Many
Christians refuse to get involved in politics for any number of reasons.
Here are some of them:
·
Jesus didn’t get involved in politics.
·
God’s kingdom is not of this world.
·
We’re to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.
·
We’re living in the last days.
·
We’re just to preach the gospel.
·
Politics is not mentioned in the Great Commission.
·
The Christian’s citizenship is in heaven.
·
There’s a separation between Church and State.
·
Politics is dirty.
·
We’re not called on to seek political power.
I answer
these and other objections in my book Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths. . . .
A
recent article by Michael Horton is
another attempt to dissuade Christians from entering the political battlefield.
While Horton writes that he’s grateful “for any public servant who upholds the
First Amendment” and “we should applaud fellow believers who ply their
education and experience as lawyers to defend religious freedom (as long as
they don’t seek to privilege Christianity legally above other religions),” he
muddies the waters with a number of caveats.
It’s not
that I disagree with everything Horton writes in his article “What Are Evangelicals Afraid of
Losing?” I don’t. He’s correct that if a single election, like the
one coming up in November, “can cause us to lose everything,
what is it exactly that we have in the first place?”
There
have been times in history where everything seemed to have been lost. There are
Christians around the world today who have to keep their faith secret. This is
especially true of Muslims who convert to Christianity. In China, churches are
being demolished. Should we acquiesce to this? Should we stand by and let the
State persecute Christians so we can say that we are not
being triumphalistic?
There’s
much in this from Horton that we can agree with:
[T]he
church does not preach the gospel at the pleasure of any administration or
decline to preach it at another administration’s displeasure. We preach at
Christ’s pleasure. And we don’t make his policies but communicate them. It’s
not when we’re fed to lions that we lose everything; it’s when we
preach another gospel. “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole
world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Matt. 16:26).
Here’s my
question? Should Christians sit back in the face of potential evil designs
on the Christian faith or should we engage the adversarial culture before we
are fed to the lions or some equivalent form of persecution?
Consider
this statement from Horton:
Something
tremendous is at stake here: whether evangelical Christians place their faith
more in Caesar and his kingdom than in Christ and his reign. On that one, we do
have everything to lose—this November and every other election cycle. When we
seek special political favors for the church, we communicate to the masses that
Christ’s kingdom is just another demographic in the US electorate.
Engagement
in politics is not by definition placing faith in Caesar and his kingdom
over against “Christ and His reign.” I’m one Christian who is not placing his
faith in “Caesar” or political favors for the Church. The fact that we haven’t
lived under a Caesar for nearly two millennia is significant. Christian
involvement in the area of politics is one of the main reasons that we can
“petition the government for a redress of grievances” without fear of being
thrown in prison. Christian political theorists understood that the civil
magistrate should have enumerated and limited powers that apply to everyone.
Christian
involvement in politics should be to limit the
scope and size of civil government in every area. That’s why I address politics
as much as I do. I’m not looking to lord it over the masses. I suspect that
most Christians think the same way. See my book God and Government.
Machen,
Hodge, and the Reformed Legacy
Horton is
the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at
Westminster Seminary California. Machen (1881-1937) was a limited government
advocate. He spoke before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, and the
House Committee on Education on February 25, 1926, in opposition to
a federal department of education.
You can
read the transcript of Machen’s testimony here. Machen’s testimony
was an attack on Caesar and his kingdom. Horton surely has read Machen’s
testimony. It’s a model for Christian political activism, but it doesn’t seem
to come out in Horton’s writings.
“Beginning
in 1923, Machen,” Gary North writes, “sounded the
rallying cry of a frontal assault against a well-entrenched and well-funded
enemy: the American Establishment–not just the religious Establishment, which
today is a comparatively minor affair in the United States, but the American
Establishment in the broadest sense.” North lays out some of Machen’s views
relative to social and political themes:
Machen
was a believer in limited civil government, non-intervention in foreign policy
(one view he shared with [William Jennings] Bryan), and private charities
rather than tax-financed institutions of coercive wealth redistribution. He
opposed Prohibition as an unwarranted incursion into people’s freedom of action
by the civil government.1 He testified before
a joint Congressional committee in 1926 against the proposed U.S. Department of
Education.2 He opposed the
proposed amendment to the Constitution, the child labor amendment of 1935.3He opposed military conscription.4 He opposed the New
Deal’s Social Security legislation and its anti-gold standard monetary policy,
which, he said, undermined contracts.5 He opposed Bible
reading or the teaching of morality in public schools, since he recognized that
the teachers were predominantly atheistic, deistic, or liberal in their
theological opinions.6 Presumably, he would have
opposed prayer in public school classrooms. This was a departure from the opinion
held by A. A. Hodge in the 1880’s.7 Hodge could still
claim that the United States was a Christian nation, and that its public
schools should reflect this fact. By Machen’s day, such a claim was less
believable. But he did not publicly reject tax-financed public education.8 His
Scottish common sense rationalism did allow for some degree of common ground in
education, which alone might legitimize tax-funded schools.
Horton
would place himself squarely within the Reformed tradition. He would claim to
follow the views of John Calvin, J. A. Alexander, Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge,
B. B. Warfield, and Machen. Using only a single example, let us compare
Horton’s views with those of A. A. Hodge who served as Professor of Systematic
Theology at Princeton Seminary from 1877 until his death in 1886.
