I am an American by birth and a follower of Jesus by choice since I was about 17 years old. I’ve spend time in the Catholic church, the Charismatic movement and in many non-denominational churches. I’ve lived in the mid Atlantic and in the South. During my graduate and post graduate studies, I’ve intentionally read books from a multitude of perspectives, both faith based and culturally based.
And I have been brokenhearted to watch the American church willingly become co-opted by political parties and organizations. While this trend may have accelerated over the past decade, it is not new. One Nation Under God by Kruse is an excellent book exploring how American Christianity willingly sold its soul to corporate and political masters in the mid 1900s.
Talking about the failure of the American church can lead to one of my least favorite lazy preacher cliches: The idea that you can’t criticize the church because it’s the bride of Christ, and Jesus will be mad if you do it. The lazy preacher than says something to the effect of, “If you tell me you don’t like my wife, then you can I can’t be friends.”
To that I say, if your wife is a mean-spirited political-rhetoric spewing bigot who’s always trying to take money out of my pocket, you’re darn right I’m not going to be willing to hang out with her.
So how can I avoid getting sucked into the the popular, but wrong current in American Christian culture? For me, that involves introspection, and asking some tough questions.
An important aside before I dive into these questions: If your reaction, upon reading them is to say I’m not patriotic, or that I should ‘get out’ of the country for exploring these questions, I would respectfully say that is a red flag for someone who may be caught in a nationalistic narrative.
First, in terms of patriotism, I find the quote by William Sloane Coffin to ring true: “There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover's quarrel with their country.” I would certainly put myself in the third category. I do care about the country of my birth and want to help it find a place of better health. However, I know many who would call anything other than uncritical love to be unpatriotic. I welcome such criticism. If I didn’t care about America, I wouldn’t bother to ask these questions.
Second, zoom out. America is a temporary political construct. It has been around for less than 300 years. We follow a faith tradition that is many thousands of years old. It is bigger, by far, than any country or empire. America has been a fairly successful experiment, but it has absolutely no eternal value or importance. My body is American. It will one day die. My soul is not American, and it will live on when my body is ashes and dust.
In asking these questions, they force me to go above and beyond earthly considerations to find a point of reference. In fact, I have two: one is philosophical and the other theological.
The philosophical basis is called is the ‘Is-Ought’ problem. It says that just because something exists in a certain way doesn’t mean that’s how things should be. Just because Americans have a particular viewpoint doesn’t mean they should have that viewpoint. Many Americans believed slavery was appropriate in the first century and a half of America, but that does not mean they were right. Indeed, the vast majority of Americans would look at that belief today and judge it to be morally wrong. What beliefs are common in America today that people will look back on in 200 years and say, “What were they thinking??” It’s a difficult exercise, but an important one.
Following that philosophical prompting comes the theological consideration. Philosophy shows us that we need a measuring stick outside of human whims. To be able to evaluate whether that which ‘is’ matches that which ‘ought’ to be, we need as accurate a picture as possible of what ought to be. This is why it is essential for a follower of Jesus to actually study the scriptures - you need a trust worthy reference point to make such judgments. Scripture provides that, however, it’s very easy to misinterpret scripture. Satan misquotes scripture to Jesus in the desert temptation. I hear scripture misquoted even by pastors all the time. You cannot outsource this to others. The better your study of scripture, the better prepared you are to determine the ought among the is.
With that said, here are two major questions to explore in order to ensure you’re not being tricked into becoming a Christian Nationalist (you know, like the church in Nazi Germany was.) If these questions make you uncomfortable, good. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re devoted to a homeless man who was murdered and told us we need to follow in his footsteps.
First: As a Christian, should you vote?
The American political system seems to do more harm than good, and is focused on political parties. Your voting is, to a small degree, keeping this system going. Should you, therefore, participate?
There’s a bumper sticker I’ve seen which extols Christians to pray for the nation, vote and pray some more.
Perhaps you notice something: there are scriptures in support of praying for the nation and its leaders. Good, well applied scriptures. However, there’s no scripture under vote. You know why? There aren’t any scriptures that can even remotely be applied to that action. Democracy doesn’t come up once in scriptures. If you say, “well they didn’t have democracy back then,” first I would tell you that you’re incorrect, as the Greeks had pioneered it hundreds of years earlier; and second, if you think Jesus didn’t know what democracy was, then you and I have different understandings of the wisdom of Jesus.
Not a single time does Jesus tell anyone that they need a democratic form of government instead of an occupying Roman empire. In fact, Jesus doesn’t seem to care at all about geopolitics. So, as his follower, why should I?
Dr. King, when he came out against the Vietnam war, and in support of pacifism in general, said that he was willing to concede there may have been times in the past when war was necessary — World War 2, for example. He called it a ‘negative good’, as the alternative may have been worse. But in the nuclear age, he argued that war could never again be better than the alternative.
Perhaps there were times and seasons where democracy was useful in America, but that day seems to have passed. To be clear, America wasn’t really a democracy until 1972 when open primaries were instituted. People like Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz, Mike Pence and Bernie Sanders would not have had a chance in the world prior to this movement. Within 50 years, we were deciding between utter fools, as the populace disregarded wisdom as an essential requirement for leadership. Plato predicted such results, and it is why he was so opposed to democracy hundreds of years before the life of Jesus.
Your voting is only giving more influence and wealth to people and organizations who want to fulfill their own agendas. But when you disengage from this system, you are freed to value everyone equally, instead of being encouraged to see those who don’t agree with you as an enemy.
I have been a contentious obstainer from the American political process for over a decade, and I believe I am better off for it. Next time you’re in a voting decision, if you’re wondering who the lesser evil is, ask yourself why you’re voting for evil.
Having been a pastor during the Trump administration, I know for a fact many of the politically conservative Christians who voted for him found him personally distasteful, but they agreed with his policies. To that, I loudly wondered, “if your political viewpoints agree with a reprehensible person, what does that say about your viewpoints?” Many of the politically progressive Christians who voted for Biden did so only to keep Trump out of the white house. This is a healthy system? Electing one incompetent, womanizing, man willing who uses his power to enrich himself and his family (Biden) to stop another who does the same (Trump)?
As a Christian I used to say you should have the choice whether or not to participate. But more and more, I have a hard time seeing how you can defend contributing to such a system. I would challenge anyone, if they choose to participate, to defend it with scripture, not simply with personal feelings or preferences.
Second: Should Christians celebrate America’s military efforts like we do?
In America, we often see a celebration of soldiers before sporting events. On TV, you can regularly see commercