If the government exists because of sin, we should be inherently suspicious of sin, not its corrective.

So, does the logic of this: “the Declaration of Independence referred to rights derived from “the law of nature and of nature’s God” and [Kuyper] thought the U.S. Constitution reflected a “sovereignty derived from God” lead to the conclusion that all States is sinful except the U.S.A.? I think this thinking leads to (Christian?) civil religion.

Well, some laws are necessary because only because of sin.
But sometimes we just need to decide as a society how to structure ourselves — “everyone do your own thing” just won’t work.
For instance, I am entirely convinced that God simply does not care whether we drive on the right side of the street like Americans or the left side of the street like the Brits. We do not need to pray and study the Bible and examine our consciences in an attempt to discern whether we should really be driving on the left side of the street and our current traffic regulations are deeply sinful. Nor is it necessary for the Brits to engage in the same sort of soul-searching to ultimately start driving on the right side. God doesn’t care.
But God does care tremendously, I am sure, that we have a standard way of operating so when we get on the road we know what to do, both to avoid running people over and also so that we don’t have gridlock with everyone constantly trying to yield the right of way to everyone else.
This sort of collective decision-making is called “government.”

Amen to Diane, with the addition that we should be equally wary of something not present during the time of the founding fathers of the union – big business headed by greedy executives. One reason we need government is to keep watch on this group, though I agree government needs some watching as well.

Gary has a point. I’m not sure Kuyper (I have a Christian Reformed background) took seriously enough the sinful disposition of what he termed the intermediate structures, even family, schools, etc.

With others above, I guess I’d say huge sections of governmental work is only necessary because of sin, but not all of it. That’s the same for parenting work or the work of the press. Some of what all these involve is mere service of others and administration/organization of larger-scale activity that would helpful to all even if no one sinned.
But all these activities do involve the use of power by sinful people and therefore all warrant some safeguarding and some checks. I think parenting has some checks built-in to our physiology, which is harder to say for government for which more of the checks have to be built and maintained by people.
And Diane, yes and no! Can we get some non-sinners somewhere to do the governing? If not, we should be suspicious of handing the power “to correct” to a subset of sinners. The greater the power, the greater the reason for monitoring and accountability.

Here’s a sort of related question: will there be “government” in the eschaton (“heaven” or “the new heavens and the new earth”)? I think there will be government. A number of eschatological passages in scripture seem to suggest that governing will be a key task for humanity in the eschaton. This suggests to me that “government” is in some ways part of the created order, and not only necessary because of sin.

@dopderbeck
Could you point out some of the particular passages? I would be quite curious. I guess I was raised in the Reformed tradition (we didn’t call it that) and Kuyper’s arguments sound pretty much exactly like what I’ve always learned as the normative Christian view. I have always been told that the kings starting with Saul were God’s relenting to the rebellion of the Israelites against His theocratic rule and that in heaven that rule would be restored. Any thoughts on that? I have almost no clue what heaven actually looks like but I would never have thought of “government” as being part of it because it does seem like a structure resulting from sin instead of “the way it ought to be”.
Anyway, I’m glad for having a place like this to “stretch” my faith intellectually. It’s incredible to see the breadth of thought in Christendom.

Jordan,
There are several references to not only Christ, but his followers, “sitting on thrones” and/or “reigning” or even “judging angels.” Also, even if having a singular human king (instead of God directly) started with Saul, that’s not the same as saying that Israel had no government before Saul. Moses appointed multiple layers of judges, the priests had various leadership roles, the tribes had elders, etc. Coordination and leadership of large groups is governing, which was happening long before Saul was crowned, and I agree with David, will be going on in the age to come.

David (#7)
Does that also imply there will be lawyers in heaven? If so, can we really call it heaven?

Kenton,
Where there are streets of gold, there will be lawyers.

Oops. The gold comment was me!

Dooyeweerdians have critiqued Kuyper on this aspect of his thought – suggesting that Kuyper is holding to an unbiblical dualistic ground motive (nature-grace) with respect to the state.

