Christians and Politics
In 1974, more than 2,300
evangelical leaders from 150 countries gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland to
consider the witness of the church. Convened by Billy Graham and led by John
Stott, the revered Anglican evangelical priest and writer, the event produced
the Lausanne Covenant. The signatories to that document affirmed the global
character of the church of Jesus Christ and the belief that “the church is the
community of God’s people rather than an institution, and must not be
identified with a particular culture, social or political system, or
human ideology.”
And yet, in the United States in recent years, we have heard the claims over and over again that the
Christian party is Republican. No, to be a Christian is to be a Democrat. And
evangelicals have been caught up in all of this.
We are now literally hours
away from a critically important election and perhaps, you feel as I do that
you can’t wait for the nasty, negative, slime-slinging television ads for
candidates to cease. In the race for power, we’ve seen a de-volution of our
political rhetoric and it seems, in many ways, more and more difficult to find
any truth in the sound bytes that ride the airwaves, crowd online postings, and
fill newspaper pages.
With the name “Christian”
often directly or tangentially attached to these antics, one has to wonder how
all of this may have damaged our witness and the integrity of our message.
There are those who would
argue that Christians shouldn’t be engaged in politics at all. John Whitehead,
president of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties advocacy organization
that supports religious rights, is one.
In “Churches and the
Corrupting Influence of Politics,” Whitehead wrote the following: “attempts to
turn the pulpits of tax-exempt churches into political platforms seem to fly
directly in the face of current IRS guidelines that make it clear that churches
or other religious organizations may lose their tax-exempt status if they
actively participate or intervene in any way in a political campaign.”
Whitehead goes on to argue
that since the church exists to teach the good news—the gospel—Christians should
stand outside the status quo and that includes politics. Whitehead argues that
since Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, Christ was apolitical. He insists
that, as followers of Jesus, Christians should, likewise, be apolitical.
Bill Barnwell, in an
article entitled, “Our Hope is in the Gospel, Not Politics and Government,”
also insists that “fruitful ministry should be our motivation, not fruitless
politicking.”
But, since the founding of
this country, Christians have exercised political and social leadership and,
whether folks like it or not, American citizens are participants in the
American governing structure. Citizens are assessed taxes; they are counted in
the Census; they are in government computer systems at all levels; most send
their children to government-run schools; they drive their vehicles on government-maintained
roadways, they are called to abide by government-mandated regulations. And they
feel the impact of their government’s geopolitical decisions.
I might note at this
juncture that, while our attention has been drawn to the presidential race, the
turmoil in our world has increased substantially. Russia recently unveiled its
largest ever nuclear missile—Satan 2—which is capable of obliterating an area
the size of Texas. NATO is now engaged in its largest military build-up on
Russia’s border since the Cold War. The US is dispatching troops, tanks and artillery
to Poland. At an October 26 meeting of defense chiefs in Brussels Germany,
Canada and other NATO countries also pledged forces. The move comes after Russia has been busy deploying
hardware of its own. Last month, Moscow said it was stationing nuclear-capable
missiles in Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic exclave. Two weeks ago, two Russian
warships armed with cruise missiles slipped into the Baltic sea.
Not that long ago,
chessboard imagery was used to describe geostrategy: then the United States and
the Soviet Union represented opposing kings and other nations served as their
assorted knights, bishops and pawns. Now the world seems not only to be engaged
in a chess game, but at the same time is playing something more akin to a game
of Chinese checkers where marbles of different stripes crisscross one another’s
paths from different angles toward different destinies.
Internationally
and domestically, our government must deal each day with questions related to foreign
policy, violence, terrorism, the environment, the economy, education, immigration,
and so much more. We need
leaders who can negotiate the new world map, leaders who can keep us safe,
leaders who will protect our Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms. And Christians
are entitled to a say in who those leaders should be.
Again, in a myriad of
ways, we engage with the government of this country every day of our lives and
our vote matters. When our vote is cast to reflect God’s moral principles, it
advances the two great commandments, loving God and our neighbor. Remember
Edmund Burke once declared: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for
good men to do nothing.”
