A Christian View of Government

Feminism is a big enough tent to encompass different perspectives that empower women. Progressive feminist dogma leaves no room for individuals committed to religiously held views of the family, reproduction, and interpersonal relationships. Barrett is the epitome of an empowered woman, but because her religious beliefs and legal interpretations oppose certain progressive feminist dogma, she is labeled anti-feminist. Why can’t Amy Coney Barrett operate in the boundaries of the court and in the boundaries of her faith? If the personal is political, there is no line between belief and practice. But, in a secular world governed by secular law, there is most definitely a line, and to claim otherwise is disingenuous. Historically, women’s pursuit of equality in part relied heavily on Christian doctrine as both justification for full citizenship and as the foundation of the values that shaped public reform both in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Progressive feminism controls what is considered normative, the sacrament of abortion its central tenet and bedrock of progressive precepts. But, if feminism is about access and equity, then conservative feminism has a place at the table. Indeed, it is on the basis of Christianity that feminism has ground to stand on. Each person is created in the Imago Dei, thus they have equal worth and should be treated equally. Not only that, but to love one’s neighbor as oneself, at the very minimum, gives credence to the thought of extending the same rights I have to my neighbor. Feminism is not something to be feared but to be redeemed, or given feminism’s history, something to be reclaimed. With the focus of this journal on Christian public witness, the lives of Barrett and Gray reveal the importance differentiating service from self. In Matthew 22:21 Jesus said, “Render to Caesar that things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” As women continue to push for equity in various forms, this is a worthy consideration.

1 Elie Mystal, “Amy Coney Barrett is an extremist- just not the kind you think,” The Nation, 25 September 2020 at https://www.thenation.com/ article/politics/amy-coney-barrett-extremist/ accessed 27 October 2020.

2 “NOW Denounces Amy Coney Barrett’s Confirmation to SCOTUS,” NOW, 26 October 2020 at http://now.org/media-center/press-release/ now-denounces-amy-coney-barretts-confirmation-to-scotus/ accessed 27 October 2020.

3 Lizzie Bond, “The Conservative Case for Feminism,” Duke Political Review, October 2020 at http://www.dukepoliticalreview.org/theconservative-case-for-feminism/ accessed 20 October 2020.

4 Natalie Gontcharova, “No, There’s No Such Thing as Conservative Feminism,” Refinery29, 28 September 2020 at https://www.refinery29. com/en-us/2020/09/10055965/amy-coney-barrett-nominationconservative-feminism accessed 25 October 2020.

5 Lee Jussim, “Conservative Feminism,” Psychology Today, 19 August 2015 at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201508/ conservative-feminism accessed 26 October 2020.

6 Judith Stacey, “The New Conservative Feminism,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 9 (Autumn, 1983), 574.

7 Gillian Thomas, “‘Four Days that Changed the World’: Unintended Consequences of a Womens’ Rights Conference,” New York Times, 6 March 2017 at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/books/review/ divided-we-stand-marjorie-j-spruill.html accessed 10 October 2020; Marjorie J. Spruill, Divided We Stand: The Battle over Women’s Rights and Family Values that Polarized American Politics, (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017).

8 Mary Macdonald Ogden, Wil Lou Gray: The Making of a Southern Progressive from New South to New Deal, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2015).

Faculty Contribution

Gai Ferdon Professor of Government, Helms School of Government, Liberty University Zane A. Richer Graduate Student, Helms School of Government, Liberty University

A CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOVERNMENT

Every article should have at least one idea in it.1 The one idea in this article is simply that a Christian view of the state is possible. And it is a wondrous development in the history of Western thought that this idea presently wants for proof not among the Marxists, who have always believed it, nor among the Nihilists, who have never doubted it, but among the narrow circle of the baptized, who once believed it unto the shedding of blood and are now quite pleased to give it up.

