Global Christianity Will Outline Western Liberalism

Mark Tooley has an excellent analysis of the situation in the United Methodist Church in this article entitled: "United Methodists Transition from Liberal to Global."

The global 12 million member United Methodist Church, now likely the world's 9th largest communion, is no longer a predominantly liberal U.S. denomination. Its quadrennial governing General Conference, which met for 10 days in Tampa ending May 4, refused to alter the church's official disapproval of homosexual practice.

Some news stories huffed disapproval and surprise. After all, the Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), and United Church of Christ have all surrendered to American culture on sexual ethics. Their membership spirals subsequently accelerated into formal schisms. But United Methodism, unlike these other historic denominations that once dominated American religion and liberalized in the early 20th century, is now a growing church and has a record number of members.

Unlike the other traditionally liberal-led Mainline denominations, United Methodism is fully global in membership. (The 2 million member Episcopal Church of the U.S. does include the small churches of Latin America, Europe and Taiwan but is still 90 percent U.S. persons.) There are 7.5 million United Methodists in the U.S. and 4.5 million overseas, almost all in Africa, mostly in the Congo. With the U.S. church losing about 100,000 members a year (down from 11 million 44 years ago) and the African church gaining over 200,000 a year, the denomination likely will become a majority non-U.S. church in about 10 years or less.

These statistics frustrate United Methodist liberals who have dominated the domination for 50 years or more. Homosexuality has been debated at the church's General Conference every four years since 1972. And the church consistently decreed that homosexual practice was "incompatible with Christian teaching." Over the years, the denomination formally prohibited clergy who were actively homosexual (as well as any clergy sexually active outside traditional marriage) and banned same-sex unions. For the last 12 years it has even supported "laws in civil society that define marriage as the union of man and woman," though normally loquacious bishops and other church elites decline to articulate this stance even as the nation debates it.

United Methodist liberals always assumed their church would follow American culture on sexual permissiveness, just as the church had followed on so much else across the 20th century, starting with divorce and contraception. They always consoled themselves, "If not this time, then next time." Sounding like deterministic Marxist Hegelians, they believed history sided with sexual inclusion.

But this year in Tampa, the church once again rejected any dilution of his disapproval of homosexual practice, despite a full court lobby campaign. Liberal caucus groups pitched a full size tent outside the Tampa Convention Center, served daily lunches to any delegates, mobilized hundreds of volunteers in rainbow stoles, and distributed a full-size daily newspaper, sometimes translated into other languages. As chronicled by the just released Forgetting How to Blush: United Methodism's Compromise with the Sexual Revolution by the Rev. Karen Booth, pro-gay caucus groups have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from non-church philanthropies.

It was largely wasted money. A record 30 percent of delegates came from Africa this time, up from 20 percent just 4 years ago (and 10 percent 8 years ago), and they voted uniformly against any liberalization of the church's sexual teaching. Combined with many Filipino and European delegates, plus U.S. evangelicals, who were themselves about 20 percent of the total, there was an insurmountable conservative majority on key issues. The final vote on homosexual practice's "incompatibility" with Christian teaching showed 61 percent supporting the current stance. 

Read the rest here.

Comment: 
 The title of this piece signifies a very important truth about the nature of the universal church today.  Living in the decadent, late-modern West it is easy to be overwhelmed by the surge of left-wing deconstruction of the pillars of Western society such as the family, marriage, respect for human life and limitations on the power of government.  The church is seduced by the line "If you don't join the left-wing revolution now, you will be left behind in the ash bin of history."  But look where God is at work: Africa, Asia and Latin America.  The universal Church is growing, vibrant and orthodox.  Global Christianity is on the upswing; it is just compromised, Western, modern, liberal Christianity that is in decline. 

If other Protestant denominations such as the Episcopal Church in the US or the Anglican Church of Canada were truly ecumenical, they would not exclude the growing majority of Christians from the Global South a voice in ecclesiastical decision-making.  But, it is clear from a look at the world-wide Anglican Communion, that if they were ecumenical they would not be accommodating themselves to the late-modern, secular, sexual revolution against civilized sexual morality.  Liberal Christianity in the West are cutting themselves off from the ecumenical (world-wide) Church.

In order to rationalize away the fact that they are on the losing side of history and really just a group of sectarians, they try to pretend that the rest of the world just hasn't caught up.  A half-century ago they thought that the secularization thesis was undoubtedly true; today it is clearly nothing more than secularist wishful thinking.  Then they were sure that Marxism would win the hearts and minds of the Global South and leave no room for non-Marxist forms of Christianity.  But Marxism is now a failed ideology and has been tossed onto the dust heap of history, which is to say that it is only alive in the late-modern Western university.

What will it take for us to come to the realization that: 1) the Christian position on sexual morality is never going to change, 2) theological liberalism is a sect that will have its day in the sun and then wither away, 3) biblical orthodoxy is never going to die out, and 4) Western secularism itself is doomed and hitching one's wagon to it is not a wise idea?

