A Christian Approach to Politics
I said at the end of my last post that I believe a Christian approach to politics is a politics of love. I don’t mean that in any simplistic way. I don’t mean love instead of justice, or love instead of rules or structures and institutions. For there to be a loving home there has to be a physical structure, along with rules with consequences, and times we agree to be together. But rules are never the point. Nor are schedules, including dinner times and curfews. Love is the point.
My last post was about a commonsense approach to politics, focusing on complexity, compromise and the common good. While a Christian approach to politics aligns well with a commonsense approach to politics, it isn’t dependent upon the latter. After reading my last post you may have thought, “Makes sense. Trouble is, that doesn’t describe our current politics. So what’s plan B?”
For believers, a Christian approach to politics is always plan A. In other words, a politics of love doesn’t depend upon a commonsense approach. That’s the beauty of it. Nothing has to be put in place first for us to practice it. We can start practicing a politics of love as of now.
Love isn’t easy to define. Like evil, you know it when you see it. The Bible focuses on particular events – like the creation of a beautiful world, a nation of slaves being rescued from a major superpower, God becoming human, Jesus healing and feeding people.
But for Christians, love is ultimately defined by a particular event called “the cross.” Before Jesus’ death, no one would have thought to associate love with such a grotesque instrument of torture. I won’t overwhelm you with a lot of biblical texts, but let me mention a couple – John 3:16 and 1 John 3:16:.
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
So what does a Christian approach to politics look like – assuming that it’s a politics of love? If a commonsense approach to politics is about complexity, compromise and the common good, I suggest that a Christian approach includes compassion, confession and communion.
Compassion
Life isn’t fair. Not everyone plays fair, and some unfair stuff just happens. Some people have more advantages than others because of where they were born (e.g. the United States vs. Bangladesh, Israel vs. Gaza, Beverly Hills vs. Compton); other factors include gender, race, ethnicity, age, family of origin, IQ, physical health, mental health, physical abilities and disabilities, talent, quality of education, and who you know. No economic system is entirely fair. No political system is fair. Life isn’t fair.
Life is also hard. M. Scott Peck began his New York Times best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled, with the simple statement, “Life is difficult.” It has sold 7 million copies since first published in 1978. Because life isn’t fair, life is harder for some people than others.
The core principle of the gospel is that all of us have a responsibility to help one another, to help carry each other’s burdens. For Jesus, this wasn’t just a duty but something that grew out of his compassion for people. And it was universal. He didn’t just have compassion for good people who were hungry or sick, people who hadn’t screwed up. In fact, he seemed particularly drawn to people who had. The religious elite criticized him for eating with tax collectors and sinners.
Conversely, Jesus’ death wasn’t just for those who’d obviously messed up their lives. He died because everyone was messed up. Everyone was afflicted with this disease called sin (i.e. self-centeredness). Everyone needed God’s forgiveness and redemption. Everyone needed help.
I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago by a biblical scholar who’s written a book about immigration. He said we’d be surprised at how many biblical characters were immigrants (including Jesus and his family). While acknowledging that immigration policy is extremely complicated, he said that a Christian conversation about immigration always needs to begin with compassion. Even the Hebrew Torah affirms this. In the same chapter where we’re told to love our neighbor as ourselves, we read:
The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:34).
Does this mean we should have open borders? I’m not saying that. Love requires healthy institutions and structures. And as we know in our personal relationships, love sometimes requires boundary setting. Love can be complicated, and border policy is especially complex.
But a Christian approach to border policy, like a Christian approach to politics in general, begins with compassion. It doesn’t start with fear. Nor does it begin with law. It begins with compassion. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” While love assumes the need for rules, the rules eat the service of love. Ultimately truth is both sturdier and more flexible than laws.
Speaking of grace and truth, it’s interesting how few people are aware of how important immigrants are to our economy. The biblical scholar I mentioned said that our economy actually needs a lot more immigrants than we’re letting in. The post-pandemic labor shortage demonstrated that. Jerome Powell, head of the Federal Reserve Board, recently said that while he had no opinion to offer about border policy, it was the large influx of immigrants after the pandemic that as much as anything helped our economy rebound and avoid the recession everyone was expecting. In February, the Congressional Budget Office said the surge in immigration is projected to boost GNP by $7 trillion over the next 10 years. (No, that’s not a typo.) Our antiquated, under-resourced border system is a disaster, putting vulnerable border towns at risk of constant chaos. I don’t claim to be an expert, but it seems that part of the truth right now is that politics are getting in the way of a solution that combines grace with truth, compassion with healthy boundaries.
