When it comes to teaching American Government to our students, we ought to begin with a familiar phrase: “All politics is local.”
That phrase was made popular by Tip O-Neill, Speaker of the House from 1977-87. But it probably goes back to a newspaper article published in 1932.1 It really should serve as a reminder that our focus on civil government really ought to be local.
People, meaning voters, who are politically engaged have a tendency to focus on the big races for big offices in government: who is in the White House and who is Congress. So they focus on the campaigns and races of the people who are running for those offices. Which means they are obsessively interested in politics every four years, and only mildly obsessively interested every two years: the mid-term elections. In between, they pay little attention to national politics except for sensationalized news stories in the media which tell them what they should pay attention to … and what they should be livid about.
It is all very transient and very counterproductive. At least for the voters.
It is also futile and misdirected. At least for the voters.
Here is why.
All Biblical Civil Government is Local
This should be obvious from a careful reading of Scripture. After all, what was it that God told Samuel about the people’s clamoring for a king to rule over them instead of the plurality of decentralized leadership they had through their hierarchies of locally-chosen elders and councils (not to mention their divinely-chosen prophets)–“for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.” (I Samuel 8:7).
American Christians who have been bitten by the political-engagement bug have a tendency to allow their thinking to be infected with some version of salvation through national politics. “If we can elect the right candidate to the Oval Office, he will bring our nation back to God.” So, they obsess every four years over the supreme electoral goal of putting a God-fearing, Bible-believing man in the White House. As though our political system in America were designed with such an officeholder in mind.
Little do they realize how hard our founding fathers fought to organize and establish a new national government that was completely devoid of its biblical, covenantal foundations. Dare I say, they most certainly deemed these biblical, covenantal foundations to be quite alienable and something to be disavowed rather than a heritage worthy of being granted as an endowment in its founding document.
This is not what your typical Christian American History or Government textbook teaches.
Most Christian high school American government and history classes teach the “Christian foundations” of the U.S. Constitution and thus our system of government.
The problem with teaching this is that, according to the early-American historical research of Dr. Gary North, it isn’t true. Or, to be more academically correct, it is not historically accurate.
Dr. North says that it is more of a faith-based myth than a properly-interpreted fact to say that the United States was constituted as a Christian nation.
All of the documentary evidence says otherwise, according to North, who eventually published his findings first as an appendix to one of his books. Political Polytheism (1989), and then as a standalone volume, Conspiracy in Philadelphia: Origins of the United States Constitution (2013).
You can download a copy of his book, Conspiracy in Philadelphia, here. Also on this site here.
The point I am making is that, as Dr. North documents, our national government was formed, despite arguments to the contrary, as a powerful, centralized civil authority ruling over the states, with a constitution whose rhetoric virtually assures an increasingly centralized and even more powerful government over time, despite arguments defending its “limited government” rhetoric to the contrary.
And since there is no stopping the runaway train of spending and expansion of power that our federal government seems bent on riding and adding sleeper cars to–with no intention at all of either slowing or stopping the train let alone getting off of it–then where should Christians be focusing their efforts of political action, and what elements of American government should Christian educators be highlighting and teaching that are worthy of concentrating on and encouraging young people to pay more attention to and become involved in?
How Local is “Local”?
Obviously, we want to ought to teach the origins of the U.S. as a constitutional republic in a historically accurate way. The presence of the federal government in our lives is an increasingly intrusive reality, as well as that of state governments. Our students ought to be made aware of all of this, and to gain at least a rudimentary framework of understanding as to how these higher levels of civil government work.
Beyond that, it would be a good thing, in my estimation, to teach in a historically accurate way about that one form of local government which has played a vital and decisive role not only in American history, but also in Western European history.
It’s the form of local government that still has a sheriff–elected by the people.
County government.
This is where we can truly begin to make an impact, as Christians and as believers in limited, biblically-defined, local government. This is where students can begin to learn where real tyranny begins.
Local tyranny is easier to deal with than national tyranny.
And we are more likely to achieve success in imparting to our students both an interest in and a useful and helpful knowledge of government.