American Statecraft

First Quarter 2001

Excerpts from the 2000 Kuyper Lecture

by James W. Skillen

Many positive things can be said about both the early innovations and the eventual worldwide historical impact of the American republican experiment, with its written constitution, Bill of Rights, disestablishment of religion, judicial review, separation of powers, and federal structure. At the same time, there are two fundamental lines of thought about government and society—two traditions undergirding political practice—that took hold in the founding era to thwart the art of statecraft.

The first tradition of thought and practice is articulated quite clearly in the Declaration of Independence: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . . "

The rights tradition, articulated in the Declaration, might be summarized as follows: Political community and governmental authority are grounded in and arise from the "unalienable rights" of individuals. The Creator endowed individuals with rights and those individuals establish government to protect their rights. Consequently, government is accountable to the people but not directly to God.

Note carefully that in this line of thought, which is also a confession of faith, there is no state to craft, but only rights and freedoms to protect and virtues to nurture. There is no direct authority of God over government. This is why so many Americans stress the political importance of religion and "values," for if the majority ever quits believing in God, there will no longer be even an indirect connection between the government and God. That is also why the culture wars rage so intensely. If people with the wrong cultural values control the levers of power, all is lost. On the other hand, if virtuous, Godfearing citizens hold majority power, then politics and government will take care of themselves. This is the political philosophy of the "rights" tradition.

Now listen to another voice, representing a second tradition of political thought and practice that has also strongly defined the American experiment: Government was ordained by God because of sin. Politics is not natural to the undefiled image of God and thus is not part of the original purpose and destiny of human society. In the providence of God, government was established to restrain and punish evil, yet because governments use force they easily and often become enemies of free people. Thus, government itself must be carefully checked and held in suspicion. Jesus Christ, by contrast, calls disciples into a community of love and service, not into a community based on suspicion and violence. The church, therefore, must constantly challenge the secular world, especially the political system and government's use of force.

In this second line of thought note that there is also no state to craft. There are only evils to be punished and a potentially oppressive government to be restrained. There are no original, God-given standards for the development of a political community, no office of public service for which to prepare by apprenticing in the art of statecraft. Politics, in other words, is not like marriage, or agriculture, or music, or art, each of which expresses an innate human ability.

In connection with this second point of view, let me emphasize that a new kind of state was being born in 18th century America, one that cast aside both a divine-right monarchy and every ecclesiastical and biblical warrant for its identity and authority. Yet despite this fact, American Christians did not develop a new Christian philosophy of a republican state. There are some reasons for this. Americans had been influenced primarily by the Augustinian stream of Christianity, which, generally speaking, held that government was established only because of the fall into sin. In breaking away from the British, divine-right monarchy, which itself had cast off the Roman Catholic Church's warrant for governmental authority, they found no other basis for rethinking representative government as a political office accountable directly to God through Jesus Christ, even though Christians continued, and continue, to profess that Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords. The biblical covenantal tradition had been tapped, somewhat problematically, by the Puritans, but it did not bear fruit after the failure to find a basis for citizenship other than church membership. Consequently and subsequently, Christian faith was confined to personal piety, "values," and the churches, while the American republic was relegated to the realm of secular contracts and deistic providentialism. The full reality and meaning of political life in God's world was lost from view.

The difficulty I hope you can see here is that if political community—our life in this republic—is not a creationally grounded human calling, then there can be no God-given accountability standards for its positive, purposeful development. And if this is true, then every use of force by government to restrain violence, to punish criminals, to preserve order, and to promote the general welfare, can eventually come to be seen as nothing more than the force that some rights-bearing humans choose to use against others. Since government action in any of these contexts cannot aim to restore or advance a healthy political community according to firm standards of justice, it will end up being viewed as simply one "power elite" trying to get what it wants. The distinction between civil and criminal penalties will become increasingly difficult to determine. And finally, the difference between violence initiated by private individuals or groups, on the one hand, and retributive acts of government, on the other, will be rejected. Government itself will be viewed as just another perpetrator of violence in the interests of those who control it.

Finding Grounds for Statecraft

If, contrary to these two powerful traditions, there is a human art of statecraft that ought to be developed in a healthy way as an expression of our very creatureliness, what are the grounds for it?

Looking at life in this world from a biblical point of view, we can see that God's covenant with creation gives human creatures the responsibility to steward the earth, to fill it with their generations, and to govern both it and themselves in obedient service to their Maker and Lord. In fact, all of creation, including rulers, authorities, and powers, came into existence through the very Son and Word of God who became flesh in Jesus Christ (John 1:3; Col. 1:15 17; Heb. 1:23). Jesus Christ is not a private god of Christians any more than Yhwh was a private god of Israel. All authority in heaven and on earth now resides in him. Moreover, every dimension of human responsibility reveals something about the Creator/Redeemer as well as something about what it means to be human. This is implicit in the fact that men and women have been created in the image of God.

This biblical, covenantal viewpoint was essentially suppressed and forgotten by early American deism and evangelicalism. But it is precisely from this point of view that I want to argue that the particular stewardship called statecraft realizes one of our creaturely capabilities and covenantal responsibilities to God and neighbor. Just as the Bible speaks without hesitation or qualification about God being like a parent to children, a bridegroom to his bride, a shepherd to sheep, a friend to friends, and a guide to sojourners on their journey, so it speaks easily about God as lord and king, counselor and judge. Moreover, these governmental and political images are used not only with respect to retributive justice, as might be expected if government exists only because of sin.

The fall into sin is certainly the cause of injustice and oppression, and the entire range of retributive responsibilities that government bears exist only because of sin. Moreover, political societies and governments are themselves infected by sin and can be oppressive and unjust. Thus, we should not underestimate the difficulty of pursuing the art of statecraft in a world where every conceivable misuse of power can be witnessed. The cry for justice all too typically springs from the experience of injustice. But retribution is not the original or sole purpose of government, and governments ought not to be oppressive and unjust. The very possibility of living in a complex, differentiated society such as ours depends on the public-legal integration of that complexity so that everything and everyone can receive its just due. Even if there had been no fall into sin, complex, differentiated societies could not exist without traffic lights, transportation systems, sewage systems, rules for protecting the commons (air, water, natural resources), and laws to coordinate multiple simultaneous activities in the same territory. Even without offices of retributive justice, there would need to be public offices to administer distributive justice.

Citizens in modern democratic states certainly have legitimate reasons to object to the political order of medieval Christendom and to states that give privilege to established churches, or to the Muslim faith, or to some other form of religious or ideological conformity. Yet the political truth of the gospel, in contrast to the Enlightenment's parochial, secular fundamentalism, contradicts all human imperialisms, for part of the good news is that statecraft ought to comport with Christ's gracious, patient rule, which requires equal treatment of everyone in the political field of this world. These are the terms of God's covenant with the world, the terms that make possible civil rights and the rule of law and limited government. The state is not a community of faith. America is not God's new Israel. Those who live by faith in Christ are spread throughout the world and hold citizenship in every state on earth. Practicing the art of statecraft, therefore, will mean working to overcome laws and patterns of government that compel conformity to a single faith or ideology, including the secularizing Enlightenment faith, which holds that individuals establish government out of their own contractual authority. It will mean recognizing that religiously deep commitments orient people politically as well as in private life.

The most urgent need of American politics and government today is to discover the true basis of, and genuine inspiration for, statecraft. For every political community and government on earth stands under the judgment as well as the promises of the One who at present upholds them all and who holds each one directly accountable.