Last week, I posted some questions about Christianity and politics for people to answer. Here are some more:
- To what degree are we to uphold a biblical standard of morality in the law? If we lived under a system of government that enforced God's ultimate moral standard, we would all be dead. I don't think anyone is advocating that. So how do you decide what you think ought to be the law of the land and what shouldn't be? Where do you draw the line and why?
- To the extent that we have a responsibility for the government of our country, how do you reconcile it with the doctrines of sin and grace? If "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10) outside of God's grace, what are we seeking to accomplish by creating and enforcing laws? Reminding non-believers that they are ultimately judged under God's law, whether they like it or not? Convicting people of sin so they are more prepared to hear the gospel? Protecting the innocent? Creating a more moral society? Ushering in the millennia kingdom (see the previous question)?
- Many of our contemporary concepts of "rights" come from Christian ideals of how other people ought to be treated. Do we, as Christians, have a duty, or even the freedom to demand those rights for ourselves? Why or why not?
You wrote:
To what degree are we to uphold a biblical standard of morality in the law? If we lived under a system of government that enforced God's ultimate moral standard, we would all be dead. I don't think anyone is advocating that. So how do you decide what you think ought to be the law of the land and what shouldn't be? Where do you draw the line and why?
My reply:
The line drawn is purely prudential. As I wrote in an earlier post, the believer's relationship to politics is existential. It is hard to see how it could be otherwise. We see through a glass darkly, to use the old King James phrase. For example: Is slavery unchristian? Clearly the NT does not treat slavery as something beyond the pale. Paul's letter to Philemon portrays a Christian slaveholder in relationship with a fellow Christian who is his slave, and this relationship is regarded as legitimate. Yet slavery was finally abolished in the Western world because of its perceived incongruence with the underlying meaning of the gospel. Which view is true? The answer is: both. Since we do not live outside history, which is fallen, or outside the convictions and exigencies of our particular historical moment, our understanding of what is right, and the limitations of practical politics, clearly delimit our reality.
To Paul, slavery was a legitimate institution, but spiritually irrelevant. But if it is spiritually irrelevant, then sooner or later it will become politically unsustainable, at least in any society made up of Christians.
You wrote:
To the extent that we have a responsibility for the government of our country, how do you reconcile it with the doctrines of sin and grace? If "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10) outside of God's grace, what are we seeking to accomplish by creating and enforcing laws? Reminding non-believers that they are ultimately judged under God's law, whether they like it or not? Convicting people of sin so they are more prepared to hear the gospel? Protecting the innocent? Creating a more moral society? Ushering in the millennia kingdom (see the previous question)?
My reply:
I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding here. I don't quite know how to address it, except to start by being deliberately obscure: "water runs downhill." Let me try to clear this obscurity up a little: "Christians live according to Christ's teaching." The questions that you ask are, in my view, self-answering. Do you stop breathing if your breathing isn't done righteously? Do you refuse to cross the street if you are not righteous enough to do so? Do you think that you should not cross the street if people say you are imposing your religion on them by doing so? I'm sorry if this is sarcastic, but it seems this obvious to me.
The purpose of politics is to create a common life together. Politics, like everything else, is either moving closer to God's will or further away from it. Which way should Christians try to move society? Again, the answer seems obvious.
Here is the underlying problem: 85% or more of Americans call themselves Christians. Therefore we live in a legal and political environment completely dominated by Christians, and which completely reflects their beliefs. Does it seem to you that we living in a politics dominated by Christians? I thought not. Yet we do live in a society of Christians: a society of corrupt Christians. And the primary reason that we live in such a society is because, over the past century and a half, Christians have completely privatized their relation to Christ. But that cannot be done without ceasing to be Christian.
You wrote:
Many of our contemporary concepts of "rights" come from Christian ideals of how other people ought to be treated. Do we, as Christians, have a duty, or even the freedom to demand those rights for ourselves? Why or why not?
My reply:
As I said in a much earlier post, the only reason to uphold any right is out of principle, which means that you uphold rights even if you benefit from them.
