Should Christians Avoid Politics?

head in the sandFrom the archives. First appeared on 2/27/09. (Original discussion thread.)

If recent polls may be believed, most Americans now see their country as seriously troubled. For conservatives the times are especially disturbing. We are deeply opposed to the political philosophy now in power but are also alarmed at the resulting economic policies. We believe the solutions now in progress will be more damaging than the problems they are supposed to solve.

Among principled conservatives feelings about the situation range from intense frustration to utter futility. To many, the segment of Bible-believing Christendom that eschews politics is looking more and more like home. They are eying the creed that participation in politics has little or nothing to do with our responsibilities as followers of Jesus Christ and finding it increasingly attractive.

Over the last few months, I have also felt the appeal of tuning out. But certain realities have doggedly called me back to the belief that in a nation such as ours Christians can and must be involved in politics. And we have this responsibility even if—perhaps especially if—it appears we will accomplish nothing.

God cares what nations do

A principle feeding my conviction that believers should be involved in politics is the fact that God has expectations of nations. He is not “judge of all the earth” in a solely individualistic sense, nor is He concerned only with the salvation (and transformation) of individuals. Consider, for example, God’s rebuke of the nations in Amos 1:3-15. Here He finds fault not so much with how individual citizens have behaved but with how they have acted collectively as a nation. And they are judged accordingly.

Thus says the Lord: “For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because they have threshed Gilead with implements of iron.” (NKJV, Amos 1:3)

What’s more, at least once in Amos the judgment of a nation has nothing to do with its treatment of Israel or Judah.

Thus says the Lord: “For three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because he burned the bones of the king of Edom to lime. But I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth; Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting and trumpet sound. And I will cut off the judge from its midst, and slay all its princes with him,” says the Lord. (Amos 2:1-3)

Here God holds the national entity called Moab to an ethical standard which it had violated by its handling of the remains of the king of Edom (a nation condemned for sins of its own in Amos 1:11). Apparently, God has ethical expectations for what nations do when acting as nations. In other words He cares about national policy.

Given the fact that policy in America is shaped by the involvement of the electorate, we cannot separate policy from politics. If God cares about what nations do as nations, He cares about what the United Sates does as a nation, and He cares about the politics that shape what we do.

We are the government

Amos and other prophets show that God expects nations to treat other nations properly. Similarly, Romans 13 reveals that God expects nations to govern their own citizens properly, and He assigns specific responsibilities to government. Verse 4 indicates that the governing authorities “bear the sword” and serve as diakonoi (servants) and ekdikoi (justice givers or punishers) for God. The words good and evil appear repeatedly in the passage, emphasizing that government’s duties are ethical and moral.

It’s impossible to take these verses seriously and conclude that God does not care what happens in Congress or in my state assembly. But the implications of the passage for a society such as ours extend much further.

By design, the United States is a nation of laws shaped by the influences of representative democracy. The founders did not aim to give every man an equal voice in state or national policy, but they did aim to give every man an equal voice in whom he would send to act on his behalf (not necessarily to vote as he would vote but to build policy that protects the best interests of his family and his nation). Regular elections—coupled with the right of public protest—were built in to ensure that policy-making is never wholly separated from the citizenry.

To say it another way, in America the difference between government and the governed is intentionally blurred by law so that citizens have governing responsibilities (policy-shaping responsibilities), whether they want them or not. To be a citizen is to be an indirect policy maker. In that sense, we are all “the government.”

The fact that we are all legally entangled in the policy-making process means that the question is not “Will I be involved in politics and try to shape policy?” but rather “Will I shape policy well or will I, by passivity and silence, shape it poorly?” What we commonly refer to as “not involved in politics” is just a way of saying “not putting any effort into policy-making responsibilities.”

Because our government is structured the way it is, the moral and ethical responsibilities of government in Romans 13 are our moral and ethical responsibilities as citizens. The only difference is that, for most of us, our involvement is that of indirect influence rather than direct execution.

The place of prayer

I have often heard that the role of the Christian in earthly politics is simply to pray. Isn’t this what we are commanded to do?

Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. (1 Tim. 2:1-2)

What the Scriptures require here is clear. Believers must pray for and about those in power and do so with the goal that they will essentially leave us alone.

