Toward a Christian View of Politics
TOWARD A CHRISTIAN VIEW OF POLITICS
by John K. Stoner
Christians and politics–a puzzle, to be sure.
Like the eagle on their dollar bill, which holds olive branches in one set of talons and arrows in the other, Americans, and American Christians in particular, are of two minds in their thought about politics. That is, Americans believe that their democracy has achieved far more cultural transformation than it actually has, but simultaneously, they believe that due to the drag of sin, true cultural transformation is impossible. What we need is a political attitude which transcends this contradiction.
Here is the problem. Americans ask you to look, on the one hand, at what their experiment in democracy has done: it has ended King George’s British tyranny over the Colonies, produced the Declaration of Independence, written the world’s greatest document of governance, the Constitution, freed the slaves, fed the world, made space for God and religion, melted the pot, developed the West, invented the light bulb, given women the vote, birthed Henry Ford, produced the car, gone to the moon, built the mall, televised the NFL, won two world wars, isolated Castro, and woven the world wide web. All of this is affirmed periodically by going to the polls and voting. Democracy works, isn’t it wonderful!?
But next they describe all of the elements of culture which are fixed in stone and can never be changed: Indians are lazy, war is inevitable, education costs too much, more prisons are needed, public transportation doesn’t work, the car is sacred, old growth forests must be cut, homosexuals must be isolated, rain forests are an outdated luxury, acid rain can’t be helped, blacks are lazy, arms sales strengthen the economy, land mines create jobs, nuclear weapons keep us free, global warming is a myth, advertising fills a need, fetuses are good, immigrants are bad, and poverty can’t be helped. Humans are born in sin, and culture is trapped where it is.
Sin, Americans believe, guarantees the permanence of cultural depravity. The triumphs of democracy, on the other hand, are proven and perpetuated by right and practice of voting. In this view, voting is the ultimate political involvement, the elixir of society’s ills, the perfect tribute to democracy’s success in the past and the guarantor of its achievements in the future. To vote, and only to vote, is to be a responsible member of society. The meaning of politics, and the essence of political action is reduced, for all practical purposes, to the single act of voting.
But politics is vastly more than voting. Politics is the challenge of achieving human community. The root word is “polis,” or city, which is the essential symbol of human community. Of course narrower definitions are possible, such as the art or science of winning and holding control over a government, or activities characterized by artful and often dishonest practices. A moderate definition would be “the art or science of governing.” This may be useful, if we think of governing as guiding the process of achieving human community.
As the challenge of achieving human community, politics deserves the attention and energies of Peace Church and all Christian people, because God, by all indications, has an interest in the development of human community. There will, of course, be people who make a specialty of governing, and that should not be surprising. However, it is not to be expected that those specialists should be left alone to, by themselves, define the meaning or content of governance. Every person has an interest in defining the shape of the human community, and narrow definitions of governing should not be permitted to obscure the fundamental goal of serving the needs of humanity as a whole.
For Christians it is worth remembering that the central message of Christ Jesus, whose name we bear, was that the kingdom of God has appeared in the midst of human affairs. I shall proceed to argue, in fact, that this kingdom memory must be decisive for our political thought. Christians are bound to ask what Jesus Christ can teach them about politics, or else maintain a discreet silence about BOTH Jesus AND politics. This is an argument, I fear, which will not find easy acceptance with my readers, whose indulgence for some moments I nevertheless beg. If this seems like strange politics, I respond that any discussion which includes Jesus is, by definition, strange in a way, and anyone who brings up Jesus has brought up a voice which is, in profound ways, quite alien. This really can’t be avoided. Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingship come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That crosses over some planets, and if we pray the prayer we are committed to making the leap. (Or we could, of course, abandon the prayer….)
Kingdom denotes reign, or governance. The message of Jesus was that God is present and taking charge. The will of God is being done on earth as it is in heaven. This is thoroughly political, and only centuries of compromise with earthly kingdoms, growing out of a fear to challenge kings as directly as Jesus challenged them, has made it seem otherwise to most Christians.