A Terrific Ministry in Our Church

This is not anything I take credit for in any way, but it is one of the things about my local church that make me feel privileged to belong. One of our men's Bible study groups has taken on the job of serving the single mothers in our congregation. They just finished painting the entire townhouse of one of the single mothers in our church and they did a whole list of odd jobs around the house while they were at it. The boys in that family know that their earthly father left them but they also know that God has provided men from our church who care about them and seek ot mentor them. One of the younger teen boys in that same family was trained to drive the ride-on tractor and do the lawns at our church by a man who is unable to have a family of his own. He and his wife are trying to adopt, but in the meantime he leads this ministry to single mothers.

We have been at our church for over six years now and I love the people there and the evidence of God's Spirit at work. We moved from the (US) equivalent of an American Baptist Church to the (Canadian) equivalent of a Southern Baptist Church and at first we were not quite sure how this was going to work out. We were a little dubious about being in such a conservative setting. But I have found that the church has surprised us in so many ways and I believe that I've been changed more through my ministry there (I'm the part-time Theologian in Residence now) than the church has been changed by my ministry.

Our Youth Pastor is a graduate of Liberty University. We have a number of home-schooling and Christian-schooling families, as well as a number of teachers in the public school system. We are located in a growing suburb of Toronto that is part of a dynamic metropolitan area of over 6 million people. We are become steadily more and more multi-cultural and reflective of our community. I noted that when the grade 3-4 kids were called forward to help lead a song with rhythm instruments a couple of weeks ago, the majority were brown and black in skin color. We have over 20 different first languages among our people and literally have people from every continent (except Australia). We have more and more East Indian and Asian lately, having had a large Caribbean contingent for a long time. We also have immigrants from Eastern Europe and Latin America. It is a dynamic place with an attendance of 450 on Sunday morning, over 150 adults in mid-week Bible study groups and the same number in adult SS. Our children's choir and Kidds With Purpose groups are extremely active and the youth group is growing quickly. We are only 18 years old and our building was finished in 2002.

The church has people in it and so it is not perfect. But the vision for missions, the authenticity of discipleship, the humility of the leadership and the guiding vision of our pastor make for a healthy and growing church.

Why do I say all this? Well, simply to encourage anyone reading this blog about the health and reality of the local church. Don't believe all the doom and gloom. Rumours of the death of the church are greatly exaggerated and have been for 2000 years. Sure there are dead patches; there always have been. But the Spirit is constantly causing signs of new life to sprout up all around us - if we have the eyes to see and, in my case, if we dare to try a new church that has a reputation for being conservative.

A Prayer for the American Election Tomorrow

As a Canadian, whatever happens in the United States has a huge impact on me and those I love. The dominance of the US media in Canada is powerful. When the US economy sneezes, the Canadian economy catches cold. Laws made in the US often decisively affect the making of Canadian laws. And on it goes. Yet I have no vote in the US elections.

Today for the first time in my life I wish I was an American citizen so I could vote against Barrack Obama and for John McCain. I pray that my fellow Evangelicals will not be led astray by the dishonest and illogical campaign that has been waged by Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren in support of the most liberal, most pro-abortion, most anti-marriage candidate for president in the history of the United States.

In many ways, the US stands alone now as the last bastion of Christian influence in Western culture. Europe is on its back. Canada, since the 1960's, has chosen public policies that emulate Europe rather than the US so that the moral fiber of our country has weakened to the point of collapse. The US is far from perfect; I could list its flaws. But the fact that up to half of its citizens are church-going, practicing Christians has meant that secularism has not completely succeeded in taking over all of the cultural institutions. The media, the universities and the military-industrial complex are all but lost to Christian influence. But the heartland of the country still contains large pockets of middle-class, church-going people who run for office, teach school, practice law, become judges, start businesses, raise families and generally create a conservative brake on the secularism, hedonism, individualism and disrespect for human life that fuels the culture of death. And the Evangelical churches are flouishing and growing even as the liberal Protestant churches are shrinking rapidly and descending into self-parody and perversion. In another encouraging sign, the Roman Catholic bishops have found their voice and are speaking out in this election season in support of the Church's moral teaching and the common good of the culture.

We should imagine the Church in the US as engaged in what Galadriel, in the The Lord of the Rings, calls "the long defeat" that she and others have fought down through the ages. If there is no dramatic, supernatural intervention in the form of a great revival of Christian faith in the 21st century, the West will surely fall. It does not matter if the external enemy is Communism or Islam or something else; no external enemy could possibly destroy the West by its own power. Like the Roman Empire, the modern West can only be destroyed by decadence on the inside. The core beliefs about God, human nature and morality have rotted away and no civilization can endure once its core beliefs have rotted. The culture of life created by the influence of the Gospel on Western institutions and thought has gradually been replaced by the culture of death.

The two sins against hope (according to the Baltimore Catechism) are presumption and despair. The proper response to the presumption that has led the West into utiopian schemes for perfecting human nature and society, which will be the occasion of our fall, is not to lose heart and despair. Anything could yet happen. We are not Deists. We believe that the God of Scripture can and does raise up and cast down nations. God's providence is often inscrutable, but His sovereignty is unchallengeable. The West will only fall if that is His will and if it does, then like Abraham Lincoln, we will consider the ways of the Almighty to be just and his judgments righteous altogether.

