Justice and America's Constitutional Order // SSCI 100

hi i'm mark david hall i teach politics here at george fox university politics i hate politics all that mud slinging backstabbing the offensive arguments i just want to avoid it well you know i don't blame you even though i teach politics i don't like that stuff either but i think all christians all americans need to be interested in politics because politics is fundamentally about justice and we should all be concerned with justice now let me just pause and say for a minute here i'm speaking to you i know many of you are americans many of

you are christians but some of you are not american some of you are not christians i think a lot of what i have to say applies to anyone but i'm working with the assumption that many in the audience are american christians and so what i want to do is i'm going to look broadly at some biblical principles relevant to politics that i think should inform crit how christians everywhere think about politics and then i want to look a bit more specifically at the formation of america's constitutional order and eventually we'll get to nuts and bolts

things like the us constitution and ways in which christians might be involved in politics in the american context so if we want to look for look for it look to biblical principles for politics with respect to politics we can get a lot of them out of genesis 1-3 actually we don't have to go very far and we begin by saying that god is a creator and that what he created is good and that god commanded adam and eve to take care of his creation all christians it seems to me must be concerned with the environment

in which we live we also learn that humans are created in the image of god the imago dei and therefore should be treated with respect and dignity all of us regardless of race or gender or ethnicity as well we see right away that there's transcendent standards of morality christians have no business being moral relatives relativists there is right and there is wrong justice exist and we must seek justice and finally we see the fall unfortunately the fall humans are sinful we are all sinful and even redeemed humans continue to struggle with the old man within

and so therefore no christian should ever be a utopian when it comes to politics we can look forward to the return of christ in the kingdom he will set up but anyone who comes to you and says well if we follow this political program or this economic program and we can arrive at perfection you should run as fast as you can well we can keep going through the old testament what you will see time after time after time is that god cares about justice judges kings rulers emperors who oppress the poor who hurt the weak

who are unfair to their workers they're in a lot of trouble christians must care about the poor the weak and the dispossessed we also learn that our allegiance to god comes before our allegiance to rulers think of daniel in the lion's den shadrach meshach and abednego if a ruler tells you to disobey god you have to say no i will not do that and then suffer the consequences and perhaps there are other options that we'll look at later when we get to the new testament again there's lots of stuff we could talk about here i'll

just mention one of the more obvious is that god has created different institutions for different purposes family church government and yes government is mentioned explicitly romans 13 god created governments not just the american government all governments governments are responsible for punishing the wicked and rewarding the good and perhaps for more than that well we could keep going in the bible what i want to do is jump to the protestant reformation now this becomes particularly relevant in the american context because 98 of americans in the in the 18th century america the american founder something in particularly

americans of european descent i should qualify are protestants so they're heavily influenced by this tradition now protestants are of course christians so everything i've said before applies to them but we also get some other things maybe distinctively protestant things protestants are famous for the doctrine of solas scripture the scripture alone where do we find truths about the things of god about how we ought to live our lives we go to scripture and if there's other sources of authority out there that contradict scripture we go with scripture now protestants also have this doctrine of the priesthood

of all believers can i just go to sunday in church on sunday and listen to what my priest tells me about the things of god no i need to read the scriptures i need to search the scriptures myself now this is very interesting in terms of church history and theology let me point out though politically that this leads to some outcomes in protestant countries if you really believe in soul scripture and the priesthood of all believers then it would seem to pretty naturally follow that everyone needs to know how to read right and what you

see in these protestant countries is widespread literacy by the time you get to new england in the late 18th century almost every male can read which is just mind-boggling when you compare early new england to the rest of the world other protestant countries are doing very well most every other country in the world not well at all now you notice i think that it's in you know almost universal male literacy actually female literacy is rising by leaps and bounds there's also something about this priesthood of all believers that tears down hierarchies right and we're all

equal and you know i don't have to defer to my priest and in fact many of these churches such as the congregationalist churches in new england adopt very flat form to church governance where the congregation comes together and votes on who gets to be the minister and votes on firing the minister and on how much the minister's paid so you see what's going on here it's a great deal of leveling all right so within the protestant tradition you see the development of almost every idea that we associate with american political thought things like the rule