T (#9)
I associate the “reigning” or “sitting on thrones” as going along with the idea of Christians being “co-heirs” with Christ. That through a shared life with Christ we share on some level *his* reign and throne. I guess I’ve just always seen heaven as so egalitarian that I can’t imagine any “government” other than God himself.
For sure prior to Saul there were the judges and prior to that Moses, but I always learned that that was a progressive “allowance” from God based on the increasing rebellion of the Israelites rather than a progress in government itself. So I guess the question is if God was “accommodating” the Israelites rebellion so that they would eventually see the error of their ways or if it was God’s plan for government all along and we’ve just managed to mess it up throughout history. Any thoughts or especially relevant Scripture on this?

Jordan (#8): 1 Cor. 6 refers to believers judging angels in the eschaton. Rom. 20 also seems to suggest that believers will stand in a place of judgment. Of course, these passages could suggest simply a role in the final judgment, but Rev. 22:5 says the saints “will reign for ever and ever.” The original creation mandate in Gen. 1:28 was for humanity to “rule over” creation, so Rev. 22 seems to be a recapitulation of this vice-regency. Since “reign” and “rule over” and the like are words of governance, it seems clear to me that “government” is part of the creational mandate and that there will be “government” in the eschaton. But I do agree with Kuyper that certain functions of government as we know it — particularly the function of the “sword” as identified in Romans 13 — will no longer be required in the eschaton.
Kenton (#10) – it will be “heaven” because everyone will actually listent to the advice of their lawyers!

I think there will be government (expressed biblically as reigning, judging, etc.) in the eschaton, so “government” in the abstract is not only a result of sin. But is God’s rule (“the government is on his shoulders”) to be identified with or paralleled to our current nation-states? If so, how? The question isn’t “Is government, aka decision-making within groups good, necessary evil, or bad?” It’s how do we, as a called out church with its own governance, relate to the specific nation-states we find ourselves in?

Jordan (#14) — I agree that, Biblically speaking, proper human “government” is a vice-regency from God — that human authority to govern is always and only authority delegated to humans by God. But I don’t necessarily think this implies “egalitarianism” if by that is meant that no human being can have authority over another absent the need to restrain sin.
If the new heaven and new earth are truly emodied just as our present creation is embodied, and if the “reign” of humanity in this eschatological kingdom is a recapitulation of the Gen. 1 creational mandate, what will that actually involve? We can only imagine and speculate, but I think about, for example, people whose “job” it will be to properly manage oceans teeming with life. There will need to be rules, procedures, structures of reporting, and so on — in other words, “government” — if mere human beings (even with glorified bodies) will be able to accomplish such tasks. It will surely be different from our present experience if there is no sin — no selfishness, no oppression, no waste, and so on. But still, it seems to me that there will be “government.”

David,
Yes. I’ve had similar discussion about our current economic activity. Certainly, if God reigned perfectly here as in heaven, some economic activity would cease (I’m thinking right off about how some items are marketed and sold, for instance) but not all of it, not even close. As you say, man was given tasks in the garden even before the ground was cursed, even before sin was an issue. Jesus, with his glorified body, prepared and even ate fish! I think a lot of our gnosticism comes out in discussions like these. Ultimately, there will be physical activity in the age to come and that activity will be rewarding and coordinated, not in the way rulers of this age boss people around, but whereby we all serve each other, properly using and caring for God’s creation.

I haven’t read Kuyper at all or Political Philosophy in a while but his thinking sounds terribly muddled. On the one hand he want’s Hobbes’ Leviathan because of original sin, and yet we need Locke lest Leviathan devour us! Sort of have your cake and eat it too! No wonder he’s a Calvinist!
Cheap shot, but couldn’t resist.

While I like aspects of Kuyper, particularly his ideas of sphere sovereignty and government playing a subsidiary role, I don’t agree that government is a consequence of sin. I think governance is inherent in the creation mandate. I also suspect there will be something akin to markets in the new creation. Finite as we are, we are not capable of truly knowing well more than a few dozen people. Structures that help us connect beyond our immediate sphere of relationships are needed and that means government and economics. It is hard to say because we don’t know in what ways our new existence will differ from the present.
Furthermore, we know that governance will look similar conservative Republican governance. Ecclesiastes 10:2 says:
“The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.”

