BLOG 7/26/15. CAN YOU SEPARATE CHRISTIAN FAITH AND POLITICS?

BLOG 7/26/15. CAN YOU SEPARATE CHRISTIAN FAITH AND POLITICS?

In this political season so irresistibly upon us, often comes the protest from some that they don’t believe in mixing Christian faith and politics. But the very idea that you can separate them is a bit humorous. After all, the Christian faith is essentially incarnational, it is those of us who embrace Jesus Christ as Lord demonstrating that relationship in flesh and blood right in the middle of this polis, this very real context where there is always our passion for peace and order and justice.

Is such an incarnation easy? Never. Is there often an intense difference of opinion? Count on it. When the Sojourners Community in Washington produced the bumper sticker: God Is Neither a Democrat or a Republican, a few years ago, that is absolutely true. Our Biblical faith expresses itself in the existential realities of many different concerns. But the notion that we can separate Christian faith and politics denies our Biblical faith. When the first generation of the Christian church declared: “Jesus Is Lord,” they were in that very statement making the most political statement that could have been made in the Roman Empire, in which Caesar was indisputably held to be the only lord and to be divine. For Christians to declare that Jesus was Lord was an act of sedition. They were considered by that declaration to be atheists because they denied the deity of Caesar.

Our Biblical roots in politics may have become most obvious in the time of the prophet Daniel. The Babylonian Empire had conquered Israel with its decadent Judaism, as God had foretold the Jews that they would if Israel continued in its forgetfulness of its own covenant of unique monotheism as spelled out in the Torah. But there was a remnant of very gifted and faithful Jews even in that dark episode of Israel’s history. The conquering Babylonians were not stupid, rather they discerned those gifted Jewish citizens, the nobility without blemish, whose skills could be useful to their own empire and took them as captives. Among such were the several very bright and gifted and attractive young men: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azarian (better known by their Babylonian names: Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednego). These were made members of the royal court. Can you think of a more challenging political context?

What did they do? They performed their given tasks with such excellence that they moved up quickly in to royal court. But it also brought them into confrontation with the pagan religion and with the jealous Babylonians who resented them. So you have the familiar stories of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace for their refusal to acknowledge Babylonian’s god, and the story of Daniel in the lion’s den. These were political encounters.

Believers also have different convictions. It was the zealous Puritans in England who brought a violent end (a beheading) to the monarchy of King Charles I, and sought to establish something of a theocracy with Cromwell as Lord Protector. The effort was fruitful in a way, but ultimately failed, but Great Britain never had an abusive monarchy after that. It also established a certain role for Christian expression in England and Scotland.

The founding fathers of this country had religious roots, sometime Christian and sometimes deistic, but they never sought to separate their faith from their politics. Abraham Lincoln was not a professing Christian believer, but in his agony over the issue of slavery and over a divided nation he sought the counsel of the pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, and the theological result of those conversations are obvious in the theological content of Lincoln’s second inaugural address shortly before his assassination.

All this is to say, that part of our stewardship of the gospel is to be informed as to God’s concern for his creation, for the helpless, for the welfare of all of its citizens, and to live out our political incarnation as Christians with intelligence, love, and excellence. You can’t separate Christian faith and politics. And no political party owns the Christian faith.

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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