Your vote is the ultimate
check and balance on your government and your vote is a witness to your
conscience. Even if your moral vote is defeated by the false arguments of
popular secularism and postmodernism which promote the denial of absolute truth
and the rejection of divine authority, you will have witnessed to the truth of
your conscience and preserved your right to speak for moral change. John Hancock, whose signature
dominates the Declaration of Independence, gives this challenge,” I conjure you, by all that is dear, by
all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only that ye pray but that ye
act.”
Your vote is needed to
preserve our liberty for future generations: Our Founding
Fathers wrote in the Journal of the Continental Congress, 1774: “It is an indispensable duty which we owe to
God, our country, ourselves and posterity, by all lawful ways and means in our
power to maintain, defend and preserve these civil and religious rights and
liberties for which many of our fathers fought, bled and died, and to hand them
down entire to future generations.”
For these reasons (the
last four of which I’ve drawn from the Providence
Forum), and most importantly for biblical reasons, our voices must be heard
in government, we must weigh in on the issues facing our democracy, our votes
must be counted at the polls.
Now, there are so many other
questions related to politics--beyond whether a Christian should vote--but for
the sake of space, I’ve narrowed this message to the following. How is a
Christian in this country to relate to civil authority? Does a Christian have a
biblical right to be involved in civil disobedience against the state? How
should we respond when a government passes a law or behaves in a way that
strikes against our Christian sensibilities? And are there principles, based on
scripture, that can guide us as we look to the upcoming election? In this
posting, I’ll attempt to make a first pass at all of these questions.
Our starting point is what
is considered the key passage on the Christian and civil authority: Romans
13:1-7. But this won’t be our only reference. We’ll be pulling into our
examination several other passages from scripture that serve as qualifiers to
Paul’s words as they were addressed to the Roman Christians of 50 A.D.
READ ROMANS 13:1-7; 1TIMOTHY 2:1-5; 1PETER 2:13-17
In order to apply the
words of Paul and Peter to the 21st century, we must see how they applied to
the first century within which they were written.
We should realize, first
of all, that the existence of the Roman Empire proved, in many ways, beneficial
to the early church. Apart from anything else, the fact of the so-called Pax
Romana (Roman peace) from 27 AD to 180 BC made it possible for Christianity to
spread more quickly and widely than in more tumultuous times.
Central to the spread of
Christianity was also the existence of a fine system of roads radiating out
from Rome and extending across the Empire. The world was at peace and under the
control of one power. Furthermore, up until the time of Nero’s reign,
Christianity was considered a novel foreign (Jewish) superstition brought to
Rome by the uneducated lower classes and, as such, it was largely ignored.
However, in AD 64, Emperor Nero set fire to Rome and then blamed the Christians
for it, thus introducing the church to an era of martyrdom.
But, at the time of Paul’s
writing, in the years before the persecutive reign of Nero, and, at the likely
time of Peter’s writing as well, Rome was clearly a restraining force against
chaos. It is “good government” that Paul and Peter address here. Neither deals
with the question of how Christians should relate to a government gone sour.
Nor do they give any guidance as to how Christians should involve themselves in
a participatory democracy. Care must be taken in making 21st century
applications especially since in Revelation 13:18, Rome is pictured as having
fallen under the control of evil and Christians are then expected to relate to
it quite differently.
One other thing we should
understand before we proceed: God is not just a “religious” God. His
providential care includes the control of nations – it is God who sets up civil
rulers and their authority is delegated from Him. God works out His plan
through rulers that we perceive as evil or as good. God is in control.
So, keeping in mind these
initial qualifiers, let’s see what Paul has to say concerning the Christian’s
relationship to good government.
First of all, everyone is
to submit to the governing authorities. This word is sometimes mistranslated
“obey.” Submission here should be understood in light of Romans 12:10 (which
speaks to honoring others above oneself) – Paul is saying here that Christians
should recognize the claim that the authorities have upon them. This idea,
however, should be mediated by the greater claim of God. In this regard, we
note Acts 5:29, where Peter and the other apostles declared, “We must obey God
rather than men” and Mark 12:13-17, where Jesus insisted in relation to taxes,
“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
If a government is good,
it helps a Christian toward the good that God has in store for him or her, by
providing encouragement to do good and discouragement from doing evil and by
curbing the worst excesses of other individuals’ sinfulness and providing them
with selfish reasons for behaving justly. Paul goes on to say that since the
Christian knows the ruler has been appointed by God, to disobey would create a
guilty conscience.
