What should be our Christian Values in the Public Square?
It’s like two ships passing through the night, two strangers talking in different languages. Both sides thinking they are on solid ground, bolted into bedrock. But with each bedrock resting on differing tectonic plates headed towards differing locales.
I know that marriages can evolve this way.
Faith traditions can too, especially under the heat of increased polarization in recent years.
As I said before, it’s almost like there’s two different gospels of Jesus Christ, two different practices of Christianity, or two different understandings of what it means to press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling within the public square. Two different understandings of Christian values.
Timothy Dalrymple’s recent article in Christianity Today “Why Evangelicals Disagree on the President” shines some light on this divide. On one side are those that yearn for a government and a culture that honors Christian values, defends Christian religious liberties, and seeks freedom for individuals, families and churches to live according to conscience. Dalrymple calls this the Church Regnant who see the use of political power as necessary to protect the Christian way of life and bring goodness to the culture.
On the other side are those that would rather see the church lose its influence than its integrity. They fear neither persecution nor the loss of cultural and political influence. Dalrymple calls this the Church Remnant who see God’s kingdom as not of this world but realized through the faithful presence of men and women who speak the gospel in word and deed.
He continues: “The kingdom of heaven is elusive. It comes not with a sword but a sacrifice, not a crown of iron but a crown of thorns. It arrives not through the powers of the world, but through the inverted power of the cross…Peter swung the blade. Jesus drank the cup.”
Dalrymple ends with a call of mutual understanding founded by love centered in Christ. We understand through listening and listening is an act of love. After all, we are all brothers and sisters of “sound minds and good hearts.”
But yet a vast gulf persists between the two sides, a division even more profound than George Packard’s recent observation in the Atlantic that: “We are two countries, and neither of them is going to be conquered or disappear anytime soon.”
It’s because the disagreement is even more fundamental, felt viscerally and not up for compromise by either side. It stems from different values, not just different priorities, and it’s the source of those differences that must be addressed.
It’s tempting to resort to both-siderism, appealing to a big tent perspective of values and truth given the vast diversity across the body of Christ.
But maybe the problem isn’t just about theological priorities or understandings. What if the problem comes from without, from external forces which interject contaminants which then pivot our heart, our values, and our understandings of the gospel?
James K.A. Smith has long warned against the risks of promoting cultural change through the imposition of Biblical worldviews within the political process. Earthly power assimilates and then reshapes values and beliefs, a phenomenon widespread throughout history including this current age. This highly repeatable syncretism reminds me of the Star Trek: First Contact movie when the Borg informed Captain Picard: We are the Borg…Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”
The church becomes reshaped because our loves are informed by what we are devoted to and our devotions are drawn to the battle. We think we are doing good when our desires are actually being reshaped, as our loves become distorted away from the mission of the kingdom. Rather than witnessing the transforming power of the gospel, the gospel instead becomes transformed. Rather than relying upon the Holy Spirit, the power behind the gospel is then exchanged for a reliance on political power. And we are unaware of this.
Shane Claiborne has put it this way: “Trying to mix Christianity with a political party can be sort of like mixing ice cream with horse manure. It might not harm the manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream.”
Recent neurological research has shown that each of us are hardwired to sub-consciously assimilate the values and beliefs of those we are bound to. The closer the association, the more their values become our values and in the inevitable conflict between competing values, it’s the group values that usually win because they have highjacked our identity, an identity that we then fight for, both consciously and unconsciously. We think we pursue our own interests and we do, but it’s a self-interest that has been taken over by the groups to which we belong to.
This exchange of identity “bind and blind” according to Haidt, aided by the full force of our cognitive biases which cements this exchanged identity within us. Hence, when the Church Regnant seeks the use of political power to protect the Christian way of life and bring goodness to the culture, they unwittingly open the door to the earthly city. And just like with the Borg, their faith and values become assimilated into the prevailing culture with any resistance inevitably turning into justification.
This isn’t just about Dalrymple’ re-ordering of common priorities. It’s the creation of a new way of living from a worldview infected with values external to the gospel.
Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry in their book Taking American Back for God show the dark underbelly of this assimilation, using a variety of statistical models to shine light into the widening divide within the church.
