The American Dream - freedom for law-abiding citizens to pursue life, liberty and happiness (property rights, for who can be happy without them) - can only be accomplished by downsizing the current big government and returning to the limited, constitutional government set up by our forefathers. This is only going to be accomplished if we learn and apply the same principles our founders used for that great document.

The Principle Approach to education is the best vehicle for meeting this goal due to its unique method of biblical reasoning - teaching students how to think, not what to think. These seven principles have each been shown to produce liberty when applied by individuals or nations. Liberty, or limited government under God, is one of the distinguishing benchmarks of our American republic.

Sovereignty is the root principle from which the others stem and on which they stand.

Sovereignty – supreme power; supremacy; the possession of the highest power, or uncontrollable power. Absolute sovereignty belongs to God only. (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary)

A small “tree of terms” of original key word definitions will help us understand their full meaning. For example, the word “power” appears three times.

Power - command; force; dominion; rule; authority.

Authority - legal power, rightful power.

Right - according to the will of God.

After defining our term, we look for the principle in scripture. Interestingly, the actual word “sovereignty” does not appear even once in scripture. But power and authority have literally hundreds of references related to sovereignty showing God’s character traits as omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, King of kings.

God’s sovereignty is not belief-dependent. He rules over believers and non-believers. He does not separate secular and sacred. All things are under him beginning with ourselves, then our families, our churches, communities, and governments.

How is God’s sovereignty applied in our government? First, we need to define government.

Government - direction, regulation, restraint, control. (Notice that “government” is NOT a political term, but a generic one, with applications to individuals, families, church and State.)

Our understanding of God’s sovereignty as it relates to government plays a major role in how much we get involved in our political process. That which is sovereign in an individuals’ life is the source of his self-government. It controls their heart, mind and directs their thoughts, establishes their presuppositions, determines their values and standards of morality, which in turn set their life’s course, and ultimately their destiny here and in the hereafter.

Christianity is a comprehensive system of all revealed truth, seen first through the Bible, but also through nature, history, language, science, politics; it embraces the whole of life. When God is sovereign in a person’s life, the greater the flow of internal (self) government, the less need there is for external (civil) government.

Likewise, that which is sovereign in the life of a nation is the source that manifests itself as civil government. That which is sovereign in a nation’s affairs (government) controls its policies, sets its standards, colors its laws and their enforcement, determines the governmental course of actions and ultimately determines the fate or even survival of that nation.

Clearly, the issue of sovereignty is the basis upon which all other decisions are rooted, in individuals or nations.