News Update

Levi Secord has written a nice volume on government,1 published a few days before my own book, King of Kings.2 Our points of agreement are too many to count, but in a spirit of brotherly love, Secord has registered serious concerns with my own account of government. He pulled a few punches but still took his fair share of big swings. It’s only right that I return the favor.

1. Levi Secord, Servant Not Savior: An Introduction to the Bible’s Teaching about Civil Government (self-pub., 2025).

2. James Baird, King of Kings: A Reformed Guide to Christian Government (Founders Press, 2025).

A Critique of Servant Not Savior

For all its virtues, Secord’s book suffers from fatal flaws.

Secord is strongest in biblical exposition. He outlines a number of true and useful principles for politics from Scripture. Secord is weakest, however, in his political philosophy and theory of governance. For example, he identifies the source of modern secularism in the “dualisms” of Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas. Indeed, it was these three who “laid the groundwork for a fundamental division between the physical and spiritual.” Readers will also be shocked to learn that Thomas is the origin of the idea that nature can “function on its own without reference to God.”3 In reality, Thomas insists on the necessity of God for nature to function. Indeed, one wonders how much Secord has read of Plato, Aristotle, or Aquinas. He cites no primary sources. Instead, he cites popular author Nancy Pearcey for her summary of these thinkers.4

3. Secord, Servant Not Savior, 17.

4. For a more reliable secondary source on the origin of secular naturalism in political theory, see Simon P. Kennedy, Reforming the Law of Nature: The Secularization of Political Thought, 1532-1689 (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

His weakness in political philosophy leads to weaknesses in his theory of governance. Consider his version of sphere sovereignty. According to Secord, the state is limited to securing the rights of its citizens by punishing evildoers. In other matters, the state has no right to govern. Those concerns lie outside its jurisdiction, belonging instead under the authority of the church, family, or business. In his words,

For the state, God has delegated it the power to accomplish its primary ministry to execute God’s wrath upon the evildoer (Rom 13:4). God gives the state a sword of justice to carry out this ministry. Outside of its sphere, the state possesses no God-given authority. God has not given the state the ministries of healthcare, education, child-rearing, doctrinal instruction, or the redistribution of wealth. All attempts by the state to expand its reach are invalid trespasses of a power delegated elsewhere.5

5. Secord, Servant Not Savior, 201.

Secord’s account raises a number of questions. What about infrastructure and public works projects like roads, bridges, tunnels, water treatment, and sewers? What about public safety laws like speed limits? Or public nuisance laws like noise ordinances? Or laws against littering? Or zoning laws? Or parking laws? Or building codes and occupancy limits? Or health department regulations for restaurants? Or door-to-door solicitation permits? None of these fall under “securing the rights of citizens” in any obvious way—and we could proliferate a list of laws with similar problems. Perhaps with some theoretical back bending, one might contrive a solution in some cases, but one wonders whether the reward is worth the contortions.

On balance, it seems as if Secord’s political theory restricts government from managing infrastructure or exercising many of the “police powers” necessary for “public safety, public health, morality, peace and quiet, law and order”—the examples given by the Supreme Court in the 1954 court case Berman v. Parker. I do not doubt that, when pressed on the particulars, he would grant many cases listed above. However, I’m not sure how his theory accounts for them without special pleading or ad hoc explanations. Nevertheless, these types of cases constitute a large bulk of the affairs civil officials oversee. To put it starkly, his model strikes me as the result of thinking long and hard about how to limit government with little reflection on how to govern.

Secord frames his model as the fruit of exegesis and biblical theology, but the specter of eisegesis haunts the pages of his book. He appears to read into the text of Scripture a limited theory of government. Let’s examine his argument and identify his critical assumption.