But the whole question of rights is misplaced. The problem at the core of modern society is our rejection of the rule of law. For example, a leftist (i.e. pagan) dominated court system has discovered in the Constitution something that is manifestly not there, the right to kill unborn babies. That court decision is not just a violation of the "rights" of the unborn. It is an assault upon constitutional government and the rule of law.
However, the response of the Religious Right (and the Right generally) is to back down from a direct confrontation with the courts, and to try to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn this decision. An amendment, of course, requires two-thirds of both houses of Congress, plus three fourths of the states, which means that it is nearly impossible to pass. And even worse, in my view, is that if such an amendment were passed it would only confirm that the federal courts had the right to make that illegal decision in the first place.
But here is the kicker: no constitutional amendment is needed. Under the Constitution itself (article 3, section 2), the Supreme Court is the weakest branch of government, modern liberal propaganda notwithstanding. Congress has complete authority over the appellate jurisdiction of the federal courts. That means that Congress can, at any time, tell the Supreme Court that they can no longer hear cases on abortion, and this may be done by a simple majority vote.
Of course, no one in Congress will ever do this, whether on abortion or in reaction to any of the other of the Court's illegal usurpations of power. Why? Because modern Christians and modern conservatives are no longer really interested in upholding the rule of law. They're also afraid, and rightly so, that the American people have been so brainwashed over the last few generations that they now view a judicial oligarchy as the ultimate authority in our government, though constitutionally they are not.
But back to your original question about Christians and rights. Let me restate your question slightly, and substitute the words "rule of law" for the word "rights." Here is your question reframed: "Do we, as Christians, have a duty, or even the freedom, to demand the rule of law?"
Do you see why I believe that these questions answer themselves?
Posted by: UJ at July 8, 2006 6:20 AM
Well, I hope you won’t mind, but I’ve decided to post another entry. It strikes me that perhaps my previous two entries, rather than being enlightening, may be misunderstood and may even be regarded as irritating.
I come at these things from a radical perspective, and one that is not widely shared (to put it mildly). But it’s a perspective that I’ve held since at least age twenty (that would be 1970). My view then and now is that modern conservatism, whether religious or political, is all about losing as slowly as possible to the pagan zeitgeist. In my view, American religious and political conservatism is simply not radical enough to understand the situation that we face, let alone to act on that situation. Mine is indeed a minority viewpoint.
If my responses to your recent questions seem hypercritical, or if they seem not to answer your questions, this is because I am trying to direct you back to what seems to be your underlying premise. It is that premise that I reject.
Let me approach the whole question from a different angle, that of history. The best argument against my view that Christianity is inherently political is the example of the early church. They expected Christ to return immediately and to put an end to history. They were completely focussed on evangelism and had no political program. The few Christians who were in government no doubt changed their approach to their jobs as the result of their conversion, but that change was purely personal. It did not constitute a political theory or program.
This would seem to be evidence against my thesis, except that Christ did not immediately return and the Roman state declared war on the church. You will note that this is a political situation.
Why did pagan Rome declare war? The historically incorrect answer is that this occurred because Christians refused to worship the emperor as a god. The Roman state did use that refusal as a means to identify Christians, but Rome was perfectly happy to tolerate other religions (the Jews, for example) who did not worship the emperor. The Roman state was happy to tolerate just about any religion, but only if that religion served the idea of Romanitas, which was itself a religious ideal. Christians, although completely law-abiding, looked upon Rome as something that was going to be swept into the dustbin of history, along with history itself. To the Christian, Romanitas was irrelevant.
Therefore Christianity was viewed as subversive of the Roman state and the enemy of true religion. The early Christians were even called atheists. Here, I would argue, is the real foundation of a politics based on Christ. Christianity is also inherently subversive of every rival faith. And the independent existence of the church, within the Roman empire, meant that the church had become a rival empire within that empire. This constituted a political revolution, and probably the most important political revolution in history. (I hope you appreciate that you’re getting a preview of my book here.)
