Written by Kurt M. Wagner |
Monday, March 4, 2024
America is obviously getting more polarized and that trend is likely not letting up any time soon. Red and blue as categories can be overly simplistic, but given the modern Democrat platform I think it’s helpful and maps well enough onto Renn’s three worlds model. Roughly speaking, “red” can be viewed as more or less positive, “blue” firmly negative, with perhaps suburban pockets with more moderate, so-called “classical liberal” and/or libertarian-leaning neoconservative types representing what remains of the neutral world. It is clear that much of the Federal government, mostly through the administrative state, has been captured by the Left and is deep blue. Retreating to red states for shelter or to engage in political and cultural battles at the state level may make sense for a lot of people.

As evangelical Christians in America enter and wake up to the reality of living in the Negative World, accurate and depressing descriptions of the times abound. However, practical prescriptions are few and far between as many begin to think about the prospect of having to navigate these uncharted cultural and political waters faithfully. Much of the counsel being offered to address this, including Aaron Renn’s own, is a most welcome and good start. However, we are admittedly only in the beginning of the conversation, the exploratory phase of discovering and implementing faithful responses to the challenges ahead. Things still need to be spelled out at a more granular level, with many sensing that certain specific, concrete steps need to be taken sooner rather than later. We need options: Benedict, Boniface, and everything in between. Understanding the times isn’t enough. We also need to know what ought to be done. 
Thinking about civilizational decline and the loss of the rule of law at a national or even state, much less imperial, level can beggar the political imagination and leave one at a loss as to what to do, what practical action one can take to prepare for further decline while hoping for the best. Don’t get me wrong, I like to speculate about possible regime change, civilizational collapse, or the outcomes of potential reactions as much as the next guy, but it’s draining and unproductive for me more often than not. Though I am very thankful for the national political and cultural actors representing God and sanity, for most people, focusing on national politics has a tendency to suck the civic oxygen out of the room, leaving little energy or will for much else. 
Conversely, the potential effectiveness of focusing on the local governance of one’s own community, where the political rubber meets the road, can be easily judged based on the reaction these efforts get from mainstream media and broader political interests, attracting the tireless attention of the proverbial Eye of Sauron. People on both the right and the left seem to instinctively know this. Things get scary for those ostensibly afraid of the so-called Christian nationalism bogeyman when it begins manifesting itself at the local level. Examples have abounded in recent years of regime-resisting actions (think local action and policy from the COVID era, or regarding DEI, gun rights, marriage licenses, etc.) of humble county clerks, sheriffs, school board members, and local DAs, faithfully practicing, whether consciously or not, the doctrine of the lesser magistrates. These are too numerous to be listed here, but any even moderately informed reader could easily call several of them to mind. 
Christians pursuing national excellence in politics and culture is a worthy goal, and fostering a counter-cultural elite that represents evangelicals at the state (kudos to Oklahoma State Senator Dusty Deevers, e.g.) and national level is undoubtedly important for the long-term survival of America as we have known it. Though a good aspiration for some, it’s just not a realistic goal for most Christians. Ambition isn’t a bad thing in itself, but we can’t all be great. In the near term, many ordinary Christians are just trying to find a place to live where they can raise their families within a society that at least still acknowledges the Tao. This doesn’t necessarily signal cowardly retreat or ultimate defeat, but it is a realistic and practical assumption to have for most people in evangelical America. There is currently a dearth of high-trust, rooted, and intergenerational communities that facilitate family formation, encourage living out Christian ethics, and support positive, explicitly Christian civic engagement, and is doubtful if urban or other progressive centers, the magnets of the elite, will be anywhere near fostering anything like this anytime soon.
Why Local?
America is an extremely vast country. Less than an hour’s highway drive from almost any town or city in whichever direction usually leads to huge amounts of relatively unoccupied, undeveloped, and minimally governed space. And like the US highway system, another often overlooked and underappreciated yet ubiquitous aspect of American life is local (county or equivalent) government: that political infrastructure quietly existing in the civic background of virtually every American. I will argue in this essay that the already existing structures of American local government, if properly leveraged, are at least theoretically sufficient to serve as the political backdrop of faithful Christian living in a quickly declining America. As real-world arenas for natural family life and freedom of religion in the public square, counties offer realistic options in the near to mid-term, and in the long-term could serve as potential springboards to greater, actually viable state and national cultural and political action. 
There are over 3,000 counties or equivalents in America, and this gives me great hope. Decentralization will be key going forward, and I would suggest that drilling down beyond the state into the county level is the right scale at this time for practical Christian self-governance, utilizing extant local political structures as a means to further the ends of the common good rooted in natural law, if not to an explicitly Christian local polity. While most of the  “three C’s” (the campus, the coast, and the city) are squarely fixed in the negative world, it’s conceivable that many suburban areas still have a lot of neutral world characteristics, and that many rural areas are still in the positive world in a lot of ways. It’s the particular matter of cultural influence and elite institutional power that makes negative world areas seem so lopsidedly powerful, punching well above their weight in negativity, geographically speaking.
For most people, the mere thought of local government, with its seemingly petty and provincial details, such things as zoning, sidewalk committees, utilities, waste management, levies (property taxes!), etc., can understandably make one’s eyes glaze over. It doesn’t exactly spark the imagination or inspire zeal. At the same time, local government can also be so accessible and practical that once it is on one’s mental radar, one is almost without excuse for not getting involved to some degree. It falls within a kind of political ordo amoris (town/city, county, state, nation, empire) which has much more of a claim to our immediate civic duty. Maybe that’s why it’s more common to describe, theorize, and speculate about issues on the national rather than local level. There is actually more of the uncomfortable possibility, even obligation, that one get personally involved with the latter rather than the former. As state governments are constitutionally sovereign, focusing locally (at the county or equivalent level) means that the higher authority one is mostly dealing with is the state government, which acts as an intermediary between the local and Federal governments. This serves as a buffer and added level of protection not afforded at the state level, which would be set up for direct challenges from and confrontation with Federal actors. Not many have the stomach (not to mention the actual position, capacity, or skill) for that kind of thing. 
County Government 101
Enough with the generalities, let’s get into the weeds. One can get a quick, basic education on American counties and their equivalents here and here. A few key concepts to know going forward in this essay revolve around what are called Dillon’s Rule and Home Rule, along with the legal term state preemption. These are important terms when considering the feasibility of living out a positive local Christian vision within a viable legal framework. 
Every state’s relationship with its counties or equivalents is unique, generally being written into their constitutions, and counties can vary widely even within the same state. I would encourage everyone to become familiar with their own state and county details, or the details of those in which they would be interested living in. For example, some state constitutions allow for county home rule and charters, allowing for varying degrees of state constitutional county authority within their jurisdictions without direct, specific approval from state legislatures. Other states control their counties in a much tighter way. 
Dillon’s Rule vs. Home Rule
“The founding document of the United States, the Constitution, is silent on local governments. Instead, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments reserve all other powers not previously delegated or prohibited to the states and the people. Therefore, each state is responsible for granting broad or limited authority to each local branch of government, such as counties, municipalities, school districts, and other political subdivisions. There are two guiding principles of governance for local governments: the Dillon Rule and Home Rule.”
Home Rule refers to the constitutional granting of municipalities (towns, cities, and county or equivalents, etc.) more local control over their governing structures, policies, and even some legislative power. Dillon’s Rule on the other hand views local government as merely an agent of the state, created by and deriving all authority explicitly by law from the state legislature. Dillon’s Rule gained more national traction after a SCOTUS decision in 1907 in favor of the states, establishing a precedent for the dominance of this view of state-county relations well into the 20th century. However, in reaction to this, Home Rule later gained more popularity, with many states amending their constitutions to explicitly grant local governments more flexibility and agency in matters of “county concern”. This is especially true in the Western states as counties became responsible for larger and larger legal jurisdictions and service areas. One could make the argument that Home Rule is the local expression of federalism the Founders had in mind, and that the last clause of the 10th Amendment, “or to the people” could refer or apply to local government. 
“The history reveals that, contrary to modern assumptions, local governments were not always seen as subunits of states, but instead, were often treated as voluntary quasi-private associations that possessed considerable power as a matter of custom.”
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The Pharisee outlined his accomplishments; the tax collector summed up all of his actions when he confessed to God that he was “the sinner!” One was a prayer of self-congratulation, and one was a prayer of self-abasement. The end result: The Pharisee went home still in his sins, and the tax collector went home as justified before God because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to him by faith alone.

