Category Archives: Faith and politics

Politics in a state of grace

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(Warning: I hadn’t realized until I put this up just how long a post this is, and while it doesn’t exactly ramble, it’s something of an exploratory post. Call it variations on a theme . . . or maybe “Rhapsody in Red and Blue.”)

Anyone who’s spent any significant amount of time around this blog is no doubt aware that I have a definite political point of view; I come by it honestly. I’m the son of a decorated Navy pilot and a Navy nurse, and the nephew of a Navy doctor. I grew up around the military, in a church that was half Navy (the other half was Dutch; it was an interesting mix), in a family and community from which I absorbed the firm belief that patriotism is a virtue. I’ve been raised to be proud of this country and of all she has done for the world, her inevitable failures notwithstanding. I took my shape from an environment that was and is profoundly conservative, politically, theologically, culturally, and personally, though fortunately evangelical in form rather than fundamentalist. I was for a while a card-carrying member of the Republican National Committee, and I thought that was a good thing. I’m not the same person I was then, certainly, but I’m still conservative, politically and theologically, and a lot of people would reflexively brand my forehead with the scarlet “R” (for “religious right”) and figure they had me labeled.

Those folks would be wrong, though. Not because I’m not conservative, or because I don’t usually vote Republican; it’s not a matter of policy differences, or differing views on moral issues. I do, however, have a major problem with the whole approach to politics taken by many conservative Christians. I’ve argued before that American politics is idolatrous, in that it leads people to find their identity in a political party rather than in Christ; in that same post, I noted that patriotism can be an idol, and for many people, I think it is. Yes, our country is a wonderful gift to us, and yes, we’re richly blessed to live here—but it’s God’s blessing to us, and when we start to value the gift as much as we value the giver, that’s idolatry.

We need to understand that as Christians, our political loyalties can never properly be primary loyalties—not even our loyalty to our country is properly a primary loyalty—because our primary loyalty needs to be to God. Arguably the primary theme in Scripture, and certainly the primary political theme, is that God is the one true king over all creation; all human authorities are secondary. We as the church acknowledge him not merely as Lord over our nation, but as Lord over the church; we are directly under his rule.

When Paul says in Colossians 1:13 that we have been “transferred . . . into the kingdom of his beloved Son,” we tend to understand that in purely spiritual terms, that we have been saved and set free from death and sin, and that is certainly his main point; but it isn’t the only point. Paul has in mind here a complete transfer of allegiance, as verses 15 and following make clear, for we are now under the rule of the one who created every power and every authority, whether in heaven or on earth; thus we are no longer to understand ourselves primarily in relation to human governments, nor are we to define ourselves in human political terms. Instead, we are to understand ourselves as citizens of heaven, serving here as ambassadors to the people and nations of this world—and note the message we’ve been given to proclaim: not a message of war or hatred, but the message of reconciliation, that Jesus came to make peace between us and God through his sacrifice on the cross.

The founding principle of any truly Christian politics must be the absolute sovereignty of God. God is king over all the earth and the source of all true political au­thority; we owe our allegiance to him first and our country second. Yes, this is our country, but only for a little while. That’s why Scripture describes us repeatedly as strangers and foreigners, wanderers and exiles on this earth. The paradigmatic verse for us in this respect is Jeremiah 29:7: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” We’re here because this is where God has planted us, which means we need to take this as our home for as long as we’re here, and to do what we can to promote the welfare of the community and country to which we belong—as God defines that, not as any earthly political group does. We must never forget that when we say “my country,” we do so not with a sense of ownership, nor indeed with a sense of true belonging, but simply because this is the country in which God has placed us to serve him. Our primary place to belong is the kingdom of God, and our primary allegiance is to him; all other allegiances must be understood in that context. We’re called to serve Christ as our one and only Lord, in every aspect of our lives, including those which our culture labels “public,” “political,” and “secular.”

This is not to say, however, that we’re free to ignore our government at will; God has established governments for a purpose, and we have to bear that in mind. Paul makes this clear in Romans 13:1-7. Note, however, that he phrases his argument very carefully. “Every person,” he declares, is to “be subject to the governing authorities.” On the one hand, this is a very strong statement—there are no ifs, ands, buts, or exceptions. This means everybody, period. On the other hand, he doesn’t say, “Every person is to obey the governing authorities.” This means everybody, but it doesn’t mean that everybody has to do everything the government orders, period. Rather, the point here is that we all must acknowledge as a general rule that the government and its officials have authority over us, for God is the source of all authority and is the one who has instituted all human authorities. This will usually require that we obey whatever our governments tell us to do, but there are exceptions; Paul’s choice of the verb “be subject” reminds us that we are called, ultimately, to be completely subject to God in every aspect of life, and that human authorities are contingent, not absolute.

When it happens that a government is bent on rewarding evil rather than good, then we must follow God rather than government. That’s part of seeking the welfare of the country to which he has sent us: any authority which is in direct conflict with the expressed will of God must be resisted in whatever manner is appropriate. Any such action must be taken with humility, not giving ourselves too much credit; and again, it must bear in mind the fact that the ends don’t justify the means, and that unjust actions corrupt just goals; but if, like Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhöffer, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Niemöller, and others, we find ourselves in the path of injustice, we are obligated to resist it to the best of our ability. “I was just following orders” wasn’t an acceptable defense at Nuremberg, and it isn’t anywhere else, either.

In general, however, we are to submit ourselves to the governing authorities, because God has established them to carry out his work in the world, whether that be the town council or President Bush—or, for that matter, whether the next president be Sen. McCain or Sen. Obama. (After all, neither one could possibly be as bad as Nebuchadnezzar was, and Jeremiah made it clear to the exiles that they were to submit themselves to his rule.) Certainly, while our government is imperfect, it generally strives to reward those who do good and punish those who do wrong, and thus is generally in line with God’s purpose for it; for in that way, we are encouraged to turn away from evil and do what is right. As such, we’re called, for instance, to obey the speed limit to avoid punishment—a ticket, in that case—but also, Paul says, “because of conscience”—in other words, because our laws and police are part of the structure by which God brings order to the world for our good. And of course, this means that we’re called to pay the taxes the law requires, for that is the most basic way in which we submit ourselves to the authorities over us; the power to tax is the fundamental power for any government.

Is it enough, however, to obey the laws and pay taxes? Perhaps it was in Paul’s time, or in Jeremiah’s time; but not in our time, and especially not for those of us who live in democratically-based societies. The underlying point in this passage from Romans is, I think, that we are called to be good citizens, and good citizens who remember that our government’s authority rests on the God who created it to serve his purposes, whether our government remembers that or not; and in democratic nations, being a good citizen carries a few more responsibilities than it did in the days of the Roman Empire. Similarly, if we truly believe that the command to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you” applies to us, that means we need to take those responsibilities seriously.

You’ll notice that nowhere in this is any command to seek the welfare of one’s own political party, nor is there any defense of a spirit of polarization. Polarization as a fact appears to have its advantages, but the spirit of polarization, which brands those who disagree with us as enemies and exalts winning for one’s side ahead of the good of the whole, is another matter altogether. Our differences are real—I’m not making light of them, nor am I saying we should play them down or pretend they’re unimportant—but I am saying that we need to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. Or at least, if we’re going to see them as enemies, we need to remember that Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Either way, we need to love those with whom we disagree, not treat them with automatic hostility; we need to respect them enough to believe that in most cases, they’re trying to do the right thing as best they see it, rather than assuming that if they disagree with us, it can only be from ignoble motives. We also need to recognize that we aren’t perfect either, and that our own motives are never as pure as we’d like to think.

That means that we need to learn a hard lesson: winning isn’t the most important thing (let alone everything). You’ll notice in his prayer for the Colossians, Paul’s requests aren’t for anything we’d identify as worldly success; rather, he prays that they would know God deeply, that they would live holy lives, that they would be patient, that they would be joyful. Yes, if we’re concerned about a cause, we’re going to be concerned whether it succeeds or fails—but we need to remember that ultimately, that isn’t our responsibility, it’s God’s, because he’s the one in charge. We also need to remember that it might not be in his plan for our cause to succeed, for one reason or another; making that determination isn’t our responsibility either. Our responsibility is to “lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him,” in every aspect of life; it’s to remember that integrity and character are more important than political success, and that the ends don’t justify the means; and, dare I say, it’s to remember that integrity and character are more important in our leaders than whether or not they advance our political agendas. (If you don’t believe in the importance of character in leadership, by the way, just talk to any church that’s ever called a pastor who was high on gifts and low on integrity, and you’ll see what I mean.)

Finally, it needs to be said that if our founding political principle is the sovereignty of God, then his word must have final authority for us—which means we must seek as faithful and unfiltered an interpretation of his word as we can. Too often we seek to conform the word of God to our pre-existing biases, causes and agendas, rather than simply letting the Spirit speak; if we want it, God must want it for us, and if somebody objects, well, “God is doing a new thing.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that, or in defense of how many different agendas. That’s not the biblical model. The biblical model is that God is the judge of all the earth, he is the one who determines what is just and right, and our job is to conform, whether it suits our preferences or not. Our political efforts should be guided by what he desires and commands, whether we like it or not, whether it’s comfortable or not, whether it’s convenient or not, whether it’s easy or not. We need to resist the temptation to hear what we want to hear, and seek as best we can to hear honestly what he’s saying.

Moral arguments and the political process

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I have believed for quite some time, as have many others, that one of the biggest problems with public discourse in this country is the insistence by folks on the left that religious and moral arguments are illegitimate in the public square; there are voices on the left who have sought to challenge this idea in a constructive way (as Sen. Obama did two years ago) but they’ve been few and far between. (There have been rather more who have followed the invidious lead of Jim Wallis in arguing that such arguments are permissible if they support liberal conclusions.) The idea that liberals should take the moral and religious arguments that undergird conservative positions seriously and engage them accordingly has mostly been anathema to folks on the left.

That’s why it was so encouraging to see Austin Dacey’s book The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life, which came out two months ago from Prometheus Books. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus commented quite positively on the book at the time, writing,

On almost all the hot-button issues—abortion, embryo-destructive research, same-sex marriage, Darwinism as a comprehensive philosophy, etc.—Dacey is, in my judgment, on the wrong side. But he is right about one very big thing. These contests are not between people who, on the one side, are trying to impose their morality on others, and people who, on the other side, subscribe to a purely procedural and amoral rationality. Over the years, some of us have been trying to elicit from our opponents the recognition that they, too, are making moral arguments and hoping that their moral vision will prevail. But in the world of secular liberalism, morality is the motive that dare not speak its name. Austin Dacey strongly agrees. I expect he would not agree that the secularist moral vision entails a quasi-religious understanding of reality, but one step at a time, and The Secular Conscience is a critically important first step. . . .

Dacey recognizes the gravely flawed view of John Rawls that public decisions must be advanced by public reasons recognized by all reasonable parties. That is not the case with most questions requiring political decisions. He writes:

“A policy can be justified when it is favored by a convergence of citizens’ varying reasons, without there being any consensus on those reasons themselves. And there is no reason why the claims of conscience can’t be a part of such convergence. . . . So long as our reasons converge, the decision is justified to each of us and the ideal of legitimacy is preserved. There is nothing necessarily illegitimate about conscience.” . . .

On many questions of great public moment, most of us will disagree with Austin Dacey. At the same time, he should be recognized as an ally in his contention that these are moral questions that must be addressed by moral argument.

Two months later, the New York Times’ Peter Steinfels has taken note of the book (and also, incidentally, of Fr. Neuhaus’ comments on it); and though it seems clear that his main concern is whether Dacey’s approach will in fact benefit the liberal agenda, he lets Dr. Dacey have his say. This is important, because while Dr. Dacey, too, seeks to strengthen secular liberalism, he believes that having “a fundamental conversation” is important enough to risk the possibility that it might not produce the results he wants.

The most interesting part of Steinfels’ article, at least to my way of thinking, is the last paragraph:

“The Secular Conscience” glows with Mr. Dacey’s confidence in John Stuart Mill’s principle that every idea should be “fully, frequently and fearlessly discussed,” lest it “be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.”

The thing that interests me about that is the implicit admission that secular ideas can be dead dogmas just as easily as religious ones can; which is a truth that points to the big admission that secularists need to make, that secularism is in fact a faith like any other, and no more rational than other types of faith commitments (though there are certainly forms of both religious and secular faith which are less rational). That way lies the recognition, which we all need, that we should regard those with whom we disagree as equals with whom we should argue with respect and from whom we have much to learn, rather than as inferiors whom we may freely mock, berate, or dismiss. If Dr. Dacey’s argument leads eventually to secularists abandoning their self-assumed (and self-congratulatory) assurance of superiority to argue with their opponents humbly rather than dogmatically, he will have done our culture a great service indeed.

