Theocracy v. Democracy -- What Do Christians Want?

Proponents of America’s Christian heritage are often confused with being desirous of a theocracy rather than a democracy.  Instantly troubling thoughts of Constantine’s intertwined papal and political authority emerge.   Americans, for the most part, place a high value on freedom.  We do not want any institution to set itself up to be a controlling agent, most especially any institution with a high moral standard.

The church has not been a strong presence in American society for decades. It’s most boisterous contributions have been associated with moral issues such as homosexuality or abortion.  The Church has become defined by what it stands against, rather than who it loves. This is changing as a new Church is emerging, one who loves and serves without strings attached.

There was a day when Alexis De Tocqueville wrote that the churches in America were our greatest and firmest support.  He found the strength of our democratic Republic rested in the churches.  They aided in the self-governance of a nation by equipping the people to govern themselves.  In so doing, the government had no need to encroach on the morality of the people for the good of the people for they practiced self-control. 

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Kingdom Freedom

Everyone wants to be free. America was born on the shared value of freedom that ran deep in the hearts of the first patriots and Founders.  Most every nation in the world desires the freedom found between our shores.  A grassroots rally cry has been sounded in recent months for a return to greater levels of freedom while rejecting current policies that would restrict freedom. 

The Founders, and the philosophers that influenced them, had a very unique idea to build a nation where the people would be free.  Thus, they set out to build a limited government by the people and for the people.  A government that would not be the granter of freedom, but it's most ardent protector for this government would be elected and held accountable by the people. 

The Founding Fathers were very clear in their thoughts concerning the nature of such a free people. They encouraged, with great enthusiasm and urgency, that the education of the people always include instruction from the Christian Bible.  Now, in these days there were no public schools. There was no Department of Education. There were only community schools usually tied into the local church that shared the one room school house facility.  There were also home schooling and private tutoring depending on ones economic status. 

The Founders view on this is evidenced by these quotations by James Madison:

“It is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.” 

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

The Founders saw it as instrumental to securing a free nation that the citizens of this nation govern themselves.  The only way they could be free, is if they did not need a governing authority to make laws guarding their conduct.  Thus they frequently wrote that people be instructed in Biblical morality and to make that and the law of nature (what they saw as the unwritten laws known in our conscious)  our external guide to maintaining our liberty.  In their opinion, if we behaved ourselves we would have little need of the government keeping us in order by excessive laws and punishments.

However, as good as this plan is it stopped short of the freedom that is available to people.  The Founders way would ensure a great deal of freedom never before established on a national level to this magnitude. They took it as far as it could logically go at the level in which they were speaking about it. 

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"A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

When Benjamin Franklin emerged from the The Constitutional Convention that convened from May 25 to September 17, 1787 to address the problems facing the post Revolutionary War America he was asked by a passerby what was the outcome of the assembly. Franklin responded, “it’s a Republic, if you can keep it.”

The great American government created by those men in 1787 was not anything akin to the current or past governments of the world. It was not just a democracy, it was a republic, and there in lies an important distinction.

The best source on the meaning of the Constitution and the authority on the government created by the Founders is a collection of essays written in 1787 to the average American, posted in the newspapers of the day. These essays were written under the pseudonym of Publius by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.

The essays were written in explanatory defense of the newly drafted Constitution because a group of people, known as anti-Federalist, opposed the creation of a centralized government were giving speeches and writing articles which caused the Federalists to compose and publish the essays in defense of the Constitution. The Constitution required ratification by the States. Therefore the Federalists essays were an apologetic, a defense for this Constitutional Republic form of Government. Today these documents are compiled into one book entitled The Federalist Papers.

It is very clear in the Federalist Papers that the American government was designed not to mirror the Democracy of the Greeks. They had great concern that such a government would be detrimental to America. Moreover, they discuss with brevity the various nations using the term “Republic” or “Democracy” with ill regard to the actual meaning of the terms. They illustrate that no government exists which accurately exemplifies what they have in mind to create for America. While the Greeks were a pattern of democracy and England a form of a representative government, neither nation truly modeled a real Republic.

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The Christian History of the West

Europe has been far removed from her cultural Christian mooring for a long time. To the best of my knowledge, one could not in any sense of the word consider the European culture a Bible culture. The days of the prominence of Christianity have disappeared into her history.

