The issue of politics has been a thorny one for many a Christian. Why? Because all too often, it tries to pull both of our feet down to earth while we meditate on what it means to be a dual citizen of both heaven and earth. And all too often, politics wants our full attention when it only merits less than half of it.
But that doesn't mean that politics is not important, especially while living in a Western Democracy. For we have a stewardship in how we live on earth regardless of where we live. And democracies have ways of increasing our stewardship role in terms of politics.
The latest venture into this tempest is an article posted on the Gospel Coalition website written by Dr. Steven Bryan who is a member of the faculty at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (click here for a bio). In that article, Bryan tries to discover a third way between conservatives and progressives in how we interact in a political world. He is looking for this 3rd way because he is writing to Christians (click here for a link to the article).
In commenting on the conservative and progressive political worlds, Bryan tries to do what Fox News only claims to do: that is to be fair and balanced with both conservatives and progressives. And I think he is fairly successful in his attempts. But he first starts of with comparing the confessional evangelical with those in the white social group voting block. In that comparison, Bryan states that while the former is an ethnically diverse group that is always trying to change for the better, the latter is not necessarily that way. He continues by comparing confessional evangelicals with the progressivist agenda. That agenda stands in contrast with what the Reformers wrote about the Church because that agenda is seeking to get the Church to compromise itself by fitting in with the world standards and ideas. That serves as a warning that we should selectively heed.
Bryan notes that sometimes there are similarities in the agendas of progressives and conservatives with what confessing evangelicals work for. Of course confessional evangelicals can hold to those similarities for different reasons than progressives and we could add conservatives as well. Bryan also repeats what G.K. Chesterton wrote about conservatives and progressives. Chesterton wrote that while 'progressives go on making mistakes,' conservatives 'prevent mistakes from being corrected.' Bryan also noted that in the US, confessing evangelicals align themselves with political conservatism.
This could lead one into thinking that Bryan wants us Christians to be centrists. To think that would be a mistake according to Bryan. Rather, Christians should take on a gadfly in relating to both groups. The term that Bryan used was 'prophets' who come from the wilderness. And as prophets, we are to try to bring both conservatives and progressives in line with what the Scriptures say. And that we should do this with unwavering clarity and conviction. He then says that the greatest threat to the Church and the Gospel are 'overt antagonists.' He then quotes II Timothy 3:5 in warning us to stay away from such people.
So Bryan's article is a so far a mix between some good stuff to agree with and a lot left to the imagination.
What should we say about this article? For one thing, Bryan seems to stress that the Church should stand not only above the fray between conservatives and progressives, but in judging them. What else can we conclude from him telling us to act toward and speak [down] to them as if we are prophets from the wilderness. And it is at this point, it becomes evident that Bryan might be too heavenly minded to be aware of the context in which he is speaking.
Politics deals only with a part of our horizontal lives, our lives with the State and society. It does not deal with the vertical, nor should it. It is ill-equipped to do so. So we need to carefully think what it means to be a prophet from the wilderness in the political continuum that has conservatives on one side and progressives on the other. And, at this point, we should note the binary thinking Bryan is employing.
That taking on the role of the prophet carries with it some dangers and hazards. One is, to borrow the phraseology of Martin Luther King Jr. as he spoke against the Vietnam War, that start to believe that we have everything to teach politically minded unbelievers and nothing to learn from them. And while Bryan cites II Timothy 3:5 to warn us about the antagonists from both groups, I would see that and raise him Romans 2 where it talks about how the unbeliever sometimes acts more righteously than those who believe, or claim to, in God. So that when we consider Romans 2, we should start cooling, not turning off, our prophetic jets. To combine lessons from the cited parts of II Timothy 3 and Romans 2, we should learn when to ignore unbelievers and when to learn from them. That last part is underemphasized in much of the religiously conservative Christian world.
But something else calls on us to learn when to learn from unbelievers when exploring issues in the political world. We are suppose to live in a democracy. And if we consider what a democracy is in terms of a state of being and in terms of what Jefferson warned us about, we should work for a society where we don't use majority rule to oppress any minorities. That we should use our democratic processes to ensure that all different ethnic groups have an equal share in and of the state regardless of their size. What is inferred from that is that we Christians should not gather in our spiritually ideological ghettos apart from where the rest of the world thinks about and discusses politics. Rather, we should collaborate. And the proper word there is 'collaborate' rather than try to control. For as collaborators, we become equal participants with unbelievers. As those seeking control, we try to claim a place of supremacy over them.
Does Bryan disagree with what is written in the last few paragraphs here? I really can't say and that is because in writing his article, he left too much to the imagination.
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