HT for the NYT article: Presbyweb

The life of faith vs. the life of politics

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“A person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way. As long as we think that the next election might eliminate crime and establish justice or another scientific breakthrough might save the environment or another pay raise might push us over the edge of anxiety into a life of tranquility,
we are not likely to risk the arduous uncertainties of the life of faith. A person has to get
fed up with the ways of the world before he, before she, acquires an appetite for
the world of grace.”—Eugene PetersonThis quote was at the head of The Thinklings yesterday. It is, I think, one of Eugene’s more important insights (which is saying something); grace is truly an acquired taste. I think this is particularly important because it points us a bit beyond Eugene’s own point to its corollary, that it’s as easy to lose that appetite as it is difficult to acquire it; the world is always trying to pull us back into valuing its own ways and solutions as much as it does, and if we aren’t careful, we tend to go along with that pull. Falling back into old habits of mind is easier than holding fast to new ones rigorously developed.That, I think, is why so many Christians who really ought to know better are so wrapped up in politics, because we’ve lapsed back into thinking that the next election will solve the problem (whatever we understand the problem, or problems, to be); we’ve forgotten that the tools of human beings will not accomplish the righteousness of God, and we’ve gotten into the habit of thinking that the work of the kingdom of God depends on electing this or that candidate, or winning a majority for this or that party. It isn’t so. Yes, we need to do politics to the glory of God, just as we’re supposed to do everything else to his glory; yes, God calls people to serve him in the political arena; yes, politics done to the glory of God is kingdom work. But in saying that, we need to remember two things:1) Politics done to the glory of God is conducted in humility, remembering that it’s not about us or what we can accomplish—and that God’s plans and purposes are bigger than what we can see, let alone understand; the plans of God are not to be identified with our own plans and dreams and ideas.2) Politics done to the glory of God is fundamentally different than politics done to the glory of getting re-elected, or of “winning” the issue. Indeed, sometimes the two stand diametrically opposed; when that happens, the desire to win must be set aside.

Speaking prophetically

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Three summers ago, in a burst of irritation at a few of my colleagues in the Presbytery of Denver, I wrote a Viewpoint article in Presbyweb titled, “Speaking Prophetically.” (If you’re not a subscriber to Presbyweb, you can also find the piece here.) At the time, I had had it up to my (receding) hairline with liberals claiming the “prophetic” mantle for what was, essentially, leftist boilerplate with a garnish of Christianese, and I felt the need to fire back. I wasn’t exactly stunned to find that no one changed their ways in response to my objection, but at least it made me feel better.Still, people haven’t changed their ways, and it does continue to irritate. The whole flap over the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., though, takes the whole thing to a new and truly egregious level. More than a few writers have attempted to defend and excuse the Rev. Dr. Wright by calling him “prophetic,” and situating him in a supposed prophetic tradition in line with the likes of Frederick Douglass and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Diana Butler Bass, in her post on Jim Wallis’ “God’s Politics” group blog, is typical:

Throughout the entire corpus, black Christian leaders leveled a devastating critique against their white brothers and sisters—accusing white Christians of maintaining “ease in Zion” while allowing black people to suffer injustice and oppression. . . .As MSNBC, CNN, and FOX endlessly play the tape of Rev. Wright’s “radical” sermons today, I do not hear the words of a “dangerous” preacher (at least any more dangerous than any preacher who takes the Gospel seriously!) No, I hear the long tradition that Jeremiah Wright has inherited from his ancestors. I hear prophetic critique. I hear Frederick Douglass. And, mostly, I hear the Gospel slant—I hear it from an angle that is not natural to me. It is good to hear that slant.

There are two problems with that—what we might call the historical and the theological problem. The historical problem is that the equation Jeremiah Wright = Frederick Douglass presumes another equation: 2008 America = 1858 America. It presumes that our country hasn’t changed at all in 150 years. And that just isn’t true. We are, no question, still an imperfect country—but on matters of skin color, however far we have yet to go, we’ve come a long way.The theological problem here is what concerns me more, however, because Dr. Bass’ idea of the gospel is really screwy at this point. When the Rev. Dr. Wright declaims, “God damn America! That’s in the Bible!” he’s right as Dr. Bass is right to point us to the fact, as Fr. Richard John Neuhaus also notes, that “Biblical prophets called down the judgment of God on their people,” and often in harsher terms than those used at Trinity UCC. But there is a profound, a deep and profound, difference between what he was saying and authentic biblical prophetic language. As Fr. Neuhaus continues,

They invoked such judgment in order to call the people to repentance. They spoke so harshly because they had such a high and loving estimate of a divine election betrayed. The Reverend Wright—in starkest contrast to, for instance, Martin Luther King Jr., whose death we mark next week—was not calling for America to live up to its high promise. He was pronouncing God’s judgment on a nation whose original and actual sins of racism are beyond compassion, repentance, or forgiveness. He apparently relishes the prospect of America’s damnation.

