A New Christian Political Witness?

on January 31, 2014

This week I’ve been privileged to speak on Christian political witness before students and faculty at Baylor University, Southwestern Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Houston Baptist University.

I noted that the old Religious Right has ebbed, and the old Religious Left is mostly over. Many Christians, especially young Evangelicals, are now uncertain about their faith’s political implications. Some are tempted toward political withdrawal, despair or cynicism. I recalled some of the major traditions guiding Christian political witness in America over the last century such as:

– Catholic social teaching.

– Social Gospel.

– Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian Realism.

– Liberation theology.

– John Howard Yoder’s Neo-Anabaptist teaching.

– The Evangelical Left.

– The Religious Right with Francis Schaefer as a founding intellect.

One issue today for Christian social witness is the collapse of denominational loyalties and of authoritative religious institutions. America is as religious as ever but unmoored from traditions more than ever. Christian political witness is no longer a matter of persuading church conventions, denominational officials or a few key thinkers.

Also, many religious Americans are privatizing their faith, focusing on their own spirituality while ignoring its public and civic implications. Some are withdrawing from political engagement because they fatalistically expect the worst for our political culture. Many others, untethered to traditional teachings of their faith, succumb more easily to unsustainable emotive political appeals.

So developing a cohesive Christian social witness in these times is especially challenging but all the more needed. Here are some possible guiding principles especially for Evangelicals:

– An Augustinian understanding of limitations of fallen humanity, about which Calvinists and Niebuhr have much to teach, especially in warning against utopia.

– Confidence in Providence and the Holy Spirit’s power to redeem not just individuals but also communities and nations, recalling the early Wesleyan example in social reform.

– Centrality of God’s Word for guidance, about which Baptists can teach, especially for prioritizing issues to which scriptures speak most directly while more modest on other issues, allowing for prudential judgment.

– Acknowledging Lutheran teaching about God working through the two kingdoms of God and man and not confusing the two.

– Appreciating the church’s universality and avoiding strictly private judgments, including the Catholic understanding about a hierarchy of teachings, plus subsidiarity, and natural law, which speaks to all.

– Some level of emotional detachment from political theology, acting more traditionally Episcopalian than Evangelical, and not portraying every issue as hell vs heaven.

– Finally, a Lincolnesque appreciation for Providence working mysteriously through many actors on different sides of the same issue, including the historic utility of civil religion in mediating diverse religious and political perspectives.

The Mainline Protestants across four centuries crafted this approach through civil religion that successfully ensured an inclusive way for faith to integrate with statecraft. As Mainline Protestantism disappears, and perhaps with it much of the civil religion tradition, others will have to pick up the torch of ensuring a thoughtful role for faith in American democracy.

(Photo above thanks to Chris Hammons, Dean of Humanities at Houston Baptist University.)

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