Based largely on Neil Mammen’s 40 Days Towards A More Godly Nation: Why Only Churches Can Lead Us To A Happier, Healthier, Safer, and Mutually Prosperous America. (I have some areas of disagreement with Mammen, however, outlined in the footnotes.[1])
“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 self-evident, 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, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” ~Declaration of Independence
· Why did our nation’s first official document talk so much about God in its first paragraph?
· What did the Congress of the United States mean when they said that there are “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” which “entitle” them to “assume” the “station” of a nation?
· What did they mean when they said that there is a “Creator” who “endowed” “all men” with “certain unalienable Rights”?
· There are those who say that since the Constitution (which was written a few years later) does not mention God, there is therefore no Christian basis to American government. However, as Neil Mammen, author of 40 Days Towards A More Godly Nation: Why Only Churches Can Lead Us To A Happier, Healthier, Safer, and Mutually Prosperous America, pointed out,
o the very fact that they were creating a new country after saying in the Declaration that God had entitled them to do this,
o and the very fact that they laid out laws in the constitution after saying in the Declaration that God made laws,
o and the very fact that they enumerated every man’s unalienable rights in the Bill of Rights after saying in the Declaration that the basis for rights is the Creator’s gifts, all these indicate that there was an underlying Christian belief system upon which the Constitution was built. It didn’t come out of thin air or mere erudite thinking.
· For instance, there can be no such thing as an “inalienable right” if rights are granted by anyone else but the One God Who does not change. If, on the other hand, rights are granted by a government or by a powerful person, then those rights can be rescinded. Do you see that without a Christian worldview, the concept of inalienable rights is sheer nonsense?
· Furthermore, it is significant that Jesus is called “our Lord” at the very end of the U.S. Constitution when they dated it, “the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven” – 1787 years, reckoned from the birth of Jesus.
· Our Biblical, Christian faith has a profound bearing, not only on the way we relate to God, but also on the way we relate to each other in the church and in civil society. It matters whether or not we purposefully apply Biblical principles to “secular” issues around us – like whether a colony or congregation has the right to declare independence, what our rights are, and how to set up a body of law to govern a church or a nation, and who should govern that body.
· As we approach two elections this week: an election this morning whether or not to receive a man to rule over you as an elder in the church, and an election Tuesday to determine our state governor, legislators, justices, and others, I want to encourage you to recognize the importance of God and His Word when it comes to government, and I want to encourage you to vote – and to vote for men who fear God and uphold the Ten Commandments.
Now, for some folks, this is tantamount to me opening up a package of nitroglycerine and playing with it during church. “Religion and politics should never be mixed together!” But that was not the position of the founders of our country, and for good reason. Law is essentially about what is good and what is bad, and the only way to arrive at a standard of good and bad that applies to everybody is to appeal to the God Who is sovereign over everybody.
· Noah Webster, one of the founders of our country, wrote, “our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.[2]” The Bible is the source for a correct way of running a republic like our country!
· Why is this important? Neil Mammen, whose book I am unashamedly pirating to compose much of this sermon explains, “[I]n our republic, murder will always be a crime, for it is always a crime according to the Word of God. However, in a democracy, if majority of the people decide that murder is no longer a crime, murder will no longer be a crime. This unchanging law, the founders claimed is the ‘The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God…’” (40 Days, p.106).
· Blackstone’s Commentaries, published in 1771, explain much of the way our founding fathers thought about the laws of nature and nature’s God. In one place they read, “murder… is expressly forbidden by the Divine… If any human law should allow or enjoin us to commit it, we are bound to transgress that human law… But with regard to matters that are… not commanded or forbidden by those superior laws (such, for instance, as exporting of wool into foreign countries), here the… legislature has scope and opportunity to interpose.” You see, lawyers, at the time of our American Independence, openly acknowledged that the 10 Commandments should be taken into consideration in civil government because they are “superior” to any other rules.