The passage might seem to imply that we should also leave them alone, but that view extends the passage beyond what it actually says. Rather, prayer is never a substitute for action in Scripture, just as action is never a substitute for prayer. For example, Jesus commanded us to pray that the “Lord of the harvest” would “send out laborers” (Luke 10:2), yet He still commanded us to “go into all the world and preach” (Mark 16:15). The apostle Paul said it was “his prayer to God for Israel that they may be saved” (Rom. 10:1), yet he included outreach to Jews throughout his ministry. Likewise the call to pray for “all who are in authority” does not preclude acting deliberately to influence them.

Taking action when we have neglected prayer is foolish and irreverent, but praying when we ought to be acting is foolish and irresponsible. Imagine that fire fighters have been summoned to the site of a burning apartment complex. They arrive, take positions, unpack the hoses, and connect them to hydrants. But rather than douse the flames, they pull out their cell phones and repeatedly dial 911 as the building burns.

The analogy is imperfect. God possesses the power to intervene directly in the affairs of men and “put out fires” in response to prayer alone. But should we assume that direct intervention by Himself alone is His intention when He has not said so and has given us the means to attack the flames ourselves?

Morality shapes everything

A final reality that keeps me from adopting the “politics is none of our business” stance is the fact that the moral condition of a community impacts everything else in it. I cannot fulfill my responsibilities as husband and father as effectively in Sodom as I can in better surroundings. And if Lot chose poorly in going to “the cities of the plain” (Gen. 13:12), am I not choosing poorly if I allow “the cities” to come to me? What’s certain is that we and our families cannot be unaffected if moral decadence descends all around us (2 Pet. 2:7-8).

Proverbs underscores this principle.

A wicked man accepts a bribe behind the back to pervert the ways of justice. (Prov. 17:23)

The proverb describes a perilous situation. A morally corrupt man influences or makes policy but does not do so according to principle or law. He perverts “the ways of justice” by seeing that someone is punished arbitrarily rather than for wrong-doing. As this blight spreads in a community, people see less and less relationship between their behavior and what government does to them. Lawlessness increases, and eventually no one anywhere is safe.

If I live in such a place, I can only successfully protect my family and my property (God-given responsibilities) as God intervenes to prevent what is otherwise the inevitable course of nature. But will He intervene in that situation if I could have stemmed the tide of lawlessness years earlier but chose not to?

Just as declining morality ruins the relationship between law-abiding behavior and personal well being, it also ruins the relationship between labor and personal prosperity.

Much food is in the fallow ground of the poor, and for lack of justice there is waste. (Prov 13:23)

This proverb can be taken to mean that lack of justice has allowed the poor to be robbed, but the view that answers best to the evidence is that injustice has somehow led the poor to let their land lie idle. This meaning is more clear in the ESV.

The fallow ground of the poor would yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice. (ESV, Prov 13:23)

The proverb describes a situation in which the land of the poor could have been producing abundance, but bad policy (or poor execution of good policy) made waste more appealing. The poor here probably feel that growing the crops will do them little good because the fruit of their labor will be taken away, either by robbers or by oppressive taxation. Either way, immoral policy has guaranteed that citizens and their families see little relationship between hard work and food on the table. As that relationship deteriorates in a community, production falls off. Soon there isn’t enough of anything.

We’re foolish if we believe that bad policy and moral confusion can spread indefinitely without eventually hindering our own ability to live and serve God. Yes, God can intervene to spare His children from the worst that lawlessness and want bring on a society, but should we assume that He will do so if we have the means to influence policy and morality for good but choose instead to “avoid politics”?

Some may object here that we “cannot legislate morality.” But in reality government exists for no other reason than to punish “evil” (what is morally wrong) and reward “good” (what is morally right). To the degree Christians can influence policy toward effectiveness in that purpose, we are wise to do so. To do less is to welcome a future of violence, chaos, and poverty from which God will have no obligation to deliver us.

Aaron Blumer Bio

Aaron Blumer, SharperIron’s second publisher, is a Michigan native and graduate of Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC) and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He and his family live in a small town in western Wisconsin, not far from where he pastored Grace Baptist Church for thirteen years. He is employed in customer service for UnitedHealth Group and teaches high school rhetoric (and sometimes logic and government) at Baldwin Christian School.

Discussion

Thank you!

