More Politics?!

There is a lot of conversation these days around All Saints, and I suspect elsewhere, or at least, I hope so, about whether or not it is appropriate for the church to engage in matters of politics. So now that we are entering another election cycle, I think it is appropriate to have such a conversation… again. The word politics derives from the Greek word politicus which simply means: affairs of the city. The “polis” for Plato was an outward and visible manifestation of God’s just order. Moreover, the city, no less, was a symbol of heaven on earth, at least a taste of it, a place of equitable commerce and well-being and mutual regard. The question foremost in Plato’s Republic is: “How then shall we live?”  And that profound philosophical question found its way among biblical scribes of the late centuries before the Common Era, and among writers of New Testament literature, all schooled in the way of the Greek Academy. How do we fashion communities that are just in the face of injustice and corrupt power? How do we fashion a dignified common life in the face of patriarchal hierarchy seduced and compromised by self-interest?

Jesus, along with other so-called wisdom teachers of the first century C.E. in the face of Roman occupation, called for a radical reordering of society. He challenged the status quo of hierarchy.  He called out elitism. He called out the corruption of imperial power. He had no intention of being worshiped; rather he was an activist for a just way of life; a way of life that included the interests of the poor and the outcasts of his world, those to whom self-interested power turned a blind eye. He was being “political,” in short. As the baptized, we in our own day and age are called, anointed, to take up the legacy of Jesus as activists and advocates for justice in the “affairs of God’s city.” Dare I say, we are to be about the politics of God.

The church in Western Modernity has embraced headlong the notion that if the church meddled in politics, it would violate the doctrine of the separation of church and state. But that is a weak excuse, a means of abdicating, ironically, our very vocation. The doctrine of the separation of church and state has to do chiefly with preventing the government from impinging upon religious freedom, on the one hand, and guarding against theocracy, the undue influence of a singular religion on government, on the other. To speak out and act on matters of our common life is the church’s business. It is what the life and ministry of Jesus was all about.

We are privileged to live in a modern democracy. We are empowered by our Constitution to have a say in “the affairs of the city.” The nuance for us is that there is a blurry line between being political and being partisan. We do well to pay attention to that. As a community that holds inclusion to be a cardinal virtue, being partisan limits the credibility of our public witness. But that in no way should hinder us from being concerned with matters political, which I choose to call “the greater good.” God’s dream for the world… God’s dream for our common life is Love; and the means of Love is justice; and justice, in our corner of Christendom, is forged in the crucible that is our democracy. How then shall we live? Our faith is a public enterprise, and the days of the church being seen and not heard must end.