· Want to hear that from an American? Here’s James Wilson, signer of the Constitution and one of the first U.S. Supreme Court Justices: “Now it should always be remembered that this law, natural or revealed, made for men or for nations, flows from the same Divine source: it is the law of God … Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine.[3]”
· Who do you want deciding laws today, like whether or not to enact the ENDA legislation that would remove any ability on the part of an employer to evaluate job applicants based on their morality? Who do you want deciding the currently-proposed laws to lower the age of sexual consent to age 13? Who do you want deciding if spanking should be illegal? Who do you want interpreting zoning and parking laws when someone complains about you having people over to your house for a Bible study? A Christian who will legislate and interpret law to give religious freedom? Or a non-Christian who will legislate and interpret the law in a way that does not appreciate your faith?
· It is very important that we put civil leaders with a Biblical worldview into office. The Bible itself bears this out:
I want to highlight two places in the Bible which speak of what to look for in a civil leader, one from the Old Testament, and one from the New:
· Exodus 18:21 Here, Moses’ father-in-law Jethro, is giving him advice on how to pick judges to help him govern the people of Israel: “Now as for you, choose men of means from all the people: God-fearers, men of truth, haters of corruption, and set over them princes of thousands, princes of hundreds, princes of fifties, and princes of tens.” (NAW) What are the qualifications? Fearing God, loving truth, and hating corruption. How do you know that is true and what is corrupt? God tells us those things in the Bible. All the qualifications for this political office – except the first one of being able to generate wealth – are religious in nature!
· What about the New Testament? Paul gives us the job description of a civil governor in Romans 13:4 …He is a servant of God to you for the purpose of good, but if you happen to do the bad, be afraid, for it is not meaninglessly that he carries the sword, for he is a servant of God, an avenger for the purpose of wrath toward the one who does evil. (NAW) The basic disposition of a civil magistrate is that of a servant of God whose job is to punish people who do evil. How can he know what is evil? By studying the Bible – right and wrong are religious categories. The death sentence of the sword cannot be objectively applied to a group of people unless the sense of right and wrong come from a sovereign God.
· If, in the Old and New Testament, political leaders are primarily defined in terms of fearing God, serving God’s interests, upholding truth, and being able to punish evil, doesn’t it logically follow that a faithful Christian is the best sort of person to fill a position of political leadership?
· Even the “secular” position of diaconal service in the church – feeding poor people – has as its foremost requirement to be “full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.” The Apostle Peter laid down the qualifications for deacon in Acts 6:3 “Therefore brothers, organize seven men from among you who have been witnessed to be full of the [Holy] Spirit and wisdom which we may appoint over this need.” (NAW) The practical work of the church is best done by those who have a close personal relationship with God. Where does wisdom come from? “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” This is what we need to look for in political candidates – not just someone who says they are a Christian, but someone demonstrably full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.
· When it comes to the office of church elder, there is a much longer list of qualifications:
o Titus 1:5b-9 …appoint elders in every city as I commanded you—if a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of dissipation or insubordination. For a bishop must be blameless, as a steward of God, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict (NKJV, cf. 1 Timothy 3:2-11).
A candidate can be evaluated by their public stands on the 10 Commandments. Let’s look at some of the candidates on our ballots and run them through the grid of eight of the 10 Commandments:
· Does he confess to be a Christian? Any other faith position is a violation of the 1st commandment.
o Paul Davis is affiliated with the United Church of Christ. There is something to be respected in a man who will submit to the accountability of being a church member, however the United Church of Christ is known for distributing birth control in Sunday school classes and hosting homosexual union ceremonies.
o Keen Umbehr claims to be a Christian, but I could find no evidence of church abbiliation, and he doesn’t mention anything about faith on his website.
o Incumbent Sam Brownback switched affiliation from Methodist to Roman Catholic, which does not commend him in my book, but instead of attending a Catholic church, he attends Topeka Bible Church, which has an evangelical reputation – I’ve even taught a missions seminar there! I can personally attest to our governor’s personal faith, because I have heard him pray. Beni and I was there on the front lawn of the Governor’s mansion two years ago when Brownback prayed for God to break the drought in the name of Jesus Christ.
o In the senate race, Pat Roberts is, as best I can tell, the only one affiliated with a church (Methodist). Libertarian candidate Randall Batson claims to be Multi-religious (Buddhist, Christian & Hindu), and I simply could not find any confession of any religion by Greg Orman. This is a problem.
o In the Kansas House race, Sydney Carlin is a member of Seven Dolores Catholic Church, Suzie Swanson teaches Catholic doctrine in Clay Center, and the Associated Equipment Dealers Association in Washington D.C. say that Tom Phillips is a Methodist, but he doesn’t mention that fact on his own webpage.
o On the other hand, Ben Wilson and Mark Linville have been members of some church called Christ The Redeemer for almost 9 years. That is very impressive in my book!