Many Evangelicals are thinking about not voting in this election. Disgusted by Bush's unjust war, (and rightly so), and unimpressed by the Democratic Party's morphing into the "party of death" they propose to succumb to apathy and say" "A plague on both your houses." But voting is not done for the benefit of one political party or the other. It is done for the sake of the country as a whole. To allow oneself to be reduced to inaction by the drumbeat that tries to discredit all conservatism by virtue of wrong decisions by someone who is not even running in this election is to allow oneself to fall into despair. And despair is a sin against hope.

A Prayer for Election Day in the US 2008
O Lord, who rules and reigns on high, by whose powerful Word the heavens and the earth were brought into being and who preserves and oversees this creation at every moment of every day. We bless your holy Name and we praise You for Your mighty works.

Look down today with compassion on Your people in the United States of America, who look to You for courage, help and comfort. May they experience a welling of up hope within them; may they be preserved from the temptation to despair. Use their willingness to work for the common good and their humble regard for Your laws to benefit the entire nation, including those who scorn Your Word and ignore Your will. Help your people to stand for righteousness with humility, determination and grace. As the democratic process moves on, may all of Your people be found to have been responsible, faithful and obedient to the moral law in the discharge of their duties as citizens.

Lord, send revival to your Church. We ask for revival over all the nations of the Western world, particularly in places where the Church was once strong and vibrant but now is cold and weak. We ask that you would forgive us our many sins and grant to us a spirit of repentance and openness to your chastisement so that the revival might begin with us.

We confess that we do not control history; nor do we rule over this earth. We know our Advasary the Devil overstates his claim to rule, yet his power is not inconsiderable. You alone are God. You alone rule over all. Help us to believe more strongly in what we already know.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray. Amen.

Addendum to the Last Post: Defining Christendom

There are two basic definitions of "Christendom:" one generic and descriptive and the other specific and pejorative.

1. Christendom: the lands in which Christianity has historically been numerically dominant, especially Europe and those parts of the globe colonized primarily by Europeans such as North, Central and South America, Australia and New Zealand and, perhaps, large parts of Africa. Christendom once existed in Asia Minor, the Holy Land and North Africa, but has been destroyed in those regions by Islam.

2. Christendom: the union of Church and State with the Church the dominant partner or (as I defined it in my book, Rethinking Christ and Culture):

"Christendom is the concept of Western civilization as having a religious arm (the church) and a secular arm (civil government), both of which are united in their adherance to Christian faith, which is seen as the soul of Europe or the West. The essence of the idea is the assertion that Western civilization is Christian. Within this Christian civilization, the state and the church have different roles to play, but, since membership in both is coterminous, both can be seen as aspects of one unified reality - Christendom." (Rethinking Christ and Culture, p. 14)

It should be obvious that in the last two posts I was using the term "Christendom" in the first sense, not the second. It is perhaps less obvious, though no less true, that in those posts I am calling into question the adequacy of the second definition as it stands.

In the context of my book, I went on to link the term "Christendom" to the term "Constantinianism," which I define as "an eschatological heresy in which the kingdom is considered already to have come, or as being in the process of coming by means of events now underway in history." (See my book on Yoder for a full discussion of Constantinianism.) In the Rethinking book I say: "I prefer the term Christendom simply because it is a better-known term and less likely to be misunderstood." (p. 15) I now disagree with myself on that point; I think the term "Constantinianism" would be less likely to be misunderstood. I made a mistake in conflating the two terms and I would now like to distinguish them.

Constantinianism has two problems, which Christendom may or may not have depending on the historical situation under consideration.

First, Constantinanism involved the absorption and co-opting of the Church into the orbit of the State. But you can have Christendom with the Church and State remaining separate; the Church does not necessarily have to be co-opted.

Second, Constantinianism is an eschatological heresy. You can have Christendom without Constantinianism, but Christendom often does fall into the Constantinian trap.

So by conflating these two terms, I may have caused unnecessary confusion. I have also made it virtually impossible to advocate a kind of "Christendom" (definition #1) in which Church and State remain separate and Constantinianism is avoided. The absurdity of this situation is that I have backed myself into the corner of saying that in any country in which the overwhelming majority of the citizens are Christian, there we have Christendom inevitably. The "inevitably" must be challenged.

It would seem to me now to be absurd to say that a given country must be an example of Christendom and therefore be sinful just because the majority of the citizens have been converted to Christ. There are countries - and not just in Europe - where evangelism has resulted in the majority of the population becoming Christian without that country becoming an example of what I meant by Christendom in my book. Kenya, for example, is now over 90% Christian. What do we do with Kenya? Ask 45% of the population to volunteer to revert to paganism? Is Kenya doomed to repeat the errors of European Constantinianism because so many have embraced the Gospel? Any viable Christian social ethics must give some guidance on what to do in case evangelism is successful and the vast majority of people in a society are converted without coercion, but by the working of the Holy Spirit. My definitions fail on that point and need revision.

