THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 28, 1996 TAG: 9604260488
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Decision '96
If we want ot make our democracy stronger, what new political and
social agreements need to be forged in America among citizens and
public and private leaders? This week we continue our periodic, public
correspondence on this question.
SOURCE: BY PETER WEHNER
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
Assume you had never read the New Testament and were asked to draw some conclusions about Christianity based on the conduct and statements of today's many politically active Christians, on both sides of the spectrum.
You would probably conclude that Christ and his followers spent a lot of time forming coalitions, networking among the politically powerful and writing laws; that in order to advance his ``social agenda,'' Christ demanded political access, influence and a ``place at the table;'' and that the best way, as he saw it, to re-moralize Jewish and Roman society was to become rulers of the nations.
You might therefore conclude that the modern church ought to be a political nerve center; that the Scriptures offer a detailed policy blueprint; and that controlling the citadels of power is crucial to advancing the Kingdom of God.
Yet these views - which increasingly dominate Christian thinking and action - find virtually no support in the life or teachings of Christ.
This is an inconvenient fact for many politically active Christians. I say ``inconvenient'' because many of them have achieved what they have long sought: political power, influence, even dominance.
But at what cost?
A compelling case can be made that Christians ought to care about politics precisely because political acts can have profound human consequences. But the principal threat Christians now face is not disengagement from politics but absorption by it. Christians need to resist a creeping political idolatry.
Trying to ascertain the proper relationship of Christian faith to political power is an inherently ambiguous undertaking; we have obligations to both God and Caesar. It was expected that the Messiah would come as a political leader. Instead, he came to us as a lowly servant, born in a manger in Bethlehem and not to noble privilege in Rome. Christ and his disciples demonstrated a profound mistrust of power - especially political power.
The focal point of Christ's ministry - the object of most of his energies and affections - were the downtrodden, social outcasts, the powerless.
Passionate political activism - for example, presidential candidates calling for Christians to ``break the doors open'' and ``take over the party'' - is simply not a model of biblical Christianity. Christ understood the corrosive effect power can have on the church as well as on individual believers.
According to Charles Colson, during the Nixon administration religious leaders were those most easily seduced by political power. There is an insidious danger that is particular to Christians: the tendency to justify their actions by assuming that (a) Christians are inoculated against the seductions of worldly power and (b) they are advancing God's purposes. The results are often moral arrogance, pride, self-importance, hypocrisy and excess.
Consider, too, how the political arena undermines traditional Christian virtues such as love, humility, forgiveness, forbearance, kindness, mercy and gentleness. These virtues are not the coin of the political realm - including the Christian political realm.
Often when Christians organize politically, the rules that are supposed to govern their behavior individually seem not to apply to them collectively. And so we find that the fuel driving much of modern-day Christian activism is anger, bitterness, resentment. Political campaigns seem only to inflame these emotions.
Many modern-day Christians are aiming squarely at earth. The result is that the church begins to look like just one more special interest group; faith becomes a weapon employed by political ideologues of every shade and hue.
The corrective is not complete retreat from the affairs of the world. It is, rather, selective political engagement characterized by distinctively Christian attitudes.
That means (among other things) that Christians ought to be voices of decency, civility and moral sanity; that we recognize our own (and not just other people's) human imperfections; that we strive for justice, righteousness and mercy; that we speak out and act against evil; that we regard political power with suspicion and acknowledge its limits; that we be less partisan and more prophetic; that we remember that the biblical model for ``loving thy neighbor'' is a servant model, nonpolitical and personal; that we maintain a detachment from and hold loosely the things of the world; and that our interest in the temporal should never overshadow our longing for the eternal. MEMO: Peter Wehner is director of policy at Empower America, a conservative
political advocacy organization.
ILLUSTRATION: B/W Photo
Peter Wehner
KEYWORDS: COMMUNITY CONVERSATION PUBLIC JOURNALISM by CNB