King of Kings

James Baird has given the church a thoughtful and timely resource that re-centers our understanding of government through the lens of Scripture and our confessional heritage. With clarity and conviction, he charts a path for believers seeking to engage the public square with both courage and humility. This is a valuable contribution—not just for PCA elders, but for any Christian longing to think more biblically about civic life.

With so much debate and confusion over 'Christian government' today comes the great need for a brief introduction to the subject. Rev. James Baird has provided just that. Appealing to history, Scripture, and reason, he makes a simple case for why the civil magistrate should promote the true religion.

This is a useful and provocative book on the perennial problem of Christianity and politics. It successfully blends historical retrieval, biblical political thought, and practical application for believers, and serves as a pithy distillation of recent scholarship on Reformed Protestant political ethics. Baird provides Christians with an accessible guide for thinking through the first principles of Christian law and government, whilst showing how those principles might apply to political engagement today.

James Baird has performed a remarkable feat: summarizing and defending classical Reformed Protestant political theology in so few pages. Although, I suspect, most Christians are naturally inclined to think that our government would be better off if it sincerely embraced and applied Christianity, few today offer us a defense of that idea while teasing out how the civil magistrate might support Christianity. With all the noise surrounding Christian nationalism, Baird ignores the clamor and draws deeply on classic Reformed authors and our early American founders to provide a positive, non-pugnacious apology for the necessity of Christianity in the well-being of our nation. A short, but accurate, popular account of such heated topics is hard to find. Baird has threaded the proverbial needle. I highly recommend Baird's King of Kings!

We live in an age of political upheaval and theological confusion. And if confusion is the problem, then clarity is the solution. In this short book, James Baird clearly and compellingly takes us back to the basic principles of Christian political philosophy. His thesis is clear—government must promote Christianity as the only true religion—and his arguments are biblically faithful and historically sound. More than that, in a time of church division, his argument has the potential of uniting Protestants of all varieties—from Presbyterians to Baptists, from Anglicans to Pentecostals, and everywhere in between. Highly recommended.

This size of this book belies its value and usefulness to Christians who need to be disabused of Enlightenment notions of governmental neutrality in matters of religion and morality. If God charges civil magistrates to promote what is good and punish what is evil, then His definitions of good and evil must be employed to evaluate how well they are doing their jobs. The Christian Bible, which reveals the Christian religion, is the place where those definitions are found. James Baird demonstrates that this connection between God’s mandate and God’s standard necessitates the argument for which he contends—that ‘government must promote Christianity as the only true religion.’ That thesis can understandably give pause to an old Baptist heart like mine. However, as Baird lays out his case, mining the riches of historic, Protestant political theology in the process, he successfully allays my fears and strengthens my understanding of and appreciation for both the Bible’s teachings on civil government and the constitutional republic we have in the United States. This book does not confuse church and state but sees both under the lordship of Jesus Christ with peculiar responsibilities assigned by Him. Thus, by ‘promote’ he does not mean that the government has the responsibility to fulfill the duties of the church. Rather, he argues—rightly in my estimation—that the ‘common good’ which government must seek to cultivate can only be found in the Christianity revealed by the one, true God. This book will be a great help to anyone who wants to think carefully about religion and politics.

In a time when the American church has largely baptized the liberal consensus, King of Kings offers a bracing dose of biblical clarity. Pastor James Baird presents a concise, airtight case—from Scripture and history—for the civil magistrate’s obligation to honor the true God and uphold true religion. This is the kind of reflection we desperately need: sharp, clear, rooted in the Word, and historically grounded. If you’ve ever struggled to explain to a friend why Christ’s kingship isn’t just personal but public and political, hand them this book. Every American Christian ought to read and reflect on this volume—both to recover our forgotten duties and to pray and labor for the day when our rulers will again recognize their accountability before the King of kings.

The Christian tradition provides rich resources for believers to face our contemporary political and cultural upheaval, not least the historic and Biblical doctrine of the civil magistrate found in the Reformed confessions. Unfortunately, this teaching has often been forgotten and even traduced because it challenges modern assumptions. In this brief, lucid volume James Baird expertly guides the reader through a compelling argument for the Reformed teaching on the civil magistrate showing its biblical basis and practical necessity. Anyone reading this brief volume will obtain a clear grasp of what generations of Christians had the privilege of being able to assume and what our generation must remember and retrieve.