I’m inclined to agree with Michael Kruse, except for the Eccl. joke . I think we see governance at work prior to the fall (at least as a hope or vision) and we see it prior to the establishment of Saul’s throne. The judges governed and Moses also governed the people. Governance is part of ordering and that seems to be a primary concern of Yahweh’s, especially if we follow Waltke’s premises on Genesis 1 about God ordering Chaos.
I suppose I lean towards a libertarian/very localized and decentralized version of government because I trust that it’s been affected by the fall and it’s easier to deal with corruption in local governance than national, remote governance.

I meant Walton when I typed Waltke on that last post @ 21

“What do you think – does the State (government) exist only because of sin? Should we be inherently suspicious of government?”
I’m not a Kuyperian (I think Kuyper was intoxicated by power and far too triumphalistic in his theology), but I agree with him on this point. I would say the state is a provisional necessity due to the ongoing reality of sin. The narrative logic of Scripture locates the state post-Fall. (I think finding government in the first two chapters of Genesis requires eisegesis.)
We should be “suspicious of government”–the state is one of the primary manifestations of the powers and principalities. Ironically, Kuyper was not suspicious enough of the state.

I think we need to define exactly what we mean by government. I’m sure that there are some functions that we currently use the government to fulfill that will continue on into the next age. But I’m not sure they will be performed by any institution that we would recognize as government. For instance, most industrial countries have government run educational systems, but this is done mainly because only the government can raise the necessary (or so we’re told) funds. In the fully realized Kingdom, I don’t think you will have to coerce funding from people for the common good, and schools won’t need to rely on coerced taxation to operate. I really think that any future Kingdom that has taxation will be somewhat less than “heavenly”. But once you remove the ability to legally collect money at the point of a gun, you have taken away the only reason for a government to exist, and the only thing that distinguishes it from other social institutions.
While there may be lawyers in heaven, will there be tax lawyers?

vanguardchurch.blogspot.com
friendofkuyper.blogspot.com
Let’s be fair to my friend, Abraham Kuyper!
Certainly, he believed that because of sin, we need government (which I think we all can agree with, even if we think, as I do, that government would have existed without sin). And we can also agree that the only case study that we have before us is a world with sin, so its hard to say what role government would have had if there had been no Fall.
We can be thankful for Kuyper’s principle of Sphere Sovereignty – it limits government, not allowing government to rule over the other spheres of culture. This empowers the other societal institutions to use their specific skills for the common good, and helps us not put all our eggs in the basket of the state to solve our problems.
By the way, those who follow Kuyper nuance his understanding of government’s role in the goodness of Creation (see Herman Dooyeweerd, Al Wolters, Paul Marshall, Ray Pennings, Richard Mouw).

“The narrative logic of Scripture locates the state post-Fall. (I think finding government in the first two chapters of Genesis requires eisegesis.)”
I think there are implied aspects to the cultural mandate. If you are going to “fill the earth” and exercise dominion it is going to require coordination. I think theologians through the years have seen this as strongly implied.
But even more compelling for me is the biblical narrative. The biblical narrative does not end with a return to the garden. The narrative begins in a garden and ends in a city. Cities were the prime symbol of governance and commerce in the ancient world.
Revelation 21:26 says:
“People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”
NRSV
Christopher Wright (and others) suggest that cultural aspects of the nations will be brought into the New Jerusalem and incorporated into that reality.
While it isn’t explicitly there I don’t think it is purely eisegesis.

#25 was in response to Josh in #23

vanguardchurch.blogspot.com
friendofkuyper.blogspot.com
Michael,
Don’t you mean “#26 was in response to Josh in #23″
I think you’re articulating what most of today’s true Kuyperians would state about government as a part of the Cultural Mandate. I think that David and especially many who are weighing in here that are (appropriately) frustrated with American Calvinism (which shows an underdeveloped work in Kuyperian political thought) need to hear this.

