In March 2023, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed The Parents Bill of Rights Act to bring more transparency and accountability to the public education system by protecting the ability of parents to access curriculum, reading lists, and school library holdings, and to be informed about actions taken toward their children regarding gender identity and bathroom/locker room usage. This piece of legislation would have seemed unnecessary to previous generations of Americans who assumed their local institutions were beholden to the community’s expectations. However, this is no longer the case.
In 2021, the federal Department of Justice, under the leadership of Merrick Garland, began tracking parents who tried to work through their local school boards to protect their children from being assigned sexually explicit reading material, being fed neo-Marxist interpretations of society and the past, and having their safety endangered by Progressive bathroom and locker room policies.[1] In some cases, local authorities even arrested parents for speaking about threats to the safety of their children.[2] So, the House bill seems like a necessary measure to limit the expansion of the state, though it will not be picked up by the Democrat-led-Senate or signed into law by President Joe Biden.[3]
On the surface, the House bill seems to be about education and the culture war, but it is actually aimed at preserving civil association in local communities. In this post, we will examine why civil associations are an essential but endangered aspect of our society and look for ways to cultivate robust civil connections in our own lives.
A Struggle for Power
All societies consist of three segments: the individual, civil society, and the state.[4] Healthy societies balance the interests and powers of these segments well. For example, in England and the countries born from her (the Anglosphere), statesmen have made a concerted effort since at least AD 1215 to limit the powers of the state and balance its interests appropriately with those of the individual and community. However, the balance is delicate and always shifting.
The interests of the state and the individual are each promoted by Scripture. The state holds a legitimate monopoly on power that it properly uses to order society and limit the licentious freedom of the individual. Certainly, this function of the state is God-given, and it is good for society and individuals when pursued properly (see Gen. 1:24, 28; Rom. 13:1–6). However, in our fallen world, the state as a human institution is prone to abusing its power, coercing immoral conformity and restricting moral freedom. The most extreme examples of such tyranny are the totalitarian states of the twentieth century, but all human governments tend toward excessive control.[5]
Because God created people as individuals with personhood, He has called them to steward God’s creation with a righteous rule. The whole implication of Scripture is individual autonomy and responsibility before God and man. The sphere of power for the individual is self-control. The Law explicitly makes this point by teaching that all people are held accountable to God’s standard and the law of the land: the poor, the rich, and even the king (Lev. 19:15; Deut. 17:14–20). Again, however, in our fallen world, people are sinners and need to be restrained. For society to function properly, the state has a duty to restrain the wicked desires of fallen individuals by punishing immoral actions (Rom. 13:3–4). However, good desires should remain unfettered so that each individual may fulfill the stewardship of God’s creation to the best of his ability. So what is the proper balance between the state and individual responsibility, each of which God has given?
Little Platoons
The friction between the state and individual is best alleviated by a robust civil society full of local voluntary associations (civil associations). As the agrarian intellectual and poet Wendell Berry explains, “the concerns of public and private, republic and citizen, necessary as they are, are not adequate for the shaping of human life.” We also need the “indispensable” intervention of community, understood as an “interdependence of local people, local culture, local economy, and local nature.”[6]
Scripture presents local associations as a means by which the potential abuses of state and individual are balanced. For example, God creates Eve and the civil association of marriage because it is not good for Adam to be alone (Gen. 2:18–24). The author of Hebrews notes how essential the regular gathering of the local congregation in civil association is for encouraging one another to prepare for the day of judgment (Heb. 10:24–25). In these small, local, face-to-face interactions, we create what Edmund Burke called the “little platoons” of society, such as families, local clubs and societies, schools, colleges, and churches—just to name a few.[7]
These civil associations created in local communities and focused on local concerns offer benefits, privileges, and responsibilities to members but only to members. For example, members of my family may claim the benefits of my unconditional love, free access to our home, and the food in our refrigerator, but they are also expected to follow the moral expectations of our family and to take part in the various chores that must be carried out each day. These benefits and responsibilities extend to my wife and children only; all others are excluded. Hence, civil society is inherently unequal and exclusionary.
The sacrifices that are demanded to become and retain membership in free associations also serve to build a deep sense of loyalty to the group. As we give our time and treasure to the regular meetings and benevolence programs of our local Civitan club or Friends of the Library group, we become invested in a specific aspect of our communities. Through the personal connections we make in these organizations, we build “relations of affection and trust” that cross political, religious, ethnic, and other social barriers.[8]
These communal connections are essential for a healthy society, because, as Berry points out, “Lacking the interest of or in such a community, private life becomes merely a sort of reserve in which individuals defend their ‘right’ to act as they please and attempt to limit or destroy the ‘rights’ of other individuals to act as they please.”[9] Thus, community affiliation and loyalty is essential for lowering the political temperature in a society and helping individuals from differing political positions to see one another as real people working toward solutions for common problems rather than as mere obstacles to social harmony.
