"Christians Should Keep Scripture Out Of Politics"
by :: Uwe Siemon-Netto
Posted 4:00 AM ET, Friday, April 18 at http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080418/cm_csm/ysiemonnetto;_ylt=An5e1XLenT5Z1xXdemmkz7X9wxIF
St. Louis - What is Christianity's proper role in American presidential politics? This question has gripped the 2008 campaign. From the dispute over the acceptability of Mitt Romney's Mormonism, to Mike Huckabee's musings about conforming the US Constitution more to the Bible and the controversy over Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor, the spiritual and secular realms have collided fiercely. Just this week, Senator Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton fielded questions from US religious leaders at a special forum broadcast on CNN.
More broadly, arguments over public policies – from war to illegal immigration – are increasingly being infused with scriptural justifications.
The media, of course, relish such controversy. So do many religious leaders, who use the occasion to offer the "real" interpretation of what Scripture says about a particular issue. As a result, religion and politics aren't just mingling – they're being wedded to the same goal: redeeming America's body politic.
A largely Protestant nation that can trace its theological taproot to Martin Luther ought to know better. As the original Reformer, Luther understood how critical it was to separate church and state and, in a more important sense, the spiritual kingdom of Christ and the secular realm where God reigns in a hidden way through humans using reason as a guide.
This is new -- I didn't know that Luther was such a separatist. But since quite a few of the world's princes and kings held their religious allegiance to the Vatican, whose level of influence would greatly increase if Luther would disappear under their watch, it wouldn't surprise me that Luther wouldn't mind keeping kingdoms of earth and heaven a little bit further apart. I wouldn't mind seeing something in the Book of Concord, or the Augsburg Confessions to back that point up...
That is not to say that Christians today shouldn't let their Christianity inform their political values and action. They should. But the Bible is not a political playbook. Christians, or adherents of any religion for that matter, should refrain from using holy text to fight politically over human concerns. Using Christian doctrine to push a political agenda is not just rude – it is a dangerous departure from the core message of Christianity: salvation by grace through faith.
Watching the primaries, I would never confuse the Bible with a how-to guide from Carville or Rove. But why not gauge political decisions against God's word? True, I look with extreme skepticism on laws, rules, and policies whose sole justification is one man's/groups interpretation of scripture. But the central message of "faith alone in God's grace alone, and God's word alone" isn't the only message in the Bible. You could make a strong argument that this message runs at the same level of importance as the Great Commandment
Jesus said, "The first in importance is, 'Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.' And here is the second: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' There is no other commandment that ranks with these." Mark 12:29-31, MSGBelieving that the Bible isn't any sort of answerbook or guide book to how one should live life here on earth, I believe, leaves a LOT of the Bible out. How else to describe the book of Proverbs?
Christ Jesus was not crucified to make society nicer or fairer; no, he suffered to redeem the believer from sin.
Did not Christ tell Pontius Pilate: "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36)? Which of these seven words is so hard to understand?
Possible the part where Jesus is telling Pilate that, while he has the ability to "veto" whatever decision he, or the Pharisees, or the shouting mob makes, this isn't God's kingdom, it's the kingdom of mortal, flawed man -- whose decision will stand. I see this as the result of what may be the second greatest gift God gave human kind (aside from justification, of course!) -- the gift of free will. God could very well make us mind numbed robots -- but doesn't. He wants us to love him, but that is only possible if we have the ability and choice not to. Pilate's decision wasn't Christ's to make.
Yet the clarity of Christ's statement hasn't stopped mankind from trying to bring heaven to earth ever since – mostly through political tyrannies of the collectivist utopian variety.
Luther understood these temptations. "The devil never stops cooking and brewing these two kingdoms together," he wrote, referring to the spiritual and the secular realms. With these words in mind, Lutherans – or at least Lutherans strongly committed to the confessional writings of their church – shake their heads over the misuse of Scripture in American politics on both sides of the political divide. (Emphasis mine -- GR)
Whodathunk? Flawed, sinful, mortal men misusing scripture? Yes, the devil is constantly at work, turning us against ourselves, and against God. And what better tool than objects that are given to us by God? That doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater -- we look at issues with a discerning eye, and use our knowledge, wisdom, as well as prayer, to make our decision.
How, then, should Christians engage in political affairs? Through the language of reason in the framework of natural law.