During Jesus’ ministry, the Pharisees were the law and order guys. It was the law and order guys that didn’t get Jesus. He didn’t fit into any framework that made sense to them. He was too loosey-goosey with the law, too easy on trespassers. The Pharisees expected the coming Messiah to do away with law-breakers; Jesus forgave them instead, and even broke some of the rules himself. And even though he came to establish a new covenant, he refused to create a new set of rules, even though he clearly considered many of the old laws obsolete. His body of teaching contains parables and hyperbolic instructions that can’t be reduced to cookie-cutter rules. The guiding principle and symbol for this new covenant would be the cross: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”
The historical record is clear: it was the law and order guys that had Jesus killed.
And Jesus loved them. It was especially about his enemies that Jesus said on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” Christian compassion isn’t just directed towards the disadvantaged, but towards those in power as well. Jesus viewed both privilege and poverty as forms of bondage. He saw that privilege was more likely than poverty to keep some from entering into his upside down kingdom. He saw how many political and religious leaders were trapped by their wealth, rules, theologies, status, power and privilege. Jesus came to set everyone free – not just those who knew they needed rescuing.
This was part of the moral and political genius of people like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. They had compassion for those in power. Their methods were designed to set everyone free, not just the obvious victims of society’s injustices.
Literary scholar and social commentator Alan Jacobs recently outlined what he saw as one of the most essential truths for understanding our current culture. He wrote about how many Americans don’t seem all that interested in data or understanding opposing views. Rather, “What many people want, what they earnestly and passionately desire, is to hate their enemies.” Contempt has become the preferred attitude rather than compassion.
Kristie May, a local journalist named to this year’s top 25 Under 35 list by Editor & Publisher Magazine, offered the following advise to young journalists:
Lead with empathy… Especially if you’re a leader in the newsroom, but even if you’re not, lead with a deep understanding and awareness of the emotions, perspectives and needs of others. This will also make you an exceptional journalist.
Empathy will also go a long way toward helping us become exceptional citizens.
The following is taken from a recent article by Peter Wehner, an evangelical Christian and speechwriter for three Republican presidents:
In his 1997 book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Philip Yancey writes of asking strangers, “When I say the words ‘evangelical Christian’ what comes to mind?” He mostly heard political descriptions, and not once did he hear a description redolent of grace.
Yancey wrote:
Grace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it and I am one of those people. I think back to who I was – resentful, wound tight with anger, a single hardened link in a long chain of ungrace learned from family and church. Now I am trying in my own small way to pipe the tune of grace. I do so because I know, more surely than I know anything, that any pang of healing or forgiveness or goodness I have ever felt comes solely from the grace of God. I yearn for the church to become a nourishing culture of that grace.
Wehner goes on to say:
It is that “culture of grace” that can transform people’s hearts, and in the process renew not just the Church but also American society and American politics. But a “culture of grace” does not mean Christians should fail to criticize what deserves criticism or stay silent in the face of wrongdoing. Christians are not called to be passive in the face of injustice and maliciousness.
Confession
A Christian approach to politics relies not only on compassion but confession. I mean confession in two different but related ways: confessing what we believe to be true, and confessing when we’ve been wrong.
It’s fine and right that we be clear about what we believe, with accompanying facts, data and arguments. It’s even okay to try to persuade others – as long as we’re also open to persuasion ourselves. If we’re going to confess what we believe, we must be willing to confess when there are facts or arguments that show we’re off track. Being confessional in both these ways is essential for healthy public discourse and a politics of love.
