There are two questions I want to put on the table this month. I think the second one is more interesting, but I have to get past the first one in order to discuss the second one.
An often ignored but critically important question that Christians should ponder is to what extent our religious values should shape our political values. For a strangely vocal minority, this question sounds ridiculous. Of course, they would say, your political perspective should be entirely derived from your faith. This is why we must hang the Ten Commandments in every courtroom, and why it would be deeply offensive if we took God out of the pledge of allegiance. After all, isn’t this supposed to be a Christian country?
Because of my location and occupation, I hear this mode of thinking quite often. It drives me crazy. No, this isn’t supposed to be a Christian nation. The founding fathers were Deists, and they worked hard to make sure the nation had freedom of religious expression. Why is it that so many Christians today are working hard to preserve some false sense of a Constantinian state? Why is their religious identity wrapped up so tightly in their national identity? Perhaps I’m cynical, but I don’t really want this to be a Christian nation. Or, to be more precise, I don’t want us to call it a Christian nation. I think doing so is hurts the kingdom of God more than it helps.
In the recent election I heard more discussion about this than usual. People get themselves worked up almost into a frenzy because they are so passionate that the people for whom they vote must represent certain (not all) of their religious values. I’m confused about how a Christian should translate their religious beliefs into political stands. It’s clear to me that there is a limit to this… for example there is no way I would advocate legislation that would illegalize lust, anger, jealousy etc., despite the fact that my religious beliefs say these things are wrong. On the other hand, I believe that I should stand up for certain beliefs (even politically) even though they are religiously motivated (i.e., social justice).
Perhaps a pertinent example would be the debate about an amendment banned same-sex marriage. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Christians decided that this was wrong. Would we necessarily need to oppose such an amendment because of our faith? My inclination is to say no. After all, why should the government dictate morality? The problem is, if another issue came up; say something that would involve showing grace to the poor or some likewise marginalized group of people… I would want to say, yes, all Christians need to support this. Do you see my contradiction?
So the two questions I’d like to hear opinions on are (1) Is this a Christian country, or should it be? And (2) how do we translate religious values into political ones? On what criteria do we base the decision of whether a belief is individual or should be advocated universally?
Christ, History, and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission. This book discusses how the church should engage the world, and how it should view history in a Christocentric way.
Outliers. This was given to me, it sounds interesting. He’s evaluating the nature of success. I’m hoping it’s more of a sociological study than a self-help kind of thing.
What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? N.T. Wright is challenging some of my preconceptions about Paul.
6 comments:
My lack of response is not a lack of interest...thanks for the topic. I have to get a test out of the way first.
I appreciate this question a lot. Here are my thoughts…
First, concerning whether or not this is a Christian country:
I think if we went by the parallelism found in Jesus prayer, that God’s kingdom is where God’s will is being done, then we could agree that the kingdom of God doesn’t have geographical borders, or at least that if it does have geographical borders that those borders would be constantly shifting as people fulfill or fail the desires of God. That alone makes it difficult for me to say this is a Christian nation, because one only has to look down the street to find an example of people acting contrary to God’s wishes.
I suppose, on the other hand, that Christians who insist on building a Christian nation would claim that a Christian nation is one that is built upon the same values as one finds in the Christian canon. My problem with this is that it seems rather impossible to legislate the kind of morality which the Scriptures testify that discipleship requires: “the jury finds the defendant guilty of three counts of not taking up his cross, and one count of not loving his neighbor as himself.” To impose such morality is impractical, as has already been said.
I propose that the problem with this line of thought, besides its impracticality, is that represents a skewed version of discipleship. What I mean is that such people take certain marks of discipleship and make them the boundary markers for Christianity, so that they assume that if people in America don’t practice homosexuality, this marks off the nation as Christian. While matters of sex and mortality are certainly important issues for the Christian community, they aren’t definitive issues for the Christian community (for instance, the Islamic community would take the same stance against these issues).
As for the second query:
I should first say that I disagree with the post, that morality should not be legislated. I define morality as what people should do, and in that sense, every law of a nation is in some sense prescriptive or proscriptive for a person’s actions based upon its desirability for the community in which he resides. Thus, a speed limit is a moral statement: one should not drive faster than 70mph on this road (implicitly, because it is dangerous for the driving community). Or on the positive side, one should pay taxes because the administration of a group of citizens and the infrastructure that they take part in requires some way to generate wealth.
So, for the question, how do we translate religious values into political ones? I have a couple thoughts on this—unfinished as they may be. First, I’d like to question whether we should translate religious values into political ones, at least in the traditional sense. As I stated above, I think any government legislates some kind of morality, and if discipleship cannot be enforced, I question whether Christians should involve themselves in government at all. This is compounded by the fact that government is necessarily put in the position of doing things that seem contrary to the path of discipleship: things like war-making, criminal punishment, and the economic self-interest intrinsic to government at the very least force Christians to do hermeneutic gymnastics to justify such practices.
