Exclusive Interview: “American Heritage Party’s” Dan Eby Discusses The Need For Explicitly Christian Party
On a recent “The American View” radio show we interviewed Dan Eby, National Chairman of “The American Heritage Party.” Here is an edited version of what Brother Eby had to say. — J.L.
Some biographical information: “The name Eby is a Swiss name. Our predecessors came over to the continent in the 1600’s. I was born and raised in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and became a Pastor in two churches — one in Pennsylvania and one in New York in the 1970’s and 80’s. The first one was a Mennonite Church and that’s the background I came out of and it’s been a long journey since then, but the second one was a Covenant Church. So, the bottom line is we began to develop a real burden for the family and the children and the parents because the state of the churches was in such a state of disarray. And so Lord began to develop a burden for us for making a difference in family’s lives and we moved into the area of Christian education. In 1994 we moved to Washington State and we were doing home school seminars and actually became involved in the Republican Party back in the 1980s.
His awakening: “I just have to say that God took us through it. When Colin Powell in 1996 stood up [at the GOP Convention] and said I’m pro-choice and I’m for affirmative action and the entire convention floor erupted in applause for Colin Powell, I said, “What are we doing here?” And that was the beginning of the journey saying, Christ has to be at the root, at the foundation and so a number of other individuals and I joined together and we discovered that there was others that were willing to be involved in applying Christian principles to politics and we started “TAHP” as a state party, in the state of Washington.
“It was under the larger national party called the National Taxpayer’s Party, which eventually became the Constitution Party. So, we labored in that vineyard and began to raise up candidates and tried to discern what is a political party and eventually we came to realize that we’re not in unity with the Constitution Party. In 1999 we disaffiliated from them, and began to put a lot of time into discovering and putting in a foundation of what an explicitly Christian political party would look like, and we formed “TAHP” as a national Christian party in the year 2000 in the state of Washington where our family convention was.
Why he disaffiliated from the “Constitution Party:” “The structure of the “CP” was — in essence what we discovered was to run a presidential candidate every four years.And we began to see that there wasn’t a focus on building locally.And our concern was to build from the bottom up and to equip families to run for an office locally.We felt that the emphasis ought to be locally vs. national.That was one of the issues — we also felt that there was a number of different faiths that were in the same party there, and there was in essence a different direction that each of these different groups were taking. We weren’t united in the same Christian principles. What can you say? Some times you get a group of Constitutionalists together and they’re not facing the same direction as what a Biblically-based Christian ought to be thinking.
“We felt that focusing on the top all of the time — focusing every four years on the presidency and only having a few individuals in each state will run the leadership of the party — there’s something wrong with that picture.But even more importantly was that just as the founders of Harvard said that Christ had to be on the bottom of the foundation of the organization, we felt that Christ and His word, the scriptures have to be at the foundation of every thing that we do.And I think that’s an exciting concept because it starts to help people to understand that you can take the Bible and you can apply it to every area of life including civil government and politics.
“So, what does that mean? So, you discover you know, what your positions are on different things and I guess that the burden we carry is that leadership and community ought to be Godly because God’s word gives us the wisdom and knowledge we need to affect sound public policy.And that’s the burden we have, to raise up Godly statesmen and to allow families to be equipped to support those statesmen and to see God’s word advanced into every area of life.
- No sacred/secular distinction: “The difficulty is that for most Christians there’s this dichotomy in life where there’s this distinction between sacred and secular.So we live and go to church and we practice our Christianity or faith lets say in a church meeting or Bible study but somehow that faith but somehow that faith is not getting applied to the daily life or where we live in society or our vocation and our civil government and the community around us.”
- The name of his Party: “For us it was a clear evidence that in our heritage it was a Christian heritage and by using the term “American Heritage” it was going to be a teaching tool for us to began to show Americans as uniquely Christian. As we go back through the early founding era — starting with 1620, the covenants that were made between each colony and the God of heaven - were to be able to show them that we indeed had a Christian history. So, we felt that the name “American Heritage” was indeed a tool for us to help Americans understand what that covenant was.And because the nation has violated those covenants, we are calling men back to accountability to the covenants that were made at that time.So, when we talk about America’s Christian history, it’s an educational tool.Sure, we could name our party the “American Christian Heritage Party,” and it would be explicitly in the name as well, but my name is Dan Eby, and I’m an Eby and my sons are named Eby and we’re an explicitly Christian family and that’s why we did it, and that’s why [the word “Christian”] didn’t get used [in the name of the Party.]
