Stirring Up Religion on the Trail

My column this week, "Santorum Stirs Up Religion," looks at the prudence not only of trying to philosophize or theologize in public, but of doing so in the wrong setting and at the wrong time. (I've this point in a recent column as well.) Rick Santorum took a double digit lead in Michigan and turned it into a single digit loss because he let himself get off message and took up the religion-in-politics topic.

That's a good topic, of course. He made some good points, though ineptly. (It wasn't his fault. It was a bad venue, or the contraints of time did not permit him to elaborate sufficiently. But he should have known that. So it was his own fault.)

He complained in an interview with George Stephanopoulos that JFK's 1960 speech on the separation of church and state--or perhaps personal religion and policy making--makes him want to "throw up." People of faith, he said, should be able to bring their faith into the public square, borrowing John Richard Neuhaus's phrase. (The religion question comes at the 13 minute mark.)



Well, sure. Good point. Christ is Lord of his people in their entire lives. You cannot dichotomize your soul. But his timing is off. When people hear this, they take him to be unfocused and undiscipline...like Newt Gingrich, but not as smart.

And the tone is all wrong. It's angry and carping. That seems to be a habit of his. He struck the same tone when he rebuked the President for wanting people to go to college. "What a snob!" A sour note to say the least.

This assertion of a Christian right and necessity of taking his faith into politics is fair and good, but it is a delicate matter and not one to handled justly in a highly political atmosphere. Actually, the political reach of the Christian religion is deeper still. This Christ, this King Jesus, is not content to be a mere tribal deity. Christians cannot say, “Oh, don’t worry. It’s a Christian thing. It has nothing to do with you.” Christ’s redeeming eye is toward not only “whosoever will,” but the whole of creation. Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper put it this way: “No single piece of our mental world is to be sealed off from the rest and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” Jesus claims whole nations (Ps. 2, I Cor. 15, Rev. 19).

It further complicates the political picture if you think your church leadership speaks authoritatively for this Lord Jesus. Notice that in his comments Rick Santorum passed from speaking of “church” involvement in “the state” to “people” of faith entering “the public square” as though they were the same thing. But this is a distinction with enormous political consequences. But the interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, did not press the matter and Santorum did not offer an elaboration.

Theology, Philosophy and Policy

The full, hour-long video of my American Enterprise Institute "Values and Capitalism" luncheon event for Left, Right and Christ has been posted.



Along with it is a nice article by Elise Amyx describing the exchange between Lisa and me. She has this nice reflection on the wild leaps that Lisa Sharon Harper makes from which she finds in Scripture to the public policies she confidently advocates.

Political philosophy is where theology and policy meet; it is where the two worlds are reconciled, yet Harper jumps the gun and avoids the “high level battle of ideas.” Her argument is seemingly aligned, but not soundly intertwined. Because she approaches policy from a consequentialist view, she has failed to recognize the political philosophy implied by the policies she supports, which is not solely theological but rather one of “big government.”

Clearly, her James Madison University education has served her well.

Innes and Harper at AEI

Friday was a big day. I took the Acela down to DC to speak at a luncheon event at the American Enterprise Institute. They invited me and my co-author, Lisa Sharon Harper of Sojourners, to speak about our book, Left, Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics. We each spoke for about 15 minutes and then took questions. AEI has released five clips from our remarks. Here are my two.

In this one I talk about God's purpose in establishing government.



In this one, I state that a more fully Christian view of government is that it must secure not only individuals, but families and the fabric of cummunities in general.



Here they catch Lisa in her astonishing Robin Hood view of the Republicans and the Democrats. When she was a girl in 1976, she followed her mother around campaigning for Jimmy Carter. "Why are we Democrats, Mom?," she asked. Mom said that whereas the Republicans take money from the poor and give it to the rich, the Democrats take back from the rich and give it to the poor. "It stuck," she said.



Yup. Apparently it's that simple. Politics is the practice of plunder and counter-plunder. That view is not unique to my co-author. It is the standard, Sojourners, left-wing Evangelical view. For this reason, I think that Left, Right and Christ is a valuable book for setting side-by-side the poilitical alternatives for the Evangelical community.

Update: Here is the whole hour! Jaw dropping moments here.



Here we are the same day on Fox's Lauren Green Show.

Libertarianism is Political Unitarianism

In last weeks column, I took objection to another columnist presenting our political alternatives as Collectivism or Liberty (which he understands to be libertarianism). In addition, the institutions of Evangelical political leftism have raised the alarm over all those right-wingers for Jesus who also embrace Ayn Rand.

So I take a stab at out-lining a more genuine Christian view (within the confines 800 words or so).

When God redeems and restores human beings, what does their life together look like? It is obviously not bare individualism. Life in the glorious body of Christ, which is God's desire for all human beings, is not a system of alliances based on the convergence of self-interest.

True, you cannot expect natural society to behave like redeemed society. But that form of society into which Christ redeems us is a full restoration of the creation order, life for which we were created. So it indicates what social relationships really are. Marriage is not merely a mutually beneficial contractual alliance with legal advantages. It can be treated that way, but then it is no longer marriage. Family cannot be reduced to a useful alliance (a la John Locke). When you treat it this way, you destroy it.

Community is natural, not artificial. It is more than just the sum of its parts. It's part of our creational purpose, not simply the means we choose with a view to fulfilling the ends we set for ourselves. That is the Christian view of man, though not the view all Christians hold.  In his column, "Collectivism vs Liberty," Alex Tokarev shares view of the modern Enlightenment. In that view, there are only individuals, the state, and any organizations that people choose to form and disband or depart. The original exponents of that view hoped to substitute it for the Christian view, and were largely successful. Because of resemblances (e.g., individual autonomy vs individual liberty) and what the views share in common (like limited government), many well-meaning Christians, like Prof. Tokarev, have fallen into this confusion to one extent or another.

The Christian view of politics is like the Christian view of anything: Trinitarian.

But Trinitarian politics mirrors the Triune God of the Bible, who is one God in three Persons (see Anthony Bradley’s column from yesterday on the Trinitarian worldview). He is a true unity that preserves the genuine individuality of each person within that divine community. As we are made in God’s image, we too are created to be true individuals living together in real community. We are individually redeemed but into the body of Christ, the covenant community, the church. A soteriology without a corresponding ecclesiology is not a fully biblical gospel. And a Christian political theory that values individual liberty without giving due respect to community, something as natural and good as the people who compose it, is a merely gospel-influenced, secular ideology.