· Let’s move on to the third commandment: Does he take God’s name in vain? If so, this is a moral problem that will bleed over into disdain for God’s authority when it comes to governing justly.
· Does he honor the Sabbath day by resting from his regular work one day a week? Does he go to church? It’s possible to find out whether or not a candidate violates the 4th commandment, but it probably won’t be on the voter issue guides.
· Does he honor parents?
o One clear test is a candidate’s stand on parental consent for abortion. If he supports abortions performed on children without their parent’s knowledge, he is against the 5th commandment.
o Other tests would include his stand on the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and his support of the Parental Rights Amendment. The Parental Rights Amendment respects the 5th Comandment; the U.N. Convention of the Rights of the Child does not. Pat Roberts is a co-sponsor of the Parental Rights Amendment. Greg Orman does the best good job of honoring his parents on his website, but neither he nor Randall Batson seem to have taken positions regarding the Parental Rights issue.
· Next, Does he murder? If he is pro-abortion, he is not upholding God’s 6th commandment, because abortion kills a living human being in utero.
o In the Senate race, all three abortion clinics in Kansas have come out in support of Greg Orman, whereas Kansans for Life supports Pat Roberts because he has actually co-sponsored legislation to outlaw late-term abortions. Libertarian Randall Batson doesn’t seem to think the government should punish murder in this case.
o In the gubernatorial race, Brownback is clearly pro-life and working to roll back abortion further, Keen Umbehr claims to be pro-life but says nothing more can be done about abortion, and Paul Davis is clearly pro-abortion.
o If your candidate won’t protect the most helpless members of our society from murder, he won’t protect others either. Notice that the pro-abortion Kansas supreme court judges appointed by Kathleen Sibelius, namely Eric Rosen and Lee Johnson, are the ones who who refused to support the death sentence of the lower courts against the Carr brothers who brutally tortured and murdered five young people, even after the U.S. Supreme Court itself weighed in to support the appropriateness of the death sentence for such a heinous murder. Will you vote to retain those Kansas Supreme Court justices?
· Does the candidate support adultery? The law of the Bible instructs us that there are many classes of adultery, including prostitution, bisexuality, no-fault divorce, and homosexual marriage – all are violations of God’s seventh commandment.
o Paul Davis, candidate for governor, was caught in the act of committing adultery when the police raided a strip club he was patronizing. That should be a big red flag for anyone considering voting for him.
o Keen Umbehr does not have a clear position on same-sex marriage; he has said that the laws don’t need to be changed, but he has also spoken to the press at a gay rights rally.
o Brownback has stated his opposition to same-sex marriage and has re-vamped the family services department of the state in order to support traditional families better.
o In the Senate race, Greg Orman supports same-sex marriage, Randal Batson says it’s none of the government’s business to say one way or the other, but Pat Roberts says it should be banned.
o In the House race, it was former mayor Jim Sherow who tried to force the sexual revolution on Manhattan a couple of years ago and proudly proclaimed gay pride month for our city. Tim Huelskamp is for traditional marriage.
· What about the 8th commandment? Does your candidate support stealing or will he punish theft?
o Libertarian Senate candidate Batson seems to have the most Biblical stand on going back to real money so that the government cannot rob its citizens through inflation.
o All of the candidates are against wasteful government spending, although all the incumbents have participated in wealth redistribution, and all the challengers will also participate in the existing wealth redistribution programs. When the government takes away money from you in taxes in order to re-distribute it to poorer people (or even to rich people), that is stealing.
o Not only is it stealing, it is wasteful! Private charity is estimated to be six times more efficient than government charity, and it is far more effective too, because of the nature of personal accountability. In other words, when the government takes $600 from you in Social Security taxes, only $100 of it on average will actually reach the poor, and very little of it will actually help the poor long-term. Compare that to the average charity which only has 10-20% overhead and could therefore, on average, pass along $510 (instead of $100) of your $600 dollars to the poor, while also building a network of personal relationships which will help the poor long-term.
