Rousas John Rushdoony (April 25, 1916 – February 8, 2001) was an Armenian-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.

Rushdoony was born in 1916 in New York City to Armenian immigrants who fled the Armenian genocide. Coming from a long line of Christian ministers, he grew up in a deeply religious environment, initially within the Armenian Apostolic Church before his family converted to Presbyterianism. His early education involved mastering English while maintaining Armenian at home, and he developed a lifelong engagement with the Bible, reading it extensively as a teenager. After completing his studies in California, including a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Education from UC Berkeley, he attended the Pacific School of Religion and was ordained in 1944, beginning a life of ministry, scholarship, and missionary work.

Rushdoony and his first wife Arda served as missionaries to the Shoshone and Paiute on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, during which time he began writing extensively. After returning to California, he became involved in the Christian libertarian movement, contributing to publications critical of centralized government and public welfare programs. His ministry continued in Santa Cruz, where he helped form a new Orthodox Presbyterian congregation, and later he founded the Chalcedon Foundation in Los Angeles in 1965. Through Chalcedon and his collaborations with figures like Gary North, he promoted Christian Reconstructionism, emphasizing the application of biblical law to society and education while critiquing secularism and modern democratic principles.

Rushdoony’s theological and philosophical work extended across education, history, and politics, promoting a Calvinist worldview that emphasized human dependence on God and the application of Old Testament law to modern society. He was a major advocate for homeschooling and argued that American history and governance were rooted in Christian principles. His ideas have been highly controversial, drawing criticism for his support of harsh penal sanctions, his views on race and slavery, and his Holocaust-related claims. He left a significant legacy through his writings, the Chalcedon Foundation, and his influence on the Christian Reconstructionist and Dominion Theology movements, continuing through his son Mark R. Rushdoony.

Rousas John Rushdoony (Armenian: Ռուսա Հովհաննես Ռշտունի, romanized: Rrusa Hovhannes Rrshtuni) was born in New York City, the son of recently arrived Ottoman 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 in what is now Turkey. 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. They then converted from the Armenian Apostolic Church to Presbyterianism. In Kingsburg, 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, Michigan, where his father pastored another Armenian church. They returned to Kingsburg in 1931, and Rousas completed school in California. His father was the pastor of Bethel Armenian Presbyterian Church in San Francisco in 1942. Rousas had a younger sister, Rose (named after their mother), and a brother, Haig. His father died in Fresno in 1961.

Rushdoony attended public schools, where he learned English, but 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.