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The old maxim "all politics is local" hasn't held true in the 2008 election season. Despite the potential for Democratic landslide victories in the Senate and House of Representatives, you hear little except the latest back-and-forth between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama. Republicans have tried desperately to localize each Congressional race and deflect attention from their unpopular President. But polls showing their incumbents in trouble suggest they have not succeeded.

Today's media climate works against politicians who want to focus on local issues. All-day cable news networks have cut into the demand for local news broadcasts. Struggling newspapers add commentary on national and world affairs, not more local reporting. Candidates for local races can't afford major media advertisements, and they labor to attract attention from the dwindling number of small-scale newspapers and radio stations. And yet local politicians are the ones who set sales-tax rates, allocate funds for road construction, run our schools, and oversee various other programs that shape our everyday lives.

Evangelicals have struggled to develop a coherent, comprehensive political philosophy. That problem manifests itself in local elections, where social issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion do not play a large role. Even left-leaning evangelicals' focal issues, including poverty relief and health coverage, typically play out on the national level. As a result, few voter guides circulated among evangelicals even bother to include local initiatives and candidates.

While evangelicals have grasped for theological principles to guide their political behavior, they have likewise searched for biblical clues to guide their ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church. Though the link between politics and ecclesiology may not be obvious, it is no coincidence that evangelicals stumble in both realms. In each case, evangelicals have neglected to properly care for what's right in front of them.

Evangelical neglect of the local church is a function both of history and theology. Historically, efforts to reform American Protestantism circumvented churches that had succumbed to theological error and evangelistic complacency. So after World War II, parachurch organizations proliferated. To this day, the ad-hoc movement is led not by its churches but by its seminaries, publishing houses, and campus ministries. Even in this megachurch era, many pastors cut their teeth in parachurch ministry and lead their churches like an evangelistic mission or social-service agency. By targeting specific demographic groups, they do not speak to their local communities as a whole.

But most evangelical churches are congregational, which suggests that conservative Protestants have a high view of the local church. After all, their forebears rebelled first against the Roman Catholic Church, and many later abandoned Protestant state churches. Lack of a denomination is no hindrance to them. The largest Protestant body, the Southern Baptist Convention, grants autonomy to local churches.

Yet the way evangelicals embody their theology today sometimes precludes a local focus. Evangelicals inherited from the Protestant Reformers a distinction between the visible (gathered) church and the invisible (universal) church. The Bible speaks of the church in both ways. Jesus Christ is the head of the body — that is, the church universal (Col. 1:18, 24). Through the church universal, the "manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places" (Eph. 3:10). But Paul also greeted the local church that met in the house of Priscilla and Aquila (Rom. 16:3-5), and addressed local churches in Rome, Laodicea, and Colossae.

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November (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52