Politics

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Founding era documents contain government declarations as well as personal testimonies. A great many of these documents underscore a dominant theme that suggests a three-fold purpose in settling the New World. First, they show that a majority of our forbearers came not just to escape religious persecution, but to freely practice their duties in clarity of conscience. Second, writings display intentions of Bible-believing Christians to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ to all peoples, indigenous as well as fellow immigrant. Thirdly, our governance models are informed by history and consistent with, often overtly based upon, Biblical principles. These three elements form an underlying singularity; not independent objectives, but interrelated principles. Nor do these three run counter to one other, but are mutually supportive. This unified triad forms the foundation upon which has been built these United States.


Civil liberty throughout history has been the necessary prerequisite for free religious practice. Though this may appear obvious, as it was to our forbearers, it begs scrutiny from both directions. This is driven home by today's commonly held myth that our civil and religious realm is not only somehow separable but each hemisphere is mutually exclusive. Nothing could be further from truth.

Religious practice in our forbearers' context means faith. Faith goes beyond mere belief or assent to so-called spiritual ideas. Nor is faith simply enactment of one or another tradition, regardless of its perceived sanctity. At stake is the conscience and sanctity of each practicing individual. Faith requires integrity in the soul. To illustrate, one may hold any number of beliefs, but doing so does not make them either true or even worthy of being true. Western culture now often inculcates the false view that faith is simply a thought to which one is entitled to hold regardless of whether it can be proven objectively valid or invalid. Such thoughts often have little expression in the real life of the individual because they carry no conviction or motivation. This is not faith but mere opinion. Real faith, rather, is more than either opinion or tradition; it is the body of words and deeds in a person's life giving substance to or evidence of the underlying belief. Faith is validated by the life through which it is lived. Faith transcends mere adherence or conformance. Hence, freedom of religious practice as understood by our forbearers is the maintained ability of any individual to speak and act in accord with their underlying beliefs.

Now civil liberty constitutes not only a system of moral laws but freedom of the people to peaceably abide under those laws so as to enjoy their life and property. In other words, legitimate civil authority always upholds the peoples' rights under law, especially those governing due process. Government infringement of an individual's rights is coercion - and it may take either positive or negative form. In such case, this is government authorizing itself to seek to modify individuals' words and deeds to conform to its own beliefs and values. Rarely if ever are such conformities congruent with the majority of, let alone all, the peoples' religious practice. Hence, civil liberty can only exist where government is explicitly left no jurisdiction to either establish or restrict a particular set of words and deeds on the basis of their supporting or undercutting an underlying faith. In the aggregate, civil liberty means the ability of any person to freely speak and act in clear conscience.

The Founders' balance for this equation is embodied in our Bill of Rights', the First Amendment. Government is prohibited from making law that either respects or prohibits the establishment of any religion. There can be no religion sponsored by the federal authority; no theocracy, regardless of the god or gods it claims. Nor can there be a government established atheism, which is nothing more than the elevation of the State by the State to its own godhood. Thus there can be no American government partiality for or against any religious practice. No religion can be legitimately persecuted. Civil authority is forever precluded from heading any ecclesiastical organization. As laws must not be capricious and circumstantial, neither can be religious practice. And to the extent that religious practice must necessarily be held accountable to legitimate law, so too, law must be bound so as to protect all legitimate religious practice.

In summary, religious practice cannot be freely exercised when the peoples' civil liberties are removed. More importantly, civil liberties cannot be maintained but by those who maintain a faithful religious practice.


Many coming to these shores did so in obedience to Jesus' 'Great Commission' - that His followers go preaching the gospel and making disciples of all nations. Some three years prior to His delivery of this commandment at His ascension, Jesus inaugurated His ministry by fulfilling the words of Isaiah the Prophet: He proclaimed good news to the poor, release of the captives, and setting free the oppressed. This gospel had nothing to do with politics. Rather, it brought the spiritual solution to our spiritual problem. For all men, Jesus taught, are by nature sinners, separated from God, subject to His judgment and God's eternal wrath. We are naturally without God and therefore without hope in the world; serving our sin, we are mastered by it. But to those admitting insufficiency in their own spirit or strength, those oppressed by their sin, and therefore willing to come to Him, Jesus offered eternal life. His earthly life and death, in accordance with Scripture, his burial, and His resurrection from the dead in accordance with Scripture not only attested to His truth but to the power of God. Therefore faith in this gospel, that is our trusting His words and actions on our behalf, provides us not only freedom from the guilt and penalty of our sin. It also, by baptism into this faith, liberates us from the power of sin, freeing us to serve Him moment to moment going forward. And, because of His resurrection, He has imparted to us His Spirit and an eternal sustaining hope of our ultimate redemption. It is this power which our forbearers brought with them, knowing that only men exercising a Spirit-filled life were capable of self-government and therefore fit for life in political liberty.


American governance is interwoven with two Divine threads: free will and private property. God will never violate the free will of any individual. Our individual volition is therefore always to be accorded the highest respect by Man. Likewise, every individual's right from God to exclusive use of their lawfully acquired personal property is codified in the Ten Commandments. Our Founders set forth government's sole legitimate function: maintain our God-given rights to life, liberty and property. These two threads are thus expressed in the form of our democratic Republic and a free-market economy.

A free-market economy is a simple principle: individuals are able to buy and sell goods and services with one another without interference or coercion from any third party, including government. To do so they must also freely exercise the ability to produce such goods and services as their means allow. Because government subsists solely upon the taxes collected from its citizens, it can legitimately neither control nor own any of the means of production. Lawful accumulation by any individual or group of individuals of the means as well as the result of production remains unimpeded. Hence every individual's life style must be earned through personal ability and merit, never obtained through forced government redistribution. Each individual's circumstance therefore is and must be disparate from that of any other.

Our Republic is a system administered by and for the people through elected representatives whom they hold accountable under a structure of civil law. The Founders understood that every other form of government consisted of the rule of a few over the many by force. Central to our structure is the separation of administrative, legislative and judicial powers, due to the sinful nature of all men who, when given opportunity, will always aggregate authority to form despotic tyrannies until they ultimately attempt to usurp even the Name and power of God. Our Republic recognizes the sovereignty of God as the Head Lawgiver as well as His Law under which we both define and execute justice.

This polity was not formed as nor was it ever designed to become a democracy. Under democracy every individual is mercilessly swallowed into a collectivist class whereby the 51% always vote to destroy the 49%. Its inevitable result is anarchy and suicide. The Founders therefore feared democracy more than any monarchy or oligarchy.

Western civilization's schooling under the industrial revolution was this: free-market capitalism - fueled by the produce of land holders and business operators, their rights protected by Republican government - is the most moral and effective path to peaceful societal prosperity. Here as in England local government therefore represented such men, the vast majority of which were European. Reputable women, though lacking direct vote, were afforded respected societal station; their representation being primarily through family, the acknowledged building block of free society. Free white and black men without means, also usually without direct vote, were more often than not extended or otherwise were able to secure opportunities to improve their economic status and thus their political contribution. Hence, government in that regard deemed to have effectively served their principal constituency, though limited, proved also to serve the best interests of all. We are that result.


America has been since its founding a Christian nation. It is the bedrock foundation of the Christian faith that motivates, enables and protects our people in maintaining our freedom, peace and prosperity. Only the God of our forefathers can therefore oversee, guide and sustain us in that noble endeavor.

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