In response to a great question recently asked of patriarchal minded families…”Is voting a submission issue?”… My answer is absolutely yes for the following reasons:
  1. The family is properly the fundamental institution of government in a Godly society. Its jurisdictions include private property dominion, pedagogical discipline of children, fundamental economics, primary social welfare, and stewardship of inheritance.
  2. In Biblical civil order, representative government begins in the home. This government agency has as its representative the Christian father who provides, protects, pastors, and answers for his household, repairing to the constitutional standard of Christ’s headship over His church. Autonomous voting within this fundamental sphere reconstructs the family as a pure democracy and tips the first ‘domino’ of a representative republic.
  3. As a husband’s calling therefore demands a great degree of integrity, responsibility, self-sacrifice, and wisdom, when men assume this role, adjoined with the proper fear of God and the submission of their wives and children, the lion’s share of a nation’s civil order is already established.
  4. ‘One vote-one nuclear family’ presumes unity in a society’s homes. And It hardly stands to hermeneutical reason that two called as one flesh would justifiably remain double-minded. If a wife was secure in the leadership of her husband, she would, by necessary extension, be confident in his affirmation of the magistrate over him.
  5. Conversely, the ‘women’s suffrage’ and so-called ‘women’s liberation’ movements (in spite of their ostensible justice and universal acceptance) are logically and presuppositionally anti-family in as much as they presume and affirm strife in the home. After all, in a deliberately self-governing society where the orderly home is normative, two votes per family is, at best, superfluous while one vote provides accountability for unity. Policies in other spheres of government should reflect an implicit trust in the government of the family. We should retain self-conscious limits of state government, being institutionally mindful not to supplant the family’s role.
  6. Security in the home restrains tyranny in Washington. As long as it remains a feminine virtue to be as independent from husbands as possible and independent from fathers as soon as possible, women will vote for security promised by legislators and presidents. This redistribution of dependency and submission results in the cancerous growth of autocratic government, threatening family, liberty, prosperity, and peace.
  7. A philosophy should never be judged by its abuses (Augustine). As I am anticipating the most prevalent objection to this view will be to cite or imagine a chauvinistic revolt against the fairer sex, let me preemptively state that the vision for the orderly self-governing home is predicated on a comprehensively applied Christian world view. A governing philosophy which views law and order proceeding from the triune God, sin as ultimate slavery, sovereign regeneration as true liberty, grace as an interpersonal reality, sanctification as abundant life, and Jesus as actually King of Kings (Lord of government)…”He whom the Son sets free is free indeed!”

Let me conclude with a question I also anticipate: “What should we do about this?” A few suggestions:

  1. Hold conventional ideology consistently accountable to scripture.
  2. Become a gospel first reformation advocate.
  3. Husbands and wives, pray together about your ballot decisions and vote in unity.
  4. Set a goal to be a self-governing family by the grace of God.
  5. (Just for fun) next election, post your Facebook status as: “Repeal women’s suffrage,” just to see if you have the faith of a martyr!

-Ken Carlton