Pastor Mike Harding

I’d add one point that I think is important on this topic and often neglected. Because good government has a positive impact on our neighbours, acting to improve the way our nation is governed is part of loving our neighbours. Where we have the opportunity to influence government for good, it is the charitable thing to do.

These are great points that I do not believe any believer will argue against. But your second to last sentence is the point of contention. How much should we be involved? SHould we hold campaign speeches in our church? Should we picket and march and write letters and make calls? Should we support from the church treasury the candidates that need financial support? These are the questions that haunt us at every election time. How much should politics be a part of the ministry of the church or the believer’s life. I don’t have answers. I just ask the question for the smart people to answer.



Goodellsboy,

The question isn’t how much you should get involved, but the how is really important. A few things to consider:

The church acting as an institution is different from the church militant (as in, all Christians now alive) getting involved as individuals. The church as an institution is to teach the word and apply it to daily life including government. But I think it’s unwise for a preacher to say “thus says the Lord” very often about political policies unless its simply crystal clear. Not everything that’s a sin should be a crime, and that’s where a lot of Christians disagree. One could say that cheating at soccer is a sin, but not want the government to make it illegal. Two Christians could have the same position on a whether a sin is a sin, but differ on how the government should involve itself. For any moral issue I can think of, Christians can disagree on policy methods while still retaining a correct stance on the sin.

For example, I was an intern on Capitol Hill during the 2004 Marriage Amendment debate. Some preachers had a very “thus says the Lord” way of looking at whether the Amendment was a good idea. It made me uncomfortable to be honest, because they were giving the impression that God supported a particular method to achieve a righteousness goal.

So when you ask if “we” should picket and march and make calls: who is the “we?” Ask yourself if this policy is a way to reach a righteous outcome, and is therefore a method, or if it’s righteousness itself that you’re advocating. This would help you know if your church as an institution should be involved or not. For example, a church could speak out against the evil of abortion, but I don’t think it would be wise for a pastor to advocate publicly that his congregation picket outside abortion clinics. That’s a tactic that should be left up to the individual believer’s conscience and wisdom.

I’m currently reading a new book http://www.amazon.com/Body-Broken-Republicans-Democrats-Same/dp/1936768…] “Body Broken: Can Republicans and Democrats Sit in the Same Pew” by Charles Drew , and it’s been helpful. I’m supposed to write a review for my church and I may submit it to SI as well.

[Goodellsboy] SHould we hold campaign speeches in our church? Should we picket and march and write letters and make calls? Should we support from the church treasury the candidates that need financial support? These are the questions that haunt us at every election time. How much should politics be a part of the ministry of the church or the believer’s life. I don’t have answers. I just ask the question for the smart people to answer.
I think there can be no hard and fast rule for how involved Christians should be (I’m not all all for campaign speeches in churches, though). So much of that has to do with vocation.

But in general I’d like to see more Christians be more intellectually involved at least: learn the history of the ideas behind the issues, understand the philosophies that drive the policies involved, vote accordingly. To me, that’s a minimal responsibility for the citizen-government of a nation like ours.

…also take the time to understand the basic schools of thought on economics.

The “polarization” that is so lamented these days (tiresomely so) has real ideas at its heart and though many politicians are just finger-to-the-wind types, much of the polarization we’re seeing is due to substantially different philosophies following their trajectories. And the more these ideas run their courses, the more they diverge.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

[Aaron Blumer] I think there can be no hard and fast rule for how involved Christians should be.
I understand what you mean by hard and fast, but if Christians get focused on national politics at the expense of the pilgrim mindset
[the author of Hebrews]… having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
it’s too involved.

I don’t really disagree with that principle. It applies to every vocation, though. What about vocations that include jobs like farmer, police officer, lawyer, doctor, cook…. you name it. These are all aimed at this present world. But it’s possible to engage in these labors with “the homeland” (in particular, the glory of the One who dwells there - Rev. 21.23) as the ultimate purpose.

I can’t see any reason to put political activities/careers in a different category.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Sure. It’s also possible, and frequently modeled and commended, to ignore what the ultimate purpose ought to be in the pure interest of “saving our way of life”, etc.

I hear/read that observation in one for another pretty often. But I never see or hear much to help me understand what they’re referring to. What does this call to ignore the ultimate purpose look like?