Good question David.
God gave the law to restrain sin, not the State. They are not quite the same.
The unique thing that government brings to the game is coercion. Was there coercion in Genesis 1,2? I cannot see any.
Will there be coercion in the heavenly city. I cannot see why. Perfect love and perfect knowledge makes coercion unnecessary.
Michael #26 Your interpretation of Rev 21:24 reads too much into it. Kings may bring their glory into the heavenly city, but they will not be able to hang onto it. They will immediately hand it over to the true king Jesus.
When a king or president seeks political asylum in the United States, the media will still refer to him with his title, but all his political authority is gone. The simple reason is that you cannot have two kings or two presidents.
Jesus will be king in the heavenly city. There cannot be other kings. They will have to become servants to enter in.

It just struck me that this conversation is almost entirely about how one views the role of government.
If one views the role of government as cooperative organization of effort, then the idea of government in heaven sounds reasonable.
On the other hand, if one views the role of government as the”ability to legally collect money at the point of a gun”, the punisher of bad behavior, the institution that provides for a “common defense”, etc. then you can see why people would see that as necessitated by sin and not something you’d find in heaven.
I think this exposes left-leaning versus right-leaning political philosophy.

If one views the role of government as cooperative organization of effort, then the idea of government in heaven sounds reasonable.
But there are many social institution that do this, businesses, clubs, churches, that we do not call government, the only one we call “government” is the institution that brings the ability to tax to the table.

Bob #28
“Michael,
Don’t you mean “#26 was in response to Josh in #23″
I would swear the numbers changed on me between writing and posting that thing.
Ron #29
“Your interpretation of Rev 21:24 reads too much into it. Kings may bring their glory into the heavenly city, but they will not be able to hang onto it. They will immediately hand it over to the true king Jesus.”
Well, I think it is hard to be certain about the precise content of this stuff. What you are saying is what I thought I was communicating. Everything is brought into the city and everything comes under the lordship of Christ. I don’t think that means transforming humanity into a monoculture. There could be many legitimate ways of accomplishing things across cultures. God redeems that which is good and makes it part of a the Kingdom.
In a larger sense, I think this is where Darrell Cosden talks about both continuity and radical discontinuity between the present and the consummated New Creation. In some sense, what we are doing individually and culturally is remembered by God. That which is just is “remembered into” (my phrase) the New Creation. Somehow the stuff we do today has influence on what is to come but that is about the most that I think can be said.

Bob (#25) — thanks for weighing in. I hope you don’t read the post as bashing Kuyper. That’s not what I intend at all. And I agree, some notion of “subsidiarity” (in Catholic parlance) or “sphere sovereignty” is important. There’s no doubt that the Bible is very, very hard on the overreaching of government, particularly when government tramples on the rights of the poor. In fact, it’s fair to read from scripture a sense that secular governments are under the sway of and perpetuate the “powers” that oppose God’s Kingdom (more on that in next weeks post, perhaps!).
No one has commented much yet on Kuyper’s idealization of the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution. I find this very problematic. Can a set of founding documents that recognizes the “liberty,” in reality, only of white males, reflect genuinely Christian principles?

I think we have to remember that Kuyper knew his Princeton audience and thought it best to include laudatory comments about his host country. As to whether government is needed only as remedy for sin, both Kuyper and Dooyeweerd believed this. However, it is worth noting that virtually all of Dooyeweerd’s latter-day followers, including myself, differ with him on this point. True, in a society lacking sin there would be no need for coercion, but there would still be need for coordination of activities. If one can imagine a society made up of entirely virtuous persons, manufacturing bicycles would hardly be possible if this depended solely on the spontaneous good will of the participants in this enterprise. Parts would not fit together, there would be too many of one part and not enough of another, &c.
Here I follow the Catholic philosopher, Yves Ren? Simon, who argues that authority has several functions, some of which are needed for reasons unrelated to human sinfulness. I would put it this way: because we are creatures limited in knowledge and capacities, we need something like government to order our common life together.
Yet even in Calvin’s Institutes we read of government: ?Its function among men is no less than that of bread, water, sun, and air; indeed, its place of honour is far more excellent.? We are created in such a way that we need bread, water, sun and air. Calvin strongly implies that this is true as well of government.