America had Christian prominence in her heritage that does continue to this day. However, while there is a huge presence of Christian churches in America, there is currently little to no affect upon culture at large. Christianity has become a private faith with a few leaders championing public issues from a Christian perspective, but by and large it is not the denominate public worldview of the nation today.

Just the same, both Europe and America have in their history a Christian heritage that did influence much of the progress of the West. In America specifically, our Republic was fashioned by men who had a strong Christian worldview. They built the Constitution upon the principals that man was created to be free and from that freedom we can choose to elect representatives that we permit to govern us. The need for checks and balances of those representatives into an Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branch was because the Founders believed in the fallen nature of man. They believed that people ought not to be permitted to rise up to be long time rulers of the people for the propensity of power to corrupt is in the hearts of man.

Alexis De Tocqueville, a Frenchman, visited America to learn about the strength and prosperity of a post Revolutionary War America. He found that America’s strength was not where he expected to find it, but in her churches, in her citizens who labored to self-govern themselves to protect the freedom of future generations.

There are a myriad of quotes by the Founders of the importance of the people to adhere to Biblical morality in effort to protect the Republic form of government for this government can only work for a people who are intent upon self governing themselves without the need of overbearing laws which restrict citizens due to the numbers of people who do not practice self-governance.

The reason we look at the past today with eyes that cannot see the Christian heritage, is that it so ingrained in our culture without the education of how it came to be that it appears to be common sense rather than a way of life influence by a revelatory book. In fact, Jefferson’s wording of “self-evident” in the Declaration is rather in correct, because these principals were not ones they devised, but ones they accepted from Scripture. The reason for the “self-evident” wording was that the prominent philosophy of the day said that things that were true were self-evidently known, so that word was used to emphasize the truth of the principals rather than how they were derived.

The way to see the stark difference between the principals accepted as “self-evident” in the West and the rest of the world is to observe the non-Western cultures. In India, equality is not self-evident—there is a cast system that does not value equality. In China, the retiring head of state in 2002, Jiang Zemin, was asked what he wanted to see for the future of China. He responded, “I would like for my country to become a Christian nation.” He could see that the West was Christianized and he wanted the results we have.

I, however, think our results, while good as America is the nation of hope to many nations, can be better. I think the Church in America is not very involved in helping her become strong again in a way that is full of love and not full of moralizing rebuke. In a way that provides viable solutions to the problems of this nation rather than just being focused on a few moral issues such as abortion. If we really believe we are in relationship with the living God and have Him living through us we ought to be more relevant to our current economic and national problems than we are. We ought to be able to come up with answers that really make a difference and help stabilize the nation without any hidden agenda—just as a gift—and not as a method of evangelism.

Secularization will not stabilize the Western culture. The Kingdom of God can do this, but there is not much reason to say it if the Church can’t show it and show it in a way that is respectful to the other cultures in this nation and to the government of this nation. We need to come along side the people who are in power and ask how we can help, instead of throwing stones from the safe distance of our homes via our facebooks and blogs. We have to be willing to help at all levels starting with the neighbor next door and working our way up to serve Washington in an honorable and helpful manner.

A shift in this direction is already sweeping through the Church in this post-Christian era that has great potential to become a healing balm to the nations. A Church is mobilization to not just aid the American nation, but to be for all nations to come into the freedom and equality that is available in the Kingdom of God. This won’t be a movement of the “religious right” but one marked by honor and love like never before. What a different world this can be when people express the love and honor of the Father without reservation.

Book Review: Moment of Truth by Marc Nuttle

Moment of Truth by Marc Nuttle is a practical guide, catered to the everyday person, to getting involved in politics.

Marc Nuttle is a living historic figure having worked in the campaigns of Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin as well as Pat Robertson and Steve Forbes. He has been an advisor on major government projects in the United States and in China, Russia, Ukrain, Bulgaria, Sudan, Jordan, and more. Nuttle is highly qualified to write this book on political issues and the necessity of involvement of the average person in the political process.

Nuttle, while openly a Christian conservative, adeptly illustrates the issues of our day and how a person can determine for themselves what side of the issue they want to endorse. Moreover, he enumerates how to ascertain the values one holds dear and use them to develop a political voice. While expressly conservative, he is very fair to the entire system of politics.

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