If you wish t explore a more fully Christian political theory or political theology, start with two papal encyclicals: Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891) and Pius XI's reflection on it, Quadrogessimo Anno (1931). Leo distinguishes the Christian view of society from both modern liberalism and socialism. From there, you can explore Jacques Maritain's Man and the State and John Courtney Murray's We Hold These Truths. More recently, Robert Kraynak has written Christian Faith and Modern Democracy.

The great nineteenth century Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuyper, has dominated Reformed political thought for the last century or more. A good place to start is the relevant sections of Lectures on Calvinism, especially "Calvinism as a Life System," "Calvinism and Politics," and "Calvinism and the Future." You can progress from there with James Bratt's Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader. Kuyper understands the crisis of modernity and addresses it appropriately.

After that, you might explore David VanDrunen's books of the two kingdoms tradition of natural law thinking in Reformed political thought and Nicholas Wolterstorff's Justice: Rights and Wrongs (2008) and Justice in Love (2011).

Addenda:

For those interested in the libertarianism of Robert Nozick, look at this article in Slate and the response at the Cato Institute site.

In my column, I mention that Martin Luther calls Satan "God's ape." This comes from his Table Talk (Of God's Works, No. 67): "The Greeks and heathens in after times imitated this, and build temples for their idols in certain places, as at Ephesus for Diana, at Delphos for Apollo, etc. For, where God build a church there the devil would also build a chapel. They imitated the Jews also in this, namely, that as the Most Holiest was dark, and had no light, even so and after the same manner, did they make their shrines dark where the devil made answer. Thus is the devil ever God's ape."

The Kingdom Perspective on Politics

I was speaking with a neighbor who I was meeting for the first time but whom I knew was a Christian. At one point in the conversation he confided that he thought the Lord's return was near because of how godless and immoral the world was becoming. Seeing someone in need of  correction and encouragement, I first warned him against judging the state of the world by how things look in America. There are other parts of the world, like China and Africa, where people are pressing and crowding into the Kingdom of God. Then I asked him if he had ever considered that maybe we are still in the early church.

He was visibly startled by this suggestion. It was as though I had stolen his hope. But I was calling him to a broader Christian perspective on current events--globally and historically. This is the theme of my Worldmag column this week, "American Decline is Not the End."

In his new book, On China, Henry Kissinger suggest that in our dealings with China it is well to remember that they see the world and history differently. They are an ancient civilization, and so they take a broader perspective on history, and are more patient in seeking their their policy goals. (Their one child policy didn't seem to be particularly far sighted, and Mao's Cultural Revolution seemed to pursue utopia in an awful hurry, but we'll set that aside.) America, by contrast, is a young civilization used to a fast paced world. (Alexis de Tocqueville has a lot to add about the short-sightedness and impatience of democratic peoples.) Mao's premier, Zhou Enlai, was once asked what he thought was the significance of the French Revolution (1789). He responded, "It's too soon to tell." That tells you a lot about the Chinese perspective.

It is difficult for Americans to appreciate that way of looking at the world. It is surely asking too much of Americans to adopt if for themselves. Christians, even Christian Americans, are another matter.

The Christian’s perspective on current events should be more like that of the Chinese. Though American history is short and has a record of fairly steady advance, a Christian’s citizenship is fundamentally in the Kingdom of God which, like China, is thousands of years old, filled with rise and decline and developments that span centuries.

When we observe the immorality, social disintegration, and national decline in our day, we are tempted to think, “The end is near!” But for a Christian, until the Lord returns, every end is the beginning of a new chapter for the Kingdom that will never end. Every setback is a repositioning for Kingdom advance. “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The persecution of Christians in Jerusalem and the subsequent fall of that holy city was a Diaspora of faith to the world. Barbarian invasion, whether by Gauls or Vikings, has meant barbarian conversion. “Plunder me, but carry away my faith,” is a Kingdom response to invasion, albeit through tears and bathed in blood.

For the few years, my pastor has been encouraging us to think of the consequences of our kingdom labors in terms of their effects on our great-great-great grandchildren and beyond. Many of the blessings we enjoy today, whether church buildings, Christian colleges, or classics of Christian literature have come down to us because of the faithful labors of those who preceded us by many generations. Perhaps you came to faith in part because an ancestor in Christ prayed for you in Puritan New England, in Hugenot France, or in your great grandfather's prayer closet. The Kingdom perspective, being broadly Kingdom-oriented and grace-dependent, is patient and far-seeing.

Dancing at a Hanging

There is a buzz of debate among students at The King’s College where I teach. I don’t think anyone regrets that our Navy SEALs caught up with Osama bin Laden and plugged him. But not everyone is comfortable celebrating the fact.

It’s good, but are high fives in order? Should we party at Ground Zero? A man is dead. An evil man, to be sure. But a life that God made in his image has come to its earthly end, and a soul has been sent to judgment. Isn’t this an occasion for awful silence?

I think that such reserve is unwarranted because it fails to give proper weight to the central fact of the killing in question, namely, justice. Osama bin Laden ordered the murder of what turned out to be almost 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, and of 17 sailors on the U.S.S. Cole the previous year. He’s a mass murderer.

Regardless of what you think the role of government should be, it is indisputably to protect those under its care from murderous assault. And where someone has unjustly taken a life, it is government’s proper role to punish that injustice.

Osama bin Laden’s offense was even more serious in that it was an assault not only on private individuals, but upon the nation as a whole. It was an act of war by a foreign, sub-national organization. New York City and Washington DC were paralyzed. The nation was terrorized. And this was precisely what the al Qaeda leader hoped to accomplish.

When our special forces—arms of the American government—finally caught up with bin Laden in his Pakistani bunker-estate and popped him between the eyes, they not only secured the nation. They did justice. More specifically, the American civil government that God instituted by the will of the American people executed justice on a monstrous evil doer. Scripture tells us that civil government is God’s instrument, “an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil” (Romans 13:4). “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19), and he executes his dread vengeance in part through the civil authorities he has appointed for that purpose.

A Christian can and should rejoice in all good things, among which is the execution of justice in the world. I work in Midtown Manhattan. I’m sorry I missed the party at Ground Zero.

Consider, however, qualifications and disagreements from John Piper, Albert Mohler, and Warren Cole Smith.