What really alarms me now is the number of people (some of whom have read my book and some some of whom have read Yoder, Hauerwas etc.) and who think the following series of thoughts:

a) Christendom is always Constantinian
b) Therefore Christendom is always bad
c) Christendom is visible whenever the Church, or Christians as a group, influence the State or society as a whole in any way whatsoever (even if it is done nonviolently).
d) All conservative Christians are promoting Christendom whenever they try to defend human rights or the family in the name of the Gospel (eg. when the early Church convinced the Roman Empire to ban infanticide or the contemporary Church tries to convince the government to ban abortion)
e) Therefore a basically liberal individualist approach to politics, ethics and law is the only way to avoid Christendom today.

The fifth thought is often unconsciously refected in behaviour, whereas the first four are often stated explicitly. My concern is that the first four lead to the fifth in practice even when the person explicitly denies being a liberal. My point is that to accept points a-d is to leave one with no option other than practical liberal individualism even if one rejects theoretical liberal individualism. To attack conservative Christians (the Religious Right) while being unconcerned about same-sex marriage, assisted suicide, abortion etc. is in effect to accept liberal individualism in practice and the theory will eventually follow the practice.

How Christendom Should Work

Historical Christendom was disasterous in many ways for the Gospel in that it tended to take away the freedom of individuals to respond to God's grace by an act of the will as it is enlightened by love. The Church sought too much political power and resorted to violence too easily. Minorities did not have religious freedom. There was persecution of the Jews instead of respect for the chosen people of God.

But one cannot be evangelical and regret the conversion of so many to Christ and it is an historical fact that whole nations did become Christian. Given the evangelistic success of the Chruch's mission, what form should the society have taken after that point? How should Christendom have developed differently? What should be the relationship between Church and State? How should a Christian majority treat a non-Christian minority? These are not merely theoretical or historical questions, but practical and contemporary ones. A short blog post is not the place to answer such questions in anything like an adequate way. However, a few thoughts to stimulate further reflection are in order. Here are 10 principles.

1. Christians need to behave as Christians 24/7, which means that they do not leave their faith behind when they enter political office or start teaching in the public school system. Christians are to be guided by their deepest religious convictions at all times.

2. Christians need the guidance of a comprehensive body of social doctrine that is: a) rooted in Scripture and faithful Tradition, b) flexible enough to be applicable in a wide variety of cultures and political situations and c) comprehensive in scope, but not merely a rationalistic system. We have this is Catholic Social Doctrine and we Evangelicals need to discover it and make it our own.

3. There must be separate, though complementary, roles for the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. They must be separate and must focus on their own areas of expertise. The Church's role is to instruct Christians on what is necessary for salvation and for the flourishing of society. The State's role is to govern the area of the secular and to do so in such a way as to be responsive to all the citizens of the State, Christian and other. The idea of the separation of Church and State should protect the freedom of the Church as much as the freedom of unbelievers. The State should not attempt to prevent Christians from living out the Gospel and when it does it becomes demonic and loses legitimacy.

4. There is such a thing as right and wrong because of the reality of the moral order inscribed in the universe by God. This is the minimum that a State must accept in order for it to guarantee peace and order without tyranny and oppression. Any State that does not accept the existence of a moral order is a pseudo-State - really a gang of thugs which has siezed power - and deserves only opposition and resistence from the Church. The twentieth century saw more than its share of such regimes.

5. The natural law is accessible to all who are open to truth, whether Christian or not. For the Church to argue for laws protecting the vulnerable or for the importance of the family from the natural law is not to impose anything foreign on non-Christians because as rational beings the truth of the natural law is accessible to them. Of course, there is always the possibility that because of sin a person or group may reject the natural law. That is no excuse to act as if it were not prefectly obvious from nature itself that, for example, murder is always wrong.

6. The Church must be careful not to legislate belief or coerce anyone into outward confromity to Christianity. God wills that man love Him freely and no amount of coercion can produce free assent to God's truth or a sincere love for God.

7. The Church may legitimately urge the government, however, to protect the weak and vulnerable by legislation. This is the proper role of government. Where Christians exist in sufficient numbers, the government may go further than where the Church is a minority in legislating morality. But the limit implied in #6 above must always be respected.

8. The Church must accompany persuasion and political actions (like voting) with a lived witness of love toward those who are weak, oppressed and neglected. The social witness of the Church must be both in word and deed and must always point the way by action, rather than merely calling on government to do something the Church is unwilling to do.

9. The Church qua Church should be committed to democracy in the sense of political freedom for all citizens. But the Church must be critical of democracy in the sense of licence to do whatever one's base desires incline one to do at that moment. In other words, the ideal is political accompanied by personal moral restraint. The goverment provides the former; the Church's mission is to instill the latter.

10. The family precedes the State and is not subject to the control of the State. People have the right to marry, found a family, raise children as they see fit and to be free from excessive State interference. Excessive State interference is any kind of law, regulation or intrusion that goes beyond protecting the literal physical life and health of children.

To go beyond these basics, we need to go into Catholic social doctrine, which I hope to do in future posts.