Whether we’re Christians or not, we should have the freedom to confess what we believe. What’s definitely not Christian is trying to force our views on others, or even imply that we speak for everyone in our tribe. Like I said in my last post, most issues are really complex. The Bible itself is complex. It can be used to justify almost any position (e.g. slavery). The Bible shepherds us toward wisdom, taking people where they are and moving them in the direction of greater love and liberty. In that regard, it’s a story more than a rulebook. Every verse or chapter and even book needs to be read in the context of where it's happening in the story. There’s a reason Christians call the first two thirds of the Bible the Old Testament and the last third the New Testament. There’s both continuity and discontinuity between the two. Like I said, the Bible shepherds us towards wisdom. It’s still doing that in my life.
The apostle Paul, one of the Bible's authors, writes:
Knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know (1 Corinthians 8:1b-2).
One of the things Christians should always confess is that they're still learning. Whether or not there is something called “absolute truth,” we should be humble about our ability to know and describe it. We should also be humble enough to confess when we’ve been wrong.
I once heard about a Bible teacher who told his students at the beginning of his courses that at least 20% of the course material would likely be inaccurate. He just didn’t know which 20%.
During my “wellness check” this past month, I asked my doctor why he (and my insurance company) didn’t call it a physical. He said studies have shown that complete physicals aren’t very helpful in identifying health issues and aren’t cost effective. He “confessed” that about 50% of what he learned in medical school was based on unexamined assumptions rather than hard science.
I’m pretty sure that being president of the United States has to be one of the most difficult jobs, if not the most difficult job in the world. I’ve heard political scientists say it’s a job that’s become pretty much impossible, which I think means it’s impossible not to make mistakes. I appreciated when one candidate said a few years ago, “I guarantee you that if I’m elected I will make mistakes, but I hope to learn from those mistakes.” His opponent said, “I fully think apologizing is a great thing, but you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize sometime in the distant future if I’m ever wrong.” He also said he was a Christian, but admitted he’d never asked God for forgiveness.
It’s because of our own limited knowledge and checkered past that Christians shouldn’t be afraid of either secularism or pluralism. Too many religious wars have been fought over doctrinal issues. Our own Civil War had a doctrinal component – does God intend some people to be slaves? We should be able to state our beliefs without shouting them, and encourage others to share theirs. It’s likely that we have a lot to learn especially from others’ experiences.
This doesn’t mean we always confess what we believe. There is a time to speak and a time to be still. Sometimes it's enough to raise questions.
Jesus came "full of grace and truth." Are we able to show grace to others even when we’re convinced they’re wrong – even before they admit it, whether or not they ever admit it, and even when we see their actions hurting others? This is at the heart of the gospel and part of what it means to take up our cross and follow Jesus.
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
Both grace and truth require courage, especially in circles where our perspective is not likely to be appreciated by family and friends or people in authority. This kind of courage cost Dietrich Bonhoeffer his life when, as a pastor and theologian, he spoke and took action against the Nazi regime in Germany. This familiar quote from Bonhoeffer is worth repeating:
Silence in the face of evil is evil itself: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.
Most of us have heard of Alexei Navalny’s recent death and likely murder. Navalny was perhaps the most-recognized anti-Putin dissident in the world, and he is now one of many Putin enemies to end up “suddenly dead.” He survived poisoning in 2020, recuperated in Europe, and ultimately went back to his homeland despite knowing what he would face. Speaking of his dissent and his willingness to bear its consequences, Navalny repeatedly referenced his Christian faith:
The fact is that I am a Christian, which usually sets me up as an example for constant ridicule in the Anti-Corruption Foundation, because mostly our people are atheists, and I was once quite a militant atheist myself. But now I am a believer, and that helps me a lot in my activities because everything becomes much, much easier.
Specifically, Navalny said, he was motivated by the words of Jesus: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6).
"I’ve always thought that this particular commandment is more or less an instruction to activity,” Navalny said. “And so, while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back or about what I’m doing. It’s fine, because I did the right thing.
"On the contrary, I feel a real kind of satisfaction,” he said. “Because at some difficult moment I did as required by the instructions and did not betray the commandment."
Martin Luther King Jr. was another Christian leader who refused to be silent in the face of evil – including when it was practiced by his fellow Christians. Today he is almost universally revered, but in his own time he was criticized for suggesting that race relations was a spiritual issue that needed to be openly confronted.
It’s interesting to me how much we admire our past heroes for being courageous and prophetic, while hoping our current spiritual leaders will remain silent and unpolitical.
