On
American Evangelical Christianity and Christian Politics
August
22, 2022
I recently read
this statement in an essay in a major national publication:
When Christian faith is politicized, churches become
repositories not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are
reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are sacramental.[1]
The author of this article
identifies himself as a life-long evangelical Christian. His article is about
the way people putting their commitment to their political beliefs over their commitment
to their Christian beliefs is breaking the American evangelical movement apart.
His solution to that problem is to banish politics from the church. He wants
the church to focus on what he calls “Christian values,” though he’s a bit
vague on what he thinks those are. In his view they have somehow to do with
personal transformation and grace-filled living. I certainly do not contest his
assertion that personal transformation and a life of grace are desirable
results of a person’s commitment to the Christian faith. They are. I cannot,
however, accept this author’s contention that evangelical Christians must
divorce politics from Christianity as the way to heal divisions within the
church.
Of course
Christianity is about more than politics. Properly understood, it is a
spiritual discipline that seeks to foster a person’s relationship with the
universal, mysterious power behind all that is that we call God. But
Christianity properly understood also speaks divine truth about the complex
issues we all face every day, including politics. Christianity is about
nonviolence, peace, and justice for all people. Those are political issues. To
eliminate them from the sphere of religion leaves us with half a faith not a
full one. Jesus directly addressed the political issues of his time and place.
He spoke about power, how people should relate to power, and how people should
relate to one another. He called the people of his time, and he calls us, to
lives devoted to caring for the least and the lost. He sought to turn the world
of his time, and of ours, upside down. He praised the meek not the strong and
the peacemaker not the warmaker. He said the first will be last and the last
will be first. Those are all political issues. To exclude them from one’s
Christian faith is to overlook most of what Jesus was about.
The fault of
American evangelical Christianity isn’t that it’s political. It’s that it gets
its politics all wrong. It sees Christian politics as radically conservative
when in fact truly Christian politics are nonviolently revolutionary. Many
American evangelicals equate Christianity with American nationalism. Yet in
truth, few dichotomies are as wide as the gap between Christian values and
American or any other kind of nationalism. Most if not all American
evangelicals strongly support the American military and the way the US
government uses it around the world. But Jesus said love your enemies. He
taught and lived radical nonviolence, which of course is completely
incompatible with any kind of militarism. Most American evangelicals oppose the
creation of an adequate social safety net for those who need it. Jesus said
that insofar as we have cared for those in need, we have cared for him. Far too
many American evangelicals favor a male-centered church and society in which
women play a role secondary to that of men. Yet Jesus certainly had women
disciples. He said Mary had chosen the better part over her sister Martha when
she assumed the place her culture reserved for men to learn at Jesus’ feet.
Mary Magdalene was the apostle to the apostles when she was the first to see
the empty tomb and hear of Jesus’ resurrection. Far too many American
evangelicals defame Muslims and want our country to close its borders to
immigrants, especially non-white immigrants. Jesus said love your neighbor as
yourself. The bottom line here is not that Christianity should be apolitical. It
is that on the whole the politics of American evangelicalism just aren’t
Christian.
Then, tragically,
there is the issue of Donald Trump. Former president Trump is a man of
deplorable personal morals with no commitment to Christian values whatsoever.
He treats women as his personal sexual playthings. He mocks people with
disabilities. He tells violent, anti-Jewish, white supremacists that there are “fine
people” among them, which there absolutely are not. He told them to “stand down
and stand by,” a line that can only mean stand by to use your violence as I
will direct you. Insofar as he had any actual political agenda other than to
gain and retain power, it was to have the federal government further favor the
rich over everyone else and to undo government regulations that, among other
things, facilitate workplace safety and address our current climate crisis. The
way he handled the COVID pandemic is a national disgrace. He has no religious
faith and is perhaps the least spiritual man in American public life. In all of
these things, and in a great many more, Donald Trump is a man all Christians
should condemn and call to repentance.[2]
Instead, millions
of American evangelicals became and remain pro-Trump fanatics. They put him in
the White House. He keeps lying about winning the 2020 presidential election,
which he undeniably lost fair and square. He at least encouraged the seditious
mob attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and did nothing to stop it
when he clearly could have called it off. He may well have instigated it. Yet
millions of American evangelicals put on their red MAGA hats and hope and pray
that he will be elected president again in 2024.
So to the author whose
essay prompted this one I say “no.” American evangelicalism may be in crisis.
It may be breaking up the way he says it is. Yet politics are not the cause of
the problem Bad, un-Christian politics are the problem. Neither
the American nation nor American Christianity needs more MAGA fanatics. They
need a great many more people committed to true Christian values in the public
realm. They—we—need people committed to creating the world of peace
through radical justice that Jesus called the kingdom of God. And what, after
all, is a kingdom if not political?
[1]
Weber, Peter, “The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart, Christians Must Reclaim
Jesus from His Church,” The Atlantic, theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021.
[2] I
will give Trump credit for one thing during his presidency. He did not get us
involved in any more foreign wars, though of course he didn’t do that out any Christian
values.
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