o Government welfare actually hurts the poor. “Recent research by Congressional Budget Office Director June O'Neill shows that increasing the length of time a child spends on welfare may reduce the child's IQ by as much as 20 percent... The more welfare income received by a boy's family during his childhood, the lower the boy's earnings will be as an adult, even when compared to boys in families with identical non-welfare income.”[4]
o When the Personal Responsibility Act Welfare Reform Act was passed in 1996, making it harder to get Welfare, the percentage of African American kids in poverty dropped 10%, and the number of unwed mothers dropped too! When Welfare became less available, there was less poverty - interesting! In fact, it was that Welfare reform act that kicked Starr Parker off of welfare; now she’s a millionaire and writing a book about how the Poor can become Rich by getting off welfare! (40 Days, p.237ff)
· Then there’s the 9th commandment against bearing false witness. Candidates who tell lies in their campaign will tell lies in office, and a candidate who lies cannot be trusted to rule well.
o For instance, Paul Davis is stating that Governor Brownback has driven Kansas into debt due to his tax reforms and that Brownback is cutting down on the budget for public schooling. On the other hand, Brownback claims that he has brought Kansas out of the heavy debt that Sibelius incurred, that Kansas is running surpluses every year, and that he has been increasing state funding for Kansas schools every year. I don’t see any way around it; one of these two candidates is lying.
Please understand, I am not saying that there are no other issues to consider when voting for a candidate. (For instance the efficiency of candidates in handling tax money could be assessed by how they spend their campaign money. Ben Wilson is campaigning for county commissioner on a platform of not being wasteful with tax money. The newspaper reported recently that the incumbent against whom Ben was running lost even though he raised 3 times as much money as Ben did. Should efficient use of other people’s money factor in to a vote like that? It does in my book!) But usually the moral issues of where the candidates are in their relationship to God and God’s laws will predict how all the other practical and fiscal issues fall out.
But some of you may be saying, “Everything is stacked against the moral conservative. My vote won’t make a difference.”
· Don’t be deceived by the mainstream media. They do not portray the big picture of reality; they only portray a small part of what actually is, and they only see what they want to see.
· In reality, our local elections are typically won or lost by 200-300 votes.
· At a Family Research Council meeting in 2007, Karl Rove estimated that the pro-life majority in the U.S. House was lost in the year 2006 by a mere 3,000 votes nationwide. But that year, there were approximately 24 million Evangelical Christians who were not registered to vote, plus somewhere around 24 million more Evangelical Christians registered to vote who did not vote. Their failure to vote made the difference between life and death to thousands of unborn children.
· Sometimes even fewer votes make a big difference, such as Bush’s win in the year 2000 by a mere 200 votes! Those 200 votes enabled him to appoint pro-life judges and to sign off on a partial-birth abortion ban.
· Neil Mammen estimates that if only 15% more of the moral conservatives voted, we would be able to consistently put moral conservatives into office. Just 15% more. So don’t buy the lie that your vote won’t make a difference. It will. (Mammen, 40 Days, pp.277-279).
Here’s another excuse I’ve heard: Politics is not important. We should just live quiet lives and share the Gospel. Besides, the average person can’t understand all the nuances of the issues. I’m sick of all the mud-slinging and robo calls. It just makes me not want to vote. Besides, Jesus didn’t invest in politics!
· Au contraire, Jesus advised the political leaders of the Jews on how to apply God’s law to murder, divorce, adultery, blue laws, use of public space, treatment of the estates of widows, holiday observance, legal evidence in court, just sentencing, and other things. The lawmakers were called Pharisees and Saducees and the Sanhedrin. Those political groups are mentioned more than a couple of times in the Gospels! Just because Jesus didn’t live in a country where popular votes were taken doesn’t mean He wasn’t politically active.
· Now, I’m not saying that God is calling every one of you to be a political activist, but I am saying that God has given every adult here the opportunity to influence civil society in some way, even if it is nothing more than one vote in the elections.
· Biblical Christianity is the only religion in the world which provides a coherent system of morality and order for society, and it is the only one in the world which consistently gives freedom to those who do not believe in the Bible. It is not loving your neighbor to passively allow non-Christian politicians to re-shape our country according to their non-Christian ideals because their ideals will bring more suffering and oppression.