We forget that courage is almost always costly, and that it is not only the leaders who pay the cost, but the rest of us – their families, friends and parishioners. I suppose, that's what we're really afraid of.
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me,” said Jesus.
Sometimes it’s clear when we are to confess what we believe, especially in the face of blatant evil and injustice. But I think we should be cautious about assuming all our colleagues and friends should do the same, or to the same degree. People need pastors as well as prophets. Sometimes it works for leaders to be both. The body of Christ consists of people with different gifts and callings. At the same time, there may be situations so dire and threatening that even leaders with the most pastoral hearts will need to speak prophetically – because it’s the most pastoral thing to do. The souls of their people or the soul of the church at large may be at stake.
For me, Martin Luther King Jr. is a great example of someone who was able to bring together grace and truth, compassion and confession. King said:
It seems to me that the first thing that the individual must do in order to love his enemy is to develop the capacity to forgive with a naturalness and ease.
I confess that it’s been difficult for me to discern how much to talk about the coming election. It feels to me like one of those times when Christian leaders may need to speak. I’m not judging those who are choosing not to. But our current situation feels that dire, that threatening to me.
Three former Trump White House female staffers – Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews – have recently been warning that Trump’s reelection would pose a danger to our democracy. Former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin said, “Fundamentally a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it,” adding that the American public witnessed Trump trying to “steal a democratic election.” She was in the White House when advisors told Trump there was no credible evidence that the election had been stolen. All three women were present when on January 6 the president watched the armed riot on television and waited 187 minutes to tell his supporters to stand down (which they immediately did). One hundred and eighty seven minutes, while 140 police officers were being injured and people were dying.
“That just shows he’s willing to break every barrier to get into power and stay in power,” Griffin added.
I watched every minute of the January 6 congressional hearings, enthralled, and appalled at what our former president allowed and encouraged. Almost all of the testimony, given under oath, came from Republicans, including many who worked in the White House. The visual and verbal evidence is comprehensive and damning. There is no persuasive counter-narrative.
When Trump was elected in 2016, he didn’t know what he was doing, and surrounded himself with people representing a relative variety of perspectives. That won’t happen next time. He will only be looking for cabinet and staff members, military and government officials who will do his bidding. He's vowed to take revenge on his enemies. He openly admires dictators like Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. I would love to be wrong. I hope and pray that our institutions will be strong enough to keep him in check if he’s elected. But too many people I respect, people with decades of government and political experience, including people who served in the Trump White House and as members of his cabinet, are sounding the alarm.
So in this and previous posts I've tried to confess what I believe to be true, based on countless articles, podcasts and books involving both progressive and conservative experts in their fields. Some are clearly secular, many are unabashedly Christian.
But I also need to make the other kind of confession. I recognize that being a political junkie (and I choose that term intentionally) has come at a spiritual price at times. Sometimes it’s been hard to turn this part of me off, both within my head and in my conversations with people. (I see my wife nodding.) Sometimes I’ve been too intense and argumentative. Compassion has at times been in short supply. I’ve not always balanced truth with grace.
A big part of why I’m writing this article is to try to figure out what part I should allow politics to play in my life as a follower of Jesus, and how I want to approach it going forward. I’ve judged Christian nationalists for making an idol of our country, but I’ve made our democracy an idol too. I love my country and it grieves me to see all that's being threatened. I love the church even more, and it saddens me to see parts of it becoming compromised and captured by demagoguery and transactional politics. But I've also been trying to remind myself of this:
For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come, through him then let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of lips that confess his name (Hebrews 13:14-15).
I confess and believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and that someday there will be a New Creation. Until then, I can’t expect or demand that any city or country be a “lasting city,” including my own country.
Communion
Family systems theory talks about the difficulty of staying differentiated while remaining connected. In other words, our tendency is either to be honest with people while holding them at arms length, or to be inauthentic in order to stay close. Confessing what we believe while staying connected can feel like trying to inhale and exhale at the same time. Something in our brain tells us we have to choose between them.
Our little house church includes in our weekly worship a time for corporate and personal confession. One of the things I appreciate about a written prayer of confession is that it gives us the opportunity to own and identify with not only our own but each other’s sins. It says we’re in this together.