How Liberal Modernity is as Bad as Christendom at Its Worst

It is customary in certain circles now to attack Christendom as evil and to hold that any attempt to "impose" Christian morality on society, even through the democratic process without violence, is wrong. This is a huge over-reaction to a legitimate concern. In my book "Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective" I may have contributed to this way of thinking inadvertantly by portraying Christendom in a one-sided way. Let me explain.

1. Before Christendom: Church and State as One
Prior to the rise of Christianity in Western Europe during the period from the shift of the imperial capital from Rome to Constantinople to the end of the Dark Ages, every known large empire had religious and political power united in the King or Emperor. This was true of the Roman Emperor and the Persians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians before him. The Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Empires did not break with this pattern.

2. During Christendom: Secular and Religious
As Western Europe developed during the 4th-13th centuries, something new happened. At first the Church stepped in to fill the void left by the gradual disintegration of the Roman Empire and helped establish order in society, but as the economy recovered, the population grew and political order became established, the Church drew back from day to day administration and allowed the secular rulers to govern. The theology of Augustine was the source of one of the greatest political ideas the world has ever seen - the idea of the "secular." The secular world was the world that was not governed by the Church. It was the world of commerce, politics and civil law.

It is true that the Church still claimed authority over the civil rulers, who were after all church members. But it was essentially the authority of church discipline. The Church taught the moral law and expected her members, including those who were rulers, to follow it. But while the Church was in that sense supreme, the Pope was not the Emperor and this was unprecedented. There were two authorities and two laws (civil and ecclesiastical) and two powers.

3. After Christendom: A Regression to the Past Unification of Religion and Politics in the State
After the Reformation, the rise of early modern states, and the Enlightenment, the modern world came into existence. As liberal modernity developed, one of the main themes was the attack by secular intellectuals and rulers on the authority of the Church. Religion was relegated to the realm of the private and personal, while the State claimed all authority. Hobbes, for example taught that the state must have the final say in biblical interpretation. What has happened in modernity is that the State has replaced the Church and assumed the kind of all-powerful role it had in the Roman Empire prior to the rise of Christianity.

In Christendom, there were times when the Church took over or allied itself too closely with the civil authorities and relied too much on coercion and violence to accomplish its mission. These are errors and failings that must be criticized. The Christendom temptation was for the Church to become totalitarian and take over the role of the State - fighting wars, deposing rulers, owning the bulk of the property etc.

But in Modernity the temptation is the opposite. The temptation is for the State to take over the role of the Church - by deciding for example to re-define marriage as not having procreation at its center and by denying human rights to the unborn. The State in modernity takes responsibility for making law, determining right and wrong and meeting all the material needs of the citizens.

The West was a great civilization and was founded on an incredibly important idea - the idea of the Church and State having distinct but complementary roles. In modernity, the goal has been to deny any role whatsoever to the Church or the Bible or revelation or God. This makes modern Western nation-states into idols, just as the great empires of the past were idolatrous. The City of Man is exalted as an absolute.

Christians who advocate the complete secularization of the West out of a mis-placed sense of shame at the failings of Christendom in the past are simple-minded, ignorant of history and naive about the dangers of letting the idea of the West die out. They are also, I fear, in the majority today. There is an unholy alliance between liberal Catholics, liberal Protestants and liberal Anabaptists who may be very different from each other in some respects, but who both promote either wittingly or unwittingly the privatization of religion and the ending of Christian influence on public life. They are aiding and abetting in the destruction of the only civilization in the history of the world ever to make religious freedom possible. The very dignity of the human person as a free being before God is at stake. There is no religious freedom in Islamic nations, none in Communist nations and none in nations in which the secular State has become all powerful.

When liberal modernity allows the totalitarian Church to be replaced by the totalitarian State, it is no friend of religious liberty. Rather it is as bad as Christendom at is very worst.

How Should Christians Be Involved in Politics?

In the last three posts I have argued:
1. The Church qua Church should not be involved in politics.
2. The Church qua Church has an evangelical responsibility to be involved in moral issues.

Now, I want to go on to discuss the role of individual Christians in the political process. I want to make a distinction between the role of the Church itself and the clergy and other leaders as its official representatives, on the one hand, and the individual Christian church member on the other. The individual church member is trying to work out his salvation with fear and trembling and is called by God to a variety of vocations and for some their vocation will be politics. All Christians, in modern liberal democracies, are citizens with certain rights and responsibilites. So how should Christians be involved in politics as citizens and, for some, as politicans?

The Problem
In the current situation, many Evangelicals are confused by the choice between the two political parties, neither of which seems to offer a consistently Christian platform. What to do? I have been arguing that part of our problem is that we fail to distinguish between moral issues, on which the Church can speak clearly and which require no debate, and political strategies, on which the Church should not speak and which require much debate and may even be impossible to resolve. My point is that we should be guided primarily by moral issues, rather than political strategies. Now, this leads to the problem posed by Sam in the comments thread of the last post that it seens that one party is better than the other on abortion but both have serious shortcomings. So should we just refrain from voting? Some, especially in the Anabaptist camp, are urging this approach this election year. How should we respond?

