My aunt, as long as I’ve known her has always been an extremely liberal Democrat and a staunch atheist. That is, until a couple who were planting a church in her housing development befriended her and invited her to start attending their church.
At first it seemed like an unprecedented change was happening in my aunt’s life. I couldn’t believe she had even said yes to the invitation, but somehow going to church became intriguing to her, and from there it was only a few months later that she told me, with daring and nervous tones, that she no longer considered herself an atheist. She told me wasn’t quite ready to believe in a “personal God” and didn’t yet know what to do with Jesus, but that she had decided that there was “something out there.” From my theist perspective, having known my aunt my entire life, this was unprecedented progress. She laughed at herself as she agreed with me at the change in her viewpoint that she had never thought possible.
And she kept going. Something was drawing her to continue going to this church, even though she told me their Republican-sounding views on Israel she found somewhat annoying to her liberal, secular Jewish sensibilities. But she found it something she could overlook, and continued fellowshipping with her friends.
Until Trump was elected. As his magic pen signed executive order after executive order, the leadership of her church rejoiced and extolled that the man they had helped elect was taking what they considered to be such glorious stands for righteous lawmaking.
My aunt, still reeling with grief about the fact that this man was even in office, was repulsed beyond measure that the leaders of the church she had come to call home had not only helped elect him, but were proclaiming the very executive orders that sickened her and kept her up at night worrying about the future of the world were their pride and joy in the man.
She quit going to church, and now tells me she has a real ax to grind with Christians for ruining the country.
Another story, if you’ll allow me:
I knew a man named John, he was a brilliant concert pianist who had destroyed his life with drugs and alcohol. My friend Rob, who was John’s brother, told me that he could barely believe his ears when this brother he had prayed for his entire life suddenly asked him one day on the phone to buy him a Bible. By some very strange event, John, who was now in his mid-60s, after spending a life carousing and studying all types of philosophies and intellectual pursuits through a drug-induced haze, had met a Korean pastor in a McDonald’s one morning. Somehow the pastor managed to entice him to come to his church – and John became a regular, going to Bible studies regularly.
John attended this church and incredibly enough, gave his life to Christ.
But then, he started to tell me and Rob that he needed to find a new church. Apparently the church had started railing against legislation that had been passed allowing homosexual couples to marry; and John, who had dabbled in homosexual relationships in his life and said, “I think it was wrong what I did, and I don’t want to live that way anymore, but I just can’t agree with the way they are talking about people who are gays and lesbians and the way they want to make laws against them. And it’s not just that: I’m also bothered by the way they keep holding these classes teaching pseudoscience trying to prove evolution isn’t true.”
The “moral” of both these stories:
I think the evangelical church has some serious questions to ask itself…the biggest one being,
“Does someone have to have a Republican view of politics to feel comfortable finding Jesus with you?”
Have we gotten ourselves so confused that we don’t even know the difference between presenting the Bible and the gospel to people and what our derived viewpoints are that are actually just Republican or Democrat?
Are we comfortable in creating a church culture where a political platform and leanings are so married together with what it means to follow Jesus, that if someone wants to find God and Jesus in your church it will be presented to them that they can’t really do that without accepting Republican beliefs too?
I suppose liberal and progressive churches can ask themselves the same question in reverse. I know many churches where Republicans coming into the church will find themselves inundated with so many leftist ideas of what it means to follow Jesus that they may well walk out of your church before they’ve really had a chance to know much more about Him. But this is not the norm as much as the conservative version of this, so I aimed this blog post more at my conservative friends and thus I ask:
Do we expect that as soon as someone begins to open their hearts to Jesus and finds His message and work attractive, that they will immediately adopt our church’s version of political leanings? Have we taken the typical salvation message and added to it our political leanings, thus essentially saying,
“Accept Christ into your heart, and please change your voting registration to Republican or go find other friends to fellowship with?”
