The Church, the Powers and Politics: Part 1, To Bear Witness to the War

Last spring, my friend and colleague Brad East posted some reflections and questions in response to a post of mine regarding Christian involvement in politics.

If you read Brad's post, he asks a lot of very good questions prompted by my post. In that post I tried to suggest that Christians emotionally disengage from politics while remaining democratically involved. I'd like Christians to think about politics less ideologically and more pragmatically, seeing politics as a tool of limited use, a tool we don't place a lot of confidence in but a tool that can be put to good use. Brad thinks that this "engaged with low expectations" approach isn't realistic. You're either in, or you're out. If you're engaged you have to care, and if you care you're going to be emotionally invested. 

Brad also asked a lot of other questions about the proper Christian attitude toward the state. One question he asked that caught my attention was "What if they ask?" That is to say, if a nation, party or political leader asked the church what to do, what sort of answer should the church have ready? 

I don't know if I have fully worked out a comprehensive set of answers for all of Brad's questions, but his post has had me thinking over many months. I'm going to gather here in this series some of my reflections on political theology, how the church relates to "the powers" (to used a biblical phrase) and how that relationship affects political engagement. This is a fraught business because, as I mentioned recently, the New Testament was written in a very different political context from ours, addressed to powerless people living in colonial outposts of an Imperial Empire. The early Christians had little hope, prospect or expectation that they could effect political change. They were living as subjects of Rome, "the Eternal City." That there would come a day where Christians would be politically enfranchised citizens in a democracy wasn't on the horizon. So we have little in the pages of Scripture giving us guidance in how to use our personal and collective votes.

Given that situation, political theologians (and just normal people sitting in the pews) weave together a tapestry from the threads of Scripture to describe a vision of contemporary political engagement. Since, as I've said, we're working with primary material that had not envisioned modern political realities, these attempts are diverse and contentious. There's no consensus on how the church should use its votes, if at all. I expect my musings here will be just as tenuous and contentious. Still, because of Brad's post, I wanted to get some of my thoughts in order. Joining me, you might clarify your own views, in either agreement or disagreement.

[Looking back over these posts today, having written them over three months ago, I'm not all that satisfied with what I've written. If there's a central, guiding idea to this series it's simply a profound skepticism about any political project purporting to be "Christian." And that any nostalgia for a lost "Christendom" is borderline delusional, and a desire for a "Christian nation" deeply problematic, and most likely a Trojan Horse for evil and wickedness. If the church is water and the state is dirt, the mixture will always be mud. This is not to say, as this series will argue, that Christians should keep their hands clean. Just that getting in the mud will muddy--See what I did there?--the vision of Christ. Christian political theologians need to be theologians of the mud. If you're a Christian political theologian not centering the mud--the occlusion of Christ by the state--you are trafficking in either nostalgia or utopianism, and likely both at the same time. These thinkers and writers are the political theological equivalent of a Hallmark movie. To these sentimentalists I say: More mud, please.]

 To start, let me set out the first and most fundamental conviction of my political theology. It is this: 

The primary relationship of the church to the state is prophetic criticism. 

Let me draw your attention to a few things.

Notice I didn't say "prophetic contrast." I said "prophetic criticism." The reason for this distinction is that the Yoder-Hauerwas vision of the church as "counter-polis" to the state, I think, has fallen on hard times. The church, by and large, is a mess. It's way too easy to describe the church in highly idealized terms as a "city set on a hill" as a counter-community to the state. To be clear, I do believe the church should embody and instantiate an alternative politics. But this attempt is fraught, ambiguous, and frankly, never really observed.   

So, the political role of the church isn't primarily to become a counter-community. Though that is always an aspiration given the collection of sinners on hand. The primary role is prophetic criticism and critique. As the steward of the gospel, the church declares the reign and kingdom of God and, given the fallenness of the Powers, this message is always delivered to the state and associated political powers as prophetic rebuke. This is the primary political task of the church, to declare the kingship of Lord Jesus and fallenness of the Powers. 

A sketch of the biblical warrant for this view is as follows. First: the political disaster of Israel's monarchy and how that monarchy was established via a failure of faith in YHWH. Relatedly, Israel's entire prophetic tradition points to how every human rule, in its fallenness, must be met by the prophetic voice. Simply, if the political rule of Israel was idolatrous and unjust, no purported "Christian nation" should expect any different outcome. To Brad's question--"What if they ask?"--the answer from Israel is: "They might ask, but no nation in history ever listened." I'll say it plainly: any vision of "Christendom" is utopian.  

Beyond the evidence of Israel's exile, that no human rule can escape the judgment of God, there is also the New Testament witness about the current rebellion of the powers to the reign of Christ:

Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. (1 Cor. 15.24-26)

Our current political situation is that Christ is at war with the rebellious powers. Every nation is currently crossing swords with Christ. Even self-proclaimed "Christian nations" are enemies of the Lamb, even when they have purported "Christian leaders" in charge. Thus, the primary political task of the church is to bear witness to this war, to make the rebellion of nation states salient and visible, and to proclaim the ultimate victory of the King of Kings. 

Pragmatically speaking, the first word a Christian has for his or her nation and political party is negative. Sustaining this prophetic negativity is the primary political activity of the church.