Citing Paul, Luther reminded Christians that natural law is "written with the finger of God" on people's hearts, a fact to which their conscience "bears witness." Thus, Christians who want to publicly oppose the practice of abortion and same-sex marriage do not need to quote the Bible to do so. Instead, they can appeal to logic and universal principles that exist, not by man's decree, but by, as the Declaration of Independence puts it, "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God."
Unfortunately, "natural law" isn't always the same as the United States Code, or the Official Statutes of (insert your own state here...). Natural law, in my own, humble, lay person opinion, would say you don't kill your own children. It would say that a man and a woman would be joined in a marital union. It's through our political system, flawed and full of pitfalls as it may be, which we write our own laws. By using the Bible as a guide, we might just get our laws close to "natural law."
Sadly, natural-law thinking became unfashionable in the two centuries after Jean Jacques Rousseau. This philosopher behind the French Revolution extolled instead man-made "positive law," which was detached from the universal ethic usually attributed to divine authorship.
In this context it is worth noting how the 20th-century Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer judged the French Revolution, whose utopian dream was the liberation of man from all constraint. To the martyred Bonhoeffer, this Revolution was "the laying bare of the emancipated man in his tremendous power and most horrible perversity," a false liberation that leads only to man's self-destruction. He saw both Communism and Nazism as the French Revolution's heirs. (Emphasis mine - GR)
Does "the liberation of man from all constraint" mean the liberation from the evil kings and emperors of the world? Or does it also imply the liberation of man from all rules, including those set down by God? Please remember, that in past experiments with Communism, the church (Christian and otherwise) were either banned or, in the case of China, handled closely by the government. In the church's place was the government.
Natural law is the "operating system" in what Luther called the "left-hand kingdom," where God reigns in a hidden way "through good and bad princes," who in a democracy include the voters. In this secular realm, "reason is the empress," Luther said, describing reason as a gift from God that enables humanity to manage this temporal world.
Bonhoeffer considered the inability to distinguish between the spiritual and earthly kingdoms a major flaw of American theologies that manifest themselves as organized struggles against some particular worldly evil. "It is necessary to free oneself from the way of thinking, which sets out from human problems and which asks for solutions on this basis. Such thinking is unbiblical," he asserted. "The way of all Christian thinking leads not from the world to God but from God to the world."
My church last year underwent what for us was a major project -- building a "fishing village" in Haiti. This was inspired by Matthew 25:31-46: a portion of which -- "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." (vs. 40) So, by using the Bible to guide our thoughts, goals and missions to serve our fellow man, these efforts were unbiblical? Should I adopt an "I believe, I'm saved, that's good enough for me" attitude? Or should I reach out, extend a helping hand, and share God's love. Last week's sermon held this quote from Rev. Tony Campolo: "We dare not talk about the love that was expressed on
Luther proclaimed a liberating message "that society need not be run by the Church in order to be ruled by God," according to the late William Lazareth, a former Lutheran bishop of New York. Yet too many Protestants have a hard time grasping the breathtaking implication of this insight.
To be sure, it would be desirable if more people turned to the Bible more often for everyday guidance. But the Gospel has nothing to say about traffic rules, illegal immigration, the price of gasoline, or the Iraq war.
Oops. The 11th commandment? "Thou shalt not run red lights, nor photograph any driver who runs a red light"? "Thou shalt have a green card?" I'll ask my pastor this Sunday, but I don't think that Jesus ever got around to writing the Driver's License Manual. But it gets a little bit more serious once you start talking about wars, though. Here, we're talking about justified homicide writ large. Here we're talking about preservation of liberty, free will. And in some cases (World War II for starters) we're talking about good vs. evil. "All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing." (I wish I remembered who said that...) And how do good men find out what to respond to, which fights to fight, and how to fight them?
The Gospel – the good news of salvation through Christ – is the Christians' highest good. Thus it is difficult to fathom why so many of them insist on exposing this magnificent treasure to public derision by using it for the wrong purpose. The Gospel can illume the believer's reason in his secular pursuits but is not meant to be a script for them.
Now we're getting close to agreement here.
Half a millennium after Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, it makes sense to ponder his down-to-earth comment that in politics, as in all other aspects of secular life, Christians must act reasonably according to natural law. The Gospel has freed them to do just that; it must not be perverted into a weapon to be slapped around other people's heads.
• Uwe Siemon-Netto, a former religion editor for United Press International, is director of the Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in St. Louis. This essay was adapted from a longer version originally published by Christianity Today.
I'm going to have to read the whole version and educate myself a bit better before digging my grave any deeper. But what do you think?
