#111 President Biden’s Sphere Sovereignty

#111 President Biden’s Sphere Sovereignty President Biden admitted that there is no Federal solution for COVID.  From a Christian economist’s point of view, he said that there are elements outside what Abraham Kuyper would call “God’s sphere sovereignty.”   President Biden had his “Abraham Kuyper moment” this week, when he stated about COVID, “There is no Federal Solution.”  Without knowing it, he was citing the great Abraham Kuyper’s idea of sphere sovereignty.   I will try to resist the very easy example of a politician not keeping a promise, because this one is too easy.  During the presidential campaign, candidate Biden promised, “to shut down the virus, not the country.” Abraham Kuyper On the back cover of the book On Business & Economics, it explains that Abraham Kuyper “Was a leading Dutch figure in education, politics, and theology.  He was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, was appointed to Parliament, and served as prime minister.  Kuyper also founded the Free University in Amsterdam, a political party, and a denomination in addition to writing on a wide array of subjects.” The AbrahamKuyper.com website simply reads, “Abraham Kuyper was one of the most extraordinary individuals of his time.”   Joe Biden is not one of the most extraordinary individuals of his time.  He is a career politician.  He is not a leader in education nor theology.  He is not a minister, and did not found a University, a political party, nor a denomination.  He is the very definition of a follower, who never hired an employee, and seldom took a stand that he didn’t later retreat from.  This podcast is about one of those many retreats.   But in this retreat, he might finally be stating something that is true, as the Wall Street Journal title quotes him as saying about COVID, “There is no Federal solution.”  Kuyper is mostly known for the concept of common grace.  But he’s also known for our subject today: Sphere sovereignty.  Here’s how he wrote it, “If you allow society to be absorbed by the state, you will be putting the state in the place of God and destroying a divinely ordered, free society for the sake of the state.  We Christians must uphold the view that state and society each has its own sphere.  Each has its own sovereignty, and the social question cannot be properly resolved unless we respect this duality.”   From the introduction to the book: “The idea that every sphere of society, including business, is charged with the ordinances of God and has the task of discerning them and acting on them was fundamental to Kuyper’s social vision.”   The introduction of the book continues,  “Each sphere of society has a fundamental moral purpose: From its divinely endowed moral purpose, rather than from any dictate from the state, each sphere of society develops a free life of its own…..  Every sphere of society enjoys a certain freedom because its authority comes from God rather than from the state. “ Stay in Your Sphere Perhaps the best-known example of sphere sovereignty is when the Baptist pastors of Danbury , Connecticut wrote to Thomas Jefferson, complaining that they were not allowed to preach because of a state church regulation.  The same situation was true in neighboring Massachusetts, where the Congregational church was the state church.  When the Baptist pastors appealed to Thomas Jefferson, he wrote them a letter stating “There should be a wall of separation between church and state.”  He was essentially stating Kuyper’s idea, about a hundred years before he wrote it.  He was clarifying that the state should not violate the sphere sovereignty of the churches. Here’s an example of sphere confusion.  Some years ago,