After thirty years of living and working directly in the political sphere, my experience regarding this week’s vice-presidential debate and my reaction to it were unusual. My experience may not have been atypical, but I suspect my reaction is not one you will get from any other source. If my experience mirrors yours, I have an offer for you.

How I “Experienced” the Debate

What was most unusual for me is I didn’t watch any of the debate except when my wife and I finished watching an episode of a show we were streaming on our television and switched back to the network station it had been on previously.

The regular broadcast channel filled the screen just in time for me to hear Tim Walz cite Matthew 25:40 and quote part of a parable by Jesus recorded there: “And the King shall answer and say unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’”

In what was perhaps one minute of unplanned viewing, it appeared to me that this verse was being ripped from its context regarding relations between individuals. I consider the verses an application of what the second great commandment means in interpersonal relations.

But it seemed to have been used to excuse or justify the lawless influx of invaders at our borders under the watch of the federal government.

(Using the word “invader” will sound pejorative to Walz-ian ears but it’s not. In law, the word “immigrant” has a legal meaning as does the word “refugee,” and most of those coming across our border do not have either legal status, making them, in law, a type of invader. In the history of that word, invaders were those who encroached—invaded—the rights of another and those whose encroachment was of a hostile nature. But I digress.)

My wife asked if I wanted to watch, and I said, “No.” One inadvertent minute was enough.

My Reaction to the Debate

That, along with some of the “highlights” I read about on Wednesday morning, confirmed my growing suspicion that our nation’s problems are rooted in the mess the Protestant church has made of things in our country.  

And, no, I’m not about to turn into David French or Russell Moore! For the reasons below, I think they are a product of what I think our problem is.

Why This Was My Reaction

My reaction comes from what I increasingly think was a wrong turn among Protestants when the centuries’ long historical developments in church-state relations met the atheistic poison of the French Revolution in the late 18^th century.

What to that point had been a messy and sometimes violent struggle for balance in church-state relations on the continent of Europe and in England took a different direction in our country. The long-term effect of our experiment with church-state relations proved to be the complete secularization of law and civil government in our country.

Of course, as I’ve written many times, this secularization was, at bottom, atheistic. The tacit religion of our country is now atheism.

Anyway, the more I learn from my study of the historical church-state context in which our nation was formed, the more I realize that nothing either of the major political parties are talking about at the federal level, or here in Tennessee, will right the so-called ship of state.

That’s why I didn’t bother watching. To my ears, it would have been like Snoopy listening to Charlie Brown.

But the reason I think this is because even the well-intentioned Christians among our civil government officials and legal/policy leaders are like me: They don’t know enough of this aspect of our history—which is the Protestant church’s history—to know the true nature of our nation’s problem and, therefore, they can’t find a way out that will work.

Thankfully, this problem can be remedied.

A Politician Christian Officials and Voters Could Learn From

Someone Christians could learn from is a politician named Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer. He knew his Bible and his nation’s historical development. He lived in the Netherlands between 1801 and 1876.

Until I began to read some of van Prinsterer’s works, I would have considered his “foreign” experience and knowledge irrelevant to our nation’s history and present situation. Not so. I knew our history was intwined with that of our mother country, England, but in 1688 its history became providentially intertwined with that of the Netherlands.

After decades of church-state strife in England that had involved the execution of King Charles I in 1649, the monarchy was restored by the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a scant 100 years before our Constitution was ratified. Our founder’s knowledge of those events would be like us having knowledge of our Civil War and World War I.

The monarchy was restored in a person known to us as King William (as in King William and Queen Mary). However, that’s the same person as William III, who was then King of the Netherlands and otherwise sometimes known as William of Orange. His ancestors—the House of Orange—had established a constitutional government in the Netherlands.

Why This History Should Matter to You?

It was this Netherlandic-raised Calvinistic King of England who agreed to the English Bill of Rights, a law I suspect few Americans are familiar with. It was conceptually a predecessor to our Bill of Rights, which was grounded in common law.

The common law legal precepts underlying the English Bill of Rights can be traced back to the Magna Carta in 1215. Before that, it can be traced to the law book compiled in the 900s by King Alfred.

Alfred’s law book began with verbatim recitations of various chapters from the Book of Exodus related to the Ten Commandments! It became the foundation for the development of common law in England.

The reason this history should be important to us was declared by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story in 1833: “The whole Structure of our present jurisprudence stands upon the original foundations of the common law.”[i] Unlike most, you now know those “original foundations.”

However, all that Christian history as the foundation for our nation’s jurisprudence was swept away by the United States Supreme Court in 1938.

“But how?” you might ask. I will provide you two answers, and a way you can begin to help recover what’s been lost.

Problem No. 1: Incompetence at the Helm

Speaking of law, politics, and the growing influence in Europe of the atheistic theories of civil government in France, van Prinsterer wrote the following in his book, Unbelief and Revolution:
  That last sentence is a killer. I was like many today—a person engaged in politics but only with good intentions and a Bible in hand. 

Thirty years ago, I was not competently trained as a Christian for that engagement, even though I grew up in conservative Protestant churches and had a law degree, and the latter observation leads to my next point.

Problem No. 2: Deceit at the Helm

I will let my friend and law professor Adam MacLeod provide the next answer to what happened to this Christian heritage and foundation for law:
 
Bentham was a legal positivist, meaning he thought the foundation of the law was to be found in the reason of man “unburdened” (as Kamala Harris might say) by the history of religion.

That’s why my law degree was of no help. I was deceived by Bentham-influenced law professors about the nature of human law as an historical development of Christianity, and the Bible alone was not sufficient to make up for it.

That’s why I cover this history (and more) in the classes I’ve been teaching on common law, but I also tie it into how the Bible presents the nature and history of law to us.

These two things must come together again, which means church-state issues will need to be revisited to determine the nature of the wrong turn we took that brought us to our current mess. Otherwise, all our political talk is just so much babel.

What You Can Do

If you have read this far, you may be a serious person. That’s my target audience because I believe only the serious-minded can provide the kind of leadership in our communities and churches that is needed.

So, if you and some politically-engaged friends want to re-engage in thinking through God’s providential work in the sphere of law and civil government and its application today, let me know. You might also want to begin listening to my podcast, “God, Law & Liberty.”