Attempting Evangelical Thoughts About Politics (An Election Year Rant)

You know what’s really important?
Being relevant. (Being sarcastic helps when you want to be relevant.)
But in all seriousness, one of the hottest topics in an election year is of course politics. Politics, as we all know is a volatile topic for conversation. It brings out real emotions and more often the darker sides of people than their lighter side. One thing I’ve noticed among fellow Christians is one of two bad tendencies when big elections years come along. Either they retreat from debate all-together and dismiss the whole discussion as irrelevant under a mistaken understanding of separation of church and state. They say, “Let the church worry about God, and Caesar worry about Caesar” which amounts to saying, “let the church worry about itself, and let the secular government concern itself with justice.” Or they lose themselves and/or their Christian virtues in the political malaise, aligning themselves with policies that are expressly unchristian for the sake of championing other policies which are Christian. The Christian ethic forms its own unique politic in our political melting pot, and to sell one’s soul to one party or candidate is to distort the clear political witness of our evangelical faith. Just because the Republican Party espouses a “pro-life” stance for the unborn, and a hawkish foreign policy doesn’t mean that that is what the New Testament apparently espouses. And just because the Democrats’ social agenda matches semantics with the Sermon on the Mount doesn’t’ mean we can fail to realize that although care for the poor is a part of justice, that playing the part of Robin Hood is not a sole responsibility of the government. As far as I can tell, pouring money we don’t have into programs that rarely attack the central issues and only deal with symptoms, on the guilt laden and coercive rhetoric employed by the left-wing, is not just.
The Church is a political entity. And as political people we are concerned with justice. We are concerned about the general welfare of the state insofar as it accompanies the going forth of the Gospel. We like free speech for instance because free speech means the free speaking of the Gospel. Our voice in a Democratic-Republic is an equal voice among the many, but the USA is not a theocracy and we are okay with this. So our Evangelical faith informs our opinions on policies, but we do not seek to supplant our Government even if we are the minority. We play by its rules and vote according to our faith just like everyone else does. And the ballot box is just one of the myriad of ways that we can get our message across. If we’re going to complain about the brokenness of the welfare system, we should try and put it out of business by our personal charity. Thus we falsify any claim that we are not compassionate because we’d rather not give our money to an untrustworthy middle-man to distribute it as he wishes. If we truly believe that justice calls for a Democratic (the party) vote, let us not be so naïve and lazy as to think that we have thus done our whole Christian duty. We should carry an awareness of the power of our vote knowing that voting for a hawkish commander in chief does in fact mean that people in the middle east will die, and that we the taxpayer will have paid for it. So awareness of the issues and knowing what our vote means is a huge thing and since we’re Christians must be informed by our Christian ethic as well as what our voting decision mean for unsuspecting or even powerless people.
In the midst of our discussions about politics we can’t forget what the New Testament says about being people who are all about love, hope, and peace. Our hope is not in the system. We do not despair that it is broken. We saw this coming. But in love for our neighbor we seek the best way given our historical political situation to champion justice and fight corruption, and injustice, whether perpetuated by right or left or both. We do this in our personal lives, our public lives, and the way we vote; no need to compartmentalize loving your neighbor.