“No one has commented much yet on Kuyper’s idealization of the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution. I find this very problematic. Can a set of founding documents that recognizes the “liberty,” in reality, only of white males, reflect genuinely Christian principles?”
This seems like an ahistorical question, David. To shift the example, no one can doubt that Magna Carta simply ratified the victory of the Barons over King John at Runnymede. Yet its significance over the centuries came to be much more than this, as it marked the beginning of constitutional government in the English-speaking world. This was not a guarantee of equality under the law as we would understand it today, but it certainly represented genuine progress over what had existed before.
Could not something similar be said of the U.S. Constitution? It was and is not perfect, yet it stands as a document of unprecedented durability and represents, with Magna Carta, another milestone in the evolution of constitutional government. I too am sceptical of those who would overstate the christian influences on the document, mostly due to the evident influence of social contract thinking on especially the preamble. As for recognizing the liberty only of white males, this is of course true, but history did not stop in 1787 or 1791. Moreover, one has to begin somewhere. One ought not to blame a five-year-old for being immature. If she is still so at age 30, then she would deserve criticism.

David Koyzis — great comments! Very interesting to hear that there are some bridges between Dooyeweerdians and Catholic thinkers. As to the U.S. Constitution representing progress — yes, absolutely. It was and is a magnificent document in the context of its own times. But at the same time, we can’t reify it. In my experience, this happens far too often — we hold up the Constitution as a model of “Christian” principles, without acknowledging how it permitted African slavery to fester. So on this point, I think Kuyper and many who claim to be modern-day Kuyperians need to be taken to task.

It is perhaps because I am in Canada that I don’t see the phenomenon of which you speak amongst our Kuyperians here. But even in the US you will not find this in, say, Jim Skillen, recently retired president of the Center for Public Justice, or his successor, Gideon Strauss. Chuck Colson has been influenced by Kuyper to be sure, mostly through his one-time ghost writer Nancy Pearcey, but he hardly represents the Kuyperian mainstream in the US.
As for the US Constitution allowing slavery to continue, this was the best that could be done at the time given the presence of the southern slave states in the negotiations of the late 1780s. Given that there was no consensus in favour of its abolition, it would not have been possible to do so without risking the existence of the proposed federal union. In practical politics one must often be content to accept small steps in the right direction while tolerating undoubted flaws for the time being.
To shift the example, while I am unequivocally pro-life, my own sense is that some pro-lifers are so thoroughly preoccupied with this one issue that they tend to lose sight of the importance of the ordinary tasks of governance. The fact that the current judicial r?gime tolerates the abortion licence, which violates justice in a rather basic way, cannot discredit the constitution as a whole.

Although, I personally am so far to the left that even the democrats appear to me to be “right-wing,” I consider myself to be a strict constitutionalist. It is my opinion that since its inception there has been an organized and systematic assault by the conservatives in the United States (and in the other industrialized nations) on the civil liberties written into the US Constitution. The ?War on Drugs?; ?War on Terror?; ?War on Communism? and a host of other wars waged by the right wing are really nothing more than a War on People–an excuse to erode civil rights to the point of non-existence. I invite you to my website devoted to raising awareness on this puritan attack on freedom: http://pltcldscsn.blogspot.com/

It is easy to single out right-wingers as a threat to freedom, isn’t it, Your Name? Let me suggest that the real threat to freedom comes from those who would redefine it as the right to do anything we please short of harming another. Libertarians of both right and left are guilty of this. Freedom cannot long endure on such a flimsy basis.

D. Koyzis (#37) — I think you’re being way too easy on the problem of slavery with respect to the Constitution. It’s hardly the case that most of the founders were eager for abolition. As we all know, many of them were major slaveholders. There is just no way, for example, that when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence he secretly intended to include black slaves (or women) among those who were endowed by the Creator with unalienable rights. Why is it still so hard to just be honest about this: slavery was a horrible blight on the founding of America; its enduring presence after the Revolution decimates any claim that the founding documents are deeply infused with “Christian” principles (if we mean by that the universal ethics of Jesus). (BTW, did you ever notice that in the Lectures Kuyper attributed the Declaration to John Hancock? I wonder, if he had known that it was really drafted by Jefferson, and if he had really understood Jefferson’s religious views, whether he would have viewed that document in the same light?)
I hear what you’re saying about “true Kuyperians” vs. the religious right in America, but it sounds like the “no true Scotsman” argument. Having lived in the heart of Evangelical culture war-dom, I can’t just brush aside the influence of the likes of Colson, Pearcey, and so on. Reading Kuypers’s Lectures on Calvinism again this past week, I was struck with how much what he said there about American exceptionalism resonates with religious right rhetoric today.
Though I very much admire Kuyper’s work — and even more so, I appreciate (to the extent I can follow it!) Dooyeweerd’s political philosophy — I feel like we need to “get beyond” these political theologies here in America. I’m not sure the “moderate” Kuyperians you mention can get us past the disasters of the culture wars and into more constructive political engagement.

“….the disasters of the culture wars and into more constructive political engagement.”
David,
Great comment and post. I appreciate your contribution here on Jesus Creed. A big learning curve for me.

“I think you’re being way too easy on the problem of slavery with respect to the Constitution. It’s hardly the case that most of the founders were eager for abolition. As we all know, many of them were major slaveholders. There is just no way, for example, that when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence he secretly intended to include black slaves (or women) among those who were endowed by the Creator with unalienable rights.”
David, I think you’re missing my point here. I agree with you about Jefferson and the slaveholding participants in the constitutional conferences that led to the American federal republic. In fact, slavery wasn’t the only problem from our own contemporary point of view. There were more: (1) Women were not enfranchised; (2) the Constitution provided for a kind of aristocratic republic rather than a democracy; (3) the states were not bound by the Bill of Rights; thus (4) state church establishments were unaffected.
I mentioned Magna Carta in this vein because there too the barons were not intending to secure equality under the law in the full sense. It simply ratified their victory over the king. Nevertheless we have to look at both documents in their context. Both secured small victories that would eventually be expanded to include previously disenfranchised groups in England, the United States and Canada. One must look at empirical constitutions as evolving phenomena, which include written documents but are not reducible to them. Yes, the American Christian ascription of near holy writ status to the US Constitution (i.e., the document) is na?ve, but one needn’t go that far to have some appreciation of the legacy of the American founders, a legacy that they did not invent but only inherited and developed further.
“Though I very much admire Kuyper’s work — and even more so, I appreciate (to the extent I can follow it!) Dooyeweerd’s political philosophy — I feel like we need to “get beyond” these political theologies here in America. I’m not sure the “moderate” Kuyperians you mention can get us past the disasters of the culture wars and into more constructive political engagement.”
I myself am not part of the so-called religious right, so I can sympathize on one level, David. But clearly you believe that slavery was worth fighting against in the context of the early 19th century. Yet it led to a real war that produced a million casualties, including half a million deaths. Today’s culture “wars” have been far less disruptive than that, yet at least one of the issues, i.e., abortion, is scarcely less important. What would you propose as “constructive political engagement” in this context?

Vanguard Church and “Friend of Kuyper”
David,
We certainly can, and should, be critical of Kuyper, just as it is appropriate to be critical of any theologian and/or philosopher. For instance, there are things we should criticize in Calvin’s Institutes or in Papal encyclicals or what we read in patristic literature. That’s fine. But what I think we need to do is be fair to these writings and see them in their cultural/historical context. And we must be careful of lumping all who follow their line of theology in modern times into a group that we can dismiss because they are “one of those.” I don’t think you’re necessarily attempting to do this, but the ramifications of your comments may lead someone there.
In my previous comment (#25), I said that “those who follow Kuyper nuance his understanding of government’s role in the goodness of Creation (see Herman Dooyeweerd, Al Wolters, Paul Marshall, Ray Pennings, Richard Mouw).” I should have included in that list David Koyzis, whose book Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies is one of the finest I’ve ever read on Christian political philosophy. Thanks, David, for commenting here! It’s so helpful.
Also, the Kuyperian group Center for Public Justice (with Gideon Strauss as its new president and James Skillen as its previous president) offers what today’s true modern-day American Kuyperians are offering to the discussion.
Contrary to many of the comments I’ve seen here on this thread, Chuck Colson and the Religious Right have less in common with what these true modern-day Kuyperians believe than what people think.

David (#42) — indeed, the comparison between American slavery and abortion is a difficult one for someone, like me, who abhors the culture wars. You could also cite the example of the Confessing Church vis-a-vis the Nazis. Still, I’m certain that you wouldn’t advocate violence against abortion providers.
I suppose my first response is to refer to the American civil rights movement, at least to its best moments, epitomized in the non-violence of MLK — even if I’m not totally sure I agree with MLK’s heavy reliance on natural law theory.
What I abhor is the totalizing force of the culture wars in our American Churches. It’s exceedingly hard in our context to be “pro-life” but not strident, angry, and also pro-war and economically libertarian right-wing. The critique of Roe v. Wade at the popular level somehow has gotten translated into the vernacular of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. That is what I despise. (To be clear, I also despise abortion, except in those exceedingly rare circumstances in which there is truly a dire life-for-life choice).
I’m NOT suggesting you (David K.) or Richard Mouw et al. are in that vein, not at all. Yet, there is something wrong with the message, because I can testify from many years of personal on-the-ground experience that these are the bad fruits the culture wars have borne. Something needs to change.

I was just thinking a bit more about this comparison between abortion and the Civil War. Here’s one thought: what if the Christian churches in the antebellum South had preached that, regardless of what the Constitution permits, all black slaves should be freed? I suspect that the question of slavery then could have been resolved non-violently. Unfortunately, those Southern churches branded the abolitionists as heretics, and preached that black slavery was part of God’s providential design.
How much of the abortion and marriage problem in the U.S. could be mitigated by Churches simply taking care of our own families? There is a place for political advocacy for sure, but to what extent is our witness compromised by the need to win in the political arena?

David, there may indeed be political posturing as part of the so-called culture wars. But it does make a difference to everyone if government claims to be able to define legally an institution that is antecedent to government itself, or neglects to include certain classes of human beings in its understanding of legal personhood. Absolutely we should attend to our own marriages and families, but this ought not be taken to exclude political activity.
That said, as I tell my students, if human sacrifice were widely practised here in Canada, merely passing a law against it would not necessarily end the practice. The British ban on sati in India did not itself rid that country of an ancient hindu tradition, however horrific they found it.
Could the American civil war have been averted through ordinary political means? We know, of course, that this was attempted many times prior to 1860. Abraham Lincoln “won” the presidency with just under 40 percent of the popular vote and carried not a single southern state. That suggests that, had the US had a different method of electing a president which had brought to office a less divisive figure, the tragedy might have been avoided. But aside from the institutional issue, if the abolitionists had shown patience and a willingness to accept gradual progress in their cause, a peaceful compromise might have been possible.
This is, of course, monday morning quarterbacking, and we all have 20/20 hindsight. (I think I may have mixed a metaphor here. Sorry!) But I think there’s a lesson to be learnt from this for today’s pro-lifers. I am definitely on side of the pro-life cause, but I think we may have to be satisfied with something falling well short of legal protection for all life in the womb. This is something that culture warriors may be insufficiently adept at doing.
Nearly 20 years ago Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s abortion bill was opposed by many Christians because it accepted the reality of abortion and merely tried to regulate the practice. The result was that the measure ended up failing and there is now a complete legal vacuum with respect to abortion in Canada. This is the consequence of an all-or-nothing attitude on the part of pro-lifers working to defeat the bill.
In short, I think there are more parallels between the pro-life and abolition movements than we are generally accustomed to seeing.