God Help Us

by David Kuo

At the same time, a new generation of politically active Christians is emerging with a different agenda than the Christian Coalition of yesterday. This new group of believers is still socially conservative; abortion remains a moral blight on America to them. So too, gay marriage is often beyond the limits of acceptance. At the same time, however, this younger group is just as likely to see personal intervention, rather than legal activism, as the best way to confront abortion and be perfectly comfortable socializing with their gay friends. Moreover, their politics do not begin and end with these social issues. The environment, care for the poor, eradication of poverty, and the fight against global HIV/ AIDS are equally important. And it’s no secret that this new generation is being actively courted by the Democratic party.

Finally, we are witnessing a period of electoral politics where the faith lives of our political candidates are being thrown open in unprecedented ways. The manner in which Senator Obama’s and Governor Palin’s theological beliefs were both caricatured and “explored” could portend a disturbing trend in which a candidate’s church is as much a political issue as his or her professional career. So, what do all of these developments mean for believers as we seek a richer understanding of the proper role Christians and politics?

WHAT DO WE REALLY MEAN?

Let me tell you a story about a man named Newt. One of my earliest grown-up jobs was working as a staffer on a presidential commission exploring whether women should be allowed into military combat. There, I met Newton Minow, accomplished attorney, noted businessman, civic leader and, years earlier, President John F. Kennedy’s FCC chairman. Much of his personal, legal, and business success, he told staffers over lunch one day, was because of his college major: semantics. Most misunderstandings and conflict, Minow noted, were rooted in language, in definition. This is true between people and it is true between nations. His field of study had taught him the importance of linguistic precision and definition — of asking, “What do you really mean?” He joked that it was also what allowed him forty years of blissfully happy marriage.

So, as we roll up our sleeves on this topic of Christian political engagement, we need to start by asking Newt’s question, “What do we really mean?” It is vital because any discussion about the implications of Christian political involvement has to begin with a clear definition of the question we are attempting to address. Without it we face a topic so vast that it mocks our attempts to approach it and defies our ability to answer it in any satisfying way.

Let me start by suggesting what we do not mean. Sometimes, when people discuss the role of Christians in politics, they are really talking about the legal right for Christians to be involved in politics. Is it legally permissible for devout, ardent Christians to be involved in the legal process or has the essence of church/state doctrine somehow curtailed that right?

This answer is a very easy one: yes. There is no “wall” separating Christians and political engagement. Christians have the same rights and opportunities to engage in politics that all other Americans have. There is nothing in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or historical precedent that precludes Christians from any and every form of political participation. Even a cursory review of American history underscores this point. America was a nation founded in religious liberty: the idea of equality and liberty granted by God and given to humankind. Whether we are a “Christian nation” is a matter for another discussion. That we are a nation established and run by Christians (broadly defined) is not a matter of any interesting debate save for arguments about the nature of the theology that these Christians professed. But this legal question isn’t what we really mean when we talk about proper Christian political engagement. Neither is the next question.

Sometimes, discussions about the role of Christians and politics become an electoral question — is it politically feasible for Christians to be involved in politics? Does Christian political involvement ultimately hold any influence in elections?

Limiting the discussion to post-Vietnam America, the answer is clearly yes. Christians, especially conservative Christians, have become the single most powerful voting bloc in American politics. Former Christian Coalition head, Ralph Reed, has said that the movement of Christian conservatives in politics is rivaled only by the influence of organized labor in post-World War Two America. Failure to mobilize this community has traditionally meant almost certain electoral defeat locally and nationally.

Between 1980 and 2008, conservative Christians have helped ensure a conservative Republican in the Oval Office for twenty of those twentyeight years. They also helped ensure the “Republican Revolution” of 1994 and were key to giving Republicans outright control of both houses of Congress for most of 1996-2008. And without the conservative Christian vote, it is unlikely that Republican presidents would have been in a position to appoint the large majority of recent Supreme Court justices. Similarly, it is a matter beyond debate that this same movement empowered the election of hundreds of Republican governors, state legislators, school board members, and city council members from Walawala to West Palm Beach to Wasilla. From a political perspective, the fact that Christian conservatives have been controversial is relatively immaterial. They have been successful and that is the political bottom line. But electoral efficacy isn’t what we really mean when it comes to Christians and politics.

Sometimes, the discussion about Christians and politics isn’t legal or political, but moral. Should Christians use political power to eradicate moral wrongs? And isn’t that vitally important?

It is very hard to say no to either question. Any historical examination of Christian political engagement during, say, the last 150 years, reveals a group of people who have helped lead the fight to abolish the inhumanity of slavery, battle for women’s right to vote, conquer moral scourges like child labor, champion civil rights for black Americans, call for an end to the Vietnam War, and oppose the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade to condone almost limitless abortion. Christian political leadership has been a force of undeniable moral good. But like the legal and political questions before them, the moral question isn’t quite what we are after either.

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