of law government by the consent of the governed the right to resist tyrannical authority you see this in something like stephanus junius brutus con torono contras terranos which was written about 50 years before john locke wrote it was not actually written a lot more than 50 years about 100 years before john locke wrote his second treatise of government to which we usually look well let me again just keep going along the historical path a little bit so you have these early puritan settlements in new england again these are taking these protestant ideas and you see

almost every male could vote in these settlements they're voting all the time they're having elections twice a year um they're creating their own laws pretty much from scratch looking to the bible for guidance and in many respects these laws are far superior to what you see over in england in england almost a third of all criminals were sentenced to death for things such as petty theft the puritans looking to the bible say well gosh it sure seems like restitution is the appropriate penalty for stealing so if you steal someone's cow you have to return two

cows to them but we aren't going to kill them you again have government by the consent to the governed it's represented in the mayflower compact and so forth now one thing i want to emphasize here within the context of the british empire you have these british north american colonies from north to south eventually georgia to maine or massachusetts that became maine later they're governing themselves for 150 years they're electing their own representatives making their own laws and england largely leaves him alone this changes a bit with the first great international war the seven years war

1754-1763 the british empire fights the french they fight them everywhere including in north america um george washington gets his first taste of military action here well the problem with this war the british win which is good for the british and americans but it leaves great britain with a great deal of debt and so great britain says not unreasonably hey americans you have to help us pay off this debt and so they start for the first time parliament starts for the first time taxing americans the sugar act the stamp act and other acts i'm not going

to go through them all but needless to say the patriots said no you can't do that you have no constitutional authority to do this and eventually this leads to a revolution or the war for american independence now we won't go through the history of this a great deal what i want to emphasize is a fundamental founding document that comes out of the war for american independence a declaration of independence written by thomas jefferson drafted but there was a committee of five and then of course it was approved by the entire congress for our purposes one

of the more interesting parts of this is this grand statement of principles we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they're endowed by the creator with certain unalienable rights among which are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness the declaration goes on to lay out some particular complaints and reach the conclusion that the united states of independent in the united states of america must be independent now i want to argue that these are the fundamental foundational principles upon which america was based as you either have heard or we'll hear

on my my lecture on race they obviously were not completely and fully implemented in 1776 but i think they're best to be viewed as a mission statement right like the fruit of the spirit is love joys peace patience kindness goodness graciousness i'm trying to live up to those ideals i don't it doesn't mean i'm a hypocrite if i'm actually trying to live up to them all right well enough sermonizing let's return to politics so what we have after 1776 are 13 independent state governments now people recognize that we need a national government of sorts and

so when articles of confederation is adopted to create a national government this is pretty cool but it's nowhere near powerful enough and so in 1787 delegates together in philadelphia and these are all the big boys you know and they're all boys unfortunately george washington and james madison alexander hamilton james wilson and others and they argue and they hash out and they eventually compromise in a variety of ways to come up with the constitution which is then sent to the states for ratification now let me just mention a couple of the results of this convention first

of all we have a written constitution that's a pretty good deal that gives us some sense of what the national government's powers are of how long presidents will serve and that sort of thing we have a paper document we can look to to say hey here are the limits that we're going to hold the national government to let's see we also have a republican form of government now this is so very important there are all sorts of forms of government right we could have had a monarchy we could have had an aristocracy instead we have

a government of the people and to be a bit a little more specific we have a house of representatives which as originally designed the members of the house of representatives are elected by the people in the states by the voters in the states and of course the number of representatives that each state gets depends on the population so it's proportional representation we also have this thing called the senate where you have two senators per state and originally it was the state legislatures who were going to choose those senators now that might sound undemocratic but who

chooses the state legislatures the people right so ultimately this is grounded on the authority of the people and you got this this crazy setup because of a compromise and i want to emphasize that the people from the large states james madison said hey let's only have a house of representatives based on proportional representation the folks from the small state say hey let's only have a senate with equal representation in the senate um if they did not compromise we would not have a united states of america roger sherman that old puritan from connecticut said hey i

