Church & Politics - Compartmentalization
In the last few blog posts we have been discussing the relationship between democracy and the Christian faith and have found that it is more complicated than you might think it would be. On one hand, modern democracy's emphasis on human rights coincides beautifully wit the biblical concept of imago dei, the idea that all people are created in the image of God and, therefore, have inherent value. In fact, we can make (and have made) a strong argument that modern democracy would not exist (or at least, would have been much delayed) without the significant contributions of people of faith. These "God humanists" helped to lay the foundation for modern democracy. However, this does not mean that democracy and the Christian faith are the same thing. While they do share some values and aims, they also differ significantly. One of the key differences that we started exploring in last week's post is the concept of the separation between Church and state. This separation is an essential element of true democracy as it is necessary to safeguard the freedom of religion for its citizens. However, it contradicts the universal lordship of Jesus, his rightful claim to "all authority in heaven and on earth." In other words, for Christians there is (should be) no area of our lives that are not completely surrendered to the rule and reign of the risen King. True Christianity believes, in the words of Abraham Kuyper, that "there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!"
So, how are we to resolve this conflict between democracy and the Christian faith. Many Christians, particularly, though not exclusively, in the United States do so by insisting on a sort of unidirectional separation of Church and state. They endeavor, to keep their faith free of the corrosive influence of politics while, at the same time, seeking to make America into a Christian nation. In other words, they seek a separation of state from Church but not of Church from state. In this post, I want to briefly explore this first impulse, the desire to keep politics out of sacred spaces.
I find this to be one of the most fascinating and illuminating interactions between politics and the modern Church. I have heard countless Church-going people bemoan any whiff of politics in the Church, calling for pastors and church leaders to "keep politics out of the pulpit." Such people believe strongly in the "separation of Church and state," and, with the best of intentions, strive to compartmentalize their lives into neat categories: not emotional, physical, political, spiritual, and so on. The problem, of course, is that Jesus made no such efforts at compartmentalization. This concept of a spirituality separate from the rest of life would have been foreign to Jesus and his contemporaries. In the Jewish way of thinking, a human being was not a divide creature but an integrated whole. In fact, the Greek word, used throughout the New Testament, that we translate as anxiety, comes from a root that literally means, "a divided mind" and carries the connotations of a person who is split between two worlds or torn apart (no doubt a fruitful discussion for another day). In contrast, the Hebrew word at the heart of Jewish spirituality, that we often translate as "soul," by which we mean the spiritual part of ourselves (as distinct from the other parts), does not mean that at all. Instead, it means, "the whole person," or, in modern psychological parlance, "the integrated self" (see Robert Alter's unique translation of the Old Testament for an attempt to rescue nefesh from "spiritual" obscurity and to place it firmly at the center of our whole existence). In fact, I have a feeling that, if we were to encounter Jesus of Nazareth in 1st Century Nazareth and ask him about his "spiritual" life, he might be confused. "You mean, 'my life?'" he would ask.
The compartmentalized self that we espouse and attempt (with very little success) is a product of Greek philosophy, not a biblical worldview. According to Scripture, a human being is not a collection of parts but an integrated whole. In the Western world (deeply influenced by the Greeks), we, who recognize the spiritual, tend to view ourselves as "a body with a soul," but the Bible paints a much more nuanced and compelling picture. According to Scripture, the body is not a vessel that holds a soul. Instead, body and soul are inextricably woven together in a vastly complex tapestry so that a human is, by design, a creature native to both the physical and the spiritual world, created to live in both simultaneously.
The full implications of this are far reaching and well beyond the scope of this current conversation, but for the sake of understanding the influence that politics exerts on the Church, it is crucial that we understand that the politics of the world we live in will and must have influence on the Church. This is not wrong. It is not something to be avoided. It is how we are designed. Politics is about the ordering of human existence, about creating systems and structures wherein these physical/spiritual beings that we call human beings can flourish as God designed us to. In other words, it is as task that, like us, is both physical and spiritual. Our goal, then, should not be to separate our spiritual lives from our political lives but rather to integrate the two, to learn how to view our politics through a spiritual lens. Or put differently, we ought to seek not to separate our political selves from our spiritual selves but to weave them together so our earthly citizenship reflects our heavenly citizenship.
This is what Jesus did. This is how he lived. A careful examination of the Gospels will reveal that Jesus was not only aware of the political realities of his day but also concerned himself with them. Now, this does not mean that he engaged them in the same way that everyone else did. Far from it! Jesus' heavenly citizenship fundamentally transformed the way he interacted with earthly politics. He did not do politics like everyone else did, but he did do politics. The popular idea that Jesus was a spiritual guru concerned only with spiritual things while all the rest of the people he lived with and cared about were deeply impacted by the political realities of their world is patently absurd. The Gospel that Jesus preached and lived and himself was is not simply spiritual Good News. It is Good News for the real world, for real people in their real lives. He came not to rescue us from the kingdoms of this would but transform us in them and to transform them through us.
Jesus cared about politics. Jesus cares about politics. And he wants his people to care as well. He wants his people to engage in politics as he did, with their heavenly identities, affirmed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, leading the way and shaping their earthly citizenships.
Of course, this is easier said than done. The reason so many attempt a total separation of spirituality and politics is that it is much simpler and tidier to do so (at least, that how it feels to us). We think that separating the two will preserve the purity of our spiritual lives, keeping them from the taint of politics, when we do so, we miss an opportunity to bring holiness into the polluted spaces. Isolation was never the answer. Jesus didn’t avoid the unclean. Instead, he touched them and, in doing so, made them clean, made them whole. He is inviting us to do the same in every area of life, including—God forbid—politics.
That said, the integration of faith and politics is fraught with complexity and danger, as we will discuss in next week’s blog post. Stay tuned!
