U.S. Senator: ‘One-Cheer’ Vision for Politics Needed

Christ-followers’ responsibilities are due not only to God, but to parent, spouse, child, and neighbor, among other entities. But what, if anything, does the faithful Christian owe to the government and to political parties? And in the face of crises including a years-long pandemic, the threat of foreign imperialism, and an ever-secularizing hedonistic culture, does it make sense for Christians to make a tactical retreat from the political sphere?

On January 18, Wheaton College (IL) held a panel with U.S. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) and former Governor Bill Haslam (R-TN) addressing these and other questions at “Living Faithfully in the Public Square,” an event which sought to determine how Christians should act in the public and political arenas, as well as what role Christian higher education plays in the process. The two politicos took turns answering questions moderated by Political Science professor and author of Honoring God in Red or Blue: Approaching Politics with Humility, Grace, and Reason, Amy Black, as well as Theology professor and director of Wheaton’s Center for Applied Christian Ethics, Vincent Bacote.

Both Sasse and Haslam stressed the importance of cultivating humility in political life. Responding to a question about temptations facing Christians in public life, Haslam responded that “particularly in today’s world, people either treat you like you’re the world’s greatest, or you’re pond scum,” and that it is important for politicians and other publicly-effacing Christians to balance “the picture that we all have of ourselves of” being “created in the image of God” while also being “fallen and broken people.”

Further, Sasse suggested that this humility and sense of regard for others could reduce the temperature of current political flames.

“Believing that everyone is an image-bearer of the eternal God pretty much transforms your entire perspective of what you’re up to everyday,” the U.S. Senator from Nebraska said. Outflowing from this understanding, Sasse continued, “politicians are supposed to be public servants, they’re not supposed to think of themselves as better than other people.”

Sasse also articulated his understanding about the nature of the political sphere, saying “we have delegated authority for a temporary calling to serve in this space, and the vast majority of things politics claim it’s going to do, it fails at doing, so having a humility about trying to maintain a public framework for ordered liberty…it flows from having a sense of the dignity of people that you’re serving in these jobs.”

Throughout the talk, Sasse repeated themes of a limited capacity for the political process to accomplish meaningful change. Responding to a question about how Christians should engage with their political opponents, Sasse noted that he was “the third or fourth or fifth most conservative member of the Senate by voting record.” And yet, mentioned Sasse, “I’m not very partisan because I think these institutions are frankly really, really crappy. The Democratic and Republican parties are not impressive institutions and they’re not persuading or winning anybody, so I’m not going to vest much of my identity either in being a Republican or in being an anti-Democrat.”

Despite his generally cynical views about the political process, Sasse still affirmed the importance of Christians to be involved in the political arena. “It is odd,” Sasse stated, “how many Christians conclude that thinking politics are really broken means that therefore you should quit.”

In fact, Sasse pointed out, such a fact should inspire Christians to get more involved in politics. “One of the reasons our politics are so weird is that, by far, the most overrepresented people are the loudest, angriest, loneliest, most online people who are least representative of regular people,” he said. “So, I actually think if you recognize that a huge part of what’s wrong in our politics is performative grandstanding…it’s partly just because so many people have already failed to fulfill their calling to be a citizen who shows up in a republic.”

Ultimately for Sasse, this approach to politics culminates in what he called a “‘one-cheer for politics’ view, which is: ‘this is not the heart of who I am or what my identity is as a citizen, but I’m really grateful that we have order in a broken world.’” Importantly, Sasse expressed that this means America needs “a little more boring normalness in our politics.”

While there is no doubt that much can be done via the levers of political power, not all Christians will be called to immerse themselves in deeply political lives. But what is incumbent upon all Christians is to exercise godly virtue within our daily routines in the surrounding culture. Perhaps when such activities become a staple of the American Christian life once again, we may be able to witness a greater degree of normality in public life, as well as a society which is grounded in humility, and as a result, less vitriolic.