Hope Amidst the Evil

After last week's column on the West Bank Fogel massacre ("Middle East Murder"), it struck me--or I should say weighed heavily on me--that there is a lot of evil making the news these days. It crowds into limited news time and forces itself on our attention.

Just after the beginning of the Jewish sabbath on March 11, terrorists from Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade (so-called) broke into a West Bank settlement home and butchered Rabbi Uri Fogel in his bed, along with his infant daughter, his wife, Ruth, and two of their sons, ages 11 and 4. This was not shooting from a distance; this was throat slashing and heart stabbing. Two children survived the massacre only because the monsters who flooded the home with blood overlooked them. The 12-year-old daughter arrived home after midnight from a youth event to behold what no human being should ever witness.

That same day, the earthquake and tsunami hit northeast Japan with a resultant nuclear crisis that has pushed even the misery of 450,000 people whom the disaster made homeless.

This volunteer fireman lost his wife, his son's family, and his four grandchildren when he went to close a wall against the tsunami. Warning, it is very sad.



Then there's Libya where the self-styled Mad Dog of the Middle East has been shooting and bombing his own unarmed people (as well as the subsequently armed ones) when he foresaw their protests sending him into exile as Hosni Mubarak's room-mate.

And all of that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg as far as human suffering in the world is concerned. It's in Syrian dungeons, Thai brothels, Brazilian slums, and it's on your street.

In this week's column, "Overcome by Evil These Days?," I indicate where the wise turn when they come to face the ubiquitous evil of a fallen world.

Entertaining Hauerwas

 Photo: WORLD magazine

Last Thursday night Stanley Hauerwas, the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School, addressed the student body of The King's College on the subject of avarice. He was the the keynote speaker for the 2010 Interregnum, the college's annual three day recess from classes when we explore a fruitful theme and a related great book.

Stanley Hauerwas is an odd man, but the sort of oddball that is good to know. He is an Anabaptist Anglican from Texas, now living in North Carolina. He is too conservative to be acceptable to liberals (he believes the Bible and thinks sodomy is sin), but he is too liberal for the comfort of conservatives (he's a pacifist and he's married to a Methodist minister). He is pleasant company, and a stimulating thinker.

Over the course of the day with Prof. Hauerwas, between a morning conversation, a lunch discussion, the evening address, and the question and answer time that followed, I gleaned these nuggets of insight and provocation. (These are either quotations, or, more likely, fairly reliable near-quotations.) For another brief exposure to the man, you can read Marvin Olasky's 2007 interview with him, "A Playful Mind."

*****************

Evangelicals know the Bible and they know today...and nothing in between.

Evangelicals are people who have a relationship with God, and attending church worship services is just how they express that. [If you don't see the point, the joke is on you.]

We don't hear sermons on greed (which is odd given that it's such a prominent theme in the New Testament.) We know what lust looks like--but greed?

There was an increase in attention to greed by theologians after the rise of the money economy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

America can never have enough power.

America runs on fear.

We cannot imagine anything but an endlessly growing economy--that says something about our greed.

People have always been greedy, but now we have made it into a moral quality necessary for economic growth.

Whether or not we are possessed by our possessions is measured by our willingness to give it away.

We want to be forgivers, not forgiven, because we want to remain in control. Learn to accept forgiveness without regret.

If in giving alms you think you are giving what's yours, you are possessed by greed.

Greed is a deadly sin because it prevents faith.

What would New York City look like if it were shaped by the virtue of temperance?

Another name for money is loneliness.

You should not have a personal relationship with Christ. You should share him.

No monasticism? No Christianity. The Protestant rejection of it explains why we have no resistance to being bourgeois.

Jesus never worked a day as far as we know. He must have begged. We need to learn how to beg. If you get money, you must always get it as a beggar. (He meant you must view it, even as you are making it, as a gift from God, from outside of your control. But he also spoke highly of actual begging.)

American democracy is a plutocracy. ...The middle class doesn't care who rules as long as they don't lose their stuff.

Every American has a sign around his neck that says, "Notice me!" (but I don't have to notice you). It's a form of greed.

********************

I was impressed by the breadth of his learning, and the fertility of his mind. (Why should I be impressed? He's a prominent theologian of high reputation.) His discussion of the moral management of prosperity, being possessed by our possessions, the ease with which we justify and even sanctify our avarice, and the many forms this sin can take when concealed within other sins as well as within virtues like generosity was a feast for reflection. But I was struck with how injudicious his judgments were in applying his learning.

Professor Hauerwas finds greed in all human business like dust in a rug, but he uses this exposure as a basis for condemning modern life itself. Of course modernity has serious problems. That's why it spawned post-modernity. But a more sober use of his considerable research and original insights would have been to recognize what good there is in modern liberty, and then caution us against the many and subtle forms of greed for which modern life gives such historically unprecedented opportunity. It is one of the blessings of modern political and economic liberty that the sons of bricklayers, people like Hauerwas, can become great theologians. Yet, necessarily alongside that and deceived by what our hands have done, we feel we are masters of our own fortune in the making of it, the spending of it, and the giving of it away. But Hauerwas seems angry that the eschaton has not come more quickly, and he seems to blame us for the delay.


It is true that we are all too comfortable in our wealth and all too blind to our greed and the extent to which we are possessed by our possessions. Hauerwas was good at exposing the finer roots of this sin in our hearts. But he went beyond that. His condemnation of all things modern and middle class was sweeping. It was irresponsible. He tossed an intellectual hand grenade into the crowd of people's thoughts to shatter their way of thinking about work, possessions, prosperity, and giving. But he put nothing in its place. At the end of the lecture, he seemed to prepare us for "an alternative to a world shaped by greed." But then he just said something vague about Jesus. When a student pressed him for a suggestion as to how then we should live, he threw up his hands and complained that we have no idea how to live any other way, and that this itself indicates how possessed by greed we are.

At the end of the question period, he eventually suggested that instead of walking around with a sign around our necks saying "Notice me!", as he said all Americans do and which is a form of greed, in its place we should learn how to live as friends. Lovely! Aside from being a hideously unjust caricature of American life--there is a great deal of friendship and community in America, and even fellow feeling toward strangers, even in New York City!--it is an almost comically unhelpful suggestion, both institutionally and theoretically. A healthy political community will be knit together by ties of affection among people that resemble those of friendship, and the more like friendship they are (remembering that you cannot be literally "friends" with 100,000 people), the healthier the community will be. Iraq in the aftermath of Saddam's fall and New York City in the 1970s and 1980s are notorious examples of political friendship deficits. But to suggest that friendship replace the market economy, perhaps along the lines of universalized monastic life or the separatistic Anabaptist communities of rural Pennsylvania, lies somewhere between philosophical fantasy and over-realized eschatology.

