- A Model for Christian Political Engagement, Part 1
- A Model for Christian Political Engagement, Part 2
For nearly 2,000 years, the church has wrestled with the question of how it should relate to the political powers of this world. This is an enormously complex and difficult issue, and Christians have given a wide variety of answers to this question through the centuries. At the risk of oversimplification, I propose that Christian models for the relationship between the church and the political powers of this world can be divided into roughly five types. In this series, I will briefly describe each of these five models, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and make the case for what I believe to be the most faithful model for Christian political engagement.[1]For many of my thoughts in this series, I am indebted to John Howard Yoder’s The Christian Witness to the State (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1998).
1. Christendom
From the time of the Christianization of the Roman Empire through the end of the Middle Ages, the dominant model for the relationship between the church and the political powers of this world was the Christendom model. In this model, there is certainly absolutely no such thing as “separation of church and state”; the political powers of this world, their leaders, and their armies are identified as Christian, and these powers freely use coercion and violence to force people to be part of the visible church. While there is a distinction of role between political leaders and church leaders, they both occupy positions within the one entity of Christendom, which declares all of society to be Christian. The political ruler thus acts in a Christian manner when using violence, whether for the sake of social order or for the sake of the church. The radical demands of Christian discipleship – self-sacrifice and love for enemies – are to be followed, if at all, only by a special class of people: clergy who have made special religious vows. All other Christians are not only free from these radical demands, but actually ought not to follow them.
While the Christendom model was the dominant model followed for centuries, it is today almost universally rejected by Christians, and with good reason. The Christendom model is right that Jesus is truly Lord of the whole world, and that His Lordship is a literal political Lordship. However, it is wrong in thinking that Jesus’ Kingdom can be advanced through the violent, coercive methods of this world. While claiming to be advancing Jesus’s Kingdom through these methods, what Christians actually do is advance a quite different kingdom, a worldly kingdom, and then falsely label it as Jesus’s Kingdom. This is actually counterproductive to the advancement of Jesus’s Kingdom. Jesus established His Kingdom through the cross, and the Body of Christ can advance Jesus’s Kingdom only through the same methods: love, truth, and self-sacrifice. The basis for entry into the church, the community of Jesus’s disciples, is repentance and faith; it is not something that can or should be coerced. And the radical demands of Christian discipleship are not reserved for some special subset of Christians; the New Testament is very clear that they are demanded of anyone who becomes a Christian.
2. Pietism
On the opposite end of the spectrum from the Christendom model, there is the model of Pietism. According to this model, Christians should simply not be concerned about engaging with secular governments or societies, or with trying to make the contemporary world a better place. Instead, Christians should only be concerned with saving souls. The church should strive to grow in holiness and faithfulness itself, but should not get involved with any futile efforts to convince non-Christians to improve morally. Instead, the church should relate to non-Christians only in terms of evangelism, attempting to convert them and to bring them to faith and repentance. Since the world is under the control of the powers of Evil, and only God’s intervention can really do anything to fundamentally fix anything, Christians should not be distracted by secular political matters while the eternal fate of people’s souls are on the line.
There is more than a grain of truth to the model of Pietism. It is true that Christians should not judge people outside the church (I Cor 5:12), recognizing that they are under the control of demonic powers (I John 5:19). It is true that, ultimately, the world’s problems can truly be fixed and all things made new only through God’s miraculous intervention. It is true that the church’s primary task is to preach the gospel, bringing people to faith and repentance. But the Pietism model is wrong in reducing evangelism to the narrow task of “saving souls,” as important as this is. The Biblical picture of evangelism is much broader than that. Evangelism is the proclamation of the good news that Jesus is Lord, that He has defeated all the kingdoms of this world, and that in Him God is establishing His Kingdom and reconciling all things in heaven and earth to Himself. And the church is called to proclaim this good news both in word and in deed. Jesus made it clear from the beginning of His public ministry that His gospel was about bringing social transformation to this world (Luke 4:14-21), not just about saving people’s souls for an afterlife. Thus, the church cannot abandon the task of engaging socially and politically with the world; as it proclaims the good news that Jesus is Lord of all, the church must engage in this task in order to establish signs of God’s Kingdom in this world.
3. Dual Citizenship
The Dual Citizenship view rejects the conflation of the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world made by the Christendom model.[2]What I have termed the Dual Citizenship view has been most commonly associated with the Lutheran tradition. Instead, it affirms that there are two distinct standards of ethics: the standard of this-worldly justice, which is for everyone, and the standard of Christian discipleship or love, which is for all Christians (not just a special class of Christians). However, according to this model, Christians have dual citizenship as citizens of God’s Kingdom and citizens of the kingdom of this world; therefore, Christians cannot and should not always follow the standards of Christian ethics. Instead, they must live in tension between the standards of this-worldly justice and Christian love, sometimes acting as Christians and sometimes acting as citizens of this world. So, as Christians, Christians should love their enemies, but, as citizens of a worldly kingdom, Christians should hate and kill the enemies of their nation if that is their duty.
There is a grain of truth in the Dual Citizenship model. It is true that, between the First and Second Comings of Christ, Christians live in a tension between being citizens of Heaven and yet living within a Fallen world. It is true that, although they are the firstfruits of God’s New Creation, Christians now engage in some things which will not be a part of God’s New Creation in the future, such as marriage (Matthew 22:30). Where the Dual Citizenship model goes wrong is in thinking that the radical demands of Christian discipleship can be set aside if they conflict with a Christian’s “duty” to a secular political entity. Such an idea implicitly denies the truth of the gospel message that Jesus alone is Lord of the whole world, and that He has defeated all the kingdoms of this world through His cross and resurrection. Yes, Christians live in this world, but they are called to never be of the world (John 17:14-18). Christians are citizens of Heaven (Phil 3:20); they are not truly citizens of any worldly kingdom. Rather, they live as “resident aliens” among the kingdoms of this world (I Pet 2:9-12). Thus, Christians cannot acknowledge any lord other than the Lord Jesus Christ, or follow any duty that conflicts with the demands of Christian discipleship.
4. Natural Law
I have already devoted a previous post to critiquing the Natural Law model, so I will just provide a brief summary here. According to the Natural Law model, there are two standards of ethics: the Natural Law, accessible to all people, and the higher standard of Christian ethics, only known by Christians. On this account, Christians should hold themselves accountable to the standards of Christian ethics, but set them aside when entering the public sphere, where they should attempt to impose the standards of the Natural Law on non-Christians. The problem is, it is not clear that any such universal Natural Law exists. And if the fundamental moral truth of the universe is the Christian gospel, how can Christians legitimately speak of some other standard of morality that is based on the assumption that the gospel is irrelevant?
In the second part of this series, I will describe and advocate a fifth model as an alternative to the four models discussed here.