Archive for category: Evangelicalism and Pol…

Christians in the United States, especially evangelicals, have an image problem. Many of those outside the faith (and plenty of insiders, too) have negative views of Christians. From what they see, they have little interest in learning more about the faith.

Some media portrayals of Christians are spiteful caricatures that have little resemblance to real life. But many of the troubling images come from actual events and people. One need not look far to find painful examples of evangelicals making hateful comments, fighting in vicious wars of words, and drowning in their own sense of self-importance.

Evangelicalism, at its heart, is about sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with a broken and hurting world. Unfortunately, many evangelical political movements have lost sight of this goal, trading kingdom values for worldly ones.

The problem is not political engagement in and of itself; the problem is that many Christians fail to demonstrate Christ-like character as they engage in politics. As I will attempt to outline in this essay, evangelicals should participate in politics as an act of Christian love, but they should do so in a manner that demonstrates the fruit of the Spirit and with awareness of the limits of politics.

Evangelicals and Political Participation

Government policies matter; decisions made in Washington, in state capitals, and at the local level make a difference for us and our neighbors. It makes sense for evangelicals to be involved in politics and government, as it is such an essential institution in the modern world.

Political participation provides a way—not the only way, but an important one nonetheless—for Christians to live out the great commandments to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Given the possibilities to serve the common good, evangelicals should participate in government, educate themselves on political issues, and advocate for policies they think best.

At the same time, we need to acknowledge that politics is messy, and government is fallen and broken (just like everything in the world, including us). Political solutions are necessarily imperfect and, at best, temporarily achieving partial goals. Ultimately, public policy involves a lot of trial and error, attempting one fix to a problem, seeing how well it works (or doesn’t work), and then trying something new. Sometimes government programs can help; other times solutions lie outside the public realm.

Making Room for Christian Disagreement

Given the messiness and complexity of addressing problems politically, it makes sense that evangelicals, like any other group, will disagree on many political issues. Any readers who doubt this statement need only look at past and present dialogue in this online discussion for evidence.

The Bible isn’t an instruction manual on public policy. Instead, it teaches principles and narrates paradigms that apply to all of life, including politics. Although almost all evangelicals will agree on core biblical commitments and most will agree on the end goals of public policy, we should not expect evangelicals to be of one mind about what specific proposals are best to pursue or which policies deserve priority.

Consider some examples. There is widespread agreement that poverty is bad, a strong economy is good, and peace is preferable to war. But even in areas of widespread agreement like these, views diverge significantly on how to achieve agreed-upon goals and what tradeoffs are acceptable to achieve political agreement.

Evangelicals have an important role to play in advocating for policies and programs that they believe will help care for their neighbors and serve the common good. But they need to acknowledge room for disagreement and express their respective views respectfully.

Modeling a Better Way

When evangelicals get involved in politics, they can lose sight of their ultimate goal to love God and neighbor, focusing instead on their own self interests. At their worst, Christian political movements become triumphalist and power-seeking; their leaders are arrogant, contentious, and condescending. At their best, however, Christian political movements can offer a powerful witness of Christ’s upside-down kingdom, modeling humility, grace, and repentance in the public square.

Almost every aspect of the current political climate runs counter to biblical values. Politicians and commentators tend to exaggerate and distort the facts to make political points or entertain an audience. The tone of most political communication is boastful and arrogant; the goal is often to tear down and attack opponents. Social media and the blogosphere abound with comments full of vitriol, spite, and hate.

Christians are far from immune. Some prominent activists on the evangelical left and right speak and act as if they know the mind of God on arcane political matters, explicitly or implicitly communicating that those who disagree with them are on the side of evil. So much of what happens in the political realm seems to fit the Apostle Paul’s description of the works of the flesh in Galatians 5, a list that includes strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and envy.

Evangelicals have an opportunity to model a different approach. In politics, as in all spheres of life, we should seek to honor God in word and deed. Instead of mirroring the values of the world, Christians are called to demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We rarely see such characteristics modeled in contemporary politics as they run counter to the expected “rules of the game.”

Consider the radical dimensions of God’s love outlined in I Corinthians 13: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” A robust, Christ-centered politics is an extension of this powerful love; it shifts the focus from self to others, pointing the way to God’s truth with humility and kindness.