If he is genuinely flummoxed over how we might organize and conduct our life together in a way that is not fundamentally avaricious, he should be much gentler in his rebukes and humbler in his accusations.

People's understanding of property has profound political implications, and gifted thinkers should be cautious in what they say about these things. One is quick to remember the degrading and bitter sting of near universal poverty before what Hauerwas reminds us was the rise of the money economy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But we should also call to mind what politics looked like at that time, i.e., how power was distributed and used. Hauerwas told us that American democracy is plutocracy--the rule of wealth--in which the middle class doesn't care who rules as long as they don't lose their stuff. But a populace of beggars and the materially indifferent would soon be once again under arbitrary government. It would soon return to the government of men in their unrestrained, unmediated greed and glorious domination, rather than the government of laws that is the limited, constitutional government of a commercial republic like ours. Yes, a commercial republic, with all its attendant spiritual pitfalls. Anyone who thinks that poverty under tyranny is the better choice because it is better for our souls should move to North Korea or Zimbabwe. They are still taking applications.

But Prof. Hauerwas was not suggesting that we revert to medieval peasant life under the indifferent hand of hereditary lords because it would free us from such culturally pervasive and institutionalized avarice. Actually, it's not clear that he wasn't. He celebrated begging. As he pointed out, the Franciscans begged. The Franciscans begged and so should we. He even claimed that we have no evidence that Jesus ever worked, so he must have begged. Thus, Christians should follow in his steps. The experience cultivates in us a recognition of our poverty and of our material dependence on God. To round out the judgment, he criticized Adam Smith for redirecting our economy, and with it our hearts, in a way that would clear the beggars from our midst. A rising tide lifts all paupers. But he says we need beggars for our sakes, i.e., to give us occasion to give. The beggars might consider that an overly selfish view, perhaps even greedy, and opt for Adam Smith. Nonetheless, there will always be helpless people among us, the disabled for example, who give us occasion to give.

Hauerwas went far beyond suggesting that Christians pick up the habit of quitting their jobs and adopting the mendicant ways of Franciscan monks. He condemned the very foundations of the modern economy. "We cannot imagine anything but an endlessly growing economy--that says something about our greed." "People have always been greedy, but now we have made it into a moral quality necessary for economic growth." But you cannot separate the modern hope of prosperity, both personal and shared, from modern economic liberty. And you cannot separate economic liberty from property rights. And you cannot separate security in one's property from security against arbitrary government, which is political liberty. To desire one without the other is like saying you want modern life, but without the invention of nuclear weapons. The one entails the other. You cannot maintain a society-wide medieval attitude toward possessions and acquisition in isolation from an otherwise modern attitude toward nature (conquerable), one another (equal politically), and political power (accountable to the people). These attitudes are all part of a civilizational package.

If Hauerwas wants all the benefits that come with widespread begging, he has to take filth, plague, crib death, famine, and oppression along with it. You cannot have the conquest of nature by science (consider penicillin) and the attitudes of personal assertion over fortune that underpin it, without also the ambitious creation of wealth by countless entrepreneurs, great and small. In other words, you cannot have Francis Bacon's New Organon without his essays "Of Riches," "Of Usury," and "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates."

It's easy to get well meaning Christians stirred up with calls for a purer heart with respect to riches. Following through on the implications of your revolutionary call for a society of friends and an economy of temperance would surely expose, however, both the impossibility and the horror of your brave new world. It would also sober your audience into considering a more temperate critique of modernity and a less monkish view of prosperity.

Tiller and His Killer

 

I have found that there are two ways to upset my evangelical Christian students (not that I try to do that). I can either question in any way the complete freedom of human will, or question people's right to rebel against the government and take the law into their own hands.

Granted, this is not true of all my students, and perhaps not even most of them, but these topics never fail to stir up a vocal response (though they are always civil and respectful).

Here is an excerpt from my post over at WORLDmag.com on why Scott Roeder was wrong to kill the radical abortionist, George Tiller:

This past Friday, Scott Roeder was sentenced to life in prison for last May’s shooting death of George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country who performed partial-birth abortions. Tiller was a doctor only in the legal sense of the word. He was not a healer, but a killer—a callous monster who could hold a baby in his hands as the child emerged from the mother, puncture its skull, and suck its brains out. Tiller was a mass murderer, though the unjust laws that govern that practice in America sanctioned his butchery. It does not follow, however, that Roeder was justified in what he did, as almost every Christian opponent of abortion would agree. ...

Read "Leaving Tiller to God."

Godly Political Opposition

In the "Incompetence or Sabotage?" post below, reader Tim registers this protest:

This blogger continuously speaks evil of the President of the United States, which is his right of course, but to do so in the name of Christ or of Christianity is so misleading as to the nature of Jesus as to be evil in itself.

On this blog, we advocate, among other things, political and economic liberty. We do this because we think it is godly to do so, and we advocate an understanding of liberty that (I believe in good conscience) is faithful to the Scriptures.

I must hasten first to say that I don't agree with everything Harold has written in his rejoinder below. Part of it seems to dismiss Paul's (and thus God's) command to submit to unjust governing authorities as culturally relative, limited in its binding authority to the unhappy and unenlightened times in which it was written. (Forgive me and please correct me if I have misunderstood you.) But I don't think we have to wait until the Enlightenment to find the value of personal liberty expressed in Christian teaching.