Thus, I would say that while a particularly held belief should be advocated, it should never be legislated. For instance, I would say along with others such as John Howard Yoder that Constantinianism was the worst thing to ever happen to Christianity.
On the other hand, as noted in the post, who doesn’t want to support legislation that advocates more social justice? The problem, I think, is in my expectation for what Christians should do in response to the various afflictions of the world. It seems that we assume we are supposed to solve the problems…which leads to the Constantinian state model of Christianity, which tries to require good of people, and ends up being put in the unfortunate position of figuring out what to do when people don’t do what is good without committing evil in response. Perhaps rather than try to solve the problem of evil, we should rather just continue to cultivate communities among ourselves that do good in response to evil and face injustice with a reciprocal, and more powerful sense of justice. This perspective is less concerned with the outcome of our actions, for justice belongs to God, and focuses more on who we are as the community of God. Thus, as the community of God, we of course stand for the giving of alms to those who need it, and rally against social evils such as human trafficking, but we do not force others to do these things by legislation or any other means. I think in some sense this is what it means for the church to be a kingdom of priests: we represent to the world a microcosm what life in the kingdom of God could be like.
First of all, kudos to Dave for some great comments.
As for my own thoughts, I don't know if we have time to cover all of this but there seems to be two worthy threads of conversation we should tease out: 1) in a broad sense, should a Christian be politically active or not and 2) specifically, how should we be active in America's political environment.
So a quick thought on 1):
To carry over an idea from the last discussion, the political arena is one of the best in which to defend the weak and unprotected, thus fulfilling James's call for pure religion. It seems like a vital part of faith to be politically active. Justice is one half of the beautifully paradoxical nature of God (grace being the other half) and so we are called on to establish it in our country. I guess the problem is whether we follow what we think is God's definition of Justice or a secular definition that allows things like gay marriage. Is it an American Christian's job to impose God's Justice on everyone? It may HAVE BEEN an Israelite's job upon entering Canaan.
Some quick thoughts on 2):
It is so strange to me that the Republican party has become closely linked with Christianity. Just one problem to begin with that I see is the conservative idea that the government should not provide help to people because those people might take advantage of that help. It seems like a Christian government should be bending over backwards to support people in need, going the extra mile and so on. Of course, the Democratic party is not any more Christian.
Is it time for a new party? I sense a lot of passion in the voices of Tea Night. I think we could be the seedbed for a new movement, a new Boston Tea Party.
Here's what my ideal would look like . . . I've got nothing.
Joe, allow me, if you will, to be polemical with you. I want to challenge your statement that the political arena is the best place to defend the cause of the weak and unprotected. First, it is important to note that James call to care for pure religion was given in a context where Christians did not have a "voice" in government. Second, political solutions must legislate by the common denominator, which abstracts solutions away from the particular. For instance, suppose a government decides it is important to financially help the poor. The problem then becomes, who are the poor. If the poverty line is set at $14,000 per year, then what of the person that makes $13,500? Further, when comparing two people who need financial help, one may have access to a community (such as a church) that is able to help him out, while the other person may have no one. My point is, political solutions to injustice will never be as good as the personal and immediately social ones. In Kenya, people are not allowed to have guns. But this doesn't mean that there is no violence--the recent violence over the elections makes that plain. The call for justice, I think, does not entail political legislation, which, to be effective, is always done from behind the point of a gun, or at least the threat of violence or imprisonment. Rather, I think justice must be issued out of a certain way of life, namely the cruciform life.
I think John Howard Yoder says it best:
The point that apocalyptic makes is not only that people who wear crowns and who claim to foster justice by the swords are not as strong as they think... It is that people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe. One does not come to that belief by reducing social process to mechanical and statistical models, nor by winning some of one’s battles for the control of one’s own corner of the fallen world. One comes to it by sharing the life of those who sing about the Resurrection of the slain Lamb.
Ok, Dave, so the question is then still: is there any value in a Christian participating in political organizing?
I made a slip; of course, the political arena is not the BEST place to defend the weak, but it is a great one. I was influenced by my reading of Psalms where every other one implores the King to protect the needy. This kind of goes back to my question earlier about whether democracy is Christian or not. A divine and righteous King is what we have in Jesus and almost what the Hebrews had under David. It seems like the ideal. Doesn't God rule us with the threat of violence? Sin ends in death. That's all there is to it. And that's not a bad thing. That's justice. So our human politics follow spiritual truth imperfectly.
As for what you said about abstraction, wouldn't it be better to save a hundred lives by a righteous law than to save one life by a righteous cup of water?
The end of all of this discussion should be some action on all our parts in some way or another. I think we should hold each other accountable to follow this question up with a response in action. I'll get back to you on what I pledge to do.
I just finished Gandhi's autobiography and one of the last sentences is this, for what it's worth:
"I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means."
Here is a man who devoted himself to religion both internally and externally, to purity and the pursuit of Truth. His inward work drove him to devote all, all, all of his life to political action.
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