First, Secord calls commandments six through ten of the Decalogue (against murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and coveting) “a declaration of the rights of individuals.”6 Second, he notes how Paul mentions in Romans 13:9 commandments six, seven, eight and ten (against murder, adultery, theft, and coveting), right after Paul’s discourse on the civil government. Third, Secord draws the implication that “the state’s ministry is to protect its citizens from threats to their rights.”7 Fourth, Secord argues that “all authority individuals possess is limited to precisely what God has given—nothing more and nothing less,” which means the state may only exercise the “specific and narrow authority” granted to it by God in Romans 13.8 Hence, Secord’s conclusion:

6. Secord, Servant Not Savior, 36.

7. Secord, Servant Not Savior, 62.

8. Secord, Servant Not Savior, 201.

The state, as a servant, only possesses the authority given by its master. What authority does God give the state? Answer: to execute his wrath on evildoers (Rom 13:4). God gives a sword to the state to wield against the wicked. Whenever the state claims an authority God has not given, it is rebelling against its master. The state’s authority is delegated and derived; therefore, it is limited. Where the state rebels against this limitation, Christians are free to disobey the state in submission to God.9

9. Secord, Servant Not Savior, 214.

Much could be said about this line of exegetical reasoning, but I will limit myself to one comment. Secord’s argument appears to turn on a key assumption that lacks biblical support, namely, that the government may only take actions explicitly commanded in the Bible. Why think this principle is true? We do not hold a similar principle for any other sphere of natural life. We provide husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, employers and employees great liberty to discharge their callings. Why not the governing authorities?

In Romans 13:1, Paul conveys a far more sweeping vision of civil authority: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers” (KJV).

Paul goes on in Romans 13:2: “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation” (KJV).

Certainly, when rulers command us to transgress God’s law, then “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29), but in all other matters, we owe obedience to the just commands of our governing authorities.

Of course, Secord rejects this principle, but he does so to the peril of those wishing to place his theory into practice. Recall that, according to Secord, the government may only “execute his wrath on evildoers” as defined by commandments six through ten in the Ten Commandments. Moreover, “where the state rebels against this limitation, Christians are free to disobey the state in submission to God.” The implications of this principle are so extremely dangerous that I struggle to believe that Secord intends to mean what he says.

Imagine you see the red and blue lights in the rearview mirror. Your car has no license plate. After all, driving without a license plate does not break commandments six through ten against murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and coveting. It does not violate the rights of others. Consequently, you are not an evildoer in this situation, and so the police attempting to pull you over are acting tyrannically, transgressing the limited jurisdiction of the state. You may, therefore, according to Secord, disobey the police by submitting to God’s provision for civil disobedience. As a good pastor, I have full confidence Secord would discourage his people from such reckless behavior. Nevertheless, resisting the police in such cases is permissible by his model. Of course, I am sure Secord opposes anarchy, but if put into practice, his theory of governance lends support to destabilizing forces within society.

The question is not whether Secord affirms Christians bear a moral duty to obey the police in the above situation. It is not whether Secord affirms the government may manage public infrastructure or exercise its police powers. Indeed, one can find many such affirmations in his book. Instead, the question is how Secord justifies these affirmations by reference to his theory of governance. Can his political principles explain his own political beliefs? As for myself, I struggle to square his circles.

My own model follows the classical stream of political theory: government exists to order the external conditions of society to the general welfare of the people. Put another way, it must promote the public good, including the Christian faith. However, Secord himself finds my thesis problematic. I will provide a few brief comments, but in general, I will leave it for the readers to weigh which model proffers the most problematic entailments.

A Brief Defense of King of Kings

According to Secord, if the government must promote the public good, then that would place everything that leads to human flourishing “under the coercive jurisdiction of the state.”10 Of course, this is not true. Promoting something does not entail coercive power over it. Indeed, oftentimes the best way the state may promote a public good is by removing itself from direct action over it. A government may better promote healthcare by further removing itself from the healthcare system, for example. Indeed, many of the most powerful tools used by governments are not coercive. They promote things via persuasion, shaping public spaces, ordering public time, organizing public activities, and modeling certain beliefs and practices by their own example.

