One thing this means is politics isn't inherently a bad thing and neither are governments. There's an idea out there (that I grew up under) that says the Church can and should take care of the worlds problems and government is really a distraction form that mission. (It’s a bit of a straw man, I know, but it will help make my point) It's a false choice to think we must choose between the church and government. I believe in the separation of church and state but not to the exclusion of one over the other. I believe the church needs government in our current context to accomplish many of the things God has called us to do. For example, the church can be there for victims of flooding but it can't repair broken levees. It also can't give health care to those who need it but can't afford it. The church simply does not have the resources for such things.
On the other hand the government needs the church. The problem with the church's involvement in politics has been one of identity. The church has tried to play the role of government far too much, especially conservative evangelicals. If we rightly remember our identity as members of God's kingdom we don't need to be the government, rather we can stand outside it and speak prophetically to those in power. We desperately need to reclaim our identity as kingdom members and specifically prophets. Our government needs kingdom members to speak out for values such as poverty, life and justice. We are not called to tie ourselves to a political party (although if you do it's ok) or pick some Biblical values over others. We must be wholly Biblical people in our politics, those in political power need us to be.
I believe in the separation of church and state, absolutely. But I don't believe in the separation of public life from our values, our basic values, and for many of us, our religious values.
Jim Wallis
More reading on the Kingdom of God
1 comment:
I don't have much to say because I just agree, although it is important to retain two aspects of the conservative anti-government message: 1. personal responsibility matters; and 2. government could stand to be much more efficient. The problem with outright anti-governmentalism is that it ignores this second problem by claiming it is impossible to make government as or more efficient than the private sector. Of course, the private sector is not always as efficient as advertised, nor is government always as wasteful.
After considering this and other similar myths commonly held in evangelical christianity, I have come to the conclusion that the movement needs a good post-structuralist writer to analyze its false dichotomies for a mass audience. Wright has already done this at the broad level of philosophical dualism, but a practical analysis of the origins and effects of the religion/science; capitalist/socialist; individual freedom/enslavement (aren't we all slaves, didn't Jesus already blow up the contemporary conception of freedom as individually based) dichotomies orienting much of the movement would be great, if anybody would read it. Foucault has some excellent analysis of how liberal discourses (think founding fathers, Locke and Mill) mythologize individual freedom and de-sociallize humans, naturalizing inequality and the current social and political power structure. There's a start. Why not co-opt more post-structuralist analyses, even if they would hate it. We already have to oppose the over-emphasis on observational "objective" knowledge to have faith, why not draw from those who have been constructing theories about just that topic and apply them to our contemporary problems?
If Christians really want to do something about worldwide poverty, they must face these issues. There is much to this fight that is intellectual, as well as action-works-missional in nature. I guess I had more to say than I thought.
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