He concludes the passage
by urging Christians to pay their taxes. There is a clear sense here and in
other early Christian writings that Christians ought to pay for the services
and benefits they receive from the government. And if the state is owed honor
and respect, it should be paid honor and respect.
The problem comes when the
state goes too far. Although human government is divinely instituted, it
doesn’t follow that its authority is unlimited. On the contrary, the scriptures
give ample evidence that when governments usurp the authority of God by
demanding subjection to laws contrary to clear commands of scripture, the
government has exceeded its authority.
In Deuteronomy 13, in
Jeremiah 7, in John 14, Christians are called to an unqualified obedience to
their Lord and God. Christians, as we’ve seen from our passage in Romans, are
also called to submit to the governing authorities and to recognize that, even
where the civil authority is not Christian, God can use it as a servant for
good. Civil disobedience becomes an issue when these two claims come into
conflict, when God commands us to do something which the civil authority
prohibits or when the civil authority commands us to do something which God
prohibits.
That the conflict is real
and that civil disobedience may be a Christian option is acknowledged by much
of the church throughout history and, most importantly, by the Bible itself.
Three examples of biblical civil disobedience are Daniel’s illegal prayer in
Daniel, chapter 6; Peter’s illegal preaching in Acts 5; and Paul’s refusal to
leave his prison cell in Acts 16. In the history of the church, there has also
been preaching conducted against the direct order of the state, illegal
assembly, illegal printing and dissemination of scripture, refusal to take
oaths, refusal to participate in certain activities of the military, refusal to
worship the emperor, and violation of racially segregationist laws.
While the basic principle
is clear – we must obey God rather than human beings – we have to be careful
that our motives in civil disobedience are pure – that we are seeking to obey
God and His Word rather than trying to rationalize any disobedience growing out
of other motives or interests. Before one resists a government, there needs to
be much prayerful searching of the scriptures and deep analysis of the
situation at hand.
The clearest indication
for civil disobedience has always been an overt conflict between civil
authority and the tasks of discipleship. Scripture tells us that disobedience
is allowed when the government forbids worship of God (Exodus 1:15-21);
dictates that God’s servants be killed (1Kings 18:1-4); commands believers to
worship idols (Daniel 3); requires believers to pray to or to worship a human
being (Daniel 6, Revelation 13); and when it forbids believers to spread the
gospel (Acts 4:17-20).
In a church I pastored in
Pennsylvania, we were blessed to have among our number a young Romanian woman.
The experience of the church in her homeland provides an excellent example of
what would appear to be biblically-endorsed civil disobedience.
For many years, in the
Ceausescu era (1965 through 1989), the Department of Cults kept a tight rein on
all churches with a policy of intimidation, interference and interrogation.
Romanian Christians were imprisoned and murdered. Parts of a shipment of 20,000
Bibles donated by the Hungarian Reformed Church were discovered turned into
toilet paper at a Romanian pulp mill. Dozens of churches were demolished,
including a 200-seat Baptist Church in Comanesti.
Over the years, dissent in
Romania found its home in the clandestine activities of Christian believers.
There was underground printing. There was Bible distribution. There were small
group Bible studies. Then, in 1989, when Laszlo Tokes, pastor of the Hungarian
Reformed Church in Timisoara, Romania refused to end his outspoken criticism of
the brutal regime of Ceausescu, officers were dispatched to the church to take
him in. When they arrived, they found a human blockade. What began as a
congregation’s protest in support of its beleaguered pastor became the nine-day
revolution that costs thousands of lives but brought libertate—freedom—to the Romanian people.
As one respected
Pentecostal leader from Bucharest said, “Christianity in our country is like a
nail. The harder you strike it, the deeper it goes.”
The church recognized a
higher authority than the state. We have a responsibility to stand in
solidarity with those Christians in countries around the world who are
struggling under repressive regimes. When a governmental authority exceeds or
abuses its power and behaves counter to the clear dictates of scripture, civil
disobedience is a biblical option.
