Anarcho-Theocracy
A lousy label for a great idea

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Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 11 Nov. 1947

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The Proper Form of Government

The only Biblically legitimate form of social order is not 

a monarchy
an aristocracy
a democracy, or
a republic

The Bible is a blueprint for human action in every field of endeavor. The Bible is a "textbook" in political science and economics just as much as it is a textbook in religion. The rejection of this textbook brings tyranny and mass death.

but a society which might be labeled an "Anarcho-Theocracy." It is a nation "under God," but a nation without the institution of "civil government." 

       We must forthrightly reject the modern myth of "separation of church and state," and embrace instead "the abolition of church and state." 

       The purpose of this web page is to focus on the need to abolish "the State." Here is a link to a page which discusses the Biblical requirement to abolish "the church."

Atheists vs. Christians - Liberals vs. Conservatives

In an article in Free Inquiry, Fall, 1995, entitled The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians, Steven Morris claims:

The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. They try to depict the founding fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.

Morris is like many left-of-center anti-Christian writers who fear that if the "Religious Right" gains political power, there are going to be policemen crawling all over atheists, homosexuals, drug-users, and others who live off the Christian social capital of the past. Everything Morris says about American history is wrong, as we have shown, except the fact that the Founding Fathers did not envision a nation governed by priests. They did, however, believe in a nation "under God" (which is the meaning of the word "theocracy"). They believed in a government of very limited powers, but one which was, nevertheless, committed to Biblical principles.

Believing them to resolve the conflict between atheist liberals and Christian conservatives, Vine & Fig Tree takes these two ideas seriously: 

• limited government
• "under God"

We maximize both "limited" and "God." We urge less and less power for the government and more and more obedience toward God. We do not seek to "impose" Christianity through fines and imprisonment. We seek to move our nation ever closer to "anarchy" and "Theocracy." The best (though still alarming) name for the system of social organization we believe the Bible teaches is "Anarcho-Theocracy."

A Paradigm Shift

You hear that phrase thrown around a lot these days. Everybody wants their idea to be the next "paradigm shift." Paradigm-shifters are now mainstream. We believe Vine & Fig Tree represents a true break with the status quo, a change as momentous as that described by Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, upon hearing of Locke's rejection of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings: 

Never before had I heard the authority of kings called in question. I had been taught to consider them nearly as essential to political order as the sun is to the order of our solar system.

Vine & Fig Tree really is a new "paradigm," a "Copernican revolution," a radical way of looking at politics and society. It is one step beyond the radical vision that motivated America's Founding Fathers. It is a vision so old that it appears to be utterly unprecedented.

The vision of Vine & Fig Tree gives energy and hope to those who work for it. It inspires dedicated action. 

For Rush, who was present in the Congress as a representative of Pennsylvania, the events surrounding the creation of the Republic marked nothing less than a turning point in the course of human history. "I was animated constantly," he reflected in later years, "by a belief that I was acting for the benefit of the whole world, and of future ages, by assisting in the formation of new means of political order and general happiness."11 ___________________           11. The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, edited by George W. Corner (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1948), p.161.

I am convinced that Vine & Fig Tree will contribute to the Glory of God and the greater happiness of mankind. It will animate future leaders and captivate the hearts and minds of many. I know it's captivated me, and I get enough enthusiastic e-mail from people who have discovered the Vine & Fig Tree web pages (even though I haven't listed them with any search engines yet) to believe that there is something here that will resonate with a broad section of Americans. 

Dr. Rush speaks of "a turning point," which is to speak of a turning  from something to something else. From what should we turn? To what should we aspire? 

I believe we must move

• From a world of priests and princes ruling over the immature and irresponsible, a world which is simultaneously "secular" and suffused with a host of pagan faiths
• To a world of self-governing families in which all believers are priests and kings under Christ, where the knowledge of the LORD covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.

Many people balked at the "turning point" which the Declaration of Independence represented. Many will balk at Vine & Fig Tree -- it is the overthrowing of ideas which many have believed are as essential to social order or the Christian faith "as the sun is to the order of our solar system." You may have already heard some of the leading lights of the Christian Reconstruction movement denounce these ideas as heresy. But Vine & Fig Tree was the aspiration of many of America's Founding Fathers, and made America "the greatest nation on God's green earth" (Michael Medved). Read their hopes here.

Detractors have called this vision "patriarchy," "anarchy," and "theocracy." In an age of sound-bites and slogans, when packaging is more important than substance, I admit I am hard-pressed to propose a consumer-tested label for Micah's Vine & Fig Tree vision. Perhaps the next generation will have to adopt the most popular label of our opponents, just as Marx coined "capitalism" and Bloody Mary derided Calvin's "Geneva Jigs."

In 1776 America rejected the idea of "the Divine Right of Kings." The rejection of the idea of "the Divine Right of Kings" was Biblically proper. Monarchy was replaced by an experiment in "the consent of the governed." For various reasons, that experiment must now be judged a failure. We must continue along the lines that led to the end of the divine right of kings, reject the thinking that created the Government-run Post Office, and establish the divine right of the King of kings.

My goal is to set forth the basic outlines, blueprints, or "institutes" of this new social order in a well-researched and persuasively-stated manner that will allow people to break out of old patterns of thought, and raise up a new generation of Christian missionaries; missionaries in the fields of politics, economics, sociology, law, science, etc., who will guide these disciplines to Micah's world of Vine & Fig Tree.

1. Brief Outline
2. Statement of the Thesis
3. Motivation for the Thesis
4. Why This Thesis is Really Not That Controversial
5. Presuppositions
6. Definition of Anarcho-Theocracy
7. Prima facie Case for Anarcho-Theocracy
8. Response to Objections
9. Bibliography

"For the Americans," Tocqueville found, "the ideas of Christianity and liberty are so completely mingled that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive of one without the other; it is not a question with them of sterile beliefs bequeathed by the past and vegetating rather than living in the depths of the soul." 
Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p. 448

America's Founding Fathers on the Importance of the Bible

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