This is a guest post by Joel Knight in response to an article I wrote engaging with his take on Donald Trump in Evangelicals Now. Joel is minister at Christ Church Wokingham
Dave asks me what I mean by ‘political theology’ and I’ll begin here because I think it will illuminate the question about ethical assessment of political leaders. We need a political theology, by which I mean the ability to apply what the Scriptures teach about power, the state and rulers to our societal context. I wonder if we particularly need that in the UK because the church is tempted to say that Christians don’t ‘do politics’. After all, politics in the UK famously doesn’t ‘do God’. I suspect this tendency is downstream from a pietism which reduces the teaching of Scripture to matters of personal salvation and godliness. The teaching of Scripture on these matters is precious beyond imagining and if that were all it gave it would be everything. And yet, in the words of Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck, “the word of God is not only the fountain of the truth of salvation but also the norm of the whole life; not only glad tidings of salvation for the soul but also for the body and for the entire world.” Scripture contains glad tidings for the whole of society, to culture and to the political realm.
The explicit teaching of Scripture makes this very clear in the context of politics. Jesus is the King who rules the rulers of the nations. He has been raised from the dead and so given the name that is above every name. The nations rage in vain at God’s anointed son who will one day call to account all people. As would have been manifestly clear to 1st century Christians, the claim that ‘Jesus is Lord’ is a profoundly political claim. Those who do govern in today’s world do so as God’s servants and their role is to punish what is evil (as the LORD defines it, not us!), and commend what is good (as the LORD defines it, not us!) All this mean that, on one side of the coin, Christianity is political. And on the other, my politics must be Christian.
And so I wholeheartedly agree with Dave’s comments about the need for a breadth of ethical assessment. Jesus’ teaching should be applied to the character of our leaders, for his ethical teaching about leadership doesn’t only apply to the church. His teaching should be applied to political policies, laws and orders. Which is not to say that this is always a straightforward task. Christians will disagree about appropriate political policy at times but it is to say that the believer is seeking to allow the teaching of Scripture and the character of God to shape their political persuasions and priorities. The Christian recognises that the Bible’s teaching stubbornly refuses to be coopted by any one political movement, party or leader and that the Bible’s teaching will cut across many of the political binaries that we have. Both progressive ‘woke’ (for want of a better term) and right wing populism seek to coopt Jesus’ teaching in different ways. The progressive seek a kingdom without it’s King. Right wing populism seeks Christendom without its Christ. The believer will embrace co-belligerence with both sides of this spectrum when either end of it happens to agree with Jesus’ teaching and yet will be careful not to co-opted by any one ‘side’.
I do though want to defend the importance of speaking about ‘the times’ in which we live in order to rightly understand them. Our digital age makes swift and shrill denunciations of our political opponents extremely easy to do and we mostly function in sound bite form. It is crucial that we slow down and attend to the state of things and potential shifts in our political climate, not least because we’re living through a significant shift at the moment. We also need to ‘understand the times’ so we might recognise what church ministry might require going forward.
Are we ready for young men (and it will often be young men) coming into our churches who have been formed and shaped in their outlook and values by right wing populism and need to be discipled in Jesus’ way? Can I defend liberal and representative democracy as an appropriate Christian ‘method’ in the face of those increasingly disillusioned by its failures and who are tempted to seek the solution in authoritarianism (on either the left or the right)?
Given the way people increasingly feel ‘the system’ has failed them and are searching for an alternative can we show searching and hurting people how Scripture’s teaching does offer glad tidings for the political realm? Can we show that it both provides the grounds for various aspects of liberal democracy and it can critique liberal democracy and what it has become, at the very same time?
If I retreat from the political sphere I will have nothing to say to these issues. I will tell people either explicitly or by what I do not speak about, that the extent to which someone is converted is the extent to which they will cease to care about the public square. But I do not want to retreat. I find Herman Bavinck inspiring on this point and so I will finish with him
“naturally it would be much easier to leave this age to its own ways, and to seek out strength in a quiet withdrawal. No such rest, however, is permitted to us here. Because every creature is good, and nothing is to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving, since all things are sanctified by the word of God and prayer, therefore the rejection of any creature were ingratitude to God, a misjudgement or under-evolution of his goodness and his gifts. Our warfare may be conducted against sin alone. No matter how complicated the relationship may be, therefore, in which the confessors of Christ are placed in this time, no matter how serious, difficult and insurmountable the social, political… problems may be, it were faithlessness and weakness in us to proudly withdraw from the struggle, perhaps even under the guise of Christian motivation, and to reject the culture of the age as demonic.”
Faithroots 