- Need Godly men in office: “Right, well let’s go back to the fact that we live in a Constitutional Republic and that from the county to the state to the national geographic distinctions, we are having people get elected to office, and so we want to have ability to have Godly men, who are well equipped to know the Godly principles the Bible teaches to run for office so we could be an educational organization and simply promote those principles and it would stop there.
- **”But, we needed a vehicle and we should have a vehicle to represent those that are well trained in the Christian body of believers and the Christian body of faith and wisdom to be able to go to a county or to a township even, or all the way to the state level of government and run for elections.So we live in a civil government that has these different levels of government and a political party allows you to elect those people and to promote who you are and what your vision is to the populous around.”
- Need for a Christian Party: “We clearly felt that there needs to be a Christian political party because there are the Republicans and the Greens the Libertarians and the Democrats, and the only reason that the Republicans and the Democrats are so big is because they’re organized in so many counties — they’ve been around for awhile.But the alternative, of course, is to not have a political party and to just educate.But, what do you do with that? What if somebody wants to run for office? Well, by having a Christian organization in its realm, that actually has as one of its purposes to elect leaders — men into office — that political party allows you to do that.It allows you to function in that way — a national Christian party whose purpose is to elect Christian leaders.”
- The experience of the Party: “We have been — you know each state has its own type of political party requirements.In the state of Washington, for example, an independent or third party has to meet at a convention with at least 200 people, and we can be on the ballot; less than that for county or local offices.We have run candidates at the Congressional level — when we were just a state party we have run.Since we are a national party in the state of Washington, the state party has run candidates for the Legislature, has gotten as much as 24% of the vote — in a county commissioner’s race we came within 15 votes of winning the election in a three way race.
- “So we have had some good experiences, but our primary effort has to put in place a scaffold to actually build this as a Christian political party across the United States, and so we’ve developed four things — our foundation, our message, our strategy and our hope.We lay out the convictions that we have, and why it’s so important to have the Bible applied into civil government and the political arena.”
- Founded on God’s Word: “Sure, so these distinctives, when you talk about the foundation — we talk about God’s word as the holy Bible, is the absolute authority upon which our principles rest, and so that obviously shows that we expressly intend to be Christian.We recognize it as a political blueprint for political action.I mean there are issues there, that when Jesus talked about no man can serve two masters we felt that we have one master — the Lord Jesus Christ and as the Christian, the way I lead my family, the way I work in my business and the way I get involved in political action has to be inherently Christian — has to be honoring to Christ and so, we have that foundation we have.
- “As a party we covenant together with other believers to work in the cultural arena — the political arena, and this allows us to demonstrate our faith in God and avoid being unequally yoked in secular, political alliances.Remember when I talked about being in the Republican party I felt like I was in a canoe rowing in one direction for a Christian purpose and I find that the guys in the other end are rowing in the other direction.”
- Christians ignorant of our foundations: “It’s the quandary we’re in.We have a nation of unbelievers — we have a nation of even Christians who don’t know what the foundations are.For the place that we’re at is we have to educate, we have to teach and we have to lead by example.And how does the Christian faith get applied? So, that all of a sudden people look at us and say, “Why do you live differently and why are you acting that way? ” And it gives them an opportunity to say to them, look, if you call yourself a Christian, then that Christian belief has to be demonstrated in your life, and then that’s the heart of it.”
The Party’s voter clubs: “The voter clubs — we pulled a lot of our ideas from other Christian political parties from history and around the world.Voter clubs were in existence in Abraham Kyper’s day. He developed a party called the anti-revolutionary party.It was a Christian political party in the Netherlands.He actually grew to the point where he became the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. He set the foundation for understanding what the French Revolution was all about.Good stuff, but bringing out voter’s clubs is what we thought was a great idea for the communities that we live in get together and actually study these biblical ideas of government and actually work together to educate themselves in the Christian principles of civil government. And then they can work of course to help provide support for candidates.Voter clubs were mean to be a tool for education and service in the community where families could get together to decide to do things in their community that would make a difference.