have an idea why don't we do both and that way everyone gets something they want and they get something they don't want this is called compromise and i emphasize this to because we see so little of it in politics today but it is a key to politics no one should win or try to win every time what else do we get in this constitution um well you get the fragmentation of powers this can be very frustrating it's hard to get things done but fundamentally this is an idea driven by a christian conviction that humans are

sinful and therefore power tends to corrupt an absolute power corrupts absolutely as madison said in federalist 51 if men were angels government wouldn't be necessary but men aren't angels and so therefore we're going to do things like separate powers you know it's possible we could have just had one person ruling everything right an absolute dictator america's founder said this is a horrible idea we'll separate governmental power we'll have an executive branch a legislative branch a judicial branch and then among these branches we'll have the checks and balances and you guys know these from high school

right once congress passes law the president can veto it the the congress can then can override the veto if the president gets out of bounds he can be impeached convicted the judicial branch can come in to strike down legislation of congress and so forth so checks and balances now the whole purpose behind this is we don't want concentrated power we want to ensure that it's difficult to pass legislation and that tyranny will be prevented we also separate and this is hard to remember in this day and age but the government the um constitution that came

out of philadelphia was one with limited powers for the national government go and read article 1 section 8 the national government is going to do only a very few things a post office national defense international relations everything else will be left up to the states all the important things you think of probably naturally besides what i just mentioned helping the poor educating children these things would be left up to the state and local governments now since 1936 the national government has blown past its limits on its power but nonetheless we still have a system of

federalism i want to emphasize this because here is where regular people can be involved i have two former colleagues that were just until very recently colleagues one serves on the newburgh school board one is a city council or newborn these are regular people and yet they decided they wanted to get involved and they ran for election and they got elected a lot of important stuff gets done right now at the newburgh school board there's huge debates over equity education how great is it that my colleague ron mock is there to speak reasonably into those debates

so i want to emphasize that we when we think of politics we tend to think of the national government and unfortunately we tend to think almost always just as the president united states the president is important the national government's important but really lots and lots of important things get done at the state and local level we ought not to forget that well let me um keep going through the constitution and and we'll try to do this pretty quickly article 1 section 8 i do want to emphasize again enumerated powers but also necessary proper clause to

give a little flexibility we get to the president the founders debated in that interesting debate should we have one president should we have a council of maybe seven people who collectively will act as president and they decided one person because we want this person to be able to act with energy and dispatch and we can also hold one person accountable a little more easily than seven persons if we had seven persons you can easily imagine all the finger pointing that would go on article three creates a judiciary a federal judiciary and keep in mind here

we have a federal judiciary and state judiciary for our purposes though i want to emphasize that the judicial branch is oftentimes a very important protector of rights of minority rights the u.s supreme court has claimed the power of judicial review the power to strike down acts of congress or acts of state legislatures if they violate the constitution or the bill of rights which we'll get to in a minute some very important decisions have come out of the court protecting the rights almost always of minorities majorities protect themselves very well through the state legislatures so i

have in mind here cases protecting people who want to articulate for minority political positions minority religious protestants things like brown versus the board of education and so forth um finally the constitution can be amended we aren't stuck with what came out of philadelphia it's difficult to amend it 34 minutes have passed congress 27 have been ratified it's difficult but not impossible some of the greatest amendments the 13th 14th and 15th amendments those amendments that ban slavery protect the rights of every american regardless of race and guarantee the voting rights of all americans article 6 the

supremacy clause when the national government and state governments clash the national government gets to win but also i want to emphasize quickly there's article 6 prohibits religious tests for office the founders recognize that religious liberty applies to all americans regardless of religion all right so the constitution is set sent to the states it has to be ratified by nine of the 13 states or by conventions in the states um specifically there are great debates here i hope you all have heard of the federalist papers the federalists are the advocates of the constitution james madison alexander