10. Each of Secord’s quotations in this section is from Levi Secord, ”Is Big Government Christian? A Review of James Baird’s King of Kings,” Christ Over All, October 5, 2026.

Secord also asks whether there are any inherent limits on the state’s power to promote Christianity. The answer is, of course, “Yes.” The government may not meddle in church affairs. It may not coerce belief. It may not transgress God’s law. It may not do anything detrimental to the public good. We could add more to the list. These are all constraints placed upon government by God. However, when arranging a polity, people need to add more specific civil laws regarding religion that go further than either natural law or divine law. These concrete specifications passed by human lawmakers take various forms depending upon the circumstances of the people and must adapt to their customs, habits, opportunities for greater piety and prosperity, and threats to their wellbeing.

Secord asserts that my view of government is “overly positive.” The right view, he argues, recognizes that “the primary earthly enemy of God’s people is the state.” Therefore, we ought to “frustrate and cage the state.” Of course, this confuses the institution itself with its abuses. For example, it’s similar to identifying sex as the problem rather than lust. For all the downfalls it has caused throughout Christian history, sex is not the “enemy” that we must “frustrate and cage.” Instead, we ought to set it free in marriage as God designed. Similarly, government is good. God made it—and it is wrong to cage and frustrate what God made. Indeed, the only thing worse than a bad government is no government. Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God, but anarchy is red in tooth and claw.

Secord ends with a critique of my account of the American Founding. He says that I “risks abandoning the American way” because Americans believed “Christianity is best promoted when it is free from the state,” citing historian Mark David Hall’s comments on disestablishment. Secord’s critique of my view is rather confused. I do not argue for establishmentarianism. I do not want a state church. Instead, I argue for government to promote Christianity. This is the historic American view. In fact, chapter 4 of Hall’s book is entitled, “the founders believed civic authorities should protect, promote, and encourage religion and morality.”11 It is true: the last state church ended in America about 50 or so years after the Founding. The reasons for disestablishment, however, were more complex than Secord suggests.12 Nevertheless, even after disestablishment, Americans still believed government must promote Christianity. The states continued to promote the Christian faith with prayer and Bible reading in public schools, Sabbath laws, days for fasting and thanksgiving, and much more.13 Indeed, many activities that modern people consider “un-American” were common until relatively recently. As the Harvard Law Review notes, “Until well into the twentieth century, American law recognized blasphemy as proscribable speech.”14 It wasn’t until after World War II that many of these kinds of measures began being erroneously ruled “unconstitutional.”15 In short, readers ought beware the Whiggish spirits chanting of the First Amendment’s “trajectory.” It is an easy way to slip into the bad habit of reading our modern perspectives back into the Founding of America.

11. Mark David Hall, Did America Have a Christian Founding? (Thomas Nelson, 2019).

12. See Carl H. Esbeck and Jonathan J. Den Hartog, eds., Disestablishment and Religious Dissent: Church-State Relations in the New American States, 1776–1833 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2019).

13. See Miles Smith, Religion and Republic: Christian America from the Founding to the Civil War (Davenant Press, 2024).

14. “Blasphemy and the Original Meaning of the First Amendment,” Note, Harvard Law Review 135, no. 2 (December 2021): 689–710.

15. See Timon Cline, Josh Hammer, and Yoram Hazony, “Everson Must Fall,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 48 (2025): 1–42.

It does seem as if Secord views government as an “enemy.” One could not blame a civil official who felt like Secord aims to “frustrate” and “cage” them in their vocation. His rhetoric gives one the sense that we’d all be better off if government were reduced to judge, jury, and executioner. However, good governance requires much more than a gavel and a guillotine.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, many of us resonate with Secord’s concerns about big government. We have all witnessed—and many of us suffered—the abuses of tyranny. However, we must resist reactionary impulses. It would be easy to fall into the trap of building a political theory around our desire to limit government. However, the solution to bad government isn’t necessarily less government; it’s good government.