Learning from the Past

Learning From The Past

In the early decades of the century, many evangelicals and fundamentalists were anything but passive. Rather, they were politically partisan with a vengeance. They were a prime force behind Prohibition, which evangelist Billy Sunday connected directly with salvation. In his famous one-hour, 40-minute sermon “Booze,” Sunday rhetorically asked listeners if they voted “for the saloon.” Yes? “Then you shall go to hell.”

Such connecting of salvation to a specific viewpoint could also be seen in the Scopes trial (1925). At issue for activist Christians was this: Could a person be a Christian and still believe man was created gradually, through a God-controlled process? To many, the answer was a clear no. Echoing Billy Sunday on Prohibition, the Reverend John Roach Straton bluntly stated the widely affirmed conviction that “any man who believes in evolution won’t be saved.” (In contrast to Straton were other evangelicals of impeccable credentials, such as the earlier generation’s Benjamin Warfield. He opposed blind-chance evolution, a form of naturalism that denied God’s place in his universe. But Warfield believed that some sort of process of development, guided by God, could square with Genesis.) In the Scopes trial, William Jennings Bryan and others took basically one position as the only possible Christian viewpoint, which left them open to embarrassing manipulation by journalist H. L. Mencken.

Eight years after the Scopes trial, in 1933, Prohibition was repealed. But the damage caused by extravagant statements, such as Sunday’s and Straton’s, was done. To many, evangelicalism had become a symbol of backwardness and mean pettiness. Disillusioned, evangelicals withdrew from cultural and political engagement.

We are not arguing that it was a mistake to support Prohibition (historians agree that it had some salutary effects), or to oppose Scopes. Nor are we arguing that the religious modernist was an imaginary bogeyman—he was flesh-and-blood reality and carried a flawed agenda.

The relevant point here is that some evangelicals absolutized contestable positions on Scopes and Prohibition; they completely identified God with their cause, and they blurred the line between human programs and divine principles. Whether the causes were right or wrong, they were not at the center of the gospel, and these Christians treated them as if they were. It is extravagant to say that opposition to Prohibition or to a particular view of Genesis 1 automatically destroys one’s salvation. Identifying salvation with one contestable position undercuts the responsiveness of many men and women who might otherwise have heard and accepted the gospel. The problem was aggravated by unchecked polemics.

Today’s polemics can be just as overblown. One best-selling religious author informed us recently that should “the liberals regain control of the Senate and White House in the coming election (they still control the House of Representatives), it will be all over for free elections by 1988.” A national Christian magazine’s front cover stated, “Ronald Reagan is lying about Nicaragua.” A Christian lobby, in a mailing ominously stamped “URGENT,” feared a Mondale coup would “turn America into Sodom and Gomorrah at the election polls on November 6, 1984.” Such statements can make evangelical political involvement appear hysterical.

Perils Of Partisanship

We must be careful not to repeat the mistakes of our predecessors in the twenties. An evangelical leader of liberal political persuasion was recently quoted in a national magazine to the effect that one cannot be Christian and Republican. On the other side, several fundamentalist and evangelical leaders have aligned themselves with Reagan Republicanism. The strong implication—which is sometimes everything but a direct assertion—is that one cannot be a true Christian and a Democrat. As a result of such assertions, the faith becomes a political football.

In fact, the church has only one thing to offer that no other institution on earth can provide: the gospel. If the church becomes too closely identified with any political program—no matter how grand—at worst it discredits the gospel (should the program prove wrong), and at best it topples the gospel from its transcendent place.

Navigating Tricky Waters

From the pulpit, the Word of God is proclaimed. We can be sure of it; we cannot be sure of our political opinions. Nor do we want the infallible gospel of Christ to be confounded with our fallible judgments. C. S. Lewis warned against clergy devising detailed political programs. “The clergy are those particular people within the whole Church who have been specially trained and set aside to look after what concerns us as creatures who are going to live for ever …,” he wrote. Much of the responsibility for working out the particulars falls to the laity. “The application of Christian principles, say, to trade unionism or education, must come from Christian trade unionists and Christian schoolmasters,” said Lewis, “just as Christian literature comes from Christian novelists and dramatists—not from the bench of bishops getting together and trying to write plays and novels in their spare time.”