Christians can choose humility over arrogance, disagree but remain gracious, and speak the truth in love. Following such principles is not a formula for worldly success, but it is a way to be faithful witnesses for Christ.

Politics and Culture

Although many American evangelicals seek to shape the broader culture through political action, such tactics will often fail. As former Senate staffer and current culture-influencing consultant Mark Rodgers has been saying for many years, “culture is upstream of politics.” Politicians are much more likely to follow trends than to set them. Moving ahead of culture entails significant political risks. It is far easier – and safer – for elected officials to respond to societal change than to try and direct it.

Frederica Mathewes-Green argues a related point when she compares attempts to influence the culture with attempts to control the weather. We may be able to do some things to make a small difference, yet the larger forces of cultural change are often outside our control. Ultimately, she says, Christians need to focus their time and attention on loving those who get caught in the storms so prevalent in our culture.

Evangelicals can and should advocate for public policies that align with their commitments and principles. But when their beliefs run counter to the prevailing culture, they should not expect political success. The best way for evangelicals to shape the broader culture is by living faithful lives, demonstrating the fruits of the spirit, and bearing witness to Christ in word, deed, and truth.

The legacy of what historians now call “Christendom” certainly casts a long shadow in the ongoing discussion of Christianity and its relationship to the public square (by which I mean the all-inclusive spaces of the political, economic, social, civic, and international). Some commentators have certainly been, especially recently, very critical of the “Christendom” posture, and for good reason. When Christians have wielded political power, -going back to Christianitybecoming the religion of the state in the post-Constantinian West, they became enmeshed in the politicking mechanisms of statecraft which focus mainly on worldly matters with little capacity to appreciate, much less account for, the spiritually important aspects of human life. The blurring of lines between church and state, with all of the difficult consequences that played out through the medieval, Reformation, and early modern periods, is testimony to how, even with the most sincere leaders in both domains, the commitments and priorities of church and state often pulled in contrary directions. This is not to say either that “Christendom” itself is irredeemable or that it cannot be managed more successfully under different circumstances. Certainly its achievements can be appreciated, as Oliver O’Donovan has so eloquently argued. It is to say that because the documents of the New Testament were written by those situated in very different political circumstances, it is difficult to clearly articulate a biblically-informed “political theology of Christendom.”

In part for this reason, reformist projects have perennially arisen amidst and on the margins of Christendom. The Radical Reformation and its legacy bequeathed a powerful vision of “political Christianity” which locates the political activity of Christ-followers not first and foremost, or even at all, within the machinery of the state, but as embodying a ecclesiological vision of what Anabaptist and Mennonite theologians have called an “alternative politics.” The church living out its discipleship under Christ provides a witness to alternative construals of life in the public square (e.g., Stanley Hauerwas). Some have countered that this is no more or less than a sectarian withdrawal from Christian responsibility to work toward the common good. Others have said that within a Christendom climate, such an “alternative society” is needed so that Christians themselves do not forget that while they are in the world, they are not supposed to be of the world.

My own response is informed largely by reflection on my upbringing in a classical pentecostal environment. Such traditionalist “sectarianism” rejected overt political involvement and was motivated less by a clearly articulated notion of Christianity or even Pentecostalism as an “alternative Civitas,” than it was by a profound and intense commitment to living out the Great Commission. As grateful as I remain for this emphasis, I think that its historical unfolding has been handicapped on at least two fronts: first, its less than holistic understanding of what the gospel means and its implications for Christian mission, and second, its presumption of a dispensationalist-eschatological frame of other-worldliness which undermined any concerns for the present public square.

Pentecostal theologians of the last two decades have mounted a withering critique of the founding generation’s adoption of a dispensational eschatology whose historic rejection of charismatic spirituality was otherwise antithetical to the heart of the modern pentecostal revival. But how then to sustain the movement’s missionary sensibilities if eschatological urgency is undercut? As importantly, how might an authentic pentecostal political theology emerge for the movement into its second century?