The purpose of their Christian statesmanship curriculum: “Well, the purpose first of all, since we are a Christian political party is — the first purpose is to educate the potential leaders and nominees for public office of the vast amount of truth that’s in the word of God, as it’s applied to law, government, history, nations, and so we have a sixty hour video tape that is now available with accompanying text books.
“I do want to mention that our first step, the statesmanship textbook is the level one text book, in the studies in principles field, and we have speakers like RC Sproul, Jr., Herb Titus, Steven McBell, Marshall Foster, and others who wrote a chapter in that book, are also videotaped with a one hour lecture.We have accompanying textbooks with videotape that help people to begin to understand the application of God’s Word to all areas of life.And that’s the Study of Christian Statesmanship and that’s to equip potential leaders of the party as well as potential nominees for public office, so that they would have to be skilled in understanding these things before they could even be nominated for office.”
Christians must be prepared to take office: “We think that just because someone’s a Christian we can put them in civil government and he gets elected into the Republican Party, the Constitution Party or any Party and he doesn’t know what he’s doing and two years later his votes aren’t the same as what he said he would vote for. They compromise.
“Well, we felt that there has to be extreme accountability and guess where that accountability comes from? It comes from the Old Testament, from Deuteronomy, it comes from the New Testament in First Timothy, and other scriptures that actually lay out the scriptures for elders at the gate, or elders in the church, as well as in the civil government.
“And so that preparation ought to be serious and the person ought to take the time whether he wants to run for mayor of town, wants to run for county commissioner, or township supervisor, to be able to understand Biblical principles of government and be able to articulate them, and the fact that he has to come with his references from his community to say that these men can testify to his integrity and the fact that he is a good man and that he is walking by Christian principles and his family has the moral and Christian character they ought to have.
“When Christ gets a hold of your life, you begin to ponder what are the implications to life, and as you read the Old Testament and New Testament there are implications to the faith, which we’ve adopted as we’ve allowed the Christ to come into our heart, and by His grace He has come in, but there is going to be a difference.”
Must think like Christians: “That’s the problem we have today — we’ve all been educated in government schools, and we’ve all been educated by a humanist mindset, we have a secular view even as Christians we do, and so we get into these civil government positions and we have this conflict. You know it’s a difficult thing and we have to correct these errors.”
Need to acknowledge Lordship of Christ: “Well, the difficulty is that if you don’t confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ over nations you don’t understand the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of knowledge. And we definitely need a body of Christian wisdom and knowledge which comes from the fear of the Lord. And our contention and I believe our contention should be is that Christ is Lord over all the nations and that should bow our knees to the knowledge and wisdom that comes out of the scripture.
“Fuzzy morality will not hold up in time and eternity.You know one of the difficulties that we have is we think that to be broadly a Christian is to be conservative and I do want to highlight this concept that there’s a difference between being biblical and being conservative.In other words, the debate shouldn’t be between are you a liberal or are you a conservative — it’s are you of full Christian belief, and if you are not, you are going to be an unbeliever, because you aren’t going to be believing in the truth of God’s word.So, there’s a bigger debate than just between are you a liberal or a conservative? Most people would consider themselves to be conservative in America today, but the problem is that they’re conserving what? What are you conserving?
“We consider that liberalism and conservatism are two sides to the same coin.They look a little different, but when you get to the bottom — at the root of it, they’re all the same.”
“Think about the founding era of our country and that some of the state constitutions actually required that you be a Christian believer before you could even run for office and those are some of the foundations and so when we think about that type of a concept when we think about an oath or a qualification, that’s powerful, because who would you rather have be the governor of a state? A Christian or a non-Christian? A Christian, drawing from the vast body of wisdom from the scripture, is going to be able to discern and deliver public policy in a way that’s going to free that area and that state from the bondages within.”