Good Christian Men, Don't Be Anabaptistic: Go Vote for Trump

Don’t be like King Henry VI. He was a good man, both in real life and in the Shakespeare plays Henry VI, Part 2 and Henry VI, Part 3, but he shirked his political duty.¹ “Famed for mildness, peace, and prayer”, Henry lived a moral life and founded the Eton school and King’s College, Cambridge. But his weakness caused the War of the Roses. He could not restrain his imperious wife, the cruel Queen Margaret, and his incompetence contrasted so with the talents of his cousin the Duke of York (he of the white rose) that a civil war resulted in which Henry, the Duke, and Henry’s son are all murdered, and when the dust settles all their male cousins are dead too, and the weary nation crowns king a distant relation from Wales, Henry Tudor.

In the play, Henry sits down and watches from the sidelines during a crucial battle, “his” side being led by his queen and Baron Clifford:

Here on this molehill will I sit me down.
To whom God will, there be the victory;
 For Margaret my queen and Clifford too
 Have chid me from the battle, swearing both
 They prosper best of all when I am thence.

Would I were dead, if God’s good will were so,
For what is in this world but grief and woe?
 O God! Methinks it were a happy life

To be no better than a homely swain,
 To sit upon a hill as I do now,
 To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run: . . .
 So many hours must I tend my flock,
 So many hours must I take my rest,
 So many hours must I contemplate,
 So many hours must I sport myself, . . .
 And to conclude, the shepherd’s homely curds,
 His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
 His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade . . .

Two men in armor come close to Henry’s molehill, fighting each other with all their strength. One man kills the other brutally, but on taking off the dead man’s helmet he discovers he has killed his own son, who is fighting on the other side in the civil war. Henry says,

O, that my death would stay these ruthful deeds!
 O pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity!
 The red rose and the white are on his face,
 The fatal colors of our striving houses;
 The one his purple blood right well resembles,
The other his pale cheeks methinks presenteth.

Henry is a pious man and a gentle one, but a king needs to do more than pray. Queen Margaret says to her lover, the Duke of Suffolk,

All his mind is bent to holiness,
To number Ave-Maries on his beads;
His champions are the prophets and apostles,
His weapons holy saws of sacred writ,
His study is his tilt-yard, and his loves
Are brazen images of canonized saints.
I would the college of the cardinals
Would choose him pope, and carry him to Rome,
And set the triple crown upon his head:
That were a state fit for his holiness.

The man who calls Henry “famed for mildness, peace, and prayer” is the Earl of Warwick, known as The Kingmaker because he switches sides during the war and first makes the Duke of York the King of England and then deposes him and makes Henry king again. He calls Henry that at the end of a passage where he is telling the Duke of York that he’ll put him on the throne in place of Henry, who though a good man is a bad king:

This strong right hand of mine
Can pluck the diadem from faint Henry’s head
 And wring the awful scepter from his fist,
 Were he as famous and as bold in war
 As he is famed for mildness, peace, and prayer.

America is a democracy. You, dear readers, are the king. Each of us has his own vocation, but we all have duties as family members, church members, and citizens. People exercise those three duties in different ways depending on their situation in life. Not everybody is a father, for example, and not everybody is a deacon. And not every Christian is a precinctman. Pretty much everybody can vote, however. You should not say, “Don't worry about the election. God is in charge.” That’s like saying “Don't worry about the fire in the kitchen. God is in charge.” True, you shouldn’t panic, or obsess about how you might have left the stove on when you started driving to the grocery store, but you shouldn’t be passive when God has put you in a place to do something about the problem.

Don’t be an anabaptist. The Anabaptists are a group of Protestant Christians, a group with a special attitude towards politics different from Calvinists, Lutherans, Anglicans, the Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholics.² Their name refers to their belief that babies should not be baptized because they can’t understand what is going on, so if you were baptized as a baby you should be baptized again as an adult. Politically, they believe in separation from the world. The Christian, they believe, is not a citizen of any earthly city, and should keep out of non-Christians’ affair, perhaps even living in entirely separate communities, although they should live peaceably, pay taxes, and obey the law. The best-known anabaptist denomination is the Mennonites, and the Amish are a Mennonite group that takes it to an extreme. “Bush fever: Amish and Old Order Mennonites in the 2004 presidential election,” is an article that talks about the Amish attitude towards voting.

Unlike citizens in the modern state who display a sense of civic duty and responsibility for the welfare of their country, Amish understandings of the state parallel those of subjects to a king. This stance of subjection is reinforced by biblical injunctions to respect and pray for rulers ordained by God. The posture of subjection diverges from modern assumptions of citizenship—of individual and collective responsibility for the civic order as well as the accountability of elected officials. The Amish rarely speak of their “rights” but typically espouse an attitude of deference and homage toward the state.

The Amish are not a national denomination, and each community makes its own rules for life, but in general voting is discouraged, even though it is usually not forbidden like jury duty.

Although various statements have discouraged voting, it is not forbidden by the Ordnung of Old Order Mennonite or Old Order Amish groups. Some Old Orders who vote in a presidential election may vote for local or state candidates, but skip the presidential candidates because they cannot conscientiously vote for the commander in chief of the armed forces.

In 1982 a national committee said voting was inadvisable:

“It would be much more fitting for Old Order Amish since they are apposed [sic] to hold public office, take part in military or serve on jury duty, to remember on Election Day to pray that, Thy Will Be Done, rather than to vote on [candidates and issues] which we usually also are not familiar with.”

