Retreating From Involvement

From The Christian Reader:

Retreating from Involvement


by Dr. Archie Jones



(This is Part Two of a series. Click here to read Part One.)



Political opportunism has played a large role in the abandonment of our Christian tradition of civil government and law, the circumvention of our Constitution’s limitations on civil government authority, the usurpation of power from the state governments, the centralization of power in our national government and its institutions, and the growth of our current gigantic, unlimited, arbitrary, bureaucratic government.



Political opportunism has been able to appeal to the sinful desires of many people, rich, poor, and middle class, to live at the expense of others by engaging in legalized theft. The disappointing story of opportunistic use of crises to abandon our Christian heritage of limited civil government must begin at least with Lincoln’s “presidential dictatorship” and the Radical Republicans’ congressional tyranny during the War Between the States and Reconstruction; resume with Woodrow Wilson’s and the so-called Progressives and their use of the First World War to augment the power of the central government and accustom Americans to socialistic direction of our economic life; and continue with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Democratic Congress and their use of the Great Depression and World War II to further augment the power of our national government and establish socialistic programs which are still with us. [1]



Lyndon Johnson, using the crisis of the assassination of President Kennedy and the Democrats’ landslide victory in 1964, expanded the socialistic “welfare state” established by the “New Deal” with his “Great Society” programs and abandoned the last of the biblical criteria by which previous genuinely charitable efforts had been based. With the exception of a slight slowdown during the Reagan years, post “New Deal” administrations, Republican and Democrat (though the former moving at slower speeds), shaped by the predominant humanistic climate of opinion and often moved by “liberal” crusades, have continued the downward course away from God, God’s law, limited government, biblical justice, and liberty and toward the arbitrary will of man, unlimited government, perverted justice, and tyranny.



Christians have done little to alter the course, much less to turn our “ship of state” back to God, righteousness, justice, and liberty.



The political and legal thinking of early Americans at the time of the “founding” of the Republic was dominated by Christianity. The church then taught (as it had done in colonial times) about civil government and law. It spoke—and spoke publicly, via public political sermons delivered on official civil government occasions—to the ethical, political, and historical issues of the day. And it spoke upon the basis of the Bible and Christian theories of “natural law” that were dependent on the Bible for directional light.



By 1853 when the Rev. Mr. Willson published this work Christians had largely ceased to be salt and light to American society, for they had abandoned the Bible as the only authoritative rule of faith and practice for all areas of life—including civil government and law. Despite the fact that civil government is a ministry of God, they had lost interest in it, as Willson rightly complains. Revivalism had led many to believe that all that is needed to heal society is the salvation of individual souls. There was little or no instruction in the whole counsel of God and the application of God’s word and law to all areas of thought and life. Emotionalism had led many to reduce Christianity to a series of “experiences” and away from the study of the Bible to deduce doctrines by which to live. Emotionalism had also fueled anti-intellectualism and thereby discouraged the searching of the Scriptures for the answers to the issues of life and politics. Claims of special extra-biblical revelations had undermined the authority of the Scriptures and exalted the pseudo-authority of charismatic leaders. Meanwhile, pietism reduced Christianity to an inward, highly personal thing. Christianity had always been that, but under the influence of the whole Bible it had been a view of the world that is also supposed to influence every area of life. Pietism claimed that civil government and public affairs are outside the realm of the true Christian’s concern and led Christians to retreat from political involvement. Also during these years some Christians began to shift from a victorious to a defeatist eschatology which, contrary to the implied promise of Christ in the Great Commission (and contrary to the view of the author of this book), denied the eventual worldwide triumph of Christianity, the Christianization of the nations, and presented evil as triumphing until the return of Christ. The result of such influences was to turn Christians’ thinking from the Bible’s teachings on civil government and law to that of a man-centered worldview.



To be continued…



Notes:

[1] Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan; Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).