But to speak of “kingdoms” is to confront a severe problem of language. “Kingdom” talk is not the current coinage of political discourse. A beginning toward correcting the problem might be for the church to abandon altogether the use of the term “kingdom of God,” because “kingdom” does not denote the basic unit of political organization in our time, as it did in the time of Jesus. The word is therefore incapable of communicating what Jesus meant, and no doubt evokes images, if any at all, of things he did not mean. So we need a new word.
I will suggest “the government of God,” which is not an ideal substitute, but definitely an improvement over kingdom. Other possibilities might be the “reign” of God, “sovereignty” of God, “civil authority” of God or “presidency” of God. To find alternative language is an ongoing task, and much needs to be done. But for this start I will contend that the main strength of “government”is its inescapably human and political tone. The word government clearly evokes a connection with existing human political sovereignties The word kingdom did the same in Jesus’ time.
At least three things are necessary if we are to give the concept of “the government of God” some of the political power and urgency which the message of Jesus conveyed in its original setting. First, the term must communicate specific content–we must identify some key characteristics of the government of God. Second, there must be a sense of timing–when is the government of God expected to make its impact on human history? And third, we must describe the method by which this government of God will make itself felt in human affairs. By what form of power does this government pursue the goal of human community? It is in examining the content, timing, and method of the government of God that we may find pearls of great worth in reclaiming our Christian call to political living.
The content of the government of God is most succinctly described in the words of Jesus recorded in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7). The Sermon provides the closest thing available to a summary of the mind of Jesus on politics, and the shape which the sovereignty of God is destined to take in human affairs. The essential points are about as well known as they are widely ignored:
Behaviors which are rewarded in God’s
government:
- The meek inherit the earth
- Those who hunger and thirst for justice are satisfied
- The merciful receive mercy
- Peacemakers are called children of God
- Those who are persecuted for the sake of justice receive the reign of God
Guides to human relationships and successful
living:
- Be reconciled with your neighbor before doing any act of worship
- Never swear to the truth; instead, quite simply, always tell the truth
- Do not resist violence with violence; take initiatives for reconciliation
- Play God: love your enemies
- Do not seek earthly riches, trust God for sustenance
Principles of true religion and piety:
- Pray for God’s government to come and God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven
- Do not advertise your philanthropy, your prayers or piety
- Learn to identify charlatans and false prophets by their smooth talk and manner of life, which deny the basic teachings of Jesus
The practice of the Sermon on the Mount would revolutionize politics in America (and anywhere else). Christians could be most relevant to the political process in this election year by saying, in all kinds of ways and places, that the governance of the country must increasingly embody Sermon on the Mount principles, and will, in any case, be judged by them. Speaking the truth, in other words, is the most significant political action which is available to any of us; not voting, but speaking the truth. This view is based on the familiar Biblical notion that “the Word” is the central thing. The word is the truth; the expression of the truth by human lips and human lives moves culture and history toward the government of God. There is no higher form of political action, nor is there one which can contribute more to the wholeness of the human community. Speaking the truth can be done powerfully in settings as different as a Sunday School class, a local school board meeting, political rally or a town meeting. This is practicing the politics of God.
Individuals who speak much of “political realism” (the need to compromise high principle in order to achieve some short-term goal) may wish to dismiss this as idealistic, irrelevant, out of touch, impractical, and pie in the sky. Which brings us to the second main question about the government of God, namely, when will, or can, it be realized?
The timing of the government of God speaks to when it might be possible, or expected, that the will of God shall done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus said that the government (kingdom) of God is like a mustard seed, which “is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade” (Mark 4:31,32.)
The image of a seed conveys deep political wisdom. First, it indicates that the early steps toward the goal do not look like the goal itself. A seed does not look like a shrub or tree. Neither does the Sermon on the Mount look like politics or government. Probably for that reason, few Christians of any type start with Jesus’ announcement of the government of God, and the Sermon on the Mount, when they think about politics. But in truth the only thing that will produce a tree is a seed. One could try other ways to produce a tree– ways which start with something which looks more like a tree. For example, one could cut off a branch and stick it in the ground (this actually works for a few species). Or bury and fertilize a pile of fresh, green leaves from a tree. Or start with a photograph, a thing which looks very much like a tree, and plant and water that for a while.