When the prophet Isaiah found himself in the heavenly throne room, he cried out, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
The prophet Jeremiah wrote:
We have sinned against the Lord our God,
both we and our ancestors;
from our youth till this day
we have not obeyed the Lord our God.
Practicing a politics of love means we don't try to distance ourselves from the faults and mistakes of those around us, including the sins of past generations.
I have a difficult enough time owning up to my own faults without having to own up to the faults of others in my spiritual tribe or country, much less the faults of past Christians and Americans. After all, I didn’t own any slaves. I wasn’t one of the state troopers and other law enforcement officers who on March 7 (the date I’m writing this post) 60 years ago met unarmed marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas, fracturing John Lewis’ skull and beating other protesters unconscious. I didn't pummel Capitol police on January 6.
I suppose what we’re talking about here is humility. Like it or not folks, this is us. Whatever we decide this next November, we will have decided it, whether or not the person who’s elected is someone I voted for.
Jesus didn’t have any faults to confess, but he identified himself with sinful humanity anyway. He wasn’t just God’s representative, he was ours, both Son of God and Son of Man. He didn’t spare himself from experiencing the consequences of our irrational choices. In fact, he offered to undergo the ultimate consequence for us. This started already at his baptism. John’s baptism was a baptism for the forgiveness of sins. By being baptized, Jesus was choosing to identify with sinners rather than cling to his own innocence. This was the heart of his mission.
The Roman governor Pilate attempted to literally wash his hands of the responsibility for Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus did just the opposite. He refused to wash his hands of the horrible things human beings do to one another. He never talked about his innocence or his sinlessness. When someone addressed him as “Good teacher,” he responded: “Who is good but God alone?” He said he came not to condemn but to save; to identify with and die for the sins of the world rather than disavow any association with the likes of us.
Jesus became one of us, and still is. As the ascended Lord, he’s still human. He still bears the marks of the cross. He said, “Whatever you’ve done to one of the least of these my sisters and brothers, you’ve done to me.”
Jesus told a parable about a Samaritan who comes across a Jew who has been beaten, robbed, and left for dead on the side of a dangerous road. After a priest and a Levite both ignore the man, the Samaritan attends to his wounds, places him on his donkey, and puts him up at an inn at his own expense.
Jesus said, “That’s how you need to live.”
At the time, Samaritans and Jews despised each other – like a number of groups in our own country right now. The priest and Levite were afraid of compromising their religious laws and principles by approaching a man who might be either dead or of another race The kind of person they were trying to avoid ended up being the kind of person Jesus says to emulate.
I’ve known people who have political views that are completely at odds with my own that have sacrificially loved people in ways I seem to only be able to preach about. There are people whose theology is different from mine, who are just plain better people than I am.
We’re in this together. There’s no clear division between saints and sinners. People in my tribe whose political beliefs I believe are putting our country and church at risk, are still my people. We’re still sisters and brothers. And all of us are children of God. Christ died for all of us. He made our sins his sins, his righteousness our righteousness, his future our future. I’m a Christian first, and I’m an American...well, it’s somewhere on the list. But I’m still an American, and will still be after November. God’s way of judging nations and his own people is almost always by simply allowing them to experience the consequences of their actions. Some people call it tough love. I pray that my love for my fellow believers and Americans will hang tough, no matter what happens in November, and that I will be willing to share the consequences grace-fully.
There is so much more that all of us have in common than distinguishes us from one another. And the differences matter. Sometimes they are a matter of life and death, like for the people in Gaza and Ukraine and Sudan, and were for Israelis on October 7. Like they are for our democracy.
Communion is the word many Christians use when talking about a meal that is otherwise referred to as the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist. It refers not only to our communion with God but our communion with one another. The “we” that participate normally includes a wide cross-section of people, people who wouldn’t normally show up at the same event, much less break bread together. (I’ve heard rumors that at some of these gatherings both Republicans and Democrats eat from the same loaf and even from the same cup!)
Compassion, confession, communion. Three words that, for me, help get at a Christian approach to politics. You might call it a cruciform approach to politics, informed and formed by the cross of Christ. May God, in his mercy, grant me grace and discernment as I try to practice all three ways of loving leading up to November and beyond.