It’s a truism that progressive Christians emphasize the pervasiveness of structural or institutional evil, often at the expense of individual or personal sin. The structures of the world are broken and they, not individuals, are responsible for the enduring injustices in the world.

But e this perspective is never (or rarely) aimed at the bureaucracy of government? Sure, when the government does something political progressives don’t like, they’re quick to condemn the institution itself. But why isn’t the broken bureaucracy of public education or public welfare, for instance, ever to blame?

Lord Acton: “Bureaucracy is undoubtedly the weapon and sign of a despotic government, inasmuch as it gives whatever government it serves, despotic power.”