God Help Us

by David Kuo

“...a burden hit me that would only shake me to my knees — I prayed and wept for our nation. Never has my heart been so broken before God. I literally interceded for [John McCain and Sarah Palin] who do not deserve all the hate against them. The GOD-Haters are going to try everything to stop them, but they will not succeed! God is not pleased with the ‘bashing’ in the news of this ‘Anointed’ person. He has called her for this time!”
-email from a pastor, October 2008

“As I stood (holding an Obama sign with a “Believers for Obama” bumper sticker affixed to it) at a major intersection, I felt the realization that Obama was going to win. I was praising God and making declarations, in the name of Jesus. I kept saying it is all about Jesus & the Kingdom of God. Suddenly, I felt so very humbled to be a part of God’s plan for our hope & future. And to be a part of a prayer team for such a time as this! God is so good!!! The naysayers (including my own daughter, sonin- law & fellow church members) will see the great & mighty things that God is going to do.”
-email from a pastor, November 2008

Two years ago I wrote a book about faith and politics based on my own experience of mixing the two things as casually as water and ice in a glass. My goal with the book was not to minimize the civic and political responsibilities that fall on the shoulder of every citizen, regardless of faith. It was, instead, an attempt to remind Christians of the vital importance of distinguishing our politics from our faith — distinguishing, as Augustine did, the “city of man” from the “city of God.” As he put it, “All earthly cities are vulnerable. Men build them and men destroy them. At the same time there is the City of God which men did not build and cannot destroy and which is everlasting.” Christians, above all, need to remember the difference between the two. This is not an easy thing to do when a country is dealing with war, economic catastrophe, social pathologies, and other things that go bump in the night. But it is vital if we are to really be Jesus’ transformational church.

After the flurry of activity around the book, I took a bit of a retreat. Rather than dig into the 2008 election cycle I stayed mostly on the outside, writing about it only occasionally as I focused on other things for a season. When I considered readdressing the topic of faith and politics, my confidence that I could knit together some previously written thoughts was high. But the effort has been far more challenging than I had anticipated. So much has happened in the past two years — both personally and nationally — that I eventually realized retreading anything old would be pointless.

Personally, I have completed twenty-three rounds of chemotherapy for a chronic — read: not currently life threatening — brain tumor. While my weight gain and the copious amounts of my unruly hair testify to the fact that this is not your grandfather’s chemo, the monthly regimen still took a physical, emotional, and spiritual toll.

It also reshaped my perspective. My monthly drug “period,” as I liked to call it, was a bit of a “thin place” — the term Celtic Christians used for those places or moments where the veil between heaven and earth was lifted or made thinner. I’d like to think that those experiences granted me a bit more wisdom. Wisdom that I hope can be brought to bear on this topic. Wisdom to know how temporal this life is and how near the next one is.

Nationally, and more significantly, during the last two years we have seen the existing dialogue on Christians and politics change because of a host of developments. Consider these:

The fall of Ted Haggard, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, but more significantly, founder and head of New Life Church in Colorado Springs
The rise of Jim Wallis and the so-called “religious left”
The rapid development of the “emerging church” movement
The deaths of Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy, evangelical and Christian right political stalwarts
The historic unpopularity of President Bush, one of the most evangelical presidents in American history
The lack of a Christian conservative organization to rally evangelicals to the polls (no Christian Coalition or Moral Majority)
The numerous and often contradictory political proclamations of James Dobson
The dissection of Barack Obama’s theology and church affiliation within the context of a political race
A similar dissection of Sarah Palin’s theology during the final ninety days of the presidential race
Democratic efforts to bolster the “faith vote.”

Taken as a whole these events suggest a slow but dramatic reformation of Christian political activism unlike anything we have seen in at least a generation. What kind of reformation? It is still early, but the broad outlines seem to be emerging.

Conservative Christians remain a potent, but increasingly unorganized, political entity. No one has stepped up to replace the Moral Majority or the Christian Coalition on a national level. This may remain true for the indefinite future as many evangelicals are cutting back on their engagement in the wake of their spiritual embrace of George W. Bush, not only as a president, but as a sort of pastor-in-chief.

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