In I Timothy 2, Paul urges prayer "for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way." That is, we are to pray that government would do that for which God has instituted it, and to do no less and no more. Government is to protect the people from one another and from outside invasion so that they are free to go about their own business, providing for their own needs and those of their neighbors (e.g. one's children and aged parents, the poor in one's midst, etc.). Government is to secure fathers in their liberty to fulfill their calling as fathers, bakers and shoemakers to fulfill their callings as bakers and shoemakers, and the church to fulfill its calling as the church. The government is not to raise children, bake bread, preach the gospel, or feed the hungry. In other words, government provides only what people cannot in principle provide on their own. Everything else is rightly left to the self-government of individual citizens, families, and churches. The life of morally informed self-government is one that both the Apostle Paul and natural reason (c.f. Aristotle, John Locke) recognize as "dignified," i.e., the dignity befitting human beings, creatures made in the image of God who governs all things.

harold adds:
David, you nicely sum up what in Protestant terms is the "sphere of influence" argument, and in Catholic thought what is called the doctrine of "subsidiary institutions", wherein the three main institutions of civil life, government, church, and family, each have their own proper sphere of influence or control. Societal upset of all sorts occurs when any of the three attempt an incursion on the sovereignty of another, or attempt a model of rule adapted from the others. Obviously, the greatest offender is the state forcing its way into matters familial and ecclesial, often under the guise of moral concern for the little ones.

I suspect that my predilections afford an earlier and more robust form of resistance to state incursions into areas I consider none of its concern than do your own. On the relativistic thing, I am as wary as anyone of falling into that state of affairs, but perhaps I have in my statement above. I suspect, for example, that the wars spawned by the Reformation were as brutal and wrong-headed as any, yet many men of strong and determined Christian faith were involved, for the principles at stake, and not just for the sake of rebellion or revenge. A special subset of the Reformation wars were the English revolutions, which ended not only Catholic but Divine Right monarchical pretensions, things we consider part of the blessings of the liberty bequethed to us by our own revolution--which strictly speaking, is difficult at best to justify out of anything Jesus or Paul taught regarding civil authorities. Was our own revolution out of line with a nation considering itself (at least for the first 150 years) a Christian nation? Would you have joined the thoughtful Tories, whose consciences and family lineages led them to side with the God-given order of King and Parliament? The colonial pulpits were filled with fiery injunctions to throw off the tyranny of King George, many pastors finding a happy coincidence of Locke and Paul in their reading of the New Testament as it applied to their new city on a hill. I don't consider any of this dispositive for my position, but bring it briefly forward in order to show the ambiguity involved in this vexed question of what the duties and rights of persons as free citizens of a constitutional state are in relation to their duties and rights as Christians, questions which were simply not germane to those under ancient despotisms, who can hardly be considered citizens with any political rights (the vanishing shadow of which allowed Paul as a Roman citizen to appeal the decision of Festus, who would have slapped his wrist and let it go had he not insisted on his rights as a Roman). There is irony for you.


What vexes Harold's righteous soul and mine, and should vex yours, brother Tim, is the leftist desire not to keep people safe in their liberty, but simply to keep them. Not only as political theorists, but also as Christians, we see the statist agenda of political liberals in general, and of the Obama administration in particular, as despotic and dehumanizing, howsoever they dress it up in the language of love and compassion. Some liberals and perhaps most, including you no doubt, are genuinely concerned about human well-being, but we argue that you are tragically mistaken. We will continue to argue, and do so in the fear of God and for the glory of Christ.

First Epistle to Tim

Dear Tim,

There are some who call you...Tim, right? Well, I can see you're a busy man, but I do want to respond to your comments on the post below, "Is It Incompetence or Sabotage?".

As the inspiration so to speak, of the post--in a personal email I directed David's attention to the Muir cartoon and the Politico piece he combined in his post--I must consider that your comments are directed at me as much as at David, since I consider his brief handling of the material very much in keeping with his usual high achievement. Hence the charge of unChristian writing and thinking--are these thought crimes in your estimation?--, and the unmannerly and unChristian error of mixing politics and faith that forms the central thrust of your plaint is pointed at me as well.

So you consider it "ironic" that the Titus 3 quote on being subject to principalities and powers hovers hard by the "very unchristian" criticism pouring forth from this blog. I notice in the same sentence the irony has turned to evil (assuming for the sake of the argument that what we are saying is evil)--someone who speaks evil of the president in the name of Christ or of Christianity is doing evil itself, or have I missed your meaning? You equate criticism with evil speaking, and evil speaking with political insurrection, and consider it antithetical to the teachings of our Lord and Savior, who called Herod--a political leader--a fox, and over turned the tables in the temple. You also implicitly equate the despotism known in antiquity with the self governance of post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment democracy, at least some of the values to which I assume you at least partly subscribe--equality before laws equally applied, the worth of individuals as individuals, natural law as the ground of natural right, the sovereignty of the people over their government servants--oh wait--that last one is the rub isn't it?

In your confusion, you have forgotten--or never knew--that in the Lockean liberal theory of politics, which Francis Fukuyama ably argued to be the basis and the high point of Western political achievement, individuals form governments for their own purposes. Governments exist for the sake of the people, not the other way around, as was the default assumption across the ancient world. The apostle Paul, from which the bulk of the political citations concerning "principalities and powers" flow, was concerned to shepherd the early churches past the suspicious and brutal idolaters of the Roman emperor and his minions. Paul's advice and teaching to the churches of the first century, under Roman dominion, makes sense to a culture based in slavery; indeed, not a few of the early adherents were slaves. What would your advice be to black slaves in say, the 1760's America; should they submit without complaint to their "masters"? In centuries in which the full implications of the intrinsic worth of every individual inherent in Christ's teachings unfolded, the understanding of the relation to the political order necessarily changed from that of those steeped in a society that accepted as matters of fact slavery and despotic rule. Would you bring back slavery, or do you long for an enlightened despotism headed by such as a Barack Hussein Obama? David and I certainly agree that despotism is the trajectory with this bunch in the White House. But respect for authority by citizens looks different in a small L liberal political culture than it does in an ancient despotism.

If you conflate Caesar and Obama in your mind--a philosophical tic you share with the One--you will miss the, for some, obvious differences between free government and despotism, and hence the range of thought, speech, and action open to free citizens of a free society. You seem to suggest that the ambit of political speech, thought, and action available to Christians in the present day should be circumscribed by that of the ancient world, as if the revelation of Christ through the writings of ancient authors also lock us into the political, social, and cultural understandings of the writers themselves. I don't think so, and neither did the writers of our Declaration and Constitution.

And thus, David and I will continue to be critical, ironic, insubordinate, and as large a pain to figures in positions of authority as we have been up to now, and we will not consider it evil-speaking or "insipient trash" (sic.), your Sojourner-inspired jeremiad to the contrary notwithstanding. I will have more to say in a further epistle. Until then Tim, take some wine for your sour stomach.

