Our Co-Founder and President
Blackstone Institute's president, Dr. Virginia Armstrong, has had a distinguished career in the worlds of both academics and action. She currently holds the post of Affiliate Professor of Constitutional Apologetics at Houston Baptist University. She has taught in both the Master of Arts in Apologetics program and the Master of Liberal Arts program. Her current HBU work focuses on audiences outside the university campus. Previously, she served as Director and Senior Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. She continues to serve as National Director of Eagle Forum's Law and Worldview program and President of the Blackstone Institute, which she and her late husband, Gerry, founded.
Dr. Armstrong is also the designer and Director of the new “Christianity Confronting the Culture Initiative (CCC),” sponsored by Blackstone and the National Eagle Forum. The CCC is a multi-faceted, multi-generational educational service including studies and activities designed with the immediate goal of prevailing in American policy making and elections. The long-range goal of the CCC is to arm American patriots with the power of knowledge necessary to confront the culture on behalf of the Judeo-Christian worldview in the ongoing Culture War threatening America’s very existence.
Dr. Armstrong also founded the Texas Undergraduate Moot Court Association and HSU's Legal Studies Program and served as the first Chairman of each organization. As a college professor, Dr. Armstrong taught a number of advanced law courses, including constitutional history and law, legal philosophy, and the judicial process. She directed HSU’s federal court internship program and coached the University’s award-winning moot court team. And she drafted several of the cases argued in TUMCA tournaments across Texas, most notably those involving “homosexual rights” and the “right to assisted suicide.” Her academic peers have included her in the distinguished circle of “public intellectuals” in contemporary America. And for many years, her students have dubbed her “an intellectual Rambo.”
Dr. Armstrong now has become a national pioneer in constitutional and legal apologetics. Much of her current work focuses on the design of short but dynamite-packed studies appealing to, and appropriate for, use by Americans in our fast-paced life today. Dr. Armstrong is expanding the use of the worldview model to understand the egregious court decisions spewing from America's Humanist judges and how Judeo-Christian worldview proponents should respond more effectively. She also continues to develop ways of expanding the use of Internet capabilities for researching, creating, and teaching constitutional and legal apologetics. Her audiences range from high school homeschoolers to attorneys and judges.
A high school and university honor graduate, Dr. Armstrong holds the Ph.D. in political science and public law. She wrote both her master’s degree thesis and doctoral dissertation on the U. S. Supreme Court. The Eagle Forum has twice granted her its National Service Award "with appreciation for your dedicated work for God, home, and country." She received the Liberty Bell Award from the Abilene, Texas, Young Lawyers Association and was a finalist for the Texas Liberty Bell Award, given "to an outstanding nonlawyer for efforts in his/her community to strengthen the American system of justice." She has won numerous scholarly and professional honors. Among these are listings in Outstanding Young Women of America, Outstanding Educators of America, and Who's Who Among America's Teachers (joining only 1% of America's educators to be listed in consecutive editions of this publication, whose honorees are selected by outstanding students for "making a significant impact and difference in students' lives").
Dr. Armstrong contributes actively to several constitutional/judicial reform efforts. She authored an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court urging the over-turning of Roe v. Wade, and she served as the constitutional issues specialist on the Roe Media Advisory Committee. She is also involved in the effort to pass Congressional court-curbing measures and to secure the appointment of constitutionalist judges. She served as the National Research and Education Chairman for the Religious Roundtable founded in the 1980s and as Chairman of the Law Committee of the Coalition on Revival (the successor to the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy).
Dr. Armstrong has written and spoken widely on legal and constitutional topics and Christian apologetics. She has hosted her own daily radio commentary and has written regular columns for various publications. She has authored other works for a variety of organizations, including the American Family Association, the Christian Legal Society, the Simon Greenleaf School of Law (now the Trinity Law School), the South Texas Law School, the Eagle Forum, Probe Ministries, the Northeastern Political Science Association, the Western Political Science Association, and the Southwest Political Science Association.
On their furloughs from the Culture War, Dr. Armstrong and her late husband, Gerry, a college administrator, enjoyed music, reading, horseback riding, hiking, water skiing, and snowshoeing. They were active for many years in the Abilene Bible Church, where they served in numerous capacities, including as church pianist and organist.