Julie J. Ingersoll. Building God’s Kingdom

Julie J. Ingersoll’s absorbing study of Christian Reconstructionism starts with a testimonial. “This book is the culmination of nearly thirty years of research,” she writes, “much of it informal” (x). Ingersoll once married into one of the Reconstructionist families she writes about; however, because of divorce, and coming to terms with a community in which she “was always uneasy,” she abandoned Reconstructionism, yet never gave up interest in it (x). Eventually her interest evolved into a scholarly agenda, carried out with the tools of a Ph.D. in hand. Ingersoll’s account is an unusually frank admission, one that challenges conventions of the guild. But it is an effective one, and a perfect entry into a text that defies easy categorization. Heavily weighted toward religious studies and part history, passionately written but also deeply researched and theorized, and sharply argued, Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction may not fit neatly in any one genre, but it is a must read. Why?

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