Stepping Back From the Immediate
Part of our problem is that many of us (most?) are somewhat naive about how politics works and we only get interested in the process once every few years when there is a media blitz of publicity concerning a presidential race or something comparable. So our participation is sporadic. In this situation, I think it is not surprising that we would be tempted not to vote and as we all know, voting rates in most western countries are falling overall. If we expect to be able to ignore the whole democratic process between elections and then be presented with black and white options in which choice is easy - then we are bound to be disappointed most of the time.

Let us assume a hypothetical situation in which we have a two-party system (as in the US) and both parties advocate positions incompatible with Christian moral positions. Let us say that one party advocates an unjust war and the other abortion. (Does this sound familiar?) Now, does that mean that individual Christians can just do whatever they want, i.e. vote for either or vote for neither? I think not.

First of all, Evangelicals should be involved in politics in multiple ways. The possibilities are local, state and national levels, working within one of the parties, running for office for one of the parties, running as an independent, working for a political action committee, working for a public policy advocacy group, working in a social justice ministry that educates the Church as part of its ministry, etc. I suggest that the long-term goal of Christians should be to be a swing vote that is educated on Christian moral issues and helps to bring those issues to the public consciousness.

Second, Evangelicals should try to form a Christian caucus in each party that tries to influence party policy with Christian morality from within. For example, I doubt that we will ever see abortion made illegal until the Democratic Party is at least divided on the issue. Even if one party is completely sold on making it illegal, the degree of determination with which the other party opposes it will be crucial. This may mean that some Christians are called to work within the Democratic party structures knowing that the Christian vote will not go their way until there is serious change to the party policy on abortion. I can thus imagine a Tony Campolo working within the Democratic party to try to moderate its position on abortion but not asking Evangelicals to vote Democratic until there is change. My problem with him at the moment is that he wants Evangelicals to vote Democratic when there has been no movement on abortion at all and that is highly problematic from a conscience perspective. This is compromise with evil, rather than transforming culture.

Third, Evangelicals should work outside the traditional partisan structures to make a compelling case for Christian moral positions in ways that do not depend on revelation and Scripture alone. This work can be done by appealing to the stated convictions of the non-Christians in power and showing how their own rhetoric of human rights and freedom should lead them to support Christian moral positions.

Fourth, some Evangelicals should run for office in order to be a witness to Christ in the government. Evangelicals who do so must be guided by the moral teachings of the Christian Church and not deny those teachings in order to get ahead politically. The John F. Kennedy strategy of promising to refuse to be governed by the teaching of his Church is not acceptable. After all, do we ask Secularists not to be governed by their highest philosophical ideals and committments? This may severely limit their acceptability to the major parties and, if so, the time may come when Christians run as independents. But at the moment, it is possible for Christians to run for the Republicans and maybe for the Democratic party as well. We should not give up on the Democratic party as far as trying to change it is concerned; all I have argued is that we must not allow ourselves to be changed by it.

Specific Problems With the Religious Right
1. It was led to an unacceptable degree by pastors as its public spokesmen. This, more than anything, created the "theocracy scare." It also placed the Church in politics up to its neck and thus undermined the Church's moral credibility.
2. It over-identified with the Republican Party to the extent that it seemed that the Christians vote has no where else to go and therefore could be taken for granted. If Evangelicals want to sit out this election in order to make the point that the Republicans need the Evangelical and Catholic vote and had better not take it for granted (say by appointing another disaster like Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court for example) then that is a reasonable position to take as a one-off strategy. I would not say that there is a moral obligation to vote Republican necessarily.
3. It could not keep specific moral issues (marriage, abortion, assisted suicide) separate from general neoconservative ideology (especially US exceptionalism and empire building and unregulated capitalism as the ideal). This also brings shame and reproach on the Church.

The Religious Right would have been much more effective (and still could be) if if was lay-led, organized outside a party and more focussed on certain issues and not neoconservatism in general. (A caution: Coalition building will always be necessary and should not automatically be identified with compromise.)

Specific Problems with the Religious Left
1. It is also too often led by clergy (who often stand to the left of their congregations) and this tends to identify the Church with as left-wing ideology. This is a similar problems as on the right.
2. It is over-identified with socialism and big government as the answer to all problems.
3. It promotes a secular solution for the problems of the world and thereby renders itself irrelevant except as a cheering section for government action.
4. By endorsing the economic left, it also tends toward approving the cultural left, which brings it into conflict with many Christian moral teachings. So far (in the past 100 years) Christians who endorse the economic left have not been able to do so without endorsing the cultural left, which raises the question of whether or not this is even possible.

Last Point
I think that the way the Catholics approach politics has a lot to teach us as Evangelicals. The role of the bishops, the substance of Catholic social doctrine, and the way Catholics function as a swing vote all are models to us, I think. I will explore this point in future posts.

Should the Church Get Involved in Morality?

It seems to me that the flip side of the Church staying out of politics is the Church concentrating on its evangelical mission of preaching the gospel, converting sinners and building up God's flock. Integral to this mission is maintaining a clear witness to right and wrong, distinguishing between good and evil and calling the faithful (and all people of good will) to do the right and avoid evil.

