In this world, which is the best of all possible created worlds, the peoples of the nations, by Divine Providence, generally get either the liberty they deserve, or the tyranny they tolerate and therefore deserve. As a rule, God reserves liberty for moral and intellectual virtue, and He reserves slavery for ignorance, sloth, and depravity.
When churches professing the name of Christ are worldly, governments are tyrannical. And when tyrannical civil government rules over worldly churches, pastors professing Christ often, under social influence and pressure, or from a sinful fear of man, become mere hirelings instead of shepherds of the flock.
Tyranny is government contrary to God’s Law. And God’s Law is to love the Lord Jesus, Who is God in the Person of the Son, with all of one’s heart and mind and soul, and to love your neighbor as you, as a believer and child of God, love yourself.
Misunderstanding Scripture, and in particular Romans 13;1 and Peter 2;13-17, there are today Christian pastors who preach, and Christian laity who uncritically believe, that when government becomes oppressive, the only remedy for the hapless citizens, or rather subjects, is humble petition and passive obedience. Against this servile and misbegotten theory, the great systematic American theologian Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898), the chaplain, chief of staff, and biographer of the great Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, argued decisively.
Dabney cogently points out that “men in society do not bear to their rulers the proportion [or relation] children bear to their parents, in weakness, inexperience, or folly, but are generally the natural equal of their rulers. Nor are the citizens the objects of an instinctive natural love in the breasts of kings, similar to that of parents for their children, powerfully prompting a disinterested and humane government of them.”
Romans 13;1 does not, moreover, command us to obey especially kings, but “the powers that be.” Scripture thus makes the existing government, be it of whatever character, whether monarchical, aristocratic, democratic, or some admixture of these, the proper object of the Christian’s allegiance within the limits of Christian conscience. Romans 13;4, establishing the ideal for government, tells us that rulers or magistrates are to be “ministers of God to thee (subjects or citizens) for good.”
God Himself ordained society for the protection and perfection of the individual. He ordained government for the protection and perfection of society. And he ordained constitution, as a human-devised organism of checks and balances for counteracting the tendency of human government to abuse and oppression of the ruled, as a means of perfecting government.
But we know, of course, that in a fallen and sinful world, nations are ruled by fallen and sinful men, so the question is: By what means, if any, may the Christian resist tyrannical government, or government that is contrary to God’s law? And when a government becomes so oppressive and tyrannical and self-serving that it tends mightily to the destruction, both physical and moral, of society and its individuals. may not Christians band together among themselves and with others as conscience allows to replace the existing government with better, less devilish and more Godly, government? Indeed, having been commanded by the Lord Himself to be as salt and light in a fallen and lost and sinful world, is it not the solemn duty of Christians everywhere to get politically involved, in truly Scriptural ways, as it were, to encourage and to support the emergence of learned and pious Christian statesmen whose charge under God is to labor for the truly progressive reformation of human government the world over? In this way, does not Scripture, properly understood, condemn passivism and quietism as sinful?
And while truly, His kingdom is not of this world, it is ignorance and perhaps cowardice and sin as well to commit the obvious category mistake of hiding behind such truths to escape obvious and express Christian moral and social and political obligation in this earthly life.
So, the true Christian is neither servile to carnal and lost government nor a revolutionary anarchist. Understanding the God-ordained nature and necessity of government, he works to gradually and peacefully reform, or, where dark and extreme tyranny necessitates, to forcibly overthrow by revolution, and to replace thereby Godless and anti-Christ earthly tyranny.
And, since the goal of proper or Christian revolution is to restore healthy society and government with a minimum of violence and disruption, the Christian statesman and revolutionary should work through and appeal for assistance from, when practicable or feasible, the power and authority of subordinate governments or lesser magistrates within the same polity while exerting effort to replace by force the corrupt and irreformable head. This wise stratagem both affirms the Divinely ordained need of government and preserves the health of the body politic while removing the cancer of Godless tyranny and oppression.
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Winston McCuen - South Carolina