(And how soon after ….or even before….accepting Christ are we assuming peoples’ political viewpoints should become the same as ours?)
I fear our emphasis on “politics emanating from our understanding of the Bible” has created a situation where, we’ve conflated teaching people to be Jesus’s disciples with teaching them they have to vote the platform of a particular party, or they may as well leave our churches because we don’t need Christians that think like THAT – that “other party’s” way of thinking.
Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians against factions and parties in the church. At that time the issue was parties arising over spiritual leaders in the church, not political ones. He called such party thinking “carnal” – fleshly, unspiritual. I don’t think he ever imagined the church would divide up over something even beyond that – earthly politics.
If his answer to that was “all things are yours” – the very name of this blog, in fact, is there something to be said for the idea that both the Republican parties and the Democratic parties in the USA might have ideas on BOTH sides of the fence that the church could see Jesus agreeing with? Perhaps ALL things really are ours? (After all, Jesus did ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, not an elephant. Ok, bad joke…)
That will take some really outside-the-box we’ve created for ourselves thinking. Until we can go there, let’s not forget that there is something to be said for creating a church culture that has something of this at its heart:
“And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:1-2)
Otherwise, we end up promoting one of the kingdoms of this world – the Republican kingdom (driving away all the Democrats from Jesus and our churches) or the Democrat kingdom (driving away all the Republicans from Jesus and our churches) – not to mention all the independents and Third Party folks among us too. All of these kingdoms are the kingdom of our God, and His Christ, Jesus – He’s at work in all of them, and owns all of them. So let’s learn to reflectively listen to the various perspectives represented by people in our society, and make sure the only thing that someone would be sick of if they decide to leave our churches, is Him… not our love affair with some party platform (or our hatred of it either.)
May 8, 2017 at 1:54 pm
I see this as an example of the above, that is, there seems to be 2 ways of doing moral calculations and the challenge is in seeing and then understanding the way you are not.
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May 8, 2017 at 2:52 pm
Amen!
One of the things with which I’m struggling is how we should understand comfort in church in light of politics. In a dualistic sense, it is entirely reasonable to ask for balance in approach. Reasonable people can objectively find a bit of both/and in many of our churches.
But with a standard built around feelings of comfort, what if this isn’t objectively true? Or what if a position of moderate both/and becomes the liberal position? We can see that our most liberal denominations in the country aren’t hippy enclaves, but actually balanced, representative groupings of the middle. What shall we make of the Republicans who don’t feel comfortable with the “liberal” politics of mainstream America?
I don’t expect you have THE answer. I’m sharing both my anxiety around church and politics and the very lived experience of getting feedback from Republican parishioners when I say it’s a tragedy every time a black person is killed or maybe the NRA’s encouraging that people retaliate with their guns is not what Jesus teaches. These aren’t Leftist statements, but reasonable appeals to a shared center. And yet they are interpreted by some as alienating. The Left/Right division is very out of proportion.
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May 8, 2017 at 3:06 pm
Drew,
It’s particularly a challenge for leadership. We don’t want to act like faith in Christ doesn’t inform our political leanings, but we want to leave room for others to see it differently. Many times when I’m explaining a position on a matter I will share various perspectives, and ultimately say, “this is the one I find the most resonance with, but I want to respect that people hold these other viewpoints because they lean more heavily on the idea of blah blah blah.” Most people can handle hearing someone passionate hold a different viewpoint than their own when we have respected their integrity in why they hold a differing viewpoint than us.
Leadership can take this a step farther – giving space for people with viewpoints other than theirs to share publically why they think differently, to create an atmosphere of respect and pluralism, even while saying, “Obviously I see this differently, but I wanted you to hear from our brother/sister as to why he/she thinks the way he/she does, so that we can be a stronger community for it.”
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May 8, 2017 at 3:06 pm
Church ought to be a sanctuary wherein we commune with God and address our spiritual needs with others of the Body. It is to be poisoned, allowing the pendulum swing, incessant bickering of the world’s factions to permeate the Body and replace Christ. I pray that your aunt’s views of spirituality will not be permanently marred by overzealous voters.
