Reject the Statist Yardstick
As we at Future of Christendom continue to call for God’s Law and God’s judicial system, we typically receive the same recycled critiques. When a critic chooses to ignore the biblical arguments, he will often turn to ad hominem attacks. Here is a recent example: “[M]ake sure you let people know when y’all actually accomplish something in the real world. In the mean time [sic], I am thankful there are a lot of Christian men and women actually fighting for justice in the world and not just pontificating online.”
Note the irony: this critique comes from someone pontificating online. But beyond the irony, it fails on its face. An ad hominem attacks the character or behavior of an argument’s proponents rather than engaging the argument itself. Whether we have or have not “accomplished something” says nothing whatsoever about whether Lancastrian theonomy is true. It is a weak dodge dressed up as a rebuttal.
For starters, the critique is ostensibly directed at Lancastrian theonomists — “y’all” — yet it attempts to refute a position not by engaging its arguments, but by claiming its proponents have not accomplished “something in the real world.” Whether or not that is true, it is entirely beside the point. It is also vague to the point of meaninglessness.
What does it mean to “accomplish something” in the context of justice and biblical law?
Does this man mean, “Go pass more laws”? “Go support candidates”? “Go lobby for legislation”? It is likely that he measures “real world accomplishment” by how much man-made law can be added to the statute books — or how much influence can be gained within the existing statist system.
This is the very mindset we reject. We have no interest in measuring up to the statist yardstick — we want to snap it in half.
But let’s play by their rules for a moment. Even if we accept this flawed standard of “real-world results,” the critique still falls flat on its face. If our opponents want to count bricks, mortar, and actual cultural footprints, we are more than happy to show them the math.
Our board members are not likely to promote their own work, so I will do it for them. Joel Saint and John Bingaman planted and lead a local church committed to the sufficiency of God’s Law. Another board member, Matt Kenitzer, pastors a church while also serving as a key leader in Abolish Abortion Pennsylvania, working to establish equal protection for the unborn. Luke Saint regularly takes to the streets to engage culture directly. There are also Lancastrian theonomists in our circles who are business owners, community leaders, and fathers building faithful households and businesses that operate under God’s Law rather than the state’s regulatory maze.
These are not abstract theorists. These are men doing real, tangible work — planting churches, preaching the Word, fighting abortion, and living out biblical justice in their communities.
The failure of the statist critics goes deeper than simply ignoring what we have built. If these men are truly the ones fighting for justice in the real world, we have a right to ask where they have been when justice was most needed — not in the halls of legislatures, but on the ground, where the state was grinding its boot into the neck of the righteous.
Where were they when Amish farmer Amos Miller was raided by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture for selling milk to willing customers? Where were they when Reuben King was prosecuted for selling rifles and shotguns to his neighbors? Where were they when Shannon Grady was fined and threatened by local authorities for repairing a bridge on her own property — exercising dominion over what God had entrusted to her? Where are they as countless Christians are punished each day for traveling, educating, or selling?
In every one of these cases, the state uses its power to punish people who have done no evil according to God’s Law. These are not abstract theological debates. These are real Christians being oppressed by the very system that many opponents of Lancastrian theonomy continue to defend — or simply ignore.
The silence from many of these voices has been deafening.
The prophet Jeremiah is the biblical archetype of someone who would have received this very critique: “Hey, Jerry — go accomplish something and stop pontificating about repentance.”
Jeremiah was called to proclaim judgment on a nation that had rejected God’s Law. He was called to declare the Word of the Lord, no matter how unpopular or futile it appeared by human standards. He was mocked, imprisoned, thrown into a cistern, and treated as a traitor.
True accomplishment in Scripture is almost never measured by political success or legislative victories. It is measured by faithfulness to God’s revealed Word.
Yet we are not pie-in-the-sky theorists. The practical outworking of God’s Law is justice between a man and his neighbor — and that justice can be pursued right now, without waiting for a legislature to act. One of the most powerful tools available is nullification. When a Christian employer refuses to enforce an unjust regulation against a worker. When a neighbor declines to report a man for operating outside the state’s licensing maze. When a community rallies around a Reuben King or an Amos Miller rather than deferring to the government agent at the door. When a jury refuses to convict a man whose only crime is violating man-made law. These are not symbolic gestures. They are acts of justice. They are nullification in practice, and they happen — in our circles and beyond — more regularly than our critics would like to believe. That is a decisive, practical step toward a just society. That is an accomplishment.
The greatest “political” accomplishment any generation can achieve is to repent of man-made law and return to the Law and to the Testimony. When a nation establishes God’s justice — punishing actual evil as God defines it, embracing His system of adjudication, and refusing to punish the righteous — that is real-world accomplishment.
Everything else is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
We are not against action. We are against the wrong kind of action. Passing more legislation is not progress when the legislation itself is the problem. Building bigger government is not victory when bigger government is the disease.
The real work is harder still: teaching families, equipping churches, calling on men to stop supporting evil, and calling magistrates back to their narrow, God-given task — to be a terror to evildoers and a praise to those who do good, by God’s standard, not man’s. That is not pontificating. That is the only path to real reformation.