While any decent political paradigm should build on the intellectual rigor of our forefathers, many have overlooked our past to form structures on sinking sand. I have been looking for a synopsis of what our Reformed heroes have taught about the role of the magistrates in political discourse. I am pleased to say that the search is now over! Baird offers a desirable appetizer on our way to further exploring the Reformational feast.

Today, many Protestants are eagerly returning to the sources of classical Protestant thought on a wide range of issues. Politics is one of them. The Reformers and their heirs held to a position that is shocking for those who live in modern, pluralistic societies: they argued that the state has a mandate from God to support the true Christian religion. Even in an early post-revolutionary American context many American Protestant theologians adhered to a form of this argument. While there are various large, academic tomes on this topic, James Baird has written a succinct, well-argued, and helpful primer on the topic. His argument, in brief, is that ‘government must promote Christianity because Christianity is a public good.’ Even if readers do not end up agreeing with all of his conclusions, they will surely profit from thinking seriously about such things. Perhaps they will find in the process of doing so that they have absorbed unhelpful ideas and mindsets from our radically pluralistic culture. And perhaps then they will also be better equipped to strive for a better future for their country.

In an era of political transformation coupled with a commitment to Protestant and particularly Reformed theological resourcement, Reformed Protestants necessarily need greater understanding and definitions of what the limits of both the church’s relationship to the civil order is, and what concessions churches should make to the liberal order. James Baird has offered an important guide for clerics and the laity on how the Reformed confessions litigate the fraught but vital relationship between church and state, and what that means for Christians in the United States today.

This is an excellent primer on the proper relationship between government and religion from a Christian perspective. In ten bite-sized chapters, Baird makes a persuasive case that the civil magistrate has a basic duty to promote true religion, namely, Christianity. This is no doubt a provocative thesis in our present cultural moment, but the book makes its argument with an uncomplicated biblical logic and without the kind of strident polemics that so often accompany these debates. It is an argument that, in my view, needs to be revived and reinforced in our day, not least because (as Baird documents) it represents both the mainstream Protestant tradition and the majority position of the American founders. It is a tonic to help cure an epidemic of superficial thinking among Christians about the role of government.

Mr. Baird has created a small but lively guide to the delicate intersection of Christian faith and political concern. We should all be thankful for an example of this literature that is refreshingly free of rancor and apocalyptic denunciations, and which is aimed for the thoughtful Christian who simply wants to be faithful before the Lord. We should also rejoice that the author clearly teaches that the Church should be the Church in a time when she is asked to become many other things instead. One does not need to agree with the conclusion reached or all the arguments in its support to still appreciate the valuable advice Mr. Baird has provided to Christians in the pew. Our brothers and sisters in Christ will be helped by having this little work at hand, especially as they are often presented with other more trendy but less edifying kinds of guidance.

This book is a rare find: crisp, well-researched, and a pleasure to read. Baird marshals a razor-sharp argument that will be hard for the skeptic to sidestep—and even harder to discredit. It strikes like a bolt of lightning.

Baird makes a clear and compelling case for why our government should promote Christianity for the good of society. With solid logic and ample evidence from the Bible, American history, and social science, he presents an argument that is both thought-provoking and deeply persuasive. The book’s clear structure and logical progression make it an engaging and eye-opening read. I was so captivated that I finished it in one sitting! If you care about the future of America, this is a must-read. I can’t recommend this book enough.

In King of Kings, Baird presses that government always orients its citizens to the ‘god’ of the system—and so the proper role of civil rule is to orient us to the true King of kings, Jesus Christ. He walks through ten punchy chapters—laying down definitions and delving into American constitutional history—all to underscore a thoroughly biblical premise: rulers are bound by God to promote Christianity as a public good. Baird’s approach is neither flippant nor heavy-handed. He demonstrates how Scripture measures earthly authorities by their willingness to purge false religion and uphold true worship. At the same time, he shows how our own American founders assumed that piety, justice, and peace were intertwined in the state’s duty. For those unsettled over modern politics shunning God at every turn, Baird’s direction is clear: civil leaders are not appointed as ‘neutral’ referees in a moral free-for-all, but to guide the people toward the joy of Christ’s righteous rule. By the final pages, you’ll see plainly that orienting our laws and customs around the lordship of Christ is not simply an option—it is the very divine command to the magistrate, the only lasting antidote to transgressivism and neutrality, and the path toward genuine, deep, and wide gladness for entire nations.