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May 8, 2017 at 4:50 pm
I’m a Republican, but really more of a libertarian. Trump wasn’t my first pick, but I really, really didn’t want Hillary. I did feel like people were twisting a lot of stuff to make Trump look really horrible, and it just wasn’t an honest picture of him.
I was in the US at the time of the election and I met a guy who kept going on and on about how horrible Trump was and how he hoped Hillary would win. I disagreed with him quite strongly. But I barely said a word, because I knew Jesus wanted to heal him of something. I knew that getting into a discussion with him about politics wasn’t going to be a fruitful endeavor. Why rob someone of a much-needed encounter with God over something they are going to disagree with you about anyways? And he ended up experiencing Jesus’ touch.
One of my family’s best friends was quite a Democrat. I guess she falls more in the place of being quite frustrated with both parties right now. She ordained me. But we honestly just usually avoid talking about certain political things, and we respect each other in spite of our different views.
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May 8, 2017 at 10:01 pm
If you look at Luke 6:27-38 Jesus left us guidance.
(1) Love your enemies.
(2) Do good to those who hate you.
(3) Bless those who curse you.
(4) Pray for those who mistreat you.
(5) Do not retaliate
(6) Give freely
(7) Treat others the way you want to be treated
If the church you are in, or the politicians you support, promote or engage in behaviour that goes against these teachings you should question them.
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May 9, 2017 at 4:43 am
I pastored a church that was conservative and fairly entrenched in the culture wars. I didn’t last long. These days I’m hiding out in a progressive mainline church. Still political but the emphasis on being welcoming and affirming tempers how in your face they get. I believe the Kingdom of God is at hand is a political statement against earthly kingdoms, but wow the church is so easily co-opted by partisan politics
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May 9, 2017 at 6:52 am
I am a Republican because I have that choice to be! Being more conservative and morally sound based on my Christian beliefs. If the Democratic Party fit more of who I am – I would be Democrat. Too bad there is such a wide separation in the beliefs. I have no choice but to align myself with the Repubician party.
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May 9, 2017 at 9:23 am
From across the Pond I can say it is frightening sometimes how often American culture is equated with Christianity. Things which are cultural become ‘biblical’ and that’s quite scary. I’m sure there are things in the UK that are cultural that Christians here do, but I don’t know of anything quite so dangerous as the equation of the Church and politics. Here in the UK I don’t know anything about my Christian friends’ political views. The only person with whom I discuss who I vote for (and only *after* the fact) is my husband. Politics does not belong in the pulpit and I would not go to any church that proclaimed any political stance whatsoever. It’s just wrong on so many levels!
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May 9, 2017 at 9:24 am
I worded that wrong – politics is a vitally important thing and Christians should be involved, but political alliance is what I take issue with, especially if it’s political alliance as directed by preacher, pastor or priest.
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April 20, 2019 at 4:23 am
I would suggest that while God is at work in all the kingdoms and systems of this world, they currently are under the rule of Satan, the prince of this world. He offered them to Jesus but Jesus refused him because his time to rule on this earth was not yet at hand. All of these earthly kingdoms and systems are not the kingdom of our God, and His Christ, Jesus. Yes, while he is at work in all of them, and is the rightful ruler of all of them his kingdom is not [yet] of this world until in the end when Satan is subdued and cast down. Focusing on politics left or right as the solution for all of our ills increasingly seems to me to be a distraction from Christ’s solution which he announced and introduced with, the gospel of His kingdom. The kingdoms and systems of this world are broken and fallen. Christ does inform our political understanding by putting these things, the things of this world, in proper perspective. All these earthly kingdoms and systems are destined to come to an end and be replaced by the Kingdom of God. Braying donkeys and trumpeting elephants in the church are such a distraction to the redemptive work of His kingdom!
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