I suspect that in many cases, it’s a problem of neglect or perceived neglect. A problem of what is not being said. But if we apply that standard fairly…. how often do we hear that selling cars or designing curtains has an eternal purpose? For believers it does, but the eternal purpose is not divorced from the temporal one. They’re intertwined.

How do I labor “as to the Lord and not to men” if my job is to run a dry cleaners service? A huge part of it is to provide excellent service for a fair price and do my business honestly—in short, I pursue the eternal glory of the Creator (and Savior) who has lead me to this work by, in large part, striving for the highest quality temporal result. I pursue the eternal by means of the temporal.

So when it comes to lines of work, seeing the eternal value of “saving our way of life” seems easy to me compared to “making better hard drive components” or “selling really good makeup” or “creating a more beautiful landscape.” (OK, admittedly, that last one would be a stiff competitor, but if I were not a pastor, to me, work aimed at influencing public policy would be the next best thing….OK, except for maybe teaching, which is very like pastoring anyway in a lot of ways.)

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard a Christian activist imply to a congregation that the key to Jesus being able to keep his promise to his church (that the gates of hell will not prevail against it) was dependant on a letter writing campaign by all God-fearing people across the land to prevent House Bill something or other from passing.

Obviously I exaggerate somewhat. But in seriousness, I’ve heard a lot of pulpit time dedicated to this over the years. Thankfully not at my current church.

EDIT: I should make clear I am not talking about actual politicians, but lobbyists, watchdogs, and other activists. “Keeping our Christian nation” was a big part of the fundamentalism I grew up in.

David,

I think you and Aaron should really drill down into what the differences are in “involved” in politics and how one puts too much hope in politics. I live in the Washington DC area. I see a lot of Christian activists acting as if the kingdom of God depended on the GOP. In one sense, you could say they’re too involved in politics, yet I don’t think their level of involvement is the problem. The problem is where they place their hope. In my experience of knowing lots of Christians at high levels of government (my roommate is the personal assistant of a US Congressman, several of my friends work in Sr. levels Congressional offices) the best Christians know the place of government as really important, yet less important than the Kingdom of God.

David, I’m with you when you decry people who are all uptight about keeping America a Christian nation. I used to live two floors below Wallbuilders founder David Barton. I went to his seminars and found he put too much hope in good government for eternal purposes.

All that said, plenty of Christians work in politics and see the dire circumstances our country is in. They are working feverishly to halt a liberal agenda that would push the country away from freedom. I think it’s really important work. I don’t think they generally mistake their work in their churches with this kind of secular work in terms of importance. There is a way to work feverishly for a more biblical government that doesn’t make biblical government an idol that displaces God Himself. Sure there are excesses you could point to, and I don’t like them, but there is a lot of balance as well.

Shayne

Thanks for the specifics, guys.

There are some problems with framing here… I think we’re not ever going to see that completely go away because some of it is theologically driven by various forms of kingdom confusion (which tends to correlate with post millennialism and its cousins among other things).

At the same time, these guys are not completely wrong. America began as a culturally Christian nation and though it’s hard to prove a strong correlation with “studies,” societies that are “culturally Christian” have tended to have many more people in them who were genuinely Christian. So the relationship between personal faith in Christ (the only place real transformation happens) and the continuation of institutions strongly influenced by Christian thought is not to be dismissed—though it is complex.

I’ve made a case elsewhere that striving for a culturally-Christian society (by means of persuasion, not coercion) is a worthy goal for many reasons including love of neighbor (life is better where wisdom is honored in a people’s customs), love of our own children (who will have to live in the world we leave them if Christ doesn’t return first), and an environment of “pre evangelism.” In this piece I touched on the idea that God cares how nations behave as well as caring about what individuals believe.

The “environment of pre-evangelism” is an area I’d like to do some more work on some time. I increasingly hear the notion that we should want a more decadent society so that people can more clearly see the vanity of moralism. I think this idea is very hard to support from Scripture because it rests on the premise that people see the truth of their sin more clearly by sinning more.

(I’m trying not to just laugh that idea off… because apparently many are dead serious about it… but it’s a strain. The truth is that it strikes me as absurd.)

The real problem with many of the “fighting for a Christian America” folks isn’t usually that they’re wrong about the (culturally) “Christian America” idea; it’s more a problem of not being well informed (rosy and naive versions of the faith of the founding fathers, for example) as well as problems of idealism and really, really ineffective persuasive strategies (e.g., mostly preaching to the choir, using really confusing language on separation of church and state, etc.).

Long post, but one more thought…

On the GOP… It’s a mess but it’s the best we’ve got right now. Since I’m not an idealist, I don’t really expect to encounter a perfect party or perfect candidate, so the state of the GOP is not deeply disturbing to me. Ultimately it’s about the right ideas winning the day and there are many voices making thoughtful cases for the right ideas. Sometimes they gain ground, sometimes lose it, but slow progress is sometimes evident and that’s good enough for me.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

First, the idea that Christians SHOULD be involved in politics is silly. Such a viewpoint implies a biblical mandate that is wholly absent from the text. Can a Christian be involved in politics without sinning? Well, political involvement in and of itself is not a sin. Voting is fine. I vote in every election. Should Christians vote? If one means that it is wrong for a Christian NOT to vote, I would argue that such a view is guilty of Americanizing Christianity. I would go so far to say that laying such a mandate on people is playing God. If a person objects to voting, who am I or you or anyone else to correct them? From what Scripture would we speak? Dare we twist the text in order to propogate the Americanizing of Christianity? Someone says that a Christian should be a good citizen and a good citizen votes. Really? Who exactly gets to define what a good citizen is? Who says a good citizen votes? The world or Scripture? A good citizen, a really good Christian citizen contradicts the wordly culture with his/her life and message. A good citizen evanglizes the community. A Christian citizen realizes that all the outward conformity in the world is not really going to make a difference in the end. So what you have a high moral culture. If men are God-haters, they are still vile and wicked in God’s eyes. A morally high culture is just as wicked as the most decadent culture if it is without Christ. And surely American culture is without Christ.

The Church can’t even manage itself, let alone influence political direction in this country. If you think she can, forgive me, but you are living a delusion. The Church needs to go back to the simple preaching of a simple gospel and trust an absolutely free and sovereign God to transform lives the way Scripture says He does. She needs to get back to the basics of discipleship, indoctrination, and evangelism if she is to have any hope of inlfuencing the culture toward God.

We are not called to elevate the morals in our culture. We are called to proclaim the gospel and if this does not move morality, all the politics and movements on the planet surely won’t. The problem with the American Church is that she has become so involved in moral issues and political issues that the world thinks she is merely one more politically oriented agent pushing her own ideologies onto the government and the rest of the culture that does not want them. In other words, she is not viewed as the Church any longer. She looks like all the other political entities vying for influence, power, and control. In that environment, the real danger is the loss of the gospel.

Politics are a far bigger distraction and a hinderance to the gospel than they are a help. They have served as a major distraction for the Church over the past 50 years or so and the results within the body are nothing short of dire. Let us return to a sharpened focus on our very narrow mission given to us by our Founder, Lord, and Master, Jesus Christ. Let us preach the gospel, baptize converts, and make disciples throughout the whole world. The business of kings, times, and epochs is really the business of God. Pray for them so that we can live a tranquil life. But let us not allow the delusion that somehow this is our mission and it is our duty and mission to influence legislation and goverment. The best way to influence is to preach!

I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth. III John 4

Ed,

I generally agree with and many of your statements and your distrust of politics as savior. I think most of us here have witnessed the demise of Christianity when the politics and the church are mixed. Tony Campolo once said, “mixing Christianity and politics is like mixing ice cream with horse manure. You will not ruin the horse manure, but you will ruin the ice cream.”

However, the problem that we face is that disciple-making does not happen in vacuum. In fact, the context for the Great Commission is “loving your neighbor as yourself.” Without it you can’t even make disciples. Each of us is surrounded by real situations including those that are political. For instance, in my city of Grand Rapids, the public schools have been rightly labeled “drop-out factories.” It is in my interest to love my neighbor by voting for education board members who by their actions will influence policy on a systematic level that help stem the tide or even gain headway with this problem. Of course the break down of the family, crime and violence, teen pregnancies, and many other social pathologies have created these problems and because sin is the problem of course the gospel of Jesus is the solution. But in many of these problems mentioned, there are bad laws or lack of laws that have also contributed to the problem as well and in a small way we can love our neighbor as our self through certain means of political action. But I do believe we do have to be careful how we go about getting involved in politics because unfortunately many Christians over the years lacked discernment with their political activism and it destroyed their gospel witness for Christ.