Their models identified two important and somewhat inverse-related variables that predict a significant amount of this divide. The first is called Christian nationalism, defined as “an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture.” This should sound awfully familiar for those of us coming from a fundamentalist Pentecostal tradition. We all grew up learning the stories of America as a Christian nation, a nation blessed by God, set up high upon a hill as part of God’s kingdom plan for the world.
Their second is called religious commitment which is best identified through one’s religious practice which ranges from church attendance and prayer to moral values inclusive of social justice and care.
In nearly every moral issue today, it’s fascinating how when one of these zigs, the other one zags. The greater the belief in Christian nationalism, the greater the belief that illegal immigrants from Mexico are criminals, that Muslims are a threat, that refugees are potential terrorists, and that mixed marriages are wrong. The greater religious commitment, the lesser these beliefs are held.
Responses to the pandemic echo this same pattern. The greater the belief in Christian nationalism, the greater the practice of incautious behaviors such as infrequent or no mask wearing and reduced social distancing. The greater the religious practice, the lesser the incautious behaviors practice.
A Christian nationalist worldview was the best, most reliable, predictor of the religious vote for Trump in 2016. Religious practice independent of that worldview was not a predictor.
Of course, these are statistical relationships and the key word here is association, not causation. Plus, the reduced dimensionality of the model oversimplifies, as many people exhibit a mixture of the two worldviews. To wit: not every Christian Nationalist adheres to those harmful beliefs and many with a strong religious practice also see America as God’s chosen nation. (We will be exploring this further in future blog posts.)
Nonetheless, the Church Remnant seeks to keep clear of these worldly temptations. By being a church filled with people that are faithful to Biblical virtues, who love their enemies, tell the truth, care for the poor, advocate for the marginalized, they become a church who influences through its witness, not through unholy alliances that bind and blind.
James Davison Hunter calls this way of living “faithful presence.” It was modeled for us by Jesus, who “was not powerless, but he always used the power at his disposal for the good of others.” Such faithful presence is “the best way for Christians to engage the world, not by setting themselves up in contrast to the world or in a direct assault on those who have a different view of how the world should be run. Instead, Christians should be a blessing in whatever context they find themselves, while at the same time maintaining their distinctiveness as a community.”
Sounds like salt and light doesn’t it?
Gospel stuff, and first order stuff at that, directly connected to the words of Jesus, responsive to His call for a new way of living as part of God’s plan to bring goodness to the world.
And it’s worked before.
The Roman world of Christ’s time was harsh, depraved, and unforgiving. Suffering was common and sexual immorality, abortion, infanticide, and even child sacrifice the norms. Patriarchy was absolute, giving men license to kill their wives and children. If any society needed cultural change, this was the one.
In steps Christianity and what did they do?
They didn’t vie for the levers of power, or form moral interest groups to denounce the world, or start a crusade against a culture. What did they do? They didn’t carry a sword but simply reflected Jesus, showing by deed and example what His kingdom could look like and carried forth by the principles that he taught.
Their faithful presence that began and ended in love rocked that world. In the words of Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor of Rome: “These impious Galileans (Christians) not only feed their own, but ours also; welcoming them with their agape, they attract them, as children are attracted with cakes… Whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity, and by a display of false compassion have established and given effect to their pernicious errors. Such practice is common among them, and causes contempt for our gods.”
Julian’s dying words in AD 363 were “vicisti Galilaee” (You Galileans [Christians] have conquered!). What a tribute to love, a love that was pure, unmixed, and unencumbered! It was a force that couldn’t be stopped. It changed the world.
Peter swung the blade. Jesus drank the cup.
Doesn’t that resonate? The cry of your heart from deep within? To become more like Him?
1 Oh to be like Thee! blessed Redeemer;
This is my constant longing and prayer;
Gladly I’ll forfeit all of earth’s treasures,
Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear.
2 Oh to be like Thee! full of compassion,
Loving, forgiving, tender and kind,
Helping the helpless, cheering the fainting,
Seeking the wand’ring sinners to find.
3 Oh to be like Thee! lowly in spirit,
Holy and harmless, patient and brave;
Meekly enduring cruel reproaches,
Willing to suffer, others to save.
Chorus
O to be like Thee! O to be like Thee!
Blessed Redeemer, pure as Thou art;
Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy fullness;
Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart.