I have argued elsewhere, especially in my book, In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology (Eerdmans, 2009), that the “Five-fold Gospel” of the early pentecostal pioneers – Jesus as savior, healer, sanctifier, baptizer in the Spirit, and coming king – is conducive toward formation of a pentecostal political theology. Jesus as savior of souls and bodies invites thinking about how the spiritual dimension interfaces with the socio-economic and political domains of human life; Jesus as healer suggests that the gospel addresses embodied creatures and that a theology of embodiment has inextricable political aspects. Jesus as sanctifier urges that Christianity is set apart and therefore not of the world, while Jesus as Spirit baptizer motivates Jesus-followers to actively engage every part of the created order. Last but not least, Jesus as coming king anticipates not necessarily a “rapture” from history and the cosmos but the divine intention to redeem and renew history and the world.

This scheme, I have proffered, is consistent with the Day of Pentecost message that heralds the redemption of the many tongues of the world as part of God’s “last days” (Acts 2:17) or eschatologically saving work. If the tongues or languages of humanity are representative of its many cultural traditions, then their redemptive retrieval suggests that the divine work of salvation holds forth unimagined possibilities for the purification, sanctification, and glorification of the public square as it finds fulfilment in the work of Christ. A pentecostal political-theological motif thereby emerges: many tongues, many political practices – each relevant to distinctive historical, contextual, and situational realities which demand particular responses that participate in the renewing work of the Spirit and in the coming reign of God.

If the foregoing has any merit, then a pentecostal political theology belongs not just to pentecostals but to all those who claim to be filled with the Spirit poured out by the Son from the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33). And if that is so, then such a pentecostal political theology contributes to and perhaps provides performative dynamism for the renewal of Christian political theology and Christian theology of the public square. This is because the Five-fold gospel is not parochial or sectarian but plays out the logic of the work of the Spirit of Christ as it has political and public impact. Hence, the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh, considered in terms of political theology or theology of the public square, potentially revitalizes and renews Christian reflection in these areas. Yet such renewal thinking inspires discernment in the many political and public circumstances Christians find themselves in throughout time and space so that they may respond appropriately, not just as if guided by inflexible and absolute laws built into the political order of things.

For me, the point in the end is not a political theology in the abstract but a political way of thinking and living the footsteps of Jesus as messiah. This requires nothing less than life full of the Spirit of Jesus, which is attentive to contextual realities and demands, and capable of seeing how the message of the gospel has distinctive political and public consequences that require action and discerning embodiment. Followers of the Spirit-inspired Christ who proceed in this vein will themselves initiate a renewal and renovation of the political realm – and this is itself nothing less than participation in Jesus’ prayer that the reign of God scatters the darkness of the present world.

An introductory comment: A reader responding to a recent post asked if I (and other writers in this series) saw any future in evangelicalism at all because he read the posts as attacking evangelical positions. I’ve been pondering that over the past few weeks and realize that I could be clearer on my intent. I’m raising concerns about some aspects of evangelical culture in an attempt to call out the latent consequences those pieces may have — especially in terms of the broader culture hearing the heart of evangelicalism as it shares the love of Christ in prophetic ways to the broader society. After the critique, I’ll try to do a better job of speaking to the positive future.

It was the fall of 1981 and I was teaching my very first Introduction to Sociology class. I’d been a TA for the course in grad school but now I was responsible for the lectures myself. When I got to the broad institutional areas (of which Politics is one), I contrasted different views of governance: town hall democracy, Jeffersonian government by elites, oligarchy, and special interests. As I finished giving the lecture, I suggested that many in the church had adopted special interest tactics and that I was worried that the Body of Christ would be seen as simply another advocacy group.

The Moral Majority had been formally established just two years prior and CNN the year after that. Evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell could regularly be found on the new cable news outlet speaking on political issues on behalf of Christians. It had been eight years since the Roe v. Wade decision but was still five years away from the formation of Operation Rescue.

Sociology professors talking to undergraduates are  not prophets. Yet in my own small way, I was trying to be a voice about something that could prove problematic. Maybe if my undergrads paid attention and acted differently as a result, we’d find a better way of engaging the political realm.

