MIXING FAITH AND POLITICS

There are many who criticize the mixing of Christian faith and politics. Preachers can take sides on social and moral issues so that members of their congregations find it difficult to disagree. On the other hand pundits in the media and politicians can demonize anyone who disagrees with their preferred convictions. The issues become toxic so that it is not possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Conversations about them become shouting matches. Good and evil, love and hate, are defined according to one’s beliefs. How can we respect one another if we cannot accept that there are two sides to every issue? What is the higher good and the acknowledged authority we accept?

For the Christian, the supreme authority is the truth of the Scriptures as affirmed down through the ages. The highest good is that of God alone as revealed in Jesus Christ. The Church has had to deal with all sorts of cultures, crises, governments, conflicts and persecutions over the centuries. Sometimes it has succumbed to the spirit of the age and the pressures of the secular powers. Immorality and corruption has penetrated to all human institutions including the Church. Jesus and other Reformers have criticized the religious and secular authorities and prophesied their judgment. No human leader is infallible. We all need to balance the courage to confront evil with humility that we are all sinners.

Each generation faces issues that occasion taking a stand one way or another. How does the faithful Christian deal with the issues that face us today? Do we ignore them and see our faith as dealing only with our relationship with God and not with our neighbor? No. We have to have convictions about right and wrong as we see them. How prominent should these issues be in our teaching and preaching? When issues of human dignity and justice are at stake we must be willing to witness to the truth as we see it in the Scriptures, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer did in Nazi Germany and Martin Luther King Jr. did in 1960’s America. Both were preachers.

But what if these issues are disputed? How do Christians deal with the issues that roil our political discourse today? Some Christians leaders feel so strongly about them that they become very involved in partisan politics. This may be their calling from God. Others seek to avoid confrontation and concentrate on other aspects of the kingdom of God. Each preacher has to decide for themselves what their highest calling is going to be and the consequences of it for their congregations. Our faith determines the degree to which we become political. We may not agree with one another as to what that may be but sometimes we cannot stand on the sidelines and say or do nothing. I do not agree with everything I hear from the pulpit, but I respect the right of the preacher to say it. On the other hand when the preacher is silent about important moral and social issues they are culpable of cowardice.

John Stott preached a series of sermons on Issues Facing Christians Today which was published under that title in 1984. In his Introduction he wrote a disclaimer”

I am in no sense a specialist in moral theology or social ethics and I have no particular expertise or experience in some of the fields into which I trespass……what I am venturing to offer the public is not a polished professional piece but the rough-hewn amateur work of an ordinary Christian who is struggling to think Christianly, that is, to apply the biblical revelation to the pressing issues of the day…Some Christians, anxious above all to be faithful to the revelation of God without compromise, ignore the challenges of the modern world and live in the past. Others, anxious to respond to the world around them, trim and twist God’s revelation in their search for relevance. I have struggled to avoid both traps.

What is evil to one person may be good to another. How do we distinguish between the two? The Christian turns to Holy Scripture for guidance. Jesus teaches us both to have compassion on the suffering and to denounce evil where it is found. We cannot be naïve about evil. There are times where it must be confronted and opposed. This will not make us friends with everyone. There is a moral revolution taking place in our generation. What before was repudiated is now celebrated. The issues cannot be ignored in the name of love.

John Stott quoted William Temple, who, in his 1942 book, Christianity and Social Order wrote, “The Church is committed to the everlasting Gospel; it must never commit itself to an ephemeral program of detailed action.” Readers of Temple will know that he was very far from saying that religion and politics do not mix. His point was different, namely that ‘the Church is concerned with principles and not policy.’ The reasons why he believed the Church as a whole should refrain from ‘direct political action’ by developing and advocating specific programs could be summed up as ‘integrity’ (the church lacks the necessary expertise, though some of her members may have it), ‘prudence’ (because she may prove to be mistaken and so be discredited) and ‘justice’ (because different Christians hold different opinions, and the church should not side with even a majority of its members against an equally loyal minority. We should seek to educate the public conscience to know and desire the will of God. The church should be the conscience of the nation. We should reason with people about the benefits of Christian morality, commending God’s law to them by rational arguments. “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind…Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (Romans 14:5,19). This is never easy. It wasn’t for Jesus and won’t be for us.