The Apostle Paul insisted on the doctrine of subsidiarity in social organization when it came to helping widows. He wrote to Timothy, “But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents” (1 Tim. 5:4). After further instructions, he concluded, “If any believing man or woman has widows, let them relieve them, and do not let the church be burdened, that it may relieve those who are really widows” (v. 16).

When local resources were insufficient to meet pressing needs, then more distant and larger communities helped. When Agabus prophesied a great famine, the wealthier church in Antioch sent help to Jerusalem (Acts 11:28-30). Later, Paul organized a large gift from churches he had founded to help poor believers in Jerusalem (Rom. 15: 25-27).

Presbyterian church government likewise illustrates the organizational principle of subsidiarity. Each church has its own elders who supervise it. When matters cannot be adequately handled in a session, that session or anyone in that church can appeal to the presbytery, or even to the synod for their judgment. When there were arguments about the necessity of circumcision in the church in Antioch and they could not settle matters themselves, they sent delegates to Jerusalem for a meeting of the apostles and elders (Acts 15). In congregational church government, there is no true larger community to appeal to for help: each church is on its own. In episcopal church government, authority flows mainly downwards from the bishop to the churches under him. Presbyterianism maintains both local authority and a genuine larger community, keeping unity and diversity equally alive.

Pastor Chellis mentions “bonds of faith, kinship, language, place, and craft” as examples of small-scale associations where men unite in fellowship. He later lists “family, church, village, and vocation.” All of these were known to political and social observers for many centuries. I’d like to add sports and hobbies to his lists: track clubs, sports restaurants, model train hobbyists, country clubs, and many more such associations. Our society is rich in such groups.

What threatens local and humanizing groupings? There is the threat of centralizing government, intent on regulating everything. Power loves to have more power. The modern extreme example of such overpowering central government was the Nazi regime, which grabbed control of every organization in Germany except some segments of the church in a gigantic campaign of coordination. Also serious, however, is the threat of local groups becoming tyrannical. In some cities and towns, gangs rule certain neighborhoods. Even parents sometimes harm their own children, and not just physically. A small percentage of homeschooling parents, for example, are not responsibly educating their offspring.

Our freedom, thus, needs genuine higher authority to protect us from local bullies, even as it needs local autonomy for people to exercise real responsibility. We are most human when we reflect the unity and diversity of the one God in three Persons in whose image we are made.