Sideshows

The House of Windsor and Decks of Cards

Political theorists of the Reformation argued that there was nothing intrinsically evil about the regimen of kings. Unlike the radical Thomas Paine, who argued vociferously in his incendiary pamphlet The Rights of Man that monarchs had been responsible for just about every tyranny every conceived, the faithful knew better. The Reformers understood that the Church had subsisted under a variety of forms of civil government: autocracies, monarchies, tribalism, and imperial domains. They also believed that the Church's form of government was to be republican--government by elders, approved by the people and ordained by God. This divine form of government was revealed in Holy Scripture.

The application of the ecclesiastical pattern of government to civil government was appropriate, but was not mandatory. What mattered was whether the civil government was firstly a government of law, and secondly whether the law reflected the law of God Himself. This was the thrust of Samuel Rutherford's Lex Rex. Take the matter of marriage. It mattered little whether marriage and family law was promulgated by a king or a council; what really mattered was whether marital law reflected the teachings of the Bible on the matter.

The marriage of Cate and William Wales has stirred up the debate over the monarchy again--and whether New Zealand should become a republic. We note that royalist sentiment is stronger here now than when Charles and Diana were defaming the House of Windsor. The same is reportedly true in Australia.

To us the issue is insignificant--a distraction, even. New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world with a unicameral parliamentary system. Laws can get promulgated relatively easily here. There are few formal divisions of power, and checks and balances. The most effective restraint we have upon tyrannical and arbitrary power is the smallness of the country. The machinations of political masters are easily exposed and their cloaks threadbare. Politicians in New Zealand are relatively naked. The monarchy is not an effective check and balance upon other branches or organs of government.

Even if it were, it would matter little. Both the UK and New Zealand long ago adopted Western Unbelief as the established religion. Secularism with its attendant humanism is dominant. Regardless of the form of government--republican or constitutional monarchy--the laws of our land conform relentlessly to this higher creed. The hearts of our rulers and the hearts of our people reject God and approbate Man. Whilst the law remains a minor potentate, it is subject to the regimen of Unbelievers writing the law to satiate their lusts and desires.

The constitutional forms of civil government at this point are a small matter.