The last three decades have seen my meager warnings come to full flower. We now have major political organizations organized around Christian themes (e.g., Family Research Council). Or are they Christian organizations organized around political themes (e.g., The Family Leader)? When political candidates flock to the  Value Voters Summit (“Faith, Family, and Opportunity for All”) to prove their conservative credential to a room full of Christian delegates, the lines between religion and politics seem to disappear.

The impact of “evangelical as special interest group” has been well documented. Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? suggested about a decade ago that evangelical voters were enticed into voting for political candidates on promises to address social issues like abortion and prayer in schools but those issues didn’t remain important to the candidates after the election. He argues quite cynically (Frank is really good at cynicism) that if the issues were addressed, the voters might return to their economic interests as a basis for voting. Perversely, one of the outcomes of the special interest approach is that the establishment keeps the issue on the table to maintain funding and voter participation but doesn’t create the desired social change.

The dynamics of the special interest approach show up in the midst of the “millennials leaving church” argument. The Barna Group’s data suggests that at least some of the disaffection of today’s young people comes from seeing church leaders as overly strident on social issues, being anti-science, anti-homosexual. In short, it’s about being known for what one is against and not what one is for.

Listen to any news program discuss what “evangelical voters” care about. Sure, they’ll take about their concerns over abortion or traditional definitions of marriage. But you’re just as likely to hear them decry Obamacare, support lower taxes and limited government, and favor a strong military. This is another outgrowth of the special interest approach — parties build “big tents” of various special interests and those coalitions start to bleed over into common talking points.

Evangelicals may have access to varied outlets in television, radio, or internet, but it doesn’t change the basic principle of electoral politics: numbers. Consider the following chart produced by UConn sociologist Bradley Wright from General Social Survey data. It’s his estimate of the percentage of Americans who can be classified as evangelicals.

The GSS data suggests that evangelical strength peaked in about 1990 and has been slowly waning since. Other data suggests it’s waning even more rapidly among the young with the percentage evangelical for those under 30 falling to 17% in 2010. This means that evangelicals cannot shape public policy without significant assistance from non-evangelicals. That 24% of the public may be strident and therefore more likely to vote than the average citizen, but elections are likely to follow demographic trends similar to the 2012 election.

Here ends the negative griping. What is the alternative going forward? Let me suggest three strategies.

First, we should recognize the difference between what is scriptural priority (to some eyes) and what makes for public policy solutions. If evangelicals are only a quarter of the population, we’ll need to find better ways of engaging with those who don’t share our faith perspectives. It means being willing to influence those things we can while not fighting over the things we can’t. For example, there is interesting data from a recent Baylor Religion study suggesting that a segment of the evangelical public isn’t fighting gay marriage as a matter of social policy. A debate is brewing among some Christian bloggers about whether this represents caving to liberalism or crafting a “messy middle” My read of the report suggests the latter. The correlation data suggests that these Ambivalent Evangelicals (really needs a new label) share few if any characteristics with liberals. (I’m in conversation with the Baylor sociology folks to get a better read on the data and may update this as that comes together.)

Second, regardless of one’s view of Christian America rhetoric (there are a vast number of good Christian history sources laying the claim to rest, but it survives in spite of it), we need to craft an understanding of the country based on the current realities. Let’s not fight over Jefferson’s views on religion or the church memberships of the signers of the Declaration. We live in a culture that is marked by demographic diversity. We are surrounded by ideological diversity. We need to engage that discussion on the basis of guiding values and not on claims of superiority. It will require much patience, careful listening, and far less pronouncing. While 24% of the public isn’t majority language, it’s worth being heard as evangelicals.

Third, evangelicals are at our best when we’re advocating for those who can’t advocate for themselves. This has been the heart of the pro-life movement. But it goes beyond that. It means that we are passionate about justice — not just in a narrow partisan sense but in the “least of these” sense. Let’s worry less about political party orientation and think together with non-evangelicals about how we speak on behalf of those without voice. The poor, the broken, the abandoned, the hurting, the addicted, the dispirited. As people reflecting God who gave himself up for us, we cannot be guilty of a self-interested approach to democracy. It’s not about us. We already received more than we could possible imaging.

It’s about “liberty and justice for all”. There’s a reason the pledge ends with that line. It’s the hope of the nation and evangelicals have a unique role in seeing that hope come to fruition.