**************
David adds:

Thank you for your comments, Tim. The comments feature is there for discussion. Thank you also for identifying yourself, and please don't take Harold's bit 'o fun with the Monty Python connection the wrong way. It's healthier to join in the laughter, and carry on from there. (Here's the video for anyone who skipped the link.)



I guess it helps to put a face with a name, even if it is a randomly chosen one. Tim the Sorcerer at least is an impressive Scotsman.

I offer a partial justification for the Christian integrity of the blog and for vocal Christian opposition to the present government's policies in the post that follows above.

Harold I am eager to read these other epistles you have in mind. Let me say, friend, you're like a big jam doughnut with cream on the top. That is, I... I mean that, uh, like a doughnut your arrival gives us pleasure and your departure merely makes us hungry for more. (Oh, where have I heard that?)

Harold: LOL...is that one of yours Innes?

When Evil Is Cool

What is it about evil that attracts human beings? It is the opposite of good, destructive of everything human beings hold dear, and find necessary for survival individually and as a species. All our large sociological constructs are ordered toward mitigating its destructive tendencies—religion and politics to be sure, social manners and mores, but even society itself, and civilization, can be said to be arrayed against evil and in favor of moral norms that favor not just human survival but human flourishing. The protection of women and children, of marriage and family, of trustworthiness and honest dealing, truth telling, are universally central to human societies.

So, the question again—if evil is so easily recognized as an existential threat, why is it so pervasive? The dogmatic answer (and I cast no aspersions on the word or the concept of dogma) is that Original Sin corrupts us so thoroughly that evil is second nature—actually, according to the Bible, it is our first nature. In this light, the question becomes, how is it that any good exists in the world? And again, the dogmatic response is “greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” We are made in His image, and not even the god of this world can completely efface that image, try as he might. Yet evil seems to be the reigning characteristic of this world.

Judea Pearl, the father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, writes in today’s WSJ (Feb 3, 09) on the seventh anniversary of his murder, of the acceptance of evil by the academic and journalist elite.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

The “gift” of being able to be disgusted by evil has been a long time in being sloughed off. Perhaps the point marking the serious turn toward evil was the advent of the “new journalism” of Truman Capote (In Cold Blood) and Norman Mailer (The Executioner’s Song), both of whom made the cool, dispassionate observation and depiction of murder by cool dispassionate murderers seem like the setting of a new baseline for analysis. Drawing on the wired-in impulse toward the grotesque and the evil, first pointed out by Plato—he has Leontius in the Republic unable to look away from the floating corpses at the seaport of Athens—journalism, philosophy, and literary criticism have, as Dr Pearl titles his piece, “normalized” evil, even made it respectable as a response by the “Other” to the pc litany of charges against the West. Philosophy trickles down—what is germinated in seminars, conferences, and books takes root and spreads across society, taking in an ever larger expanse of society. Thus, it was not long after Foucault’s celebration of the Marquis de Sade (Discipline and Punish) before the bloodiest, most hideous, graphic, and pornographic murder thrillers were on offer from Hollywood, soon becoming campy, ironic parodies of themselves, offered up as little more than cartoons for social touch-points for knowing teens.

Roger Shattuck analyses evil into four categories: natural evil—weather catastrophes, plagues, and the like; and three sub-types of human evil:

Moral evil refers to actions undertaken knowingly to harm or exploit others in contravention of accepted moral principles or statutes within a society.

Radical evil applies to immoral behavior so pervasive in a person or a society that scruples and constraints have been utterly abandoned;…evil so extreme that it can no longer recognize its own atrocity. Lenin stated it forcefully: "The dictatorship means -- learn this once and for all -- unrestrained power based on force, not on law."

Metaphysical evil designates an attitude of assent and approval toward moral and radical evil, as evidence of superior human will and power. Thus forms of evil arising from human agency are given a status as inevitable -- effectively a reversion to natural evil.

Shattuck argues that the postmodern philosophical obsession with overturning truth and all objectively recognized standards, arising in the first instance from its worship of the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, is what has led to what Judea Pearl calls the normalization of evil. In academic parlance, it is the elevation and valorization of “transgression.” It is in this atmosphere that evil has gotten for itself the name of the good, or at least the “cool.” Thus, all the university courses featuring masturbation, pole dancing, prostitution, and pornography offered in our most prestigious institutions; the long since established argot of “cool”, where “bad”, “wicked”, and even “evil” are descriptors not just socially acceptable, but indicative of one’s cultural bone fides. (The reductio in my mind is “Bad Girls of the Bible”, an attempt to appropriate the current cultural nomenclature for use in a bible study for church ladies).

All of pop culture seems to have been given over to evil and all its works: heavy metal music (note the allusion is to poison), and even “death metal”; rap music’s glorification of every pathology in existence; most of Hollywood’s production for the past thirty years; comic books, and on and on—dozens of other examples have no doubt come to your mind already. The continuous struggle between good and evil is of course the central element in all of literature and poetry, from the dawn of civilization; but the viewpoint has changed—compare Quenton Tarantino’s ironic distance and coolness in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, etc, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, to Aeschylus’ Oresteia, or Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, for a not untypical contrast.

We seem to be at a point in our civilization where we have succumbed to evil in its metaphysical sense—where forms of evil arising from human agency are given a status as inevitable -- effectively a reversion to natural evil. “People are evil—get used to it”, would be a slogan capturing the zeitgeist. Or, as this fellow’s T-shirt states) watch the whole video) , “Nice day to rob people.” In fact, as the video shows, many people actually prefer evil, as both Paul and James, following Jesus, aver.

Acceptance of evil is a characteristic of decadence, and Western societies are nothing if not decadent; thus evil is celebrated, goodness is denigrated and mocked.

Perhaps it has always been so. But never with so much cool.

Neuhaus at The King's College, 2007

Each spring in April, The King's College as a whole takes off three days to mull over a great theme through debates, lectures, art, a common reading, and a public address by a national figure. In 2007, our theme was "difficulty" and our speaker was Richard John Neuhaus, who died last week at the age of 72.

David Lapp, class of 2009, introduced him that night. In honor of Rev. Neuhaus's now completed life of service to Christ and with Mr. Lapp's permission, I reproduce his fitting tribute here.