Scripture is quoted in opposition to voting:

An Amish statement on voting and involvement in government affairs says, “We are dealing with two separate kingdoms. Jesus said to Pilate, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If my Kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight,’ (John 18:36). No doubt Jesus would say to us, ‘If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants vote.’”

A lot of Amish actually did vote in 2004 for George W. Bush, who they realized is a good Christian. I expect they have been quiescent since, but Amish America has an article, `2024 Election: Will The “Amish Vote” Actually Matter This Time? (2 Factors That Could Make A Difference)’. The article discusses whether the Amos Miller case (involving government regulation of an Amishman) and mail-in voting will increase turnout. If you vote by mail, you don’t have to be afraid that your elders will see your buggy parked in front of the polling place, so social stigma is reduced. And, we are increasingly seeing that the Democrats are the Anti-Religious Party.³ Victoria Dorfman⁴ wrote “As President, Kamala Would Wage Legal War on Churches” for The Federalist. She describes all the litigation against churches by the Biden Administration, and it will get worse under Kamala. Recall that at a recent rally, some student protesters shouted, “Jesus is Lord!”, and Kamala paused her speech and quipped, “You guys are at the wrong rally,” to which the audience applauded loudly. The Democrats don’t like religion, and it looks like Kamala doesn’t even understand what it means when someone says Jesus is Lord. The Amish are highly vulnerable to lawsuits because of their traditional lifestyle, their practice of shunning⁵, their strict church rules, and their lack of legal sophistication. Kamala could be an existential threat for them.

I could say more, and I will. But it’s 1:19 pm on Election Day, and I’d better publish this Substack now so all those Amish can read it and still have time to walk or ride to the polls. I hope to finish it later with the fragments below, which I leave here for your edification and amusement.

For Revision:

Vocations.

A third party cnadidate would be OK.

Unrealistic ambition is a good thing in a young man, natural to his age and sex, whether it to be to get a Nobel or be the fastest motorcyclist in the county. But you have to be careful not to kill yourself, and to adjust to inevitable failure.

“The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head.” Proverbs 29: 19. Beautry for young women. Stronger nad more beuatiful than 5 years befoe .

Footnotes

1. In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 1 Henry is just a baby, so he doesn’t even appear as a character. The play starts at the funeral of his father, the great Henry V, who conquered half of France, including Paris, and it’s about how the little king’s uncles and cousins squabbled over power while Joan of Arc reconquered France. All three are good plays, Parts 2 and 3 being among Shakespeare’s best, despite the low estimation many people have of them. All three are about the destructiveness of Ambition.

Shakespeare’s plays are best viewed on the stage or listened to on tape. Movies are okay, but not as good as stage or tape. Reading comes last as a way to absorb them. The historical plays are better on tape than on stage, I think. You can get the very best actors on tape, and battle scenes don’t do well on stage. Start with Part 3, the best of the lot— they can each be seen independently of the others— and I recommend the Arkangel CD’s.

2. A good survey of Protestant political thought is Joseph Rigney’s “Everyman’s Guide to Protestant Political Thought: A Crash Course in Historic Reformed Political Discourse,” in the November 2024 American Reformer.

3. I deliberately said Democrats are “anti-religious” rather than “anti-Christian”, because I think it goes deeper than Christianity. The Democrats don’t like natural law. They hate traditional morality, piety, and authority, though they are increasingly emphatic about their own peculiar morality and piety of wokeness, and they have long promoted the Authority of goverment. Islam and Orthodox Judaism are disliked too, but liberal Christianity and Judaism are part of the Democratic Party. The Democrats hate religion for the same reason as they hate free markets: it impinges on the authority of the state. They want Gleichshaltung, the grinding of the gears that the Nazi’s considered so crucial to the state, where private organizations continue to exist (and indeed are encouraged), but only if they mesh with the Party and the State.

Although the Democrats are the anti-religious party, the Republicans are not the pro-religious party. The Republicans have stayed much the same over the past 50 years, respectful of religion and moderately favorable to it. It apparently is not really true that "Eisenhower once remarked that 'America makes no sense without a deeply held faith in God—and I don't care what it is,'" that was what John Adams believed, and I think it’s what most Republicans believe. (Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”)

4. Victoria Dorfman is a lawyer, a partner at Jones Day. Jones Day is one of the big law firms, with an annual profit per partner of $1.5 million (but they’re only 73rd! I see my college roommate’s Baker and Botts has $2 million/partner. He was a precinctman too, in Houston). I always notice Jones Day because they were opposing counsel to me and Hodson-Russ in the Citigroup case.

5. Here a cite to my forthcoming article on ostracism is both appropriate and self-advertising. Shunning by the Amish may be as vulnerable to litigation as murahachibu in Japan. See J. Mark Ramseyer & Eric Rasmusen, "Ostracism in Japan," forthcoming, Asian Journal of Comparative Law. “Groups ostracize members. Sometimes they do so to enforce welfare-maximizing norms, but other times ostracism reduces welfare. Japanese villages have long used ostracism as a tool for conformity, and the targets have sometimes sued in response. The cases that have reached the courts disproportionately involve welfare-reducing behavior by the community; for example, ostracism against targets who report corruption. The targets usually win the civil cases against ostracizers and prosecutors usually win the criminal cases. Yet the targets seem not to have sued for financial or injunctive relief, and the prosecutors seem not to have pushed for prison terms. Instead, they have used the courts for an informational end: to certify and publicize innocence. This end is of minor importance in normal litigation, but crucial for ostracism, as we explain using a formal model. We use case examples and the model to explore the factors that cause disputes to lead to ostracism and ostracisms to lead to litigation. https://www.rasmusen.org/published/ostracism_2024.pdf.”