This does not mean the gospel must be preached as having no relation to the everyday world. The kingdom of God is among us, not solely in heaven. The Christian gospel disturbingly challenges individuals and society. As Harvard historian Christopher Dawson, a devout Christian, wrote, “The world which is the natural enemy of the Church is not a moral abstraction, it is an historical reality which finds its embodiment in the empires and world cities of history.…”

But clergy (and politically active laity) need to distinguish between biblical imperatives on one hand, and their particular applications on the other. The imperatives are plain enough. In the words of 1974’s Lausanne Covenant, the church is called to “proclaim God’s love for a world of sinners and to invite all men to respond to [Christ] as Savior and Lord in the wholehearted personal commitment of repentance and faith.” This “message of salvation implies also a message of judgment upon every form of alienation, oppression and discrimination, and we should not be afraid to denounce evil and injustice wherever they exist.” So it is that, “The salvation we claim should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibilities.”

But the applications are not so plain. Were James Watt’s environmental policies, judged on Christian terms, a case of poor stewardship? Is the welfare state doing more harm than good to the impoverished? On these and literally hundreds of other questions, Christians hold a variety of positions.

How, then, are we to navigate these tricky waters? An efficient navigator keeps an eye on his compass, and the church needs always to keep an eye on the center of its gospel and its mission; again, it must distinguish imperatives from applications. Confusing the two alienates seekers of the all-important truth the church alone has to tell. It is one thing for the Holy Spirit to persuade a person that he or she is uniquely loved by Christ. Do we seriously expect the Spirit also to convict that person that the U.S. should never have relinquished the Panama Canal? Or again: To proclaim an imperative is to insist that a just society cares for its poor. An application is confused with the imperative when we say the gospel itself demands that we follow the economics of John Kenneth Galbraith.

Indeed, the further we move from the center of the gospel, the more proposed applications of the gospel we find. Classical Christians agree that Christ is to be understood as God enfleshed; but they disagree about what economic system is truest to all the imperatives of the Bible. Since statements of the clergy are so easily taken for what “the church” thinks, these applications—these more specific outworkings of the imperatives—are best left to individual Christian and parachurch group action, or to Christians working within the national political parties.

Of course, exceptions arise. Certain socio-political developments (such as slavery or nazism) are clearly evil, and demand an equally clear denuciation from the church as the church. We believe abortion on demand is currently just such a development, as is apathy about the possibility of nuclear holocaust.

A Matter Of Perspective

The church looks through a glass—however darkly—to a world beyond our own. Biblical revelation is multifaceted and profound, much more profound than suggested by bumper-sticker political slogans. With the perspective of the Bible, the Christian has incentive to seek justice and peace no matter how hard the struggle, and has genuine hope to offer the world no matter what the outcome.

With this perspective, Christians in politics should understand the complexity of human nature and of evil. This will help us avoid absolutizing our detailed applications of the gospel and, as a result, denouncing our political opponents as enemies of God’s very truth. Some politicians, like some members of any profession, may be radically evil. But many are sincerely trying to do what they believe right and are struggling as creatures motivated both by good and evil. So to pronounce an ordinary sinner anathema because he disagrees with a particular political program alienates the sinner, muddles the debate at hand, and benefits only the Devil.

Christians can do better than that. We can responsibly bear the gospel into all the world, political as well as private, and guard its essence at the same time. The gospel is like an iceberg made of pearl. We successfully see and live out only a tiny percentage of it, but we draw strength and hope from the massive, great rest of it, which extends into and remains hidden in heaven.

In this election year particularly, we do well to remember with Paul that the treasure of the gospel is borne in earthen vessels, proving all the more that “such transcendent power does not come from us, but is God’s alone” (2 Cor. 4:7).

In conclusion, because God calls us to a full-orbed response to the gospel, we will each want to apply biblical truth to every area, including the political. It is a step forward for evangelicals to recapture the spirit of Christians in the mid-1800s, who worked so hard to abolish child labor, protect orphans, and free slaves.

Yet our generation of evangelicals is new at political involvement. We have forgotten costly lessons learned by our forebears, and will make many mistakes. Political involvement is complex and dangerous, but that does not excuse us from it. The admission of that complexity and danger is, simply and realistically, a recognition of what it is to serve an ideal kingdom in a fallen world. “We have much to be forgiven,” said John Henry Newman. “Nay, we have the more to be forgiven the more we attempt. The higher our aims, the greater our risks.” And, it is fair to add, the greater the gain for Christ and his world.

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