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Respecting Politicians During Elections

There is a respect that God requires us to give to our leaders. Not because they are great individuals who have merited our admiration but because all authority is derived, ultimately from God. Consequently, disrespect for those in authority is a disrespect for God. Leaders do not have to "earn" this respect but, due to the very nature of their derived authority, should have it. The flip side of this is that because governing authority is derived, our allegiance must remain to God and not man. When a government figure steps outside of his God-given authority, we stand with God in opposition to him.

I was reminded of these principles while reading three different documents. The catalyst and first was a message by Peter Leithart [kudos to Polemics for the link], in which he writes:

Needless to say, this is a very different attitude than many Americans have adopted toward our civil rulers. Instead of treating them as servants of God, with fear and honor, many Americans treat rulers as open targets for mockery, ridicule, and scorn. There is a time for mockery of political folly: But we do not have the wisdom to know when and how to use mockery until we have learned to give fear to whom fear is due, and honor to whom honor, until we pay our taxes not with complaints but as an act of civil honor. Do not be caught up in the fervor of this political season so that you dishonor rulers that God commands you to honor.

Later is the message Leithart describes why a leader's character, "the orientation of his affections, the direction of his heart", are key to evaluating his suitability for office.

While you cannot read hearts as God can, you can draw conclusions about a man’s heart from the fruit that he produces. Does the candidate you vote for show any signs of devotion to God? Does he manifest any fixed orientation? Does the candidate you vote for hold to unpopular positions and stand against the tide of public opinion and media attack, or does he trim his sails to the shifting winds of political opinion? You are voting for a man, not a set of ideas, and you have to make some judgment about the man’s character and heart. Humility is one of the key signs of a rightly ordered heart. Does the candidate believe that he is capable of producing national health and prosperity by his own programs and politics? Or does he show some awareness of his limitations and the limitations of political life in general?

The entire message by Leithart is well worth the five minutes it takes to read. It is well done and quite convicting.

The second document, Vindication Against Tyrants, well-known for its compelling arguments founded in the sovereignty of God over the affairs of man states:

First, the Holy Scripture does teach that God reigns by his own proper authority, and kings by derivation, God from himself, kings from God, that God has a jurisdiction proper, kings are his delegates. It follows then, that the jurisdiction of God has no limits, that of kings bounded, that the power of God is infinite, that of kings confined, that the kingdom of God extends itself to all places, that of kings is restrained within the confines of certain countries.

Finally, David Hall writes The Religious Backdrop of the Declaration of Independence. The foundational influence of Calvinism in the establishment of the American system of government is effectively argued by Hall. Among his thesis are five marks of calvinistic thought that are illustrated in the Declaration of Independence. I've summarized them below.

(1) The Declaration refers to the transcendent basis for government as rooted in the "laws of nature and nature's God".

(2) The Declaration discusses derived powers, which stem from the consent of the governed. In this context, the Declaration refers to "the right of the People to alter or abolish" an existing government. It should be recalled that prior to the age of the Reformation, no such right was admitted. Three times the Declaration referred to "tyrant" or "tyranny," leaving fingerprint smudges of the Vindication Against the Tyrants.

(3) Another post-Reformation treatise was likely in mind when the Declaration condemned "absolute Despotism" and called citizens to their "duty" to overthrow a king who would not submit to the law of the land. Echoes of Rutherford’s Lex Rex are heard in the call for King George III to reside under the Law. Rutherford had earlier written that the king must be circumscribed by constitutions and other legal limits. Moreover, even the Reformation maxim that "any government is better than no government at all" is witnessed in the apologia for the American Revolution, to wit: "Mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable." The reiteration of the principle that the king is under the law, not over it, was widely accepted in early American culture because of the spread of that idea through the likes of Rutherford and Buchanan.

(4) Separated powers and checks and balances were other political signatures of the Declaration. One of the condemnations of British rule was the litany of items whereby the King had abused his power. According to the Declaration (and numerous sermons a generation before it), he made judges dependent on his own will (including for their pay); he created new offices which became "Swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance; and he imposed Standing armies." These and other abuses are instances of non-separation of powers.

(5) Minimal governments were alluded to in the last paragraph of the Declaration. The Continental Congress based its action on the "Authority of the good People of these Colonies," and lodged other responsibility with independent states.

Posted by tim at September 8, 2004 12:42 AM

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