#40 Where Are the Statesmen?

IDENTITY POLITICS | Mark Boonstra: So, on November 5th, let’s enter the voting booth with the integrity of the mind of Christ, and insist that those wishing to earn our votes have it as well.

Nov 04, 2024

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As we approach another election day in America, I find myself once again pondering a question I have often asked myself: Where have all the statesmen gone?

WHERE HAVE ALL THE STATESMEN GONE?

Before endeavoring to answer that question, let us first define the question more precisely by asking what exactly a “statesman” is. It is a question that has been debated since the days of Plato and Aristotle. Modern-day dictionaries now offer such mundane descriptions as “one versed in the principles or art of government, especially one actively engaged in conducting the business of a government or in shaping its policies.” But that hardly captures the essence of what I mean by a “statesman.”

How about this secondary definition: “a wise, skillful, and respected political leader.” Well, that’s closer, but it’s still missing something.

Political theorists Patrick Overeem and Femke Bakker have suggested that across cultures and eras, “[s]tatesmanship can roughly be defined as morally excellent leadership at the polity level.” Professor J. Rufus Fears, who taught the History of Freedom, argued that a statesman is not a tyrant; he is the free leader of a free people and he must possess four critical qualities:

A bedrock of principles;
A moral compass;
A vision;
The ability to build a consensus to achieve that vision.

These underlying concepts of “moral excellence” and a “moral compass” perhaps derive from Aristotle’s description of true statesmen as being “thought to have studied virtue above all things.”

America was founded by statesmen of this sort—men who valued moral excellence and virtue above all else. Men who endeavored to conduct their affairs, and the affairs of state, with the integrity of the mind of Christ. As George Washington—the Father of our Country—implored in his Farewell Address on September 18, 1796:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men & citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man ought to respect & to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private & public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure—reason & experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

On August 28, 1811, Washington’s successor in the presidency, John Adams, wrote to Benjamin Rush, a fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence:

I agree with you in Sentiment that Religion and Virtue are the only Foundations; not only of Republicanism and of all free Government: but of Social Felicity under all Governments and in all the Combinations of human Society.

While serving as Governor of Massachusetts on November 2, 1780, John Hancock—who had earlier served (under the Articles of Confederation) as President of the United States in Congress Assembled (and whose extravagant signature vividly adorned the Declaration)—issued a public statement that included:

Sensible of the importance of Christian piety and virtue to the order and happiness of a state, I cannot but earnestly commend to you every measure for their support and encouragement. . . . [T]he very existence of the republics . . . depend much upon the public institutions of religion.

And on September 4, 1816, Gouverneur Morris—the Penman of the Constitution—gave an address in which he said:

The reflection and experience of many years have led me to consider the holy writings, not only as a most authentic and instructive in themselves, but as the clue to all other history. They tell us what man is, and they, alone, tell us why he is what he is: a contradictory creature that, seeing and approving what is good, pursues and performs what is evil. . . . But experience teaches that profligates may gain all the enticements of life, and criminals escape punishment, by the perpetration of new and more atrocious crimes. Something more, then, is required to encourage virtue, suppress vice, preserve public peace, and secure national independence. There must be something more to hope than pleasure, wealth, and power. Something more to fear than poverty and pain. Something after death more terrible than death. There must be religion. When that ligament is torn, society is disjointed, and its members perish. . . . But the most important of all lessons is, the denunciation of ruin to every state that rejects the precepts of religion. Those nations are doomed to death who bury, in the corruption of criminal desire, the awful sense of an existing God, cast off the consoling hope of immortality, and seek refuge from despair in the dreariness of annihilation. Let mankind enjoy at last the consolatory spectacle of thy throne, built by industry on the basis of peace and sheltered under the wings of justice. May it be secured by a pious obedience to that divine will, which prescribes the moral orbit of empire with the same precision that his wisdom and power have displayed, in whirling millions of planets round millions of suns through the vastness of infinite space.

Unfortunately, as James Madison—the Father of the Constitution— said in Federalist No. 10, “Englightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”

How prescient Madison was. In modern-day America, true “statesmen” seem to be few and far between. We have politicians in abundance, men and women who seek power for its own sake, and who will do and say anything in order to attain (and keep) it. People who will say one thing (to get elected) when they actually mean (and do) quite another. Who hold no true principles, but whose contrived positions ebb and flow according to the benefits their hypocrisy affords them in a given moment.

Lost in all of that is the essence of what makes a statesman a true statesman. A focus on the greater good driven by a core set of principles that is founded in the moral excellence and virtuousness that are themselves grounded in religion. In other words, integrity in the mindset of Christ.

That aspect of statesmanship has largely been lost in today’s America. Sure, we have politicians who make the occasional obligatory reference to God, or who claim the moral high ground. But all too often, on closer inspection, their morality is phony and their virtue manufactured.

As we head to the polls on November 5^th, let us pray for discernment, so that we may identify the true statesmen among our political contestants.

Those who are truly driven by a God-centric sense of moral excellence and virtue. Those with integrity, who endeavor to conduct their affairs, and the affairs of state, with the mindset of Christ. And let’s divest ourselves of the insincere and duplicitous fraudsters who seem to dominate today’s landscape of political leaders. Let’s insist on, and demand, something better.

Let’s find the next Washington, Adams, Hancock, or Morris, who understand to their very core that morality, virtue, and religion are the “indispensable supports” of our society, without which we will crumble into ruin. Let’s find the next generation of statesmen, who will return us once again to moral excellence and virtue.

So, on November 5^th, let’s enter the voting booth with the integrity of the mind of Christ, and insist that those wishing to earn our votes have it as well.

Identity Politics, with Mark Boonstra & Dr. Stephen Phinney, is an extension of IOM America’s IM Christian Writers Association. The mission of the authors is to restore faith in God & country.