· Every other world religion ultimately demands a man-made rule-making system which cannot tolerate a transcendent God as the final authority in all of life. Pluralists can tolerate any religious view as long as it is pluralistic, but they will persecute Christianity because we claim absolutes.
o Hinduism is the religion where anything goes, yet it seems that every month, Christian news sources tell us of some new instance of Hindus in India oppressing, pillaging, or killing Christians, and, in India, they don’t grant missionary visas to Christians.
o The Ancient Romans worshipped almost as many gods as the Hindus do, but the one thing they could not tolerate was Christians claiming that Jesus is the King of Kings, so they butchered Christians by the hundreds of thousands.
o This even happened in more modern times under the semi-pluralism of Roman Catholicism – “Worship any saint you want, as long as you don’t claim that Jesus is the head of the church.”
o Contemporary Neo-Atheistic Humanism proves to be cut of a similar cloth: Politely decline a contract to labor in support of a homosexual cause because you are a Bible-believing Christian, and you will be bullied out of the market. By the way, where are all the homosexual-owned t-shirt shops and bakers and florists who were put out of business by angry mobs of Christians who shut their businesses down for refusing to print homophobic slogans on their t-shirts and cakes?
o Do you understand? Biblical Christianity is the only religion which can provide true peace in the civil order. It is not helpful to American civil order to sit back and allow Secular Humanists to take the halls of power.
· Furthermore, if we fail to uphold Christian morality and worldviews in the elected offices of our country, politicians with worldviews hostile to ours will continue to remove Biblical principles of truth and morality and justice from the public schools and will continue to sweep clean all traces of Christianity from our nation until it is illegal to share your faith with anybody and illegal to support Christian missionaries.
· The foundation which was laid for our nation by her founding fathers and mentioned in our nation’s founding documents, that foundation of belief in a transcendent God who has laid down laws in the Bible which are morally binding upon all mankind, and an implicit support of the Christian faith, are important foundations to keep if we want to continue to fullfill the Great Commission of going into all the world and preaching the Gospel.
· I encourage you to research the confessions of faith and morals of the candidates on the ballot and vote accordingly on Tuesday. Please feel free to compare your research with my notes on the candidates which I am adding to the text of this sermon online.
[1] While I agree with the main points of Neil’s book, I believe that there are some areas that he needed to think through better, particularly regarding slavery, civil rights, judicial law, female civil leadership, and ecclesiastical responsibility for the poor. (Well, he could have used a better grammar editor, too, but I’ll just deal with the ideology here.) 1) The Bible actually supports contractual slavery as a remedy for poverty, so Neil, as a Bible-believing Christian, is inconsistent in painting all slavery as evil. In most cases, if Neil had replaced the word “slavery” with a phrase like “slave trade,” “chattel-slavery” or “involuntary servitude” I would agree with him. 2) Neil’s unqualified praise of the Civil Rights movement is problematic because, while there were some admirable things, such as alleviating race-based oppression and the involvement of church leadership in the political arena, there were also unbiblical things, such as preferential judicial treatment based on race and Marxist ideology to subvert Biblical order. 3) Neil’s position that “Judicial law” is a fourth category of Biblical law which perished along with the Ceremonial law is also problematic. First of all, it is unusual to separate this as a category out of the body of Biblical law, and secondly, his claim that the punishments God said were fair at one time in history are no longer fair today (and that we are free today to decide whatever we want as punishments for various sins) is not supported by Scripture. 4) Fourth, there is no Biblical basis for proactively seeking to place women in office, so his frequent references to putting Godly “men and women” into office does not square with Scripture. 5) Finally, Mammen emphasizes that the church (instead of civil government) should care for the poor, but does so to the exclusion of saying that individual Christians should care for the poor. I think this is a significant oversight. In conclusion, this brief overview of my areas of disagreement is admittedly inadequate for a rebuttal, but my purpose here is simply to outline my caveats so that readers would not think I agree with everything in Neal’s otherwise very good book.
[2] History of the United States, published by Durrie & Peck in 1832
[3] The Works of the Honorable James Wilson, Bird Wilson, ed. Vol I, p.103ff.
[4] http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1996/06/bg1084nbsp-how-welfare-harms-kids