org effort, seems to have run a program, for two years, to give political training to young adults with a "Biblical Worldview".

More importantly, Martin and his wife have played a part in building state "Republican Assemblies" in Arkansas and Florida; now Rod Martin serves as a regional executive Vice President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies. As described in a 1998 Mother Jones article, God's Vice Regents, the creation of state "republican Assemblies" and, as a coordinating body, the National Federation of Republican Assemblies has been a significant part of a strategy to pull the national GOP yet further to the right: towards, in essence, the ideology of Christian reconstructionism.

[Christian Reconstructionist] Vice President Huckabee ?

Mike Huckabee's endorsement of Rod Martin, and also the apparently major advisory role Martin played for the presidential aspirant while Huckabee was governor of Arkansas, together make it considerably harder for Mike Huckabee to deny his own reconstructionist leanings. In South Carolina, in all likelihood, the Christian reconstructionist movement just narrowly missed a chance to propel its favored son to  the 2008 GOP nomination and so the reconstructionist vision, of imposing upon America "Biblical Law" that would mandate, as part of the legal agenda, bashing homosexuals and rebellious teens to death with rocks, will have to wait at least until the next presidential election cycle.

Now that Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's GOP primary presidential bid has sputtered in South Carolina, losing the Palmetto State to John McCain by three percentage points, Christian Reconstructionists may have to scale down their expectations. But if odds, that a Christian reconstructionist might win the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, are lower now it is possible, especially to the extent mainstream media neglects to do any serious digging into Huckabee's associations and track record as governor of Arkansas, that Mike Huckabee could be tapped as a running mate of whomever wins the 2008 GOP nomination and so America might see its first reconstructionist vice president installed in office in early 2009 and so Mike Huckabee would be well positioned for a higher profile and much better financed presidential bid in 2012.