Conclusion

Paradoxically, the failure of the first generation of Christian Reconstructionists to cohere, either personally or ideologically, has worked in the movement’s favor, creating an internal marketplace of ideas by means of which competing groupings within political and religious conservatism have been able to appropriate and adopt their central arguments. Recognizing that a “moral majority” does not exist, and therefore abandoning the top-down political strategies of earlier evangelicals, the believers who participate in the migration to the Pacific Northwest work to build communities that will expand organically and over time to renew America and to replace the supposed neutrality of its legislative base. The project is working. But it is not clear whether the integrity of these ideas will continue as their audience base grows. Mass culture routinizes what was once regarded as radical, with effects that may not easily be predicted at the “end of white, Christian America.”