Jim Wallis wants us to "vote out poverty." If only it were that easy. What he actually proposes is that the Church get involved in what could be termed "outcome-based politics." He holds up the Enlightenment ideals of democracy and equality as the outcomes we seek and then suggests that we work for those outcomes through all partisan political means possible. Morality must take a back seat to the more important goal of eradicating poverty. So we are told to support the Democratic Party even though it advocates clear moral evil in the form of legalized private killing. We must become morally complicit in moral evil for the sake of a greater good. This is utilitarianism and it contradicts Christian morality at the most fundamental level. As Pope John Paul II wrote in Evangelium Vitae: "the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral." (#57) As Brend Wannenwetsch, points out, it is the teaching of another of the pope's encyclicals, Veritas Splendour, that provides the background for this teaching. (See B. Wannenwetsch, "'Intrinsically Evil Acts'; or, Why Abortion and Ethanasia Cannot Be Justified" in Ecumenical Ventures in Ethics: Protestants Engage Pope John Paul II's Moral Encyclicals, ed. R. Hutter and T. Dieter, Eerdmans, 1998). In Veritas Splendour, Pope John Paul II made it clear that there is such a thing as an "intrinsically evil act."

In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan tries to get Alyosha to answer the question of whether he would agree that it is acceptable to torture one little five-year old girl and inure yourself to her tears if that were the only way to "build the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last." Would you agree, demands Ivan? "No, I would not agree," Alyosha said softly. (Book II, Chapter 4 "Rebellion") Alyosha says that he would rather leave millions of people in misery than torture one innocent little girl. He is right, but not by any kind of utilitarian calculation. From a utilitarian point of view he is selfish and moralistic. But from a Christian perspective he is correct to fear God, refuse to commit an evil act that will imperil his soul and leave the results to God.

Now I know that Jim Wallis proclaims that Obama would reduce abortions and probably he really believes this in his heart of hearts. But Obama steadfastly declares that mothers have the "right" to kill their children and that he will defend this right legislatively. (I hear that a pro-life, pro-Obama website is about to be launched. As one wit said: Can the McCain for Pacifism website be far behind?) How can we take seriously those who say they want to reduce abortions when they vote for politicans whose policies ensure that abortion on demand will remain legal?

We who argue that Evangelicals and Catholics cannot support Obama are accused of being single issue fanatics who don't look at the big picture. But what bigger picture is there than the fundamental right to life? It seems to me that we are being invited to enter into the murky world of partisan politics and engage in compromises and trade-offs in order to achieve our ideological goals. This is exactly what the Church must not do. We don't have an opinion on every issue because not every issue is a moral issue and even when it is a moral issue it is not always clear cut. The Church has a right to say to its members and to society as a whole that to vote for abortion is to imperil one's soul. This is the subject that the Church is the expert on and this is the kind of issue on which the Church must speak. Morality, unlike partisan politics, is the Church's business.

Should the Church Get Involved in Politics? More Thoughts

I'm not sure I made myself as clear as I might have done in the previous post so I want to try again. The Church, qua Church, should steer clear of politics because it has more important things to do. The policy of the Roman Catholic Church not to allow priests to run for political office seems to be to draw an important line in the sand that should never be erased. Politics is the realm of ideologies and partisan strife; it is always morally ambiguous and never a vehicle of salvation. I fear that this truth has been obscured today.

Why should the Church not involve herself in politics? We often hear today strident condemnations of the Church for failing to do exactly that. We are told that every social institution must be on one side or the other; no neutrality is possible. We are either "for" the poor and oppressed or we are "for" the oppressors. Let me give three historical examples of what I am talking about.

1. The 19th and early 20th century Social Gospel. Basically, the Church was told that as Church she must choose sides in the class warfare between socialism and capitalism. The Church, in her preaching, Christian education, worship and ethical instruction, was told to place herself in the service of the struggle for socialism. This was the only way to be "relevant" and to "responsible" given the world historical (read: eschatological) struggle between the forces of good and the forces of evil.

2. In the 1960's European Marxist thought imported to Latin America launched a struggle for "liberation" in the name of the poor, indigeonous peoples of Latin America. Liberation theology said much the same thing as the Social Gospel in a largely Roman Catholic context. To embrace a fundamental option for the poor once again meant taking sides in the ideological struggle to replace capitalism with socialism.

3. In recent years, the Sojourners organization evolved from an alternative community to a left-wing social justice lobby group that seeks to elect Democratic candidates and influence legislation according to the dictates of both econmic and cultural left. Evangelicals who feel guilty about suporting George Bush and his unjust and unwise war are urged to make ammends by electing the morst extreme left-wing ideologue ever to run for president in the US.

What do all three of these movements have in common? Let me make a list.

1. All of them urge Christians to support a particular secular ideology that arises out of the Enlightenment instead of applying specifically Christian doctrine to the social question.

2. All of them propose a comprehensive program for improving the world instead of addressing specific issues one at a time, thus flirting with the dangers of utopianism.

3. All of them require compromise with evil in order to achieve the "greater good." Each asks Christians to support coercion and violence as a way of implementing social justice.

4. All of them put a great deal of faith in government as the means by which justice and peace can come about in this world.