Introduction for Fr. Richard John Neuhaus

The King’s College – Interregnum III

April 4, 2007

David Lapp, Scholar to the House of Lewis

Good evening and welcome to The King’s College Interregnum.

Difficulty. One certain gentleman gravely staring down at us right now knows a good deal about difficulty. If you look to your right, you’ll see a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was president during one of the most trying times for our nation. The civil war that our forefathers went through makes one wonder why, as one of the boys in the Lord of the Flies wondered why “things break up like they do.” Why do we bicker with one another, deceive one another, even kill one another? Why can’t we all just get along? And why don’t things go as we plan? We start life with grand hopes and noble dreams—but somewhere along the way we encounter the grave realization that life is difficult. If we are to live life at all, we come to realize that we live in a broken world; a messed up world. Of course, as Christians, we have the hope of redemption.
But in the meantime we live inescapably in the here and now---now, here, on 37th and Park in the Union League Club in New York City—and New York City is an opportune place for getting one hand’s dirty. Many wise people, including our speaker this evening, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, contend that getting our hands dirty is worth it.

Born in Ontario, Canada, Fr. Neuhaus was one of eight children and the son of a Lutheran minister. He would eventually become a Lutheran minister himself, pastoring a congregation in a poor, mostly black part of Brooklyn for 30 years. In the early 1980’s, he became involved with the Moral Majority, an evangelical movement initi0000000ated by Rev. Jerry Falwell, with the goal of promoting fundamentalist Christian values in government. The Moral Majority answered the need for what many Christians saw as a Christian presence in politics. Christians at that time largely shunned politics, confining themselves to the church. While Fr. Neuhaus appreciated the idea of the Moral Majority, he would come to criticize what he saw as their overt “triumphalist” approach to politics. He insisted, and continues to insist, that Christian political engagement, demands a civil conversation with opponents.

In 1990, Fr. Neuhaus converted to Catholicism, and became a priest soon after. But he certainly hasn’t shied away from discussions with Protestants since then. His commitment to our Lord’s prayer that the church “all may be one” is evident. He was one of the primary architects of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” a document signed by leading Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics in America in an effort to identify common ground in the Christian faith.
As founder and editor-in-chief of the influential religion and public policy journal, First Things, Fr. Neuhaus has been advocating for an informed Christian presence in the public square. An interreligious journal, its stated purpose is to “advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.”

His 1984 book, The Naked Public Square, was named by Christianity Today as one of the “Top 100” religious books of the 20th century. In it, he argued that secularism is a dangerous political doctrine; we need a public square that’s informed by transcendent values. In 1988, he wrote the influential The Catholic Moment: the Paradox of the Church in the Modern World while still a Lutheran pastor. So while not an evangelical, Time Magazine recently named him one of “The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America.” ...

Those of us that attend college in the “skyscraper to heaven” have fairly lofty goals. We came to The King’s College out of a sense that God calls us “to get our hands dirty”; to redeem, not retreat. Yes, we are a fairly ambitious lot—us young aspiring statesmen, CEO’s, media execs, educators, pastors. We are the culture shakers who will change the world. But lest we’re under the illusion that we can assemble our presidential campaign team now that we’ve mastered Rhetoric, Logic, and have read Plato’s Republic, Fr. Neuhaus reminds us that we need to think very carefully about how we engage the public square. His somber and reflective writings have reminded the Christian community for decades now that Christian political and cultural engagement demands constant prayerful reflection and a circumspect civility.

In our time, the remarkable resurgence of evangelicals’ engagement in politics since the 2000 presidential election is, at least in some respects, akin to the Moral Majority movement that Fr. Neuhaus was a part of in the early 1980’s. Today, as then, there are enormous difficulties we must wrestle with as principled Christians entering the messy public square.

Pres. Lincoln’s portrait, though, reminds of the nobility of engagement. The fact that his portrait occupies such a prominent place in this Club is a testimony to the heroism of his willingness to serve his country, and the nobility of taking on the hard work of his time. But his somber look also reminds us that it came with a great deal of difficulty.

We are honored to have Fr. Neuhaus share with us his reflections on some of the particular difficulties that confront Christians today in the public square. Indeed, as one who’s spent over forty years thinking, living, and talking about what it means to be a Christian in the public square, Fr. Neuhaus has a wealth of wisdom to share with us. And we would do well to listen.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my very great honor to introduce Fr. Richard John Neuhaus.

You may read David Lapp's TKC Student Voice editorial on Neuhaus here. It is a fine reflection on the primacy of being transformed oneself before presuming to transform the world, and on the importance of adding civility to the love for truth when taking one's place in the larger cultural and political conversation.

What Neuhaus Wrought

Theologian and political theorist Richard John Neuhaus died yesterday. Joseph Bottum made this announcement in First Things, the journal of Christian political reflection that Neuhaus founded. "Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and soon after, in the company of friends, he died. My tears are not for him—for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord in whom he trusted."

Douglas Puffert, an economics professor at The King's College in New York, gives us this summary of his life and work.

"Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009, was arguably the leading Christian public intellectual of our time, at least in the United States. He was the son of a Lutheran pastor in Canada, but he moved to the U.S. as a teenager. As a student at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis (Lutheran Church -- Missouri Synod), he began his life-long consideration of the relationship between the ultimate concerns of the Kingdom of God and the subordinate but still vitally important concerns of politics and worldly justice. In this he engaged with Luther's "two kingdoms" understanding, with Reinhold Niebuhr, with the American Catholic John Courtney Murray, and indeed with many leading contemporary theologians, philosophers, political activists, church leaders, and Jewish leaders as well as with the broad tradition of Christian social thought.

"In the 1960s he was "very much a man of the left," as he later frequently put it. He was an activist in both the Civil Rights movement, as a supporter of Martin Luther King, and in the movement opposing the Vietnam War. His first substantial break with much of the political left was over abortion. Early on, before Roe v. Wade, he was convinced that opposing abortion was of a piece with his other political concerns. During the 1970s he grew increasingly concerned over the way that many leftist Christians were elevating politics and political ideology to the level of ultimate concerns and were sometimes, indeed, conflating these with the Kingdom of God (for example, in liberation theology). This led him in 1982 to write a manifesto for the newly founded Institute on Religion and Democracy and to break publicly (on 60 Minutes) with many of his erstwhile political allies.

