Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Religion and Politics: Finding Our Voices

Last week I set out to write some posts on the theme of "Religion and Politics." I've appreciated the supportive feedback on the first three posts. While I suppose this could go on for much longer,  I'm going to offer this one final post in this series, below. If you've missed the first three and are interested you can find them here and here and here.

I want to be very clear: I believe in the separation of Church and State. But I believe that separation exists primarily to protect religion from government; not the other way around. And it does not exist to keep religious people (including the ordained) from having political opinions, hopefully informed by the Gospel. To be convincing in the public arena, however,  we need to speak not "in the name of the Lord" but in ways that also resonate with those who may not share our faith convictions, but are committed to matters of justice.

Somewhere along the line we got shy, however. Somewhere along the line we got scared of losing our tax-exempt status. Somewhere along the line we silenced the prophetic voice that runs through both the Old and New Testaments. I think this goes back further than the 1950s or even the 1770s. I think the key date to remember is 312: the conversion of Emperor Constantine. 

We inherited Christendom models of thinking about the faith that privatized and truncated it, and reduced it to a small box we could fit it into on Sunday mornings. Both liberal and conservative voices bought into the norms of Christendom and the place of privilege that Christians enjoyed in North America until very recently was seductive. There were, of course exceptions along the way: the Anabaptist traditions and the Black Church remembered an older, pre-Christendom way of being Church. But the so-called mainline denominations are only now catching up. 

On a more personal level, amid all the noise, it's hard to know what to say. I know I've been struggling and perhaps not very successfully with finding my voice. That may seem laughable to those who know I am rarely at a loss for words. But it's too tempting to become reactive. There are assaults from many directions. But as a follower of Jesus (who also deeply values and needs interfaith companions, including people of good will who have no religions faith) what is harder is to find the word that needs to be spoken. The right word of hope, and healing, and truth that points us toward love of God and neighbor, rather than adding fuel to the fire.

In my last post I quoted Karl Barth and in this post I have begun with some words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Together they remind us that we are not in altogether uncharted territory. The Church has struggled before to find it's voice in the midst of propaganda and lies. One of the books that has left a deep mark on my faith is Bonhoeffer's Life Together, written as lectures for seminarians who would take on leadership in the Confessing Church. That book was written to help people speak up at a time when the silence from Church leaders was deafening.

God's politics is not Democratic or Socialist or Republican or Independent. But when we claim Jesus as Lord we are insisting that "Caesar" is not. That claim has profound political implications. God's politics is about caring the for poor, and speaking up for those who have no voice. It is about love of neighbor. It is never about finding ways to defend or justify taking children from their parents and putting them in cages. That's an easy question to answer: Christians don't do that. It's only seems to be a harder question when our allegiance is misplaced, which is just a polite way of saying when we have turned from the living God to false idols.  

Perhaps that is the place from which we find our voices again: by getting clear about whom we serve. As the modern-day prophet, Dylan, put it so clearly: "you're gonna have to serve somebody."

We face some very serious and very challenging issues and the voices of all matter. Christians do not have a monopoly on the truth. But if we are to offer anything at all, we have to find our voices again. We have to speak the truth, in love. We will not all agree on matters of policy. What should our immigration policy look like and how do we do that in more just and humane ways? That's not an easy question to answer and we'll make mistakes along the way. But those who serve the risen Christ know that we are commanded to love God and to love our neighbor, and those are non-negotiable commitments. We know it's wrong - that it's a sin - to put children in cages.

Our work is never to defend the policies of the Empire. It is to offer an alternative way to be in the world, rooted in the commitments we made at Holy Baptism. If we aren't prepared to do that we may as well close up shop. But the world might actually need for us, in this time and place, to speak up.

Because not to speak speaks volumes.

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