5. None of them require their secular allies to give up any of their cherished sins in order to be part of the movement, which is to say that none are evanglistic in nature. Rather than trying to convert non-Christians, the goal is simply to get them to adopt left-wing policies and ideology and nothing more. Nothing in the programs of these groups requires faith in Chirst to believe. A vague secular humanism is adequate. In this way the Church becomes little more than a faint echo of what the world is already saying to itself.

Notice, finally, that when an argument is made like the one I am making, the response is usually to castigate the person making the argument to stay out of politics and remain focussed on morality as "intolerant" and wanting to impose his views on everyone. In other words, it is reasonable to impose socialism on everyone, but not the Ten Commandments. This is, at best, highly selective tolerance and is actually driven by ideology.

Should the Church Get Involved in Politics?

One way to understand the difference between Catholic Social Doctrine and Protestant social ethics is to see the Catholic teaching as moral teaching, rather than political involvement and to see Protestant social ethics as blurring the line between Christian morality and politics. What do I mean by this distinction?

Catholic Social Doctrine is focussed first and foremost on what human persons need to know and do in order to be saved. It is the teaching of pastors to the faithful on the implications of the Gospel for their lives as disciples of Christ. It is not about strategies and trade-offs necessary to effect change in this world. It is not primarily about power politics, parties, coalitions, programs, and electability, although it may affect all these things indirectly. When the Church concentrates on what is morally right and wrong, it inevitably bumps into the political realities of the world around it. That cannot be helped. But when the focus shifts from morality to the effective implementation of programs, something vital is lost - something evangelical is lost.

When the Catholic bishops clarify that abortion is always an intrinsically evil act and that to vote for a politican because he is for legalized abortion, when an alternative exists, is always formal cooperation in moral evil - that may well rule out voting for the Democratic Party in this election. But the main concern of the bishops is not which party wins or which program is put into action. The main concern of the bishops as pastors is to safeguard the souls of their flock and to teach the truth about the taking of human life that arises out of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and which can be discerned by reason as natural law. The main concern is moral even though the implications are also political.

Protestants on both the right and the left seem to have lost the ability to make this distinction. For example, when neoconservatives like Colson and Robertson defend the indefensible in the form of the second Iraq War, they display a committment to Republican party unity and conservative ideology that is political and, of greater concern, trumps morality in the form of the just war teaching. To defend an unjust war on utilitarian grounds is unworthy of Christian theologians. And when Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo collaborate in advancing the pro-legalized abortion agenda in the name of Democratic party unity and liberal ideology, they need to be corrected for a moral lapse. Liberal Protestantism, in particular, seems prone to enshrine liberal political ideology on a level of equality with classic Christian orthodoxy. (Well, to be honest, it actually doesn't hold classic orthodoxy that high!).

There is a very large distinction to be made between matters of prudential judgment and the direct evil of breaking God's commandments. For example, it is debatable whether the State should allow no-fault divorce and Christian politicans might well find themselves on either side of a debate over a specific bill relating to divorce. But it is always evil to commit adultery in every situation and there is no debate to be had between Christians on this matter. It is debatable whether a given war is justifiable, but abortion is always wrong. (And, to be fair to the Christian Right, the Iraq War is not as clear cut an issue as abortion by a long shot, except for pacifists and most Evangelicals are not pacifists.)

Perhaps the Church, in the form of the teaching of her pastors, would do well to be much more discrete about making political pronouncements, and save her moral credibility for moral issues that are more clearly matters of faith and more clearly grounded in the Bible and Tradition.

The Intellectuals Have Hitherto Only Changed the World; the Point is to Understand It

In the final chapter of Robert Inchausti's book, Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries and Other Christians in Disguise, we find the following remarkable statement:

"The point that many moderns fail to grasp about Christian thinkers is that they have very little interest in changing the world. They seek merely to see things clearly in the light of God's hidden logic. And if, by so doing, they expose the narcissism of their contemporaries, the false agendas of their leaders, and the didactic pornography of their artists and entertainers - well, that is all to the good. but unlike their more utilitarian peers, they desire to live in the truth even more than they desire to be effective in the world, and this puts them on the far side of a very important and very deep intellectual divide: it puts them in the camp of the stoic poor, the moral outcasts, and the political and literary pariahs. . . As one Parisian graffiti artist wrote in 1968, "the intellectuals have hiterto only changed the world; the point is to understand it." (188)

This sentiment expresses the foundation of all Christian action in the world for the Christian is one who above all else wishes to live in the truth and knows that the truth is that this world is 1) fallen and 2) not the only reality. Because of #1 it is not possible for human revolution or human science to make a utopia on this earth and because of #2 we can expect an intervention from a transcendent God who will judge the world in righteousness and set up an everlasting kingdom of perfect peace. Knowing these two truths is more important than all the Marxist, Liberal, Democratic, revolutionary, Liberationist, Social Gospel or Progressive schemes in the world.

Why then do Christians today so often give the impression that the only way to "make Christianity relevant" is for the Church to join one or another social engineering project and become the religious cheer leader for it? It is a rhetorical question - I haven't got a clue why this should be so. It makes no sense.