3rd Way Christian Politics

A Call to Christians to Avoid Exerting Political Power

If conservative Christians suddenly had control of all three branches of government what would we do? What is our political endgame?

Since this is never likely to happen, at least for an extended period of time, most of us have never deeply thought about our ultimate political vision. But this is a huge problem because we should be voting with the end in mind.

What is a political vision that is uniquely Christian?

Well if you asked me what the current political vision that most evangelical Christians have in mind I would have said they will keep exerting their political power until we have 100% conservative judges, a 100% conservative congress and that all Presidents would be conservative Christians.

If you vote for conservatives 100% of the time and this is not your political vision then I’d love to know what you’re aiming at when you exercise your political power.

The vision of using Christian power to make the government as conservative as possible has a number of flaws but here are three quick examples.

First, this does not appear to be God’s vision. Paul writes in Romans 13:1 “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” God is clearly choosing not to institute a totally conservative government in the United States. He appears to be more interested in a government that allows people to experience the implications of their beliefs.

Second, this vision is bad for the spread of the Gospel. Possibly the biggest turn off to the non-Christians I know to following Jesus are what they perceive to be the political implications of becoming a Christian. They are legitimately scared America will become a Christian theocracy and as non-believers they often resent Christianity for stoking this fear and the effort they feel they must expend to prevent this from happening.

Third, this vision has been tried numerous times and its failure is part of what led to our current form of government that most of us would admit is far superior. Christendom reigned in Europe for over a thousand years and whether you call this period the Dark Ages or not most believers and nonbelievers alike would rather endure the problems with our system then return to anything like those systems.

So let me suggest an alternative. What would happen if every Bible believing Christian ignored political affiliation and voted for whatever candidate would best reflect the current beliefs of the American people.

In other words a candidate who would appoint 50% conservative and 50% progressive judges as long as that distribution reflects the makeup of America.

This is a possible third way that keeps us out of playing the political power game.

If we want to see a change in the judicial system we would get there through spreading the Gospel not by ceasing the levers of power.

No matter how immoral a law may be it’s clear from how God governs the world that he is more interested in people experiencing the results of their bad beliefs than using naked power to prevent them from committing evil.

Christians must decide once and for all if we want to exert political power over nonbelievers or not. Jesus seemed to have no interest in playing this game (Matthew 20:25–26). Why do we? This has been a disaster for the spread of the Gospel.

Remember we are a part of another Kingdom. This Kingdom does not spread through the use of power but through the preaching of the Gospel and takes root through repentance and belief (Mark 1:15). We live in the chapter of the Story where we win the hearts and minds of rebels back to the King. It’s hard to win someone’s heart when you’re holding a gun.

Jesus demonstrated how to do this by avoiding binary political controversies and by finding and choosing a third way. He did when asked about taxes (Matthew 22:21), he did this when asked about sentencing a prostitute (John 8:1–11) and he even did this when facing his own execution (Mark 15:4).

Non Believers do not want to live in a Christian theocracy. Believers should likewise not want nonbelievers to live in a Christian theocracy. But we’re doing a bad job of showing it. Only when political power dynamics are removed can people be truly free to make a decision for or against following Jesus.

Christians should think of most governmental functions like a utility company. Most issues in the sphere of government, with some clear exceptions, are pragmatic and are not primarily moral. Our current political environment seeks to frame every issue as primarily moral in order to gain political leverage. Christians need to stop falling for this trick. We should encourage our leaders to make the best decisions they can given the data and options available and get back to our mission of making disciples.

What would happen if we could convince the world we were not interested in power?

“Every nation gets the government it deserves.” (Joseph de Maistre)

We cannot save souls through exerting political power but we certainly can lose them.

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Q & A

Blake: But what about the issues that we truly DO think are moral? or God thinks are moral?

My broad answer is that we look for a third way. We come together as a Christian community and find ways to express our beliefs while avoiding the temptation to enter into a political power struggle with the secular world we are here to serve.

The obvious example is where the government allows things like abortion or physician assisted suicide. These are very tough issues because for most Christians they fit squarely into the mandate of government to protect the basic right to life. But let’s see how far this goes with an extreme thought-experiment.

Imagine a country where 95% of the population are non-believers who are in favor of assisted suicide in certain cases and 5% of are believers who are totally against it and see it as murder. Now, imagine that the believers, through adept political maneuvering were able to get just the right people in the right places of power to make this practice illegal. They are now using the power of the state to enforce their vision of morality on the 95% of the population—a vision of morality founded on the divine revelation in Scripture. Should this be an acceptable method for combating an immoral action?

There is a pattern that keeps repeating in our country that goes something like this:

1. Christians agree that a certain act is immoral.
2. Christians gain enough political power to pass laws against this action.
3. Non-believers spend decades fighting to repeal these laws while a growing hatred and hostility develops between believers and non-believers. Due to this struggle possibly millions of people reject the Gospel.
4. The law in finally repealed
5. Christians begin to agree that the law wasn’t such a great idea in the first place and that maybe we shouldn’t seek to legislate morality in that area.
6. Christians find another act they agree is immoral
7. The cycle repeats.

What I’m wondering is, no matter what the issue, shouldn’t we be looking for a third way to resist immorality that does not involve exerting political power based on our faith in divine revelation over a non-believing world?

One third way I’m considering is to tell nonbelievers in our country that we only want our beliefs to be represented proportionally. So if they can convince 51% of the people that abortion should be legal we will only seek to make it illegal if we can convince 51%.

While we’re waiting to convince more people Christians focus their attention on saving the lives of these babies through every other non political means possible.

Remember that in Rome infanticide was legal for pater familias (the head of the family) to commit and Christians worked to rescue these infants at risk to their own lives when the infants were left outside to die of exposure. What a disaster for the Gospel if Christians would have tried to stop this practice through seizing political power.

Would we have gained more ground against abortion these past 45 years if millions of nonbelievers would have come to Christ because they don’t see Christianity as a threatening political ideology?

What would Jesus do to combat abortion? In this chapter of the Story I see him laying down his life before taking the levers of power.