High-Power Politics

While the Bible does not ordain a specific foreign policy, Christians can still provide insight and wisdom.

Here’s a term we haven’t heard much lately: Kremlin watcher. That’s what the media used to call experts on the Soviet Union. Now when a reporter needs a quote, practically everyone is an expert. It is hard to find someone who hasn’t made the pilgrimage to Red Square; and upon returning, everyone seems to have sound-bite-sized answers to the Eastern Bloc’s problems.

Who can blame us for rushing to the aid of our neighbors? But as initial excitement gives way to the delicate issues of autonomy, economics, and the role of the church, more careful thinking may be in order.

To start, we need to temper our desire to help Soviet and Eastern European believers with an awareness of both past experience and present realities. Let’s not forget the rich Christian heritage of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Seventy years of Marxist-Leninist ideology has indeed inflicted deep wounds, but even oppression has its advantages: The believing communities may be small, but they are not weak.

Next, Christians need to begin thinking about this region politically as well as spiritually. Aside from a collective concern for persecuted believers everywhere, we have tended to view the Cold War and various Third World proxy wars as inevitable events in a fallen world. Our concern for the soul of Marxism’s prisoners has seldom extended to the political realm other than to lob verbal broadsides at communism. Because political activism has never been (and should never be) the primary ministry of the church, Christians in general—and evangelicals in particular—have tended to sit out the foreign policy discussions related to U.S.-USSR relations.

Those days may be over. Responding to President Bush’s general call for dialogue on the subject of superpower relationships, Sen. Mark Hatfield, widely respected both for his Christian commitment and political savvy, has laid out a plan for better days at home and abroad (see “Agenda for Global Reconciliation,” p. 29).

Regrettably, some will view the senator’s essay as a sort of evangelical foreign policy. We say “regrettably,” because there is no such thing. Just as there is no political party favored by the Almighty, it would be foolish and naïve to use the Bible as a foreign-policy manual. And while Senator Hatfield applies the biblical principle of reconciliation to superpower strategy, he wisely points out that reconciliation is not necessarily or distinctly Christian.

Those who are prone to seek God’s endorsement of political demagoguery should take note: Efforts to find a distinctly Christian policy for world affairs will ultimately disappoint. God is neither a Republican nor a Bolshevik.

But God is love. He cares for his creation and he offers his wisdom to those who seek it. And because he calls his followers to be salt and light, Christians ought not abdicate their responsibility to join the global search for a new way to live as neighbors.

We are pleased to see a senator using his influence and faith to try to bring about peace and reconciliation between the superpowers. It is also encouraging to see so many Christian organizations reaching out to Eastern Bloc believers. But we remind Christians in the West of the importance of living by the very principles we recommend to the world’s policy makers. The last thing our neighbors in the Soviet bloc need is yet another system that promises them more than it can deliver.

By Lyn Cryderman.

The “free exercise” of religion would not be a difficult liberty to defend if religious practices were uniformly moderate, rational, and largely invisible. Unfortunately, religious beliefs occasionally move people to do silly—even dangerous—things. Such cases make us justifiably nervous about the free exercise of religion.

Knowing where to draw the line when idealism and faith yield bitter fruit is difficult; knowing why to draw the line should not be so tricky. Yet in a recent case involving the ritual use of the hallucinogenic peyote in the worship of the Native American Church, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia displayed an illogic that if cited in future decisions could obliterate the entire force of our “First Freedom”—the constitutionally guaranteed free exercise of religion.

In writing for the majority, Scalia discarded traditional criteria used to evaluate cases where a legitimate law conflicts with a bona fide religious practice. In the 1963 case of Sherbert v. Werner, the high court said free-exercise cases should be decided by determining whether a law has imposed a burden on free exercise, whether state interest is strong enough to justify the burden, and whether the state has no other way to accomplish its interest. By demanding that the state show a “compelling interest” whenever its laws conflicted with the practice of religion, the court treated religion as a fundamental freedom.

Now the high court has tossed out the “compelling state interest” test, reserving the constitutional guarantees for those cases where the law seeks directly to restrict a religious practice. And Justice Scalia seems to treat religion as an essentially trivial matter when he writes, “We cannot afford the luxury of deeming presumptively invalid, as applied to a religious objector, every regulation of conduct that does not protect an interest of the highest order.”

In one way, that freighted sentence shifts the burden of proof from the state (with its armies of lawyers and bottomless purse) to individual believers (most of whom can ill afford the legal challenge). But it also seems to put into question the very validity of a religious motivation for exemption from the law.

We suspect that many Christians would regard the peyote-centered religion of the Native American Church (NAC) not to be worth protecting (although 23 states with substantial Indian populations do exempt the sacramental use of peyote from criminal penalties). But the constitutional and ethical issues here are not centered on whether a religion seems “far out” or “mainstream.” What matters is whether we are committed to the fundamental nature of religious freedom.

If peyote piety seems trivial, consider the case of David and Ginger Twitchell, who are standing trial on charges of manslaughter in the death of their son Robyn. The Twitchells are Christian Scientists who relied on the unsuccessful ministrations of a Christian Science practitioner and a Christian Science nurse when Robyn seemed to come down with the flu.

Spiritual healing as an alternative to medicine was recognized legally by Massachusetts in 1971. Yet a special assistant to the district attorney has said the Twitchells “acted with reckless disregard for the health of their son.” Religious “practice is subject to regulation by the state,” said the D.A.’s assistant. “Belief is not.…”

What was the guarantee of the free exercise of religion intended to protect if not practice? Very few of us are worried that we will be hauled into court for our interior beliefs. If the courts as a whole buy into that distinction—as it appears Scalia’s opinion does—a fundamental freedom’s days may be numbered.

We pray that no matter how judge and jury look on the Twitchells’ specific actions, they will resist the temptation to follow Scalia’s rationale. If our First Amendment is to have any vitality, it must be construed as protecting religious action and as putting the burden of proof squarely on the state. If it does not do that, we do not have a guarantee of religious liberty, but only tenuous toleration of religion.

By David Neff.

In April the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops announced they were engaging a public-relations firm and a political polling concern to educate Americans on the evils of abortion. The bishops anticipate spending three to five million dollars over the next five years in the antiabortion campaign. “Given the stakes, we can do no less,” said John Cardinal O’Connor, archbishop of New York and chairman of the bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities.

The cardinal’s assessment is right. Five million dollars seems a small price when a moral issue of life and death is involved. And we applaud the bishops’ commitment to conduct the campaign in a tasteful, rational way that we hope will bring healing and wisdom to a bloody, divisive public debate. We pray for the campaign’s success.

Our enthusiasm for the project, however, is tempered by the methods employed. We do not argue with the common wisdom that sound bites, ten-second TV ads, and catchy slogans are the way to capture the mind of America. We just wish that were not so.

It is demeaning to all religious people to realize that moral suasion’s classic forms—appeals to scriptural authority and prophetic teaching—are no longer the mind-changing agents they once were.

Our slide into hyperdemocracy has come in two stages. The first, an overreliance on opinion polls to make political and commercial decisions has too often removed spiritual leadership from the equation. The second followed quickly: If swaying public opinion is the name of the game, then any means to sway the most minds becomes the method of choice.

From the pulpit to Madison Avenue, from “Thus saith the Lord” to “It’s what the people want,” is a dangerous and ultimately self-destructive slide.

By Terry Muck.

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