That is the key point that every other commentator I’ve seen has missed; that’s the point at which the Rev. Dr. Wright’s message unequivocally ceases to be gospel, indeed ceases to be in any real sense Christian, and becomes something else altogether—something very, very ugly. There was a discussion on The Thinklings a while back about the imprecatory psalms, where David and the other psalmists similarly aim harsh, violent language at their enemies; these are psalms not often read in most churches. As one of the commenters pointed out, however (probably Alan), there’s an interesting feature to most of these psalms: when David prays that God would destroy his enemies, he prays that God would do so either by slaughtering them or by bringing them to repentance. It’s that either/or that brings this sort of bitter prayer within the compass of a Jewish/Christian understanding of God. Without it, it’s nothing more than a pagan cry for vengeance.In light of that, I pray that someone who has pull with the Rev. Dr. Wright—perhaps Sen. Obama, who I can’t help thinking should have done this years ago—will draw him aside and call his attention to a couple passages from the Book he was supposed to be preaching from all these years:You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.—Matthew 5:38-48 (ESV)Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities,
against the cosmic powers over this present darkness,
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.—Ephesians 6:10-12 (ESV)

Revelation 7 multiculturalism

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One of the more interestingly problematic characters in contemporary SF is John Ringo. As the blogger over at Aliens in This World put it, “John Ringo is an odd bird, even by comparison to the normal oddness of science fiction writers. Ringo can write really really good, bad, and creepily-unwholesome-I-need-a-shower books. Often inside the same cover.” That captures it quite well, I think—particularly the way Ringo so often juxtaposes things I really appreciate with things I really don’t. He has in some ways a very perceptive eye, but a deeply flawed worldview underlying it, which makes him one of the few people I’ve run across (along with Ann Coulter) who can articulate conservative conclusions in such a way as to make me react like a liberal. This all is probably why the only books of Ringo’s I really like are the Prince Roger/Empire of Man series he’s co-writing with David Weber. (IMHO, they fill in each other’s weaknesses quite nicely.)As I say, though, he does have a good eye, and little tolerance for nonsense (he’d use a much more pungent word there, of course, having a rather rough tongue), virtues which are often promiscuously on display in his work—along with his pronounced animus against received pieties of any kind. That animus can color and distort his perception, but at times, it can also inform and strengthen it; when it does, the attacks he unleashes can be devastating.One good example comes from the fifth chapter of his latest project, a novel titled The Last Centurion, in which he takes a swing at multiculturalism. The novel is set in the future, but the examples on which he draws are from this decade, including this one:

Group in one of the most pre-Plague diverse neighborhoods in the U.S. wanted to build a play-area for their kids in the local park. They’d established a “multicultural neighborhood committee” of “the entire rainbow.” . . . There were, indeed, little brown brothers and yellow and black. But . . . Sikhs and Moslems can barely bring themselves to spit on each other much less work side by side singing “Kumbaya.” . . .The Hindus were willing to contribute some suggestions and a little money, but the other Hindus would have to do the work. What other Hindus? Oh, those people. And they would have to hand the money to the kumbaya guys both because handing it to the other Hindus would be defiling and because, of course, it would just disappear. . . .When they actually got to work, finally, there were some little black brothers helping. Then a different group of little black brothers turned out and sat on the sidelines shouting suggestions until the first group left. Then the “help” left as well. Christian animists might soil their hands for a community project but not if they’re getting [flak] from Islamics.

Now, maybe that sounds unfair to you; but if so, check out this piece (among others) by Theodore Dalrymple, based on his extensive experience working as a doctor in one of Britain’s immigrant slums. I won’t cite any of his stories—you can read them yourself; be warned, they aren’t pleasant—but I can tell you the conclusion to which they’ve led him:

Not all cultural values are compatible or can be reconciled by the enunciation of platitudes. The idea that we can all rub along together, without the law having to discriminate in favor of one set of cultural values rather than another, is worse than merely false: it makes no sense whatever.