My favorite quote on this subject is from one of the leading twentieth century historians of political theory, G. H. Sabine (who was not, by the way, a Christian). In his History of Political Theory (p 161), Sabine writes:
"The rise of the Christian church, as a distinct institution entitled to govern the spiritual concerns of mankind in independence of the state, may not unreasonably be described as the most revolutionary event in the history of Western Europe, in respect to both politics and political thought."
Think about that sentence for a moment. The history of the West, although it contains plenty of dynastic and other secular wars, is chiefly defined by the struggle between church and state, down to our own time. The book that I am writing (which is half done, I’ve reached the year 1800) is a history of the evolving iterations of Christ’s theory of politics (the distinction between God and Caesar) as it has progressed down through the centuries.
The modern political era, in my view, begins with creation of religious freedom in late eighteenth century America, together with the creation of constitutional government. In Europe, the definition of religious freedom turned out to mean freedom from religion. Indeed, the gospel and the church have been effectively destroyed in modern Europe, just as it was destroyed in North Africa and the Middle East by the sword of Islam, a thousand years before.
In America, we are proceeding at a somewhat slower pace in this destruction, but are on the same road. That process has been slower in America because religious freedom here originally meant the freedom of the American people to create a Christian secular society. In the nineteenth century, a non-denominational evangelical Protestant Christian culture was successfully instantiated as the basis of American society. The slow death of this Christian culture constitutes the history of America in the twentieth century.
Today we are taught to believe that modern secularism is religiously neutral, and this is a lie. There is no religious neutrality. What we are witnessing is the creation of a new pagan culture, and a society that is increasingly anti-Christian. Of course, most Americans seem to believe that modern secularism is religiously neutral, and this includes most of those who call themselves Christians.
Your original post, in which you welcomed the return of Christians to the margins of society, so that we would once again have the authentic Christianity of the catacombs, represents a misplaced idealism. The early Christians, by their very existence, even in the catacombs, were the enemies of the authority and meaning of the Roman state. Likewise American Christians, to the extent to that they actually are Christians, are the enemies of modern America. And they are seen to be so, no matter how marginal they become.
The fact that American culture, society, and politics are turning pagan does not mean that American Christians are becoming more spiritual. It means that American Christians are ceasing to be Christians. As I said before, there are not two realities. There is only one reality and Christ is Lord of it all.
I have my own views as to the kind of politics that Christians should be pursuing, which I will briefly touch upon. My belief is that we have not taken the idea of religious freedom to its necessary conclusion. For example, and only as one example, I consider it axiomatic that there should no more be a publicly established school than a publicly established church. All education is religious education, which means that the American public school is, in essence, our established church. Largely controlled by evangelicals in the nineteenth century, the public schools are now largely controlled by liberals (or, more accurately, pagans). Public education should be abolished.
You have to understand that all this is very old hat to me. The first time I ever voted I voted against the public school levy on that principle, and have never voted for a levy. At the time, there was no such thing as home schooling, and the Christian school movement was barely underway. Today, more than thirty years later, there are 30,000 Christian schools and millions of children being home schooled. Yet most Christians, with cheerful grins, continue to pull the lever to fund a system that is the enemy of everything they believe. I don’t pretend to understand this attitude and never have. But it does suggest to me that before we can have a serious politics, we need some serious Christians.
Posted by: UJ at July 10, 2006 2:59 PMI am going to post my own comments at length sometime soon, but I did want to set two things straight:
1. Your comments aren't annoying at all. I've found them very through-provoking and helpful.
2. It's not that I think the marginalization of Christianity is a good thing in and of itself, or even something to be sought after. It just seems to me that much of the current Christian political activity is specifically aimed at avoiding our own marginalization and nothing else, and that, in the process, it sometimes even inadvertently presents the world the message of personal righteousness under the law instead of the gospel of redemption. My point is merely that, if the church can and has thrived as an entity on the margins, maybe Christians should be a little more cautious about fighting our own marginalization when there are no other issues at stake, especially when it draws attention away from or possibly even contradicts the message of the Gospel. Boy, I can tell this is going to require a much longer explanation. Suffice to say that I don't think marginalization is good for its own sake, I'm just not convinced it's an evil to be avoided at all costs the way some Christian political groups seem to. More later. :)