A quick glance at the category cloud on this blog (left column) will reveal that 'politics' and 'religion' are two topics that I write about frequently. Those who know me know that I believe that the deep practice of Christian faith is unavoidably 'political'. But this statement is far from self-evident within the church and society today, whether you're talking about the Seventh-day Adventist Church in particular or the Christian church more generally.
It is easy to throw around glib phrases like "politics and religion don't mix," but what does that really mean. Tony Campolo is credited with saying that mixing politics and religion is like mixing horse manure and ice cream. It doesn't hurt the manure very much but it sure messes up the ice cream. However, Campolo's life in Christian service reveals that he has engaged in many causes that would, by most measures, be considered 'political.'
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*This is one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies, Nacho Libre.
I am stubborn when it comes to the word 'politics' or 'political.' I don't want to lose the word. I think what most people mean when they say that politics and religion don't mix is that partisan politics or electoral politics and religion don't mix. That is a notion I can agree with 100%. When the church gets involved in partisan politics (on the right or the left) it inevitably loses its voice. The question is really not whether the gospel of Jesus is political. The question is, what kind of politics? Stanley Hauerwas has said, and I think he's absolutely correct:
National politics is like the Roman circus in first century Rome. It is entertainment to keep us distracted from the real issues.
In practice, however, this notion of keeping politics
and religion apart has translated into a kind of neo-pietism or
quietism in which the church focuses on 'souls' and 'soul care' but
avoids altogether the issues that are most pressing in people's lives:
economic insecurity, war (whether in Iraq or on our city streets),
poverty, disease, lack of adequate health care, and the sustainability
of our planet, to name a few. This is not to say that government has
all the answers or that engagement with political power is the solution
to every problem. It certainly is not! But this does not mean that
Christians should never speak or act in the public square or that
theology should never be addressed to public life.
For me, my safeguard is to keep my feet on the ground where God has
planted me. When our congregation is on about the work of being the
church - that is, living our lives together around the Lordship of
Christ and learning to order our lives in his kingdom way - and we
discover that the people in our neighborhood, for example (whether
members of the church or not), are being squeezed to death by an
economic system that unjustly favors the rich at the expense of the
poor, my faith in Jesus leads me to stand in solidarity with those who
suffer. Sometimes (not always!) this means working alongside those who
suffer to insist that government do what government can do to provide
solutions. In other words, my congregation alone, even if we were a
mega-church with thousands of members, cannot solve the problem of
children in our neighborhood who can't see a doctor because they can't
afford the doctor OR the insurance. That's not to say that our only
recourse is to petition government for more just policies toward the
poor. It is also our calling and mandate, to support the families that
come to us for help. To share all our things 'in common' for the good
of the body of Christ. This is perhaps the most difficult part. Someone
recently said that rather than "ending poverty in our generation" the
slogan should be "ending affluence in our generation." That touches me
personally and is far harder to enact than writing a letter to Congress
about more foreign aid. BUT, that is not say that we shouldn't petition
our elected officials for more foreign aid.
An Evangelical Manifesto: de-politicizing a label
Yesterday I heard about "An Evangelical Manifesto"
on NPR's Day-to-Day. The host was interviewing Dr. Richard Mouw of
Fuller Theological Seminary (where I am a D.Min. student). It was a
quick 4 minute interview
in which Mouw said that he and others wanted to reclaim the term
'evangelical' for its historic roots which, in his words, is a belief
in the authority of Scripture and a belief in Jesus as the way of
salvation.
So, this morning I decided to look up this 'Manifesto' and see for myself what it says. Here's an excerpt from the 20-page document:
We must find a new understanding of our place in public life. We affirm that to be Evangelical and to carry the name of Christ is to seek to be faithful to the freedom, justice, peace and well-being that are at the heart of the kingdom of God, to bring these gifts into the public life as a service to all, and to work with all who share these ideals and care for the common good. Citizens of the City of God, we are resident aliens in the Earthly City. Called by Jesus to be 'in' the world but 'not of' the world, we are fully engaged in public affairs, but never completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, class, tribe, or national identity.
A few paragraphs later, under the heading, "Neither privatized nor politicized:"
First, we Evangelicals repudiate two equal and opposite errors into which many Christians have fallen recently. One error has been to privatize faith, interpreting and appyling it to the personal and spiritual realm only. Such dualism falsely divorces the spiritual from the secular, and causes faith to lose its integrity and become "privately engaging and publicly irrelevant," and another form of "hot tub spirituality."
The other error, made by both the religious left and the religious right in recent decades, is to politicize faith, using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes "the regime at prayer," Christians become "useful idiots" for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form. Christian beliefs are used as weapons for political interests.
And, as I'm writing this post I just received an email from Sojourners with this comment from Jim Wallis about the Manifesto"
On the question of public life, the manifesto recognizes that the political categories of left and right simply don't fit religion, and it is a big mistake to try to fit religion into them. The people I meet across the country are yearning for a moral center to our public life and political discourse, with a fundamental emphasis on the common good. They want to understand better the moral choices and challenges that lie beneath our political debates. More and more people want to see a common-good politics replace the politics of individual gain and special interests.
So, while the POTUS is not the Christ and national governments cannot save us (remember, Jesus is Lord, not Ceasar), Christians are called to live out their faith in public. Or, as we say in the PICO Network, we are compelled by our faith to put that faith into practice.
While I have not studied the Evangelical Manifesto, I think it makes some good points. I want to interact with it a bit more. That being said, I don't really feel a compulsion to redeem the label Evangelical, for myself or my church. It just doesn't matter to me. As a practical matter, I think Evangelicals will have a hard time getting the label back for anything useful. (Furthermore, why so anxious about the label?) Just saying you want it back doesn't make it so. Evangelicals are going to have to start acting like Jesus again before anyone will care to change their views.
Finally, a quick plug for the upcoming Adventist Forum Conference in Orlando Florida, September 26-28, 2008. The title of the conference is "Christians in the Public Square." The organizers have asked me to be part of a panel of practitioners who are putting faith into action in the public square, so I'll be working through these thoughts more in the coming months.
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