"... the most troubling element in [contemporary American politics] lies beyond our mere partisan differences. It involves a distinctive politics of passion that could, if left unbridled, lead to the ruin of our experiment in republican self-government." - Law & Liberty
(Posted in July of 2020)
My thoughts below predate COVID-19, masks, hydroxychloroquine, or churches defying public health emergency orders. Last fall, different controversies were exposing problems in how believers evaluate conflicting claims and decide what to believe.
But those problems are still with us, and the current raft of controversies is exposing them even more painfully.
Many Christians who claim to revere the Bible lack biblical habits for evaluating truth claims and consequently lack skill in judging the ethics of situations in a biblical way. It seems almost ubiquitous now—the habit of putting the political/culture-war lenses on first, and embracing or rejecting claims based solely on source classification (friend or foe). The result is that ideas are accepted uncritically if they’re perceived to be from “our people” and rejected reflexively if they’re seen as from “the other side.”
What’s missing is weighing ideas and claims on their own merits—on things like evidence and sound reasoning. Increasingly, what’s completely missing is any nonpolitical consideration of what Scripture teaches and what sound application requires of us.
More than ever, believers need to meditate on a genuinely Christian view of truth and on a genuinely Christian approach to evaluating truth claims. At least five principles are are fundamental that effort.
"The specific issues are many, some comparatively new (critical race theory, former President Donald Trump), some all too familiar (racism and race relations beyond the one theory, roles of women, sexual ethics, Christian nationalism, church handling of abuse), all with a political edge." - C.Today
"Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan tweeted, 'The Republican Party is no longer the ‘wine and cheese’ party. It’s the beer and blue jeans party.' .... As it stands right now, however, the party is much more about grievance politics and retribution" - Dispatch
Edmund Burke, on moving his Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies. House of Commons, March 22, 1775
Below are excerpts from the first fifth of the speech. The speech is public domain. All 24,000 words are available at Project Gutenberg.
I hope, Sir, that notwithstanding the austerity of the Chair, your good nature will incline you to some degree of indulgence towards human frailty… . We are at this very instant nearly as free to choose a plan for our American Government as we were on the first day of the session. If, Sir, we incline to the side of conciliation, we are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We are therefore called upon, as it were by a superior warning voice, again to attend to America; to attend to the whole of it together; and to review the subject with an unusual degree of care and calmness.
“You’ve got to be strong,” said DeSantis at the end of his speech. “You’ve got to put on the full armor of God. You’ve got to take a stand, take a stand against the Left’s schemes. You’ve got to stand your ground. You’ve got to be firm. You will face flaming arrows, but take up the shield of faith and fight on.” - C.Leaders
"The church, the body of believers, has a key role in the political process. But that role has to be marked by humility and reflection. It also has to be marked by a commitment to be more faithful to the Word of God than we are to either political party." - Bill Haslam
"This tendency to see contested public-policy issues—such as those concerning immigration, religious liberty, or economics—through the lens of modern political ideologies and party platforms before seeing them through the lens of the gospel is problematic." - TGC