hamilton john jay if you've seen the play hamilton i think there's some stuff about the federalist papers there arguing for a stronger national government and yet one recognizing those checks and balances separation of powers the federals go out of their way to assure americans that this will not result in tyranny even in the founding era and we should always be skeptical if anyone says the founders believed you should be skeptical because there were people in the founding era great patriots a george mason patrick henry a mercy otis warren who said wait a minute this document

gives way too much power to the national government the national government is going to become tyrannical and we ought not to adopt it so america's founders differed the anti-federal was lost and yet they made an important contribution and again i want to emphasize this just because you fight about and lose doesn't mean you don't get anything good one of the things anti-federalists pushed for was a bill of rights what became the first 10 amendments to the united states constitution important amendments protecting our right to freedom of speech freedom of press free exercise of religion all

sorts of abuses by the police state they're put in place to protect american citizens and as i've mentioned before the u.s supreme court is oftentimes use the constitution but more likely the bill of rights and subsequent amendments to protect the rights of american citizens all right now this is of course just 17 88 constitutions ratified 1789 first federal congress a lot of stuff changes from that day to the present obviously a lot of stuff and i just simply don't have time to go through at all important and key amendments such as the 13th 14th the

15th amendment amendments allowing for requiring the direct election of senators and that sort of thing the key idea i want to leave you with though is this we america's constitutional order i want to submit to you is fundamentally not about mudslinging and backstabbing and simply getting elected to office it's about justice it's about the majestic principles of the declaration of independence and to help illustrate this i want to jump forward about 70 years from where i left off the gettysburg address lincoln's gettysburg his dress given at the battle of gettysburg after the battle of gettysburg

november 19 1863. um listen to to just a very brief part of this four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal do you see what he's doing there he's not going to the constitution he's actually going back to the declaration of independence and those great principles we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and so forth you get the idea right this is what america is about and he sees

the american civil war is helping to bring about the promises of the declaration of independence the last part of it begins like this and ends like this we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation under god shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth a government of the people by the people for the people that's you you that are american citizens and citizens of other countries where you have the ability

to participate in the political process i would say it is our duty to be involved in politics as distasteful it is sometimes it is our duty to do so because through political involvement we can pursue equality liberty and justice now how can we be involved in politics there's a host of ways as a politics profit i'm always helping political science majors good internships they're working with candidates sometimes they even get paid to work for candidates so find candidates you believe in if it's an election year volunteer for them maybe work for them advocate for them

write an article in for the crescent encouraging people to vote for them right and of course i'm hoping here that you're concerned with that candidates that will do more than not to bring about a more just order in the united states of america if you're to do this well you have to be informed i find that most of my students nowadays unfortunately many my peers get their information their political information from twitter or facebook or the equivalent this is not a good thing and particularly if you have feeds that feed you only conservative information or

only progressive information this is no good let me encourage you strongly to go to a relatively mainstream paper or magazine the new york times the washington post the economist i'm not saying these are objective but i do think they're a bit more objective than what you oftentimes find on the twitter feeds and you can figure out where they're coming from and take some of what they say with the grain of salt but you need to be informed you need to know what is going on unfortunately too many things get done through the courts nowadays and

i know some of you may become attorneys and litigate cases and that sort of thing and that's great but there are also some great advocacy groups out there i do a lot of religious liberty work and some of the groups i often work with are like the alliance defending freedom first liberty the beckett fund the christian legal society and now these groups many of them are christian in orientation but they go out of their way to protect religious minorities they're always litigating on behalf of muslims and other americans because they recognize that religious liberty is

belongs to everyone and these organizations run on donations so i know right now you're poor college students but maybe eventually you'll get jobs and have money to donate after you give to your church and charities consider giving to a group like this so let me conclude by saying this if you care about justice you must care about politics now i focused on america's constitutional order assuming many of you are american citizens but of course much of what i say applies to those who are citizens of other countries where you can participate in the political process

let me leave you with the organizing verse of this course and what does the lord require of you to act justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with your god this is not something we just get to choose it shouldn't be something we get to choose it's something we're told to do by god do justice thank you very much