Common sense drew its content from Christian sense for so long in our nation that we’ve lost touch with the revelatory roots of the shalom we’ve enjoyed. But today, one person’s common sense is another’s evil. In such circumstances, corruption, corrosion, and collapse of family, church, and state ensue. The antidote to the horrors of such societal breakdown demand just the sort of biblical engagement James Baird advances in this remarkable book. Flight from the challenges Baird addresses has left too much of the Reformed world still trying to make do with pietistic, evangelistic, and church growth foci while political and cultural forces ravage our world. Baird’s volume advances the recovery and rehabilitation of needed theological resources for negotiation of the treacherous terrain before us.

Christianity has shaped some of the freest, most prosperous, and virtuous societies in history, and Baird argues it’s the government’s role to promote the public good by upholding this faith. Yet many modern Christians shy away from politics, believing it conflicts with loving their neighbors or seeking God’s kingdom. In this concise, accessible book, Baird makes a compelling biblical and historical case for the Reformed Protestant view of Christianity’s role in governance, addressing common objections with clarity and conviction.

In King of Kings, James Baird recovers a distinctly Protestant and unashamedly biblical vision of civil government that is both theologically grounded and historically compelling. With clarity and conviction, he argues that rulers are not morally neutral arbiters of public order, but accountable servants of Christ, charged with promoting the true religion for the good of their people. I found particular value in the chapters titled The American Way, The Way of Love, and The Way of Wisdom. In The American Way, Baird shows how early American political thought was steeped in Protestant convictions about law, liberty, and the public good. In The Way of Love, he dismantles the false dichotomy between truth and charity, showing how a government that refuses to promote Christianity out of a misguided pluralism is, in fact, failing to love its people. And in The Way of Wisdom, Baird skillfully applies prudence and pastoral sensitivity to the modern context—recognizing that while the duty of civil rulers is fixed, the means of fulfillment must be wise, lawful, and appropriately tailored to time and place. This book is timely, accessible, and deeply faithful to Scripture and the Reformed tradition. It deserves wide reading among those who seek a political theology that is both uncompromising and charitable, principled and prudent. I commend it warmly.

Do civil magistrates have a moral obligation to uphold piety and the true worship of God? Although many Christians today would instinctively say ‘no,’ James Baird makes a concise yet powerful case that Scripture and the Reformed confessions clearly say ‘yes.’ Part of the reason this is counter-intuitive, however, is because we have forgotten the classical distinction between principle and prudence. We often assume that every right and true principle must be applied fully and immediately, regardless of the context, and in cases where this seems too impractical, we excuse ourselves from pursuing them altogether. But Baird is not willing to let us off the hook so easily: To help us guard against this conflation of principle and prudence, he carefully distinguishes the roles of church and state and urges greater attentiveness to the contingent circumstances of time and place as we engage in public life. His book thus serves as a timely reminder of the responsibilities incumbent on us as Christians, as well as the practical wisdom necessary to fulfill them properly and well.

Christians, it’s time to step up: King of Kings gives you the tools to bring faith into politics and make a real difference.

In his debut book King of Kings, rising author and theologian, James Baird, tackles one of the most controversial and emotionally charged topics in contemporary Christian discourse: Government and Christianity. With both intellectual rigor and immense clarity, Baird wades into the tension between belief and silence, theology and ignorance, Scripture and skepticism. In a book that’s sure to challenge one’s preconceptions, it’s a can’t miss for the spiritual growth of our nation.

We have needed this book for a long time! For too long Protestants have ignored their own tradition, especially when it comes to politics. We have been plagued by an obsession with the latest fads. James Baird’s study on the Reformed doctrine of government offers a clear and accessible primer to reintroduce Protestants to the riches of their own tradition. If you are interested in political theology, Reformed theology, or just a curious layperson, this book will give you a good grasp of the basic ideas and concepts that animated their biblically informed politics. In a time of upheaval, the way forward is to build upon biblical wisdom of our forebears in the faith. Baird's book is an important contribution to that effort.

King of Kings articulates the loving and logical, compelling and charitable reasons that governments must promote Christianity. Baird also introduces the ethical, political and historical considerations — centered on the founding experience of Christians in what was once our most successful polity, the U.S. — that shape this public obligation and render it not just persuasive but common sensical. Timely, temperate, and thoughtful, this is a grammar for dispassionate discussion, a logic of political thought in a conceptually confused age, a rhetoric for persuasive renewal of American political theology. Jesus and the Scriptures are at the center of it, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.