The Christian in Politics: Vocation, Advocacy or Witness?

Christians have a positive obligation to engage in the political life of their community as opposed to the idea that Christians should stay out of politics. The present day political circumstances where there is radical injustice and suffering requires the Christian to take a stand…political life will confront us so we need to engage, but how?

Professor Gordon Graham (2^nd from left) seen here with the then Principal of OTS Rev Dr Wati Aier, former Academic Dean Rev Dr Zelhou Keyho, now NBCC General Secretary and Assistant Professor Dr Pangernungba Kechu during the public lecture at Niathu Resort, Chumukedima on October 19, 2014

By GORDON GRAHAM, Princeton Theological Seminary

The relation between Christian faith and political life is a widely discussed but somewhat contentious issue. There is a long standing debate between ‘political quietism’ and ‘political activism’. Political quietists believe that Christians should stay out of politics, partly on the ground that Christian faith transcends political loyalties, and partly on the ground that political issues have nothing to do with salvation. Political activists hold the sharply contrasting view that the Gospel speaks to social and political conditions as much as it does to the personal lives of individuals, and that Christians have a positive obligation to engage in the political life of their community.

It is probably true that ‘political quietism’ is no longer considered a real option in contemporary theology. There may still be many Christians who think that politics and religion are better kept apart (as most secularists do), and he long line of thought stemming from Luther’s radical division between the secular and the spiritual had a celebrated modern exponent in Reinhold Niebuhr. But beginning with other influential theologians such a John Howard Yoder, the tide turned against political quietism and in favor of active political engagement. Indeed, almost all the major theological trends of the late 20^th century — social gospel, feminist theology, liberation theology, post-colonial theology — have rendered the quietist position no longer respectable in theological circles. Even an prominent and important theologian such as Stanley Hauerwas, who wants to draw a sharp divide between church and world, thinks that the significance of this division lies in its socio-political implications.

For the purpose of this talk I will assume that the quietist/activist debate has been settled in favor of the activist. Even so, we are still left with this crucial question: what form should Christian political activism take? There are three leading contenders as answers to this question. The first possibility holds that some people have a special vocation or calling to political office, which is to say, the exercise of state power through the authority of government. This is an old idea. Effectively it is the conception of the Christian’s explicit engagement in political life that we find in Aquinas, Luther and Calvin – a role that the medieval world called ‘the Christian Prince’. The second conception of the Christian in politics is more contemporary and more general. It does not confine political activity to the occupants of political offices, or even to elected representatives, though it can include these. Rather it conceives Christian engagement as advocacy in the public forum. That is to say, on this understanding, Christians ought to be advocates for specific causes or constituencies – social justice, the poor, or the institution of the Church itself.

The third conception is more general still. It does not restrict Christian engagement to either political office or political advocacy. Indeed, it might even be said to free it from the constraints of both these spheres in the name of political witness. That is to say, this third conception conceives of the Christian in politics as one who witnesses to spiritual values in a world primarily concerned with political power and economic strength.

What is to be said for and against these different, and possibly competing, conceptions of the Christian in politics?

The Christian Prince

Aquinas, Luther and Calvin all think that there is a distinctive role for government, and hence for governors in God’s plan for the salvation of humankind. All three, along with other major theologians, have different things to say about this role, of course, but broadly speaking they agree that the task of the Christian prince or governor is to create and maintain the conditions under which the Church can bring individual souls to eternal life. These conditions include

the moral restraint of individuals — preventing them from committing major sins and offences – murder, rape and the like — by making all such offences against the law of the land, and subject to punishment by the State
the protection of the Church in its work and worship, by which alone salvation is possible
the suppression of heresy so that simple and uneducated people are not led to believe things that are contrary to the true faith
the defense of the realm against the hostile invaders of another religious faith.

From this point of view, the special authority of government, and the very significant powers that it claims — to punish, coerce, and even kill — are warranted by the role that God has assigned to government in the plan of salvation. The position of prince or governor can properly be called a vocation similar to a priestly vocation, because whether by birth or election, he or she exercises power and authority at God’s command and to divinely appointed ends. Political office brings with it special temptations, but God allows some latitude in his forgiveness of any excesses of greed or cruelty to which the Christian prince or governor may be tempted.

It should be fairly obvious that this conception of the Christian in politics makes sense only in a context where the social and political order of Christendom prevails, and that it can have no application in modern, pluralist societies. It assumes (as Aquinas, Luther and Calvin had reason to do, of course) that all citizens are Christians, that just laws are derived from Christian teaching, and that people can rightly be compelled to act in accordance with Christian teaching for the sake of their own salvation. In short, the plausibility of this conception rests upon the idea that the law in historically Christian societies is a Christian equivalent of Islamic Sharia law. Virtually no one believes that now. Indeed, modern liberal democracies no longer regard religiously derived laws as validly enforceable on all citizens. That partly explains both the tension over, and the inevitably secular direction of recent changes in the laws relating to abortion, homosexuality and same sex marriage. The claim that all these practices are contrary to Christian teaching, even if it is true, no longer carries any weight in arguments about how the law of the land should be.