The problem here is the unexamined assumption that “the intolerance against which [multiculturalism] is supposedly the sovereign remedy is a characteristic only of the host society,” and thus that if those of us who belong to the dominant culture would just set aside our idea of our own superiority, then all the problems would go away. Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. For one thing, this rests on the essentially racist assumption that all “those people who are different from us” are really all alike and thus all on the same side; but it ain’t necessarily so. To be sure, this assumption isn’t only made by white folks. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assumed that Hispanic immigrants would ally themselves with American blacks, and thus supported loosening immigration laws; Jesse Jackson assumed the same, which is why he proclaimed the “Rainbow Coalition.” As Stephen Malanga writes, though, it hasn’t worked out that way.More seriously, it isn’t only Western culture that is plagued by intolerance, hatred, violence, and other forms of human evil; other cultures have their own problems, too. As Dalrymple writes, “many aspects of the cultures which they are trying to preserve are incompatible not only with the mores of a liberal democracy but with its juridical and philosophical foundations. No amount of hand-wringing or euphemism can alter this fact.” Nor will any number of appeals to the better angels of our nature; human sin is a cross-cultural reality.Does this mean multiculturalism is hopeless? No, but it means it cannot be accomplished politically. If the divisions between people, and between groups of people, are to be healed, there must be another way; and by the grace of God, there is. It’s the way incarnated in the ministry of the Church of All Nations, a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in Minneapolis which is founded and pastored by the Rev. Jin S. Kim. It’s the way that says that our divisions cannot be erased by human effort, but only by the work of the Spirit of God—and that we as Christians have to be committed to giving ourselves to that work. We can’t make it happen, but we need to do our part to be open to God making it happen. This is the vision God has given us to live toward:“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number,
from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,
standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes,
with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice,
‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’
And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders
and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne
and worshiped God, saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving
and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.’”—Revelation 7:9-12 (ESV)

“Louder doesn’t make you right”

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Kudos to Chris Rice for this one—one of his best, I think.

You Don’t Have to YellSo-called reality,
Right there on my TV;
If that’s how life’s supposed to be, well,
Somebody’s lyin’.
The camera’s on and we can tell,
To keep your fame, you have to yell,
‘Cause tensions build, and products sell, and
We’re all buyin’.
I hope we’re smarter than this . . .

Everybody take a breath;
Why are all your faces red?
We’re missin’ all the words you said;
You don’t have to yell.
Draw your lines and choose your side,
‘Cause many things are worth the fight,
But louder doesn’t make you right;
You don’t have to yell.
Oh, you don’t have to yell.

I tuned in to hear the news—
I don’t want your point of view;
If that’s the best that you can do, then
Something’s missin’.
Experts on whatever side,
You plug your ears, you scream your lines;
You claim to have an open mind, but
Nobody’s listenin’.
Don’t you think we’re smarter than this?

Chorus

Everybody take a breath;
Why are all your faces red?
We’re missin’ all the words you said;
You don’t have to yell.
(If everyone will take the step,
Back away and count to ten,
Clear your mind and start again,
We won’t have to yell.)
Draw your lines and choose your side,
‘Cause many things are worth the fight,
But louder doesn’t make you right;
You don’t have to yell.
Oh, you don’t have to yell.Words and music: Chris Rice
© 2006 Clumsy Fly Music
From the album What a Heart Is Beating For, by Chris Rice

Inconvenient truth?

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The conventional wisdom is that the earth is warming, that it’s the fault of human activity, and that we need to make major changes to reduce CO2 emissions or we’re heading for disaster. Certainly, that’s the line pushed by the scientific and media establishments, and by much of the political establishment as well; as for the cultural elite, they showed their view of the matter when they gave Al Gore an Oscar for his film expounding that point of view, and then topped it off with the Nobel Peace Prize (in one of the stranger awards in the already strange history of the Nobel Prizes).

Which is a very good thing, if this is a real problem. But is it? Is the science really there? Maybe not. For all the worry about shrinking ice caps, for instance, the ice has come back under the Northern Hemisphere’s coldest winter in decades, which has given it its greatest snow cover in over 40 years. For all the concern about polar bears, their population is up. And for all the insistence that global warming is caused by human CO2 emissions, the temperature data and the CO2 data don’t correlate; that’s why 30 years ago, the alarmists were proclaiming that human CO2 emissions were driving a cooling trend that would send us into another ice age.

The fact of the matter is, we know beyond a doubt that the climate has been heating and cooling all through human history; around the turn of the 17th century, we had a “little ice age” that saw the Thames and the Hudson freeze, while earlier, during the Viking period, Greenland was pleasant enough to warrant the name they gave it. We know that the sun’s behavior varies, and it seems likely that fluctuations in solar activity is one of the major drivers in global temperature change; the fact that other planets of our solar system have also been experiencing “global warming” certainly suggests that this is the case. The driving force behind the global-warming argument appears to be not science, but the wisdom of Sir John Houghton, the first person to chair the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.”

