We now see a growing willingness among Christian leaderships to articulate and practice their faith publicly according to a consciously biblical standard of government. Efforts to bring all areas of life into submission to God hearken back to the earliest and best of our political traditions, namely the public Christianity that shaped the American constitutional system. M. Susan Power, a professor of political science at Arkansas State University, ably sketches in Before the Convention a few of the leading personalities and key elements of the covenant-making tradition that promoted local self-government, rule of law, and limited government based on consent of the governed.