Indeed, it is common enough to hear genuine believers say that there can be no authentically Christian view of government because the Bible does not tell us exactly what sort of government to have. And yet the curious thing is that, on the same evidence, we should never assume this for the other institutions of life. Consider, for instance, the family. The Bible tells us simply that there is such thing as families, that God has made them, and a particular authority is placed at their head. The rest is rather conspicuously left open. There is no telling from reading Scripture who precisely should control the money, or the number of children to have, or how the daily chores are to get done. There is tremendous liberty here in how family life can manifest itself. Every family is a unique creation because every combination of two individuals will create an entirely unique dynamic, have at its disposal unique talents, and wrestle against unique weaknesses. There is almost untold diversity available to the human race when it comes to the free development of family life. No two are the same; yet, we would never say there is no such thing as a Christian view of the family.

Moreover, because it is God’s design and delight to bring this familial diversity into richer and deeper development across the generations, there is a correspondingly vast terrain of liberty in which it may blossom. And yet, this liberty must always remain tied to God’s particular framework for the family. We may choose who to marry; we may not choose to marry three people instead of one. We have freedom to determine how family decisions are made; we have no freedom to decide that the wife or the child is now the head of the household. We may choose how our family worships God; we may not choose for our family to worship Baal. There is astonishing freedom for fruitful relationships within God’s ordinances. There is no freedom outside His ordinances.

Thus, we say, there is a Christian view of the family, not because every Christian family is the same, but precisely because each is different, yet bound together naturally, united in their diversity, through one divinely created relational framework.

It is in this sense also that we speak of a Christian view of government. Not only do we recognize that there may be a genuine variety of possible political arrangements, arising from the unique history, geography, culture, and genius of a people — as a fact, we insist upon it. Any view which denies this essential liberty to the free development of a nation in their civic life is not only un-Christian, it is positively anti-Christian. We do not claim, for instance, that the precise constitutional configuration of the United States is the only conceivable way to organize public affairs. The American constitutional order and system represents the unique genius of the American people, suited to their particular disposition and character, and tied to their common heritage of chartered liberties and covenantal self-rule. There is no reason to suppose that it should fit with the French, or the Russians, or the Sudanese, who share none of America’s formative history,2 and in many cases, reject their basic creeds.

Yet even in the midst of this legitimate liberty of structures, there is still a framework designed by God — just as in the family — in which the state must operate if it wishes to meet with the approbation of Christianity. This much we insist on, even in the face of the most disintegrative postmodern relativism. Just as with families, the legitimate liberty of expression for civil organization arises organically from the particular people, history, talents, and virtues being covenantally joined into one nation. But this should never lead us to suspect that governments can be (or can do) anything under the sun. God Himself

has set the parameters in which government is to operate and the great ends it is to serve — mankind has no authority to alter or to modify these arbitrarily. And despite an admittedly very good, if somewhat laborious, campaign on the part of the Enlightenment Rationalists and their modernistic intellectual offspring to convince us that the mysticized “public square” has, in a very bad parody of our Lord’s own kenosis, emptied itself of all allegiance to God, we nonetheless meet this innovation with the historic confession of the Church: that the royal scepter of Christ extends over the whole domain of our human existence, and that the state — just as the family — holds its office and its authority by the Grace of God.

But what is its authority? For what purpose did God create civil government? Here we must know something about the biblical view of man himself. It is the unique property of the Christian religion to assert that man, as male and female, is formed in God’s image. We do not presently inquire into the depths of all this could mean but simply draw out of its richness one particular feature: relationality. Because of this Imago Dei, man is intimately able to relate with God and others. We were created to walk in blessed fellowship with God, characterized by total devotion and obeisance, and with one another in mutual, reciprocal love.

Now, God in His sovereignty and creative goodness has fashioned numerous venues of relational activity through which we are to love Him supremely and serve others as ourselves. We may think, for instance, of such relational spheres as the family, the church, the market, the academy, the arts, and the individual’s personal relationship with God. Each of these domains of human life has a unique and highly relational structure, which supports and channels our productive service towards God and others. While undoubtedly our ability to navigate these moral relationships has been diminished by the Fall, our Lord has nonetheless reaffirmed through the Greatest Commandments that the underlying relational structures of human life have not totally dissipated under the assaults of sin but hold together still — no doubt by His common grace — awaiting redemption through His Atonement. The Fall has not altered God’s relational priorities; we are still to follow the light of truth in all of our relationships and spheres.

The result is that, even in a fallen world, we are constantly walking in profound relationships, whether familial, social, corporate, ecclesiastical, intellectual, or political. The question we face across all these venues