That said, does it necessarily follow that we can ignore the question of CO2 emissions, or other forms of pollution? While I think it’s inappropriate of the establishment to smear dissenters as “in the pay of the oil companies,” there are certainly those who oppose the global-warming argument not because it’s bad science, but because they have their own agendas. As Christians, we should be very careful about that. Regardless of the scientific case one way or the other, we have powerful theological reasons to fight pollution; we know from Genesis that God has not given us this planet, but has rather entrusted it to our care as stewards under his authority, and we will most assuredly be called to account for how we have taken care of it. I believe the earth God has made is much more resilient than we often believe, and that our capacity to damage it permanently is quite a bit less impressive than we, in our twisted pride, tend to think—but that in no way frees us from our responsibility to enhance the earth by our labors rather than diminishing it. Will continuing to pump our pollutants into the air cause catastrophic warming that will kill billions of people? I rather doubt it; but if we continue to do so without doing everything we can to clean up our act (bearing in mind that today’s solutions often produce tomorrow’s problems), we’ll still pay for it in the end.

(Update: here’s an excellent column by Thomas Sowell on the subject of global warming.)

The idolatry of American politics

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Someone with sharp eyes may have noticed that I added the Anchoress to the blogroll. Why it hadn’t occurred to me quite a while ago that she wasn’t on there, I’m not sure, but that oversight is now rectified. At least it was good timing; I checked in just in time to catch her asking the question, “Are Our Ideologies Our Idols?” Some might disagree with me, but I’m pretty sure (and have been for a while) that the answer is “yes,” and she provides some good evidence for the proposition.

The truth is, I’ve been convinced for a while that our politics is idolatrous, ever since God convicted me about some of my habits. For instance, I’ve tried (and I think succeeded) to stop saying, “I’m a Republican.” I most often vote Republican, and to say that is a simple statement of fact; but to say “I am a Republican” (which I was—I paid dues to the Republican National Committee and kept my membership card in my wallet, for a while) was to define myself in terms of the Republican party. It was to say that the Republican platform was a defining part of my identity, and that the leaders of that party were my leaders. As a Christian, I have no right to do that, nor do any of us.

We’re called to be in the world, yes, but not of the world; to vote, to participate in our government, is to be in the world, but to attach ourselves to a political party and adopt it as our own is to be of the world. Our Christian faith—the content of our beliefs, our commitment to each other, and above all our commitment to follow Jesus the Messiah—must be the source and control of all our political beliefs and actions, and that cannot be the case if we have a pre-existing commitment to the positions or the political success of any political party. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” and it’s equally true that where your goals are, where your sense of identity is, there you will find your heart as well; and when we let that happen, when our politics shapes our faith rather than the other way around—when our identity is defined even in part by a political party or a political cause—then our political commitments have claimed a place that belongs only to God, and we are guilty of idolatry. We are to find our identity in Christ and him only.

It’s worth noting that the same applies to patriotism. I’m not saying that love of country is always or necessarily idolatrous, because it isn’t; but it can be, very easily. After all, America is a concrete reality which has benefited us in concrete ways, and which needs improvement in concrete ways; the kingdom of God, by contrast, can be a little harder to see, and easier to forget about. Plus, we all get to pledge allegiance to our own concept of what America ought to be, and to define our patriotism accordingly; which makes America a very flexible idol indeed. We need to be careful of ourselves.

Barack Obama and the case for faith in the public square

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I most often vote Republican for a number of reasons. One is that as a whole, the positions taken by the Republican Party line up better with my own beliefs. Another, however, is the frequency with which the Democrats nominate people I find it hard to respect. Thankfully, that isn’t the case in our congressional district, the 2nd of Colorado; unfortunately, it’s all too often the case at the presidential level. I don’t expect the national Dems to nominate someone I could be happy voting for, but I wish they would at least nominate someone I could respect. They’re out there, politicians like Virginia’s Mark Warner or New Mexico’s Bill Richardson—or, perhaps most intriguingly (though not for 2008), Illinois’ Barack Obama, who showed why in his recent keynote address to the Building a Covenant for a New America conference.

As Slate’s Amy Sullivan writes, “Obama’s speech, delivered to an audience of the frustrated religious left, . . . was, for the first time in modern memory, an affirmative statement from a Democrat about ‘how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy,’ as Obama put it. . . . [H]e doesn’t defend progressives’ claim to religion; he asserts the responsibilities that fall to them as religious people. Americans are looking, Obama said, for a ‘deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country.’ He started that conversation. A few others are joining in. It’s time for everyone else to catch up.”

I appreciate this speech (and Obama for giving it) because I consider the increasing secularization of the Democratic Party—and its concomitant effects on the Republican Party—unfortunate for the health of our nation. The increasing identification of our political parties with a sacred vs. religious split marginalizes the Christian Left (and while I may not agree with them on many points, that’s unfortunate for the democratic process), while turning the demands of folks like the Chicago Tribune‘s Eric Zorn for a thoroughly secularized public square into a fundamental plank of American liberalism. Which, in my point of view, it shouldn’t be, because that privileges one religious outlook over all others. That’s religious discrimination, which we all know is a Bad Thing.