It still makes sense, of course, for individual Christians to see their exercise of political office as a form of service to others, and hence an expression of ‘love of neighbor’. It might reasonably be asked, nevertheless, whether the real nature of politics with its struggle for power can make simple ‘service’ a plausible ideal. But even if holding political office truly is ‘serving the community’, this does not make the office holder a special instrument of God’s salvific purposes in the way that Aquinas, Luther and Calvin thought. A Christian who successfully stands for election to political office in order to serve the community, does not thereby become the modern equivalent of the medieval ‘Christian Prince’.

The Christian Advocate

A much more plausible model for Christian engagement in contemporary politics is that of the Christian advocate. This is the person who sees a connection between the demands of discipleship and certain political and social causes. The most striking example in Christian history is probably the Abolitionist movement in early 19^th century England. The long and sustained campaign for the abolition of the slave trade was largely initiated and led by evangelical Christians who explicitly understood the cause of anti-slavery to be an outworking of their Christian faith. The same model of Christian ‘advocacy’ has many exemplars in the modern period, and especially since the middle of the 20^th century. It’s leading figures include Martin Luther King and Archbishop Desmond Tutu and familiar examples are to be found in policy initiatives for the relief of poverty, anti-racism campaigns, and more recently environmental projects and causes.

The problem with the conception of advocacy as the model for Christian political engagement is twofold. First, there is deep uncertainty about which causes the Christian ought to advocate. Although at any given time there may be some consensus, there have also been many occasions on which divisions between Christians are evident. In fact, these divisions between Christians can be just as marked as those between Christians and adherents of other faiths and none. When this is the case, in advocating for a specific cause, political alliances with non-Christians may be far more important than allegiance to the church in any of its branches. For instance, in the struggle to abolish slavery in the United States (and in the Civil War that was part of that struggle), sincere Christians were to be found on both sides. Accordingly, abolitionists had to form alliances with non-Christians, and set themselves at odds with (some) faithful Christians. Similarly, today there are sincere Christian advocates on both sides of the abortion debate – Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice – and in debates about the rightness and wrongness of legalizing same-sex marriage.

The second problem is related to this. Effective politics requires advocacy on grounds that will command support from quite different political constituencies. Someone might be led to advocate health care reform out of a powerful sense of Christian care for the sick and helpless. However, in a pluralist society, presenting Christian or Bible based arguments in favor of such reform seriously limits the chances of political success. This means that often Christian advocates will have to ‘shut their Bible up’ and find non-biblical terms in which to advocate the political proposals they support, terms that any citizen – non-Christian as much as Christian can endorse. This means, however, that the Christian faith which motivates the ‘advocate’ is personal, and must to some extent be hidden. But the main point is that the faith of the advocate and the cause that is advocated just happen to coincide. Convincing political appeals and arguments for the proposal have to come from elsewhere. If this is correct, then ‘Christian advocate’ simply means the advocate of a political cause who happens to be Christian.

The Christian Witness

A third less widely canvassed conception is that of the Christian witness. It can be difficult to distinguish witness from advocacy, yet there is a crucial difference. One way of bringing out this difference is to note this key feature: for Christian advocacy, as for any advocacy, success matters. Political advocacy is aimed at bring about a result, a real change in the state of the world. A political campaign that does not bring about the change it advocates is a failure, and those who campaigned for it have to regard themselves as having failed, even if their resolve and commitment is strong enough to make them try again. Christian witness, by contrast, does not stand or fall with political success. The witness to whom the world will not listen, who is derided or persecuted has not failed. Indeed central to the Christians faith is the belief that it is through the derision, persecution and destruction of the Crucifixion that Christ achieves victory over ‘the world, the flesh and the Devil’.

On this point it is essential to remember that the Greek word for ‘witness’ is the word from which the term ‘martyr’ is derived. ‘Martyr’ takes on its modern meaning of someone who suffers and dies, because the Christian witnesses we remember and honor are those who were willing to accept pain, and even death, rather than deny their faith in Christ or the truth of his Gospel. From most points of view death is failure; from a Christian perspective the death of the martyr results in a ‘glorious crown’. But of course, such a crown is not a mark of political success.

III

The key to understanding witness, then, is to see that its importance and value do not lie in effective action. This distinguishes the Christian witness from both the out-dated idea of the Christian governor, and the more plausible but ultimately unsatisfactory conception the Christian as political advocate. But it leaves this question: what should Christians be witnessing to? The answer for contemporary society and the modern world can be summarized thus: the Christian must witness against ‘the politics of salvation’. The politics of salvation is a useful phrase that characterizes any political program or policy – from left or right – which aims effectively to replace God with the State as the instrument of salvation. Some examples of the politics of salvation are evident and widely agreed – the Soviet Union under Stalin, Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich, Pol Pot’s Cambodian ‘killing fields’. Others, however, are less evident, especially those that can claim the respectability of a widespread consensus in liberal democracies. But these much more hidden examples are the most challenging for Christian witness.

(The above is an abridged version of the lecture delivered by the author during the first lecture series conducted by Oriental Theological Seminary, Bade Dimapur on October 19, 2014)