The goal of politics, to achieve human community, can only be reached in one way–by planting the seeds which produce human community. Impatient efforts to enforce justice by violence, or construct human community by legal coercion are doomed to failure. The Sermon on the Mount describes the essence of the only politics which can hope for success.
The seed image speaks also of time and patience. Time, someone said, is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. Jesus taught a politics of patience, of waiting and watching. The goal of human community takes years, centuries, and millennia. The appearance of democratic government, replacing monarchy as the accepted standard, took millennia. The same was true of the legal abolition of slavery in the United States as a social institution. How long will it take to abolish the social institution of war? The recognition of women’s rights and the abolition of patriarchy is a slow process. These things do not happen all at once. But they do happen because better ideas and practices are embraced; because God is active in history. Culture can be transformed, and God might just give us, or hold us to, all of the time which it takes for culture to conform to the Sermon on the Mount. It is a frightening, but also a challenging and hopeful thought.
Thirdly, the method of the government of God is conveyed in the image of the cross. The cross is not the price which God exacted from the Son so that God would have something in return for extending forgiveness to guilty sinners. Jesus taught his disciples to forgive, demanding nothing in return. God might be expected to do as much. The cross is the revelation of the only kind of power which is greater than the power of death which is wielded by human governments–nonviolent power. The cross is the revelation of the government of God.
Jesus said that anyone who wanted to follow him should take up their cross and follow his way (Mark 8:34). When he said this he issued an invitation to all of humanity, he announced a new government which is destined to take over the world, and he said that the dynamics of his own cross must define the life of every person who wants to join struggle against the evil in the world–evil which works by coercion and death. When Jesus called upon everyone to take up their cross, he turned away from making the cross uniquely his own, and exactly to the contrary, made the cross the universal way for humankind, the way to bear witness to and live under the government of God. The cross is the willed acceptance of personal and present injustice and suffering for the sake of a wider and future realization of justice and peace. The cross is serious about the fact that actions have consequences; it performs an action which exposes the fraudulence and futility of homicidal violence and contains the seeds of transformation of individuals and cultures. No wonder the rich man went away in despair: he was not yet willing (or able?) to make such a commitment to Jesus’ radical politics, to the government of God.
Preparing for the fall elections, Christian should recall that voting is a small matter compared with holding a clear vision of the kind of human community for which one should be voting if one did vote. Running–in a footrace, for election, to the polls–is a small matter compared with knowing the destination toward which one should be running if one did run. To run for office is a blind dash if neither the human purpose nor the appropriate methods of the office are deeply understood. Likewise, voting or not voting is a blind act or blind avoidance if dissociated from the call to a new community, a new Jerusalem.
The Christian contribution to the political discussion should be to speak this truth: the best help available for knowing the true goal and method of politics resides in the central images of the Judaeo/Christian tradition. Admittedly, there are painfully embarrassing things in this tradition as it has been practiced throughout history. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that this is an immensely self-critical tradition, one which has virtually specialized in identifying and denouncing its own failures, a process in which Jesus represented an epochal crisis and dramatic breakthrough. Jesus was, of course, executed for his efforts, watering the seeds with his blood, but so the human community moves forward, slowly but surely, as a mustard seed toward a tree.
Reprinted with minor revisions from MENNONITE LIFE, October,
1996.
John K. Stoner works for world peace from his home in Akron, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries in 1967, and says that in his lifetime he has probably spent more time studying the Bible than most people his age have spent eating. He pastored Harrisburg Brethren in Christ Church for 8 years, and was executive secretary of the Mennonite Central Committee US Peace Section for 12 years. He is part-time coordinator of New Call to Peacemaking, and teaches part-time in the Bible and Religion department at Messiah College. He serves on the boards of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) and KAIROS School of Spiritual Formation. His wife Janet and he have 5 children (two adopted) and 8 grandchildren He enjoys parenting and grandparenting, reading, bird watching, gardening, hiking, and watching God¹s purposes unfold in history.
Article Copyright © 1996 John K Stoner