Of course, Zorn and others would deny that. When he writes, “Speaking as a secularist—I don’t like that word, really, but it’ll do for now—and presuming to speak for them, what we ask of believers—all we ask—is that they not enter the public square using ‘because God says so’ as a reason to advance or attack any policy position,” he doesn’t believe he’s “asking believers to abandon their values or beliefs as a prerequisite to engaging in political debate”; indeed, he writes that “the idea that this demand is hostile to religion is a common and popular strawman . . . it’s also completely wrong. ” Clearly, he understands his own secular presumptions as religiously neutral, rather than as a set of presumptions which compete with religious ones.

With this, I cannot agree; where Zorn writes, “Whatever beliefs or philosophies shape your values or guide your personal conduct are of no nevermind to us,” I have to say that he’s wrong. As any mathematician or philosopher could tell you, it’s not just your conclusions which matter—your reasoning, which provides the foundation for those conclusions, matters just as much, and it really is significant if you get to the right place for the wrong reasons. It’s significant because it means you’re right as much by accident as anything, and that getting one point right is no indicator that you’ll get anything else right. As such, the “beliefs or philosophies [that] shape your values or guide your personal conduct” do matter—they matter a great deal—and for people like Zorn to insist that people like me pretend otherwise is precisely to “ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square,” as Sen. Obama put it.

So what’s the alternative? Sen. Obama is completely correct when he says, “Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King—indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history—were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.” The problem, though, as any preacher knows, is application: what do we do with that? That’s the tricky part, and I think the senator himself wobbles in saying, “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.” I understand his concern here, “their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason” (and on a side note, shouldn’t that be “our proposals”?), and I agree with that; but who gets to define what values are “universal”?

The fact of the matter is, requiring religious folk to make arguments only on grounds of “universal . . . values” will be translated right back into saying “that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates.” As a recent Christianity Today editorial noted, “What Obama fails to see is how often specifically Christian or religious reasoning has been at the core of social movements,” and how often his test would invalidate precisely those reformers whom he praises. There needs to be room for people of all stripes to make arguments for their positions on the basis of their own values, rather than restricting them to arguing on the basis of values pre-approved by others. It should no more be necessary for Christians, Muslims, and Jews to pretend to be secularists than for secularists to pretend to be Christians, Muslims, or Jews. We should all be free to make our arguments on the basis of who we really are and what we truly believe.

Of course, if we do so without trying to establish common ground with those who stand in different places—if, for instance, Christians make political arguments without trying to connect them to values held by at least some secularists—then we wind up only preaching to the choir, building very narrow movements, and that’s not a good thing. From a pragmatic point of view, then, while I don’t think it’s wrong to “enter the public square using ‘because God says so’ as a reason to advance or attack any policy position,” if that’s our only reason, we ought not expect to get very far. Christianity Today addresses this point in its editorial, arguing that “what Lincoln, King, and others did . . . was use a variety of reasons—some religious, some pragmatic—to motivate social change. Thus, listeners with or without a religious bent could find some reason to buy into the cause.”

To be sure, there are those on the conservative end of American Christianity who would object to such an approach; but their objection, I believe, rests on their failure to take seriously Augustine’s insight that all truth is God’s truth. When we as Christians approach political issues from that perspective—and when we understand that God is not capricious, that he hasreasons for everything he tells us to do and not to do—then we come to understand that “pragmatic” arguments which appeal to values we share with those who don’t share our faith aren’t merely pragmatic, but are in fact theological. We are never called to say, “Thus says the Lord,” without explaining why “thus says the Lord”—what the reasons are, as best we understand them, for the commands God has given us—and this is no less true in the political realm than anywhere else. It isn’t our place to “defend the ways of God to man,” as Milton put it, but it’s certainly our responsibility to explain them as best we can. To do so is both good theology and good politics; to fail to do so is arrogance, and nothing makes for worse politics—or theology—than arrogance. May God be glorified in our lives.

Electoral musings, theological edition

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This is the last post on the recent election, barring something really bizarre; but I wanted to end on a theological note, because the church needs to respond to this election based not on political affiliations but on the truths and principles of our faith. This is the first step to recovering a theology of politics, which I believe is essential for us now as it has always been. To that end, I want to point you to a colleague of mine in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts; if you haven’t discovered his blog, rectify that, and dig deep—it’s good, strong food for the mind and soul. His posts on this subject, titled “Presidential Election Results: A Christian Response,” are a very good place to begin this discussion.