The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14) is the most theological of all Jesus’ parables. It is the most theological because it deals with the subject that is of most importance to the life of the Christian—namely, how a man or woman, boy or girl is accepted before God.
The irony of this parable is that both of these men were going to the Temple to pray. On face value both of them seemed to be praying to the same God. Both men came to the same place of worship. Both were members of the same covenant community. Both were men of the working class. But that’s where the similarity ends.
Jesus loved to draw contrasts in order to drive home kingdom principles and truths. When he sets out these two men, he does so by appeal to their ethical, social and religious standing. The Pharisee was a respected, religious member of the covenant community. The tax collector was a despised and questionable figure in Jewish society. Throughout the gospel records, tax collectors are identified with “sinners”—a term usually reserved in Jewish society for those known for their sexual immorality.
By Human Standards the Tax Collector Was Not on His Way to Heaven, but the Pharisee Was
In his sermon, “Going Up, Going Down: The Story of Two Men at Church,” Sinclair Ferguson set out a series of reasons why we would have to conclude that the tax collector was not on his way to heaven, but the Pharisee was. By all human standards, the tax collector was disqualified from salvation on account of the following sinful characteristics:

The tax collector had been an unmerciful, money-extorting man.
The tax collector was unjust to the poor and the weak.
The tax collector probably was an adulterer.
The tax collector didn’t pray in what was the acceptable manner and form.
The tax collector probably hadn’t been to the Temple in years.

Whereas, here are some of the apparent moral virtues of the Pharisee:

The Pharisee is a man of discipline and prayer. He had given a tenth of all that he had. (Sinclair Ferguson explained, “If a church were made up entirely of Pharisees, its church budget would double, if not triple, if not actually quadruple.”)
The Pharisee is thankful for all things in his life.
The Pharisee is different from other people.
The Pharisee lives a far better life in society than the tax collector does.
The Pharisee is more like you or me than the tax collector.

Yet, it was the tax collector and not the Pharisee who went to heaven, because the Pharisee had a religion that had no place for mercy, whereas the tax collector saw his need for mercy.
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Learning to pray when there’s an emergency or when something is frightening us requires a lot discipline. Instead of praying, we tend to torture ourselves with anxiety and worry. All we can think about is trying to get rid of the problem. The devil often tricks us when temptation or suffering first begins, whether we are dealing with spiritual or physical matters. He immediately barges in and makes us so upset about the problem that we become consumed by it. In this way, he tears us away from praying.

In our study of temptation for the believer it has become apparent that our major weapon in this battle is prayer. Jesus told us that we should pray as He showed us in what has become known as “The Lord’s Prayer.” It ends with this, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” This is a cry to God that He not allow us to be drawn into temptation which is not the same thing as being tempted. In any case, God has given us this prayer as part of what we do in seeing as we become holy and separate from the world. God allows us to be stressed so that we will pray.
by Martin Luther
14 Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the house of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD. 15 Hezekiah prayed to the LORD saying, 16 “O LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Isaiah 37:14-16 (NASB)
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