Right for the wrong reasons

The Rev. O. Benjamin Sparks, interim editor of The Presbyterian Outlook–a weekly journal covering the PC (USA)–put out an editorial a week ago titled “Praying for the Powerful,” which makes an important point in a remarkably wrongheaded way. I agree with his opening sentence (“The first duty of responsible citizenship is prayer – even before we wind our way into the voting booth”), and his conclusion that “the first duty of Christian citizenship is prayer: prayer for all persons; prayer for kings and rulers to keep peace; prayer that the church catholic be kept humble before God, who made all humankind, and who desires that all humankind be saved.” Unfortunately, most of what comes between them is highly problematic, to say the least.

The first problem I have with the Rev. Sparks’ editorial is its smug, condescending, self-righteous leftism. I was struck, for instance, by his complaint that “factions within the church catholic are trying to capture U. S. government for religious purposes: restoring prayer in the schools, posting the Ten Commandments in public places; outlawing all abortion, and permitting or restricting gay and lesbian civil unions or ‘marriage.'” I have three problems with this statement. First, “factions” is a loaded word–by connotation, it marginalizes those groups and labels them divisive. Second, “capture” is a biasing word: it implies that the U. S. government rightly belongs to those who hold other positions (no prayer in schools, no Ten Commandments, unrestricted abortion license, same-sex “marriage”) and that anyone who challenges those positions is trying to steal our government from those who properly own/control it. Third, this sentence paints those with whom the Rev. Sparks disagrees with the broadest possible brush, assuming unanimity of opinion which in fact isn’t present. In short, it appears that in his understanding, when liberal Christians argue for liberal political positions, that’s fine, but when conservative Christians argue for conservative political positions, this is somehow sinister and inappropriate; only liberals, then, have the right to claim that their politics are supported by their faith. Such a conclusion is not only biased, it’s ridiculous.

My second objection to the Rev. Sparks’ argument is his apparent belief that our government exists to protect the rights of religious minorities but not those of this country’s Christian majority. This would have come as a great surprise to James Madison, who was just as alive to the dangers of the tyranny of the minority as he was to those of the tyranny of the majority. (See Federalist #10.)

Third, there is the Rev. Sparks’ seeming position that the Western church should have connived at the efforts of communist governments to keep their slaves from reading the Bible, rather than trying to smuggle Bibles behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. In making this point, he interprets Paul’s argument in Romans 13 to mean that a) no “subversion of the authority of [any] government” is permissible, that b) trying to smuggle Bibles into countries which were attempting to suppress Christian faith is such subversion, and thus that c) Paul would argue that the church should support that effort rather than trying to share the gospel message with people in those countries. Given that this conclusion is in direct opposition to Paul’s own actions (see Acts 13-28), it is, to say the least, questionable. For Paul, subjection to the governing authorities had definite limits, and certainly didn’t include acceding to their demands to stop preaching the gospel. (See also Acts 3-5 for the consensus of the early church on this point.)

Fourth, I cannot see how the Rev. Sparks reached his evident conclusion that if the Soviet government were still in place, we would never have seen the rise of radical Islam and all would be right with the world; this position is frankly ludicrous. Given that the rise of bin Laden and radical Islam was one of the major factors in the failure of the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan, on the one hand, and the fact that the Putin government is no less authoritarian or ruthless than the Soviets–in this area, it can fairly be said that there is no significant difference between the two–on the other, how can this argument possibly stand?

Fifth, I have serious objections to the Rev. Sparks’ rather Erastian understanding of the proper relationship between the church and the state. In defining “the real business of the church” as “prayer, listening to the memories of the apostles in the light of scripture (still for them only the Hebrew Scriptures), and baptism, holding all things in common, almsgiving, and the breaking of the bread,” he is speaking of the earliest Christians, but if that was “the real business of the church” then, how can it be significantly otherwise now? While he does admit that Christians should call our politicians to be moral and just (well, at least liberal Christians should), his argument makes government dominant over religion and the proper arbiter of religious disputes. Why he puts greater trust in government to act in accordance with the gospel than he does in the church is an interesting question; more importantly, for all that he talks about “the deeply Calvinistic, Reformed understanding of government written into our nation’s founding documents,” this ain’t it (being neither Reformed nor present in the aforementioned documents).

Sixth, it seems to me that at various points in his argument, the Rev. Sparks is a little casual with the facts, that he simply hasn’t taken the time to do the necessary research; my second and fourth objections, above, would be examples of this. Perhaps the most egregious example, however, comes in this statement: “Most religions, including Christianity (though not Sikhs) harbor intolerant, angry factions hell bent on oppressing and killing on behalf of their god/gods.” Excuse me? Though not Sikhs? I can only conclude that the Rev. Sparks lives in the wrong Richmond.

You see, I’ve never been to Richmond, VA, but I spent three years in Richmond, BC, part of five years in and around Vancouver, BC, Canada. As it happens, the metro Vancouver area has quite a large Sikh population, from which came the first Sikh premier in Canadian history, Ujjal Dosanjh (a good man whose time in that office was brief, thanks to the malfeasance of his immediate predecessor). As any Vancouver-area resident who bothered to follow the news could tell you, violence broke out in the area’s Sikh temples on more than a few occasions as extremists and moderates fought for control. Further, one of the reasons why this was such a concern to the BC government was the strong linkage between those extremists and Babbar Khalsa, the Sikh terrorist group responsible for the bombing of Air India Flight 182 and a bombing that same day at Tokyo’s Narita Airport (which was supposed to have been another mid-air bombing, but the bomb went off prematurely). Babbar Khalsa is the largest and worst expression of the militant strain in Sikhism which is also responsible, inter alia, for the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

I don’t offer this to bash Sikhs in any way, shape, or form, or to blame the Sikh faith for the embrace of terrorism by some of its adherents; my point isn’t to single Sikhism out, but rather to point out that the Rev. Sparks did so wrongly, in ignorance. Sikhism as much as any religion may be said to “harbor intolerant, angry factions hell bent on oppressing and killing on behalf of their god/gods,” and he should have done the research to find that out before off-handedly declaring otherwise.

In general, I don’t think this editorial did The Outlook credit, which is too bad; not only does the publication deserve better, but I think the Rev. Sparks’ thesis is important for Christians to keep in mind. Unfortunately, while he’s right in his main point, he’s right for all the wrong reasons.