Civil associations not only serve to build personal connections across social barriers but also address the specific challenges facing local communities. Civil associations call upon the local loves and affections of the community to encourage individuals to act to preserve the social order, including the land of that community. The late conservative philosopher Roger Scruton has noted the power of local community organizations to channel individual interests and initiative to solve problems of environmental pollution by appealing to the individual’s love for a specific piece of the local landscape.[10] For his part, Berry argues that “Community alone, as principle and as fact, can raise the standards of local health (ecological, economic, social, and spiritual).”[11] Scruton notes that these benefits arise even from civil associations that simply “exist for the sake of membership” rather than benevolence.[12] State (top-down) plans are destined to failure and lackluster support because the state cannot call upon the same loyalty and sacrifice from me that my neighbor can.
Unlike the extensive power of the state or the self-contained power of the individual, the power of civil associations to enforce its expectations is limited to social and moral authority. For example, civil associations may influence members by “teaching the young and by preserving stories and songs that tell (among other things) what works and what does not work in a given place.”[13] In a voluntary association, we choose to submit to the authority and rules of the group.
Often, joining a civil association requires a public vow of commitment, including submission to the disciplinary process of the group. Thus, civil associations demand the virtues of “trust, goodwill, forbearance, self-restraint, compassion, and forgiveness.”[14] If you fail to incorporate the values of the group and lack the requisite virtue, the last recourse for civil associations is exclusion.
The Erosion of Community
Civil society has been eroding slowly since at least the 1930s when increasing numbers of Americans began looking to the state rather than their neighbors for assistance in difficult times. In addition, individuals who rankled at being excluded from civil associations for which they did not qualify and to which they did not contribute have used the power of the state to destroy the exclusivity of these associations. For example, in recent years biological men who claim to be women have been using the power of the state to force women’s sports organizations to allow them to compete against biological women.
Over the twentieth century, the ethos of equality has motivated many to tear down the exclusionary barriers of civil associations; even marriage and the family have come under attack. Berry has described well the motivations and results of such destruction. He explains that when individuals cast off civil society’s authority, they become narcissistic and licentious, and the public square is reduced to an “arena of unrestrained private ambition and greed.”[15]
Conclusion
In school districts throughout the country, communities have been trying to come together to address problems in their schools. These folks have suddenly realized that, through long neglect and persistent state-sponsored erosion, their local civilassociations tasked with educating the young have become almost completely unresponsive to the community they are meant to serve. Worse, when these parents began trying to regain the reigns on these institutions, the state—even the federal government—threatened to use its monopoly on violence to suppress the resurgence of a healthy civil order in local communities.
This problem should serve as an alarm bell in the night, calling us to set our shoulders to reviving healthy civil associations of all sorts in our communities. Wonderfully, this task does not demand special training, national organization, massive financial resources, or extensive time commitment. It simply requires the willingness to give some time and treasure, to offer our God-given gifts to benefit the community. Our actions may take the form of joining a formal national organization with local chapters, like the Rotary Club, but we should also include faithful membership in our local congregations, volunteering at the local homeless shelter, donating to benevolence work, or just holding a regular book club that meets to discuss important works of literature and scholarship. By joining these little platoons, we can turn the tide of the battle for a peaceful society.
[1] See House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, A “Manufactured” Issue and “Misapplied” Priorities: Subpoenaed Documents Show No Legitimate Basis for the Attorney General’s Anti-Parent Memo, 118thCong., 1st sess., 2023, accessed May 16, 2023, https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2023-03-21-school-board-documents-interim-report.pdf.
[2] See Hank Berrien, “Father of Alleged Rape Victim from Loudoun Slams DOJ: ‘Weaponizing Itself against Parents,” Daily Wire (October 13, 2021), accessed May 16, 2023, https://www.dailywire.com/news/father-of-alleged-rape-victim-from-loudoun-slams-doj-weaponizing-itself-against-parents.
[3] See Lexi Lonas and Mychael Schnell, “House Republicans Pass Parents Bill of Rights,” The Hill (March 24, 2023), accessed June 5, 2023, https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3916114-house-republicans-pass-parents-bill-of-rights/ and Hank Berrien, “‘Today Was a Win for Every Mother and Father’: House GOP Passes Parents Rights Bill,” Daily Wire (Mar. 24, 2023), accessed May 16, 2023, https://www.dailywire.com/news/today-was-a-win-for-every-mother-every-father-house-gop-passes-parents-rights-bill.
[4] For an excellent overview of these three segments of society with their attending powers, characteristics, and conflicts, see William D. Gairdner, The Great Divide: Why Liberals and Conservatives Will Never, Ever Agree (New York: Encounter, 2015), 51–63.
[5] For a fascinating look at how and why various state programs’ attempts to rationalize and control society and the natural world have failed, see James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, The Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies Series (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
[6] Wendell Berry, “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community,” in Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community: Eight Essays (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 119, 120.
[7] Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition (New York: All Points, 2017),46.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Berry, 120.
[10] Roger Scruton, Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously about the Planet (London: Atlantic, 2012), 24–25, 36.
[11] Berry, 119.
[12] Scruton, Green Philosophy, 27–28.
[13] Berry, 120.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid., 121.
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