"His conviction about the distinction between ultimate and subordinate concerns is also reflected in the names of two journals he later founded, This World (late 1980s) and First Things (1990-present). These journals, together with Neuhaus's book The Naked Public Square (1984), have had an immense effect on public discussion of religion and public life. In addition to their direct influence on politicians, church leaders, and opinion leaders, they have encouraged and guided many young Christians (and some older ones) in developing a robustly Christian approach to these matters. Neuhaus and his journals have directly helped to develop a new generation of writers to carry on his vision.

"At seminary Neuhaus became the sort of confessional Lutheran who regards oneself as an evangelical catholic and who sees the Reformation as a very regrettable necessity (and hopefully a temporary one). Partly as a result of Vatican II and the papacy of John Paul II, Neuhaus decided in 1990 that he could no longer in good conscience refrain from joining the Roman Catholic Church. Neuhaus was re-ordained as a priest in 1991. He had already been a friend of such leading Catholic intellectuals as Avery Dulles and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) as well as some bishops, and his influence in the Church subsequently expanded greatly as he advised and admonished American bishops and Vatican officials."

The editors of the National Review give us these reflections.

Watch Neuhaus's lecture, "The Blessing of Mortality," which he delivered at Boston College in 2003.

Honor the King. Pray for the King.

President-elect Barack Hussein Obama

"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. ... For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed."

Romans 13:1, 4-7

"I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for...kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way."

1 Timothy 2:1-2

The Attributes of Christian Political Involvement

It’s the presidential election cycle, so evangelicals are in the news again. Which candidate will they support? What price will they exact? Are they even relevant? The New York Times ran a story recently on fissures within the movement (“The Evangelical Crackup”). But anyone who thinks that American Evangelicals are going to dwindle in numbers or retreat into their old fundamentalist cultural withdrawal is deluding himself. Nonetheless, Evangelicals are not primarily a political movement, but a spiritual community. So they are for the most part conscientious and prone to seasons of critical self-assessment. Thus, a growing number of Evangelicals has become uneasy with the spiritual toll that politicking has taken on them personally and on the evangelistic calling for the church. (Consider Blinded By Might: Why the Religious Right Can’t Save America, published in 2000 by Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson).

Immediately after the broad Republican congressional defeat in 2006, David Kuo of the JWalking blog published this reflection on the Evangelical soul searching that continues today (“Putting Faith Before Politics,” New York Times, November 16, 2006):

There has been a radical change in the attitudes of evangelicals — it’s just not one that will automatically be in the Democrats’ favor. You see, evangelicals aren’t re-examining their political priorities nearly as much as they are re-examining their spiritual priorities. That could be bad news for both political parties.

John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, the conservative Christian organization that gained notoriety during the 1990s when it represented Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against Bill Clinton, wrote this after the elections: “Modern Christianity, having lost sight of Christ’s teachings, has been co-opted by legalism, materialism and politics. Simply put, it has lost its spirituality.” He went on, “Whereas Christianity was once synonymous with charity, compassion and love for one’s neighbor, today it is more often equated with partisan politics, anti-homosexual rhetoric and affluent mega-churches.”

Mr. Whitehead is hardly alone. Just before the elections, Gordon MacDonald, an evangelical leader, wrote that he was concerned that some evangelical personalities had been seduced and used by the White House. He worried that the movement might “fragment because it is more identified by a political agenda that seems to be failing and less identified by a commitment to Jesus and his kingdom.”

After the 2006 election, Beliefnet.com conducted an online survey of 2,000 people. Two findings struck me:

• nearly 60 percent of non-evangelicals have a more negative view of Jesus because of Christian political involvement

• nearly 40 percent of evangelicals support the idea of a two-year Christian “fast” from intense political activism

A fast from “intense political activism” may be a healthy exercise for some, but abstaining from political engagement in general would be misguided. Christians are called to be good citizens. In a free republic, good citizens are politically engaged. It would also be a sinful neglect of one’s neighbor’s good. How to go about that political engagement Christianly appears to be the question for us at this end of the Bush presidency.

Let me suggest a theological answer. That is, I suggest that Christian political life in this land of liberty take its bearings from the character of God. I have three particular attributes in mind: his wisdom, his sovereignty and his goodness. In order for God to be trustworthy, he must have all these three attributes. If any one of them were missing, we would have no grounds for trusting him. (I'll leave you to think it through.)

Following this pattern, ...

• If Christians are obedient to the wisdom of God, we will be a godly influence.
• If Christians are confident in the sovereignty of God, we will be a humble influence.
• If Christians are confident in the goodness of God, we will be an effective influence.

It is not enough to be culturally conservative. We have to be biblically faithful. But biblical fidelity entails not only godly ends, but also godly means, godly temperament, and sensible efforts to accomplish those ends in a world that is not amenable to, and even resists, godliness.

However wise we have been at selecting our policy positions, we have behaved terribly in the way we have advocated those positions. As a result of our public involvement over the past thirty years, people have come to see Evangelical Christians as self-righteous, unloving seekers after an earthly kingdom. “Humble” is neither the first nor the last word that comes to mind for most impartial observers. Unlike the non-Christians who share our political positions on matters of justice and morality but who are strangers to Christ, we should be oddly winsome. Though faithful to the truth, we should demonstrate a personal concern for our opponent’s well being. Public debate should be a form of love for neighbor, and evidently so.

As to effectiveness, Jesus calls us to be as wise (Gk, phronimos - prudent, provident) as serpents, but as innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16). God wants more than good intentions. He wants us to do good. He wants not only veracity, but also charity, and the best charity actually gets things done.

Looking to the next election, the one still ahead of us, Kuo offered these last words:

We will have to wait until 2008 to see just how deep this evangelical spiritual re-examination goes, and how seductive politics will continue to be to committed Christians. Meanwhile, evangelicals aren’t flocking to the Democratic Party. If anything, they are becoming more truly conservative in their recognition of the negative spiritual consequences of political obsession and of the limitations of government power.

Evangelicals should see that we live in tension between two poles. It is wrong for Christians to act franticly in the political arena the way our political opponents do who are without God and without hope in this world, and to grieve the way they do when we lose. It would also be wrong for us to retreat from our responsibility to exercise godly influence in that legitimate and noble sphere of life. Though there are limits to what can be accomplished through politics, there is also an obligation to accomplish what we can, and to do so in the confidence that God does not depend upon our efforts, but does all things well according to his at times surprising and even puzzling will.