Jonathan Merritt has a very interesting Religion News Service interview with Wheaton College’s Mark Amstutz on his new book Evangelicals and American Foreign Policy.
Here are some significant quotes from the interview:
On war
Following St. Augustine, evangelicals believe that Christians are citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom where Christ’s peace reigns but are also citizens of temporal kingdoms where the use of force may be necessary to deter aggression and protect legitimate interests and values. To the extent that evangelicals assess the use of military force in international relations, it is largely through the tradition of just war. Although pacifism has become more influential in recent decades, its impact on evangelical foreign policy thought remains modest.
In general, evangelicals support coercive diplomacy and war when confronting aggression and egregious wrongs. Throughout the Cold War, evangelicals were staunchly opposed to Communism because the ideology was assumed to be inconsistent with the Christian faith. As a result, they not only supported the strategy of containment but were staunch defenders of America’s overt and covert wars. During the 1980s revolutionary wars in Central America, for example, evangelicals supported the counter-insurgency strategies of the Reagan administration. And when Iraq intervened in Kuwait in 1990, evangelicals, like most Americans, supported the use of military force to oust Saddam Hussein’s forces from that small country.
On Israel
Evangelicals are strong supporters of Israel. But evangelicals’ support is, on average, only 5-7 percent stronger than that of the general American public. The conventional wisdom is that evangelicals support Israel because of the influence of premillennial dispensationalism and “left behind” theological perspectives. This view is not persuasive, however, since only a small portion of evangelicals accept prophetic theology.
A more convincing explanation for evangelicals’ support of Israel must include both religious and non-religious factors. At a minimum, four factors affect Evangelicals’ view of Israel: First, the belief that Jews are God’s chosen people; second, the belief that God’s promises to Abraham and his descendants remain valid; third, the common bond between Israelis and Americans arising from shared values rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition; and fourth, the common bond between the two nations arising from the shared commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.
On Evangelical shortcomings
A common shortcoming of evangelical foreign policy advocacy is the effort to use the Bible to justify public policy prescriptions. Since the Bible is not a manual on international relations, Scripture should not be used for political ends. Biblical principles should of course be used to structure the analysis of issues and to influence public policy debate, but Scripture should not be used to justify foreign policy positions. For example, some Evangelicals supporting Comprehensive Immigration Reform have unwisely used the biblical phrase “welcoming the stranger” to imply that the regulation of international migration is inconsistent with Scripture. But the use of Scripture to justify amnesty for undocumented aliens is unpersuasive and is likely to undermine the moral authority of the church.
Another shortcoming of evangelical foreign policy advocacy is the tendency to oversimplify global issues. For example, when highly-indebted poor countries were facing difficulties in meeting debt obligations, some evangelical groups attributed the obstacles to debt repayment to the structural injustices of the international economic order. And when the National Association of Evangelicals took up the issue of nuclear arms in 2011 by adopting a resolution that called for a reduction in strategic weapons, it did so by viewing the problem as an excess of weapons, not the inherent conflictual relations of global politics. Rather than integrating a Christian perspective with the problem posed by nuclear arms, the NAE oversimplified the issue.
If evangelicals are to contribute to worthy goals, they need to avoid shortcuts.
Regarding Amstutz’s criticism of NAE, Galen Carey of NAE responds in the column’s comments section.
Be sure to read the whole column and Galen’s response.
Amstutz’s book sounds like an important contribution to Evangelical witness on global statecraft.
Comment by Marco Bell on April 30, 2014 at 8:09 am
America must be careful not to become the same “Holier-than-thou” jihadists that their proclaimed enemy purports to be. Please don’t count me in that number, as my religion doesn’t accommodate what Mark Amstutz is promoting.
There is no doubt the Evangelicals were part of the ‘rush for blood’ that former President George W. Bush, and the American Neo-Cons promoted during the first decade of this century, and that didn’t do ANYBODY any good. So let’s not do any more to fuel that fire, please!
This is just another example of what ill can be done in the name of Religion.