"Biblical Anarchism" sounds like a shocking
doctrine at first. But if you were to be
- transported
back in time 1,000 years
- into a
prosperous urban center
- among
the greatest intellectual and political leaders of the day
- armed
with a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,
- and
you politely suggested that people adopt the views of those documents
concerning the civil magistrate,
you likely would have been executed by sundown.
"The Divine Right of Kings" dominated political thinking in those
days, a doctrine which
- every
theologian and prince agreed was an essential doctrine of the Christian
Faith,
- the abandonment
of which would result in the destruction of the social order,
- a
doctrine which has been universally repudiated in favor of the doctrine of
"the consent of the governed,"
- and is
believed by virtually nobody in the 21st century.