Christian Political Activism

Does the image above disturb you as much as it does me? There is no doubt that there are Muslims around the world, and in within the US, who want to turn our country into part of a worldwide caliphate – eliminating our civil rights and replacing our legal codes with Islamic religious law (Sharia). As difficult as it might be to make that happen, the idea of Americans being flogged in public or women being forced to cover themselves from head to toe is reprehensible to us, and rightly so.

In doing a bit of internet research for my blog on the movie “’V’ for Vendetta,” I came across some web sites that really got me thinking. It appears that political activism by evangelical Christians really has some non-Christians scared of our ambitions. Our rhetoric has a lot of people convinced that we want to establish a theocracy and effectively throw out our Constitution. As hateful to all of is as the idea of an “islamisized” US flag is, there are a lot of people in our country who think that we want our flag to have the stars replaced by crosses.

Like the Islamists, I’m sure that there are many of those who disagree with Christians who have what we would classify as “anti-constitutional” ambitions, but I’ve also become convinced that evangelical political ambitions are seen as just as much a threat to our secular government as the Islamists would like to be. This is a real problem for Christians who claim to be “patriotic” and to love our country.

While Christians have a clear biblical call to live upright lives in society, I have yet to hear a cogent argument for Christians to be trying to change our culture by changing our government. Indeed, the biblical mandate appears to be crystal clear:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. (Rom 13:1,2 – English Standard Version (ESV))

and

Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (1 Peter 2:13-17 – ESV)

In the US, the supreme governing authority is not a person, as in the Roman empire when these passages were penned, but a document - the Constitution. It seems to me that the biblical mandate is for Christians to demonstrate their submission to the authority established over us by being strict constitutionalists. That would mean deferring to the Constitution even when that means doing so would give people the freedom to do things with which we would disagree. President Reagan famously stated that, “No country ever taxed its way to prosperity.” Similarly, I think we can say that no country ever legislated its way to moral righteousness. There are certainly those that try, though. Iran & Saudi Arabia have very strict moral codes – and secret police breaking down doors in the middle of the night to enforce them. By trying to change our culture by changing our laws, we give in to the mistaken notion that public morality is determined by law and not by the behavior of people. Anything might be made legal, but if no one participates in that behavior, then the legality is irrelevant. Abortion my never be made illegal in our country again, but if we demonstrate true compassion and sacrificial love to those women whose pregnancies cause personal crisis, we might eliminate abortion simply by loving them away from that decision. If there are no customers for the abortion clinics then the effect is greater than criminalization of the act itself.

This past weekend our church sponsored a seminar on sexual purity. The speaker has been doing intensive counseling for Christians caught up in pornography and marital infidelity for more than 17 years. Half of his 2500 clients in that time have been pastors and missionaries. Just that anecdotal evidence alone demonstrates that the problems with immorality within the Christian world (what we would call the “church”) are so great that we have no business trying to force those who don’t share our values to adhere to our standards of behavior. Let me say that again – I believe that we as Christians have no business trying to enforce our moral standards on those who do not willingly submit to biblical authority. We must focus on getting those within the church to live up to the standards they themselves claim as their own. We have a huge credibility problem, and we don’t help ourselves, or honor God, by pointing the finger at those outside the church when our problems with sexual immorality, divorce, abortion, and business and personal integrity are statistically not much different than those who claim no allegiance to Christ.

In the 1980s a Christian rock group called “Petra” wrote and performed a song called, “Seen and not heard.” Part of the lyric goes:

“There’s too much talk, and not enough walk.

Sometimes God’s children should be seen and not heard.”

That lyric echoes Peter’s admonition:

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. (1 Peter 2:11, 12 ESV)

In addition to the “passions of the flesh” that those words immediately bring to mind, I think we could add, “an ungodly desire for earthly political influence.”

“Fly high & roar loudly”

dirk