We have a responsibility
to submit to the legally instituted civil authorities unless we are certain
they have violated biblical principles. The higher authority to whom we submit
is the Lord.
The Ten Commandments, the
message of the prophets on God’s justice, the Sermon on the Mount, and the
apostles’ teaching on the social implications of the gospel are other essential
sources for a clear perception of the command of God which supersedes all other
commands.
So, finally, are there
principles, based on scripture, that can help us as we look to Tuesday? Well, Deuteronomy 17 offers guidance as to the characteristics
we should seek in the ideal candidate. Passages throughout scripture also
stress the issues of primary concern to the Lord.
In Deuteronomy, we are told that we are not
to put a foreigner in authority over us. The candidate must, therefore, be a
patriot, an individual who vigorously
supports our country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or
detractors. The passage also suggests that the one who
would lead us must believe in a strong national
defense.
Deuteronomy goes on to call for a
leader who is a person of unimpeachable integrity, free from any hint of
corruption, free from any hint that, in public office, he or she would line
with gold his or her pockets or the pockets of cronies.
Further, the individual being
considered as leader should be a person of humility who does not consider
himself or herself above those who are being served, a person who is humbled by
the awesome responsibility of the office and has an awareness of his or her own
limitations.
In Proverbs 29:2 we read: “When the righteous
thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.” Character
matters in elected officials.
Our Second President, John Adams declared in his address to the military dated October
11, 1798: “We have no government armed
with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and
religion…Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is
wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
The Lord insists
that we are to advocate for the treasure that is the family; we are to advocate
for the sanctity of life. The ideal candidate, in honoring the scriptures and
the Declaration of Independence, would defend the
right to life of all, including those individuals still in the womb.
Throughout the scriptures we are also reminded of
the need to tell the truth and to make right judgments. The Supreme Court was
never intended to be a representative body; it is charged with upholding the
laws of Congress and the laws of the Constitution. The ideal leader should be
committed to defending the truth and defending right judgments. The Golden Rule
of Matthew 7:12 teaches that, in everything, we are to do to
others what we would have them do to us. When we honor this rule, we give to others the
religious liberty and free speech we desire for ourselves. Similarly, we are
then in a position to insist that our liberty of religious conviction and free
speech are not assaulted or abridged.
The ideal leader should, of
course, also be a student of Scripture.
But, we don’t have ideal candidates on the
ballot, do we? Unless, Jesus of Nazareth is on the ballot, as one commentator
opined, we will always be choosing the lesser of two evils. Or in the case of
this election, write-ins or third party candidates as well who have little to
no chance of winning.
As we approach the voting
booth and look at the full range of candidates—not only for the office of
President but for each seat that is open--we must pray for conviction from the
Lord. We must vote, as best we are able, using the lens of scripture. We must consider
each individual’s character, proposed plans, and the platforms of their parties.
We must pray the Lord will guide our hands as we register our votes.
The words of 2nd
Chronicles 7:14 have been much on my mind in these days: “If my people who are
called by My name, will humble
themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I
will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
Please lift with me this
prayer:
Gracious God, as you have
instructed us in 1st Timothy, chapter 2, we pray for all those who
are now or will be, following this election, in authority over us. We pray that
they would lead in such a way that we might live peaceful and quiet lives in
all godliness and holiness. We pray for ourselves that you might guide us
individually as we vote on Tuesday. Guide each one us in our selection of
candidates and in our understanding of the issues facing us. Guide us, as a nation,
Lord that we might honor you in all our policies. Lord, we also raise to you
the nations of the earth and especially those Christians within them. In
countries where the Christian witness continues to be repressed, may a movement
of your Spirit open the eyes of believers to your great power. Lord, we pray
for our sisters and brothers who live under totalitarian regimes and we pray
for ourselves as well that they and we might be given the wisdom and courage to
be God’s witnesses and God’s ambassadors. May the gospel of the saving power of
Jesus Christ be advanced in a mighty way in the midst of an ever-changing
world. We pray all these things in the name of and for the sake of our precious
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen