DISCIPLING AMERICA: BLUEPRINT FOR RESTORATION

Recently I served on a task force that rewrote the social studies and history curriculum for the Fairfax County, Virginia public schools. In reviewing a multitude of documents and textbooks related to Virginia and U.S. government, I made a troubling discovery. Our children are not taught the truth about America's form of government. The meaning of republicanism and republican form of government has not changed, but our nation has. This "Blueprint" is for restoring these concepts to American life.

Article IV, Section 4, U.S. Constitution

The constitution of each original state created a republican government. Federalist Papers 10 and 51 show democracies an anathema. The people adamantly opposed a democracy as a form of government so a "republican guarantee" is in the federal constitution.

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.

Republicanism is "One Nation Under God." Republican form of government means self-government under the rule of law and distinguishes America from that of all other nations, past or present. Moreover, the concept of "self-government" sets republican government apart from a democracy, a representative democracy, and all other republics in history.

Do not, however, confuse republicanism with the Republican party. Based on the popularity of direct democracy among Republicans in the form of initiative and referendum, it appears that few know what republicanism and republican government are. This is why it is so important for us to understand the American Republic.

Self-government and rule of law mean little today as evidenced by the widespread sexual immorality of the people. Without doubt, sexual immorality is the number one cause of family break-up, sexual abuse, abortion, pornography, and numerous other crimes that contribute significantly to the skyrocketing health care costs, and public and private debt in our land. Unless we do something to restore the principles on which our Republic stands, the destruction of America is inevitable. It is simply a matter of time.

The most popular government textbook in our nation's public schools, Magruder's American Government (1997), describes the situation.

To most Americans...the terms democracy, republic, representative democracy, and republican form of government all mean the same thing. Whatever the terms used, remember that in a democracy the people are sovereign. They are the only source for any and all of government's power. In other words, the people rule.

In short, the people of America are confused but the textbook writer seems to think that it is obvious that the people rule regardless of the type of government. This, of course, is simply untrue.

To understand the truth, however, we must understand what sovereign and rule mean. Webster defines the nouns rule and sovereign as supreme command or authority, and the verb rule to govern.

The textbook writer believes the people have ultimate supreme authority regardless of the form of government. If true, why does the Declaration of Independence read:

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?

"Popular sovereignty" is based on the first principle that the creator of anything has authority over his created work. The people first created the nation with the Declaration of Independence. And twelve years later they created the nation's governmental structure with state and federal constitutions. Popular sovereignty thus means that the people have general authority over the nation under the laws of nature and of nature's God producing "One nation under God" Who delegated to man authority to create nations and form governments.

When the people formed our republican government by written constitutions, they assumed authority over the operation of government making civil magistrates their public servants, and limited all political action to the constitutional boundaries thereby created. And the people did not grant themselves rights through the state and federal constitutions of America. No. The Creator grants their rights upon conception of each human being and they are unalienable. And the end of government is to protect those individual unalienable rights. In contrast, any right created by the opinion of men, can change in an instant so that the people fear government and not God.

In America, the laws of the created order authorize the people to make laws for human conduct that conform to the laws of eternal justice such as the Ten Commandments. Popular sovereignty, therefore, is under the rule of fixed law not under the whimsical majority opinion of men. If the people of the American Revolution thought that they could change the sacred laws of human behavior by an opinion poll as is common today, then authorization from "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" to create the new nation was unnecessary. If ultimate power and authority reside in the people, they could simply say: "By the inherent authority to rule over our own corporate life we hereby declare our independence from England and create ourselves a new nation."

What Students Are Taught

An August 1997 draft document titled Virginia/U.S. Government, Standards, Benchmarks, and Indicators (Benchmarks) sets forth what a graduating senior in Fairfax County public schools should know about Virginia and U.S. government. Definitions of democracy and republic state: "The term democracy is derived from the Greek word for 'rule by the people,'" and "a republic [is] a state in which the citizenry as a whole is considered sovereign but which is governed by elected representatives rather than directly by the people, as in direct democracy."

Definitions Are Misleading

The definitions must be read together to understand that the Benchmarks' definition of democracy refers to direct democracy where the people have supreme authority and actually exercise governing power by making laws based on opinion. Under this governmental form, the majority opinion of the people determines right and wrong because the people rule. A democracy is truly an "empire of men" governed by opinion. And where "the citizenry as a whole is considered sovereign but...is governed by elected representatives" who respond to opinion not fixed law, that is a representative democracy, not a republic as stated. And as shown by the recent impeachment proceedings, opinion polls now rule in America.

In his essay Thoughts on Government (1776), John Adams defines a republic.

[T]here is no good government but what is republican...the very definition of a republic is "an empire of laws, and not of men." That, as a republic is the best of governments, so...that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws, is the best of republics.

In a republic, law is sovereign not opinion. Only in a democracy does opinion reign. The Benchmarks do not include the Adams definition.

Republics other than the American Republic exist and have existed in the world. For example, the national socialist republic of Nazi Germany, the soviet socialist republic of the former Soviet Union, and the current People's Republic of China. In each, the State's opinion is law because these republics have separated God from government. Their people are thus enslaved and the controlling elite live in opulent splendor and lord it over them.

What distinguishes the American Republic from all others in history? Answer: the legal document that created our nation. The Declaration of Independence proclaims "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" the supreme authority, which entitled the people "to dissolve the political bands that connected [them] with [England]" and "to assume among the powers of the earth [their] separate and equal station [as a new nation]." Known primary sources also call them the governing authorities, the laws of the Created Order, the laws of eternal justice, the eternal laws of order and right, the rule of right, and God's law(s).

The Father of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams, confirms a republican truth when he said as the Declaration was being signed:

We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.

Sam Adams proclaimed the truth of the Declaration that Jesus is Lord of the United States of America! The truth is: The people have supreme power in a democracy and the State rules in all other republics, but God is sovereign in the American Republic.

America's Public Servants

Jesus declared a fundamental governing principle under the rule of law.

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant (Matt.20:25-26).

Here Jesus commands magistrates to be public servants in a God-fearing nation. Without God, public officials lord it over the people. In a God-centered society, however, the people have servant leadership. The public servant principle embodied in the American Republic is uniquely Christian.

In His earthly ministry, Jesus confronted the State numerous times. Yet, today most Christians reject confrontation of any kind. They tend to divide life into the secular and the sacred--the holy and the profane. They properly spend time in ministry to others, reading and teaching Scripture, and in prayer. They work with God in the body of Christ and commune with Him in their personal and corporate spiritual lives. Yet everything else in life--work, the education of children, paying the bills for food, clothes, and shelter, and paying taxes to the civil government--is deemed secular. You are labeled "religious right extremist" if you confront the State.

Many Americans vote but most know little about how our Republic should work. Christians, additionally, do not know what our Lord commands us to do with respect to our nation. Some complain about paying taxes, but few know how the State is spending the revenue taken from us and that most of what the State is doing is unauthorized by the state and federal constitutions. The vast majority still trusts the public school system believing that the best interests of our children are important there. Yet the evidence shows otherwise. Atheism is taught and works to separate the children from parents, from the things parents believe, and from the truth concerning the operation of the American Republic.

In How Should We Then Live, a leading twentieth century Christian philosopher, Francis Schaeffer, defines a worldview:

People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By presuppositions we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic worldview, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People's presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.

The secular worldview eliminates God from our presuppositions and the sacred, where it conforms to Scripture, constitutes a God-centered worldview. The people who created America and its government had a Biblical worldview. Question: What is your worldview?

Law of Faith/Law of Human Conduct

The law of faith says that each of us lives by faith in someone or something. Some direct their faith to God. Others put their faith in man and his ability to solve his own problems. Each of us has either a Biblical perspective, a non-Biblical perspective, or, at best, a mixture of the two. And the law of human conduct holds that as a man thinks within himself, so is he (Prov.23:7) and thus explains why we do what we do. With the heart we believe (Rom.10:10) and out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks (Matt.12:34). The heart is the spirit of man and contains his belief system.

How Do Ideas Get Into Heart?

We only believe that which we consider to be true. When that becomes part of our belief system, we act accordingly. Truth is the knowledge of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Biblically, this includes His law, commandments, and word (Psa.119:142,151,160) and Jesus Himself (John 14:6). Much of what we believe, however, are lies taught by the opinion of men in religious tradition. Why? Because we don't know and/or understand what the Bible says and we believe things because of who told us or simply because it sounds good.

The law of the mind distinguishes setting our minds on things of the spirit (God) and on things of the flesh (man) (Rom.8:5). When we are God-centered, we practice self-government (Gal.5:16). And the fruit of the Holy Spirit includes individual self-government (Gal.5:22-23). Renewing our minds enables us to walk in the spirit. We must proclaim the gospel of the kingdom so others can benefit from a belief in Jesus as their personal Lord. He also commands us to disciple the nations. This is in harmony with the second great commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Each of us, therefore, is responsible for discipling at least the nation in which we live.

The Corporate Salvation of a Nation

The people at America's beginning understood how a nation under God should work. Their appeal to the laws of England for their individual and civil rights was consciously exchanged for the rule of the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God as found in the Declaration of Independence. And before that, the several state constitutions reflected reliance on the law of nature, which the then popular 17th century scholar, John Locke, called the will of God. George Mason, for example, wrote in the Virginia Declaration of Rights (June 12, 1776):

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Here "inherent rights" alludes to the "unalienable" God-endowed rights of the Declaration adopted in Philadelphia the following month. These words are in Art.I, Sec.1 of the current Constitution of Virginia. God's sovereignty necessarily requires the people and the public officials of America to have a working knowledge of the rule of His law.

The Rule of Law in America

God's law officially rules in America as revealed in its founding documents. To know how His law has been and should be applied to public policy decisions of the State necessarily requires an understanding of the difference between power and authority. Webster defines power as the faculty of doing or performing anything, and authority as legal power. Legal means lawful or rightful. Law is a rule of action, which is prescribed by a superior, and which an inferior is bound to obey. Right means conformity to the will of God. As incorporated in the founding documents, God's fixed, uniform, and universal law provides the standard of authority for all human conduct in America, individual and corporate.

With the governing authorities of the laws of eternal justice fixed, Sir William Blackstone's rule of right enables the individual to obey those laws and thereby experience happiness. And so long as the individual practices self-government, the State has no authority to impose its will on that person. Self-government therefore should maintain the unalienable right to liberty. Based on the republican form of government, which is self-government under the rule of law, it necessarily follows that every problem that exists in life can be traced to its source as someone having exercised power without authority.

The two series of papers introduced here and entitled The Founder's Worldview and Discipling America: Blueprint for Restoration lay out a plan for turning America back to God and restoring the American Republic. The plan has three parts: Understanding the fundamental principles of republicanism, learning how those principles apply to every aspect of life, and then implementing those principles in our individual and corporate lives. The papers concentrate on the application to and implementation of republican principles for law, government, and education, and provide a proper foundation for equipping and training political leaders who will be prepared to assume elected and appointed positions of civic responsibility. We look forward to working with those who are fully committed to God and will not wilt in the face of adversity.

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Last modified: December 23, 2000