Hodge
made the case that “the kingdom of God on earth is not confined to the mere
ecclesiastical sphere, but aims at absolute universality, and extends its
supreme reign over every department of human life.”9 The implications of
such a methodology are obvious: “It follows that it is the duty of every loyal
subject to endeavour to bring all human society, social and political,
as well as ecclesiastical, into obedience to its law of righteousness.”10 With
these statements, one might assume that Hodge would disagree with Horton’s
claim that it’s a good thing to defend religious freedom “as long as [doing the
defending] don’t seek to privilege Christianity legally above other religions.”
In
addition, Hodge had no problem teaching that there are political implications
to the preaching and application of the Bible to every area of life:
It is our
duty, as far as lies in our power, immediately to organize human society and
all its institutions and organs upon a distinctively Christian basis.
Indifference or impartiality here between the law of the kingdom and the law of
the world, or of its prince, the devil, is utter treason to the King of
Righteousness. The Bible, the great statute‑book of the kingdom, explicitly
lays down principles which, when candidly applied, will regulate the action of
every human being in all relations. There can be no compromise. The King said,
with regard to all descriptions of moral agents in all spheres of activity, “He
that is not with me is against me.” If the national life in general is
organized upon non‑Christian principles, the churches which are embraced within
the universal assimilating power of that nation will not long be able to
preserve their integrity.11
The goal
of the Christian is to limit the size and scope of civil government. When its
size and scope grows, Christians need to act.
Limiting
the State
It’s not
so much what Horton says that’s troublesome; it’s what he doesn’t say. For
example:
This is
not to say we should have no concern at all about the state of our nation.
Nowhere in the New Testament are Christians called to avoid the
responsibilities of our temporary citizenship, even though our ultimate
citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20). However,
many of us sound like we’ve staked everything not only on constitutional
freedoms but also on social respect, acceptance, and even power. But that comes
at the cost of confusing the gospel with Christian nationalism.
Are
Christians really staking everything on politics and social acceptance? I doubt
it. For centuries Christians made it their “ambition to lead a quiet life”
and attend to their “own business” (1 Thess. 4:11; 2 Thess. 3:12). Over time, their business
became other people’s business through the agency of the State. Consider Jack Phillips who
was literally minding his own business when the state of Colorado tried to force him to
use his business for something he does not believe in. No one should be forced
to act against his or her conscience.
Yes, the
apostle Paul made it clear that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven, but it
didn’t stop him from appealing to his Roman citizenship (Acts 22:22-29) and ultimately to Caesar
(25:9-12).
Earlier,
Paul and Silas had been mistreated by the Romans. They had been ordered by “the
chief magistrate … to be beaten with rods,” their feet fastened in stocks, and
thrown in “the inner prison” (16:22-23). Through a direct act of God, they were
released (16:25-30). Later, the chief magistrates sent their policemen to
release Paul and Silas telling the jailer that they could “go in peace”
(16:35-36). Paul was neither amused or satisfied:
But Paul
said to them, “They have beaten us in public without trial, men who are Romans,
and have thrown us into prison; and now are they sending us away
secretly? No indeed! But let them come themselves and bring us
out.” The policemen reported these words to the chief magistrates. They were
afraid when they heard that they were Romans, and they came and appealed to
them, and when they had brought them out, they kept begging them to leave the
city. They went out of the prison and entered the house of Lydia,
and when they saw the brethren, they encouraged them and departed (16:37-40).
Was Paul
“confusing the gospel with Christian nationalism”? No. He wanted to live in
peace, and the opposition party of the Jews and the local Roman government
wouldn’t let him. Paul was not staking everything on political power. He pushed
back to keep the State from intruding where it had no legitimate jurisdiction.
Notes:
1.
Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A
Biographical Memoir (Philadelphia: Westminster Theological Seminary,
1954), 387.(
)
)
2.
Proposed Department of Education,
Congress of the United States, Senate Committee on Education and Labor, House
Committee on Education (Feb. 25, 1926), 95-108; reprinted in Machen, Education,
Christianity, and the State, edited by John W. Robbins (Jefferson,
Maryland: Trinity Foundation, 1987), ch. 7. Cf. Machen, “Shall We Have a
Federal Department of Education?” The Woman Patriot (Feb. 15,
1926); reprinted in Machen, Education, ch. 6.()
)
3.
Machen, “A Debate About the Child Labor Amendment,” The
Banner (Jan. 4, 1935), 15-16.()
)
4.
Machen, “A Debate About the Child Labor Amendment,” The
Banner (Jan. 4, 1935), 15.()
)
5.
“Machen to Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” New York Herald
Tribune (Oct. 2, 1935); cited in D. G. Hart, Defending the
Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern
America (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994),
143.()
)
6.
Machen, “The Necessity of the Christian School” (1933); reprinted
in Machen, Education, ch. 5.()
)
7.
A. A. Hodge, “Religion in the Public Schools,” New
Princeton Review, 3 (1887); reprinted in The Journal of Christian
Reconstruction, 4 (Summer 1977).()
)
8.
Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 14.()
)
9.
Archibald A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology: Lectures on
Doctrine (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, [1890] 1990), 283.()
)
10.
Hodge, Evangelical Theology, 283.()
)
11.
Hodge, Evangelical Theology, 283–284.()
)