From chapter 4 of Boot’s book:

“The Puritan missiologist, however, is neither a retreatist pacifist nor a neo-Marxist, but believes in the necessity of civil government, qualified by the biblical conviction that the state only has abiding legitimacy where it surrenders to its limited God-ordained role as minister (diaconate) of justice in terms of God’s authority (Rom. 13:4)

[. . .]

“As soon as the state steps outside this sphere it plays God and offers every form of counterfeiting of the Word of God. [. . .] Such a state will be judged by God and once a state commands what God forbids, if Christ is truly Lord, then the Christian has to religious duty to resist. [Emphasis in the original.]

[. . .]

By moving outside its God-ordained sphere, the state thus progressively destroys localism and with it, liberty, as it asserts a messianic (saving) role for itself in the centralized politics of power that exists to serve itself. This is done by attaching to itself the prerogatives of God. It is fascinating to observe in this regard that the theological categories of God’s word are inescapable to all people, and if denied to God are typically transferred to the individual (anarchism) or the state (totalitarianism). When examined through theological lenses, statism involves a pretending to deity by offering everything from usurped sovereignty and law (in terms of human autonomy and positivistic law-making), to providence (cradle-to-grave security through state welfarism), predestination (by social science and planning), incarnation (by the implementing of man’s ‘word’ and idea), atonement (via political reparations, payments, and the politics of guilt), salvation (through a growing world order) and judgement (by threatened environmental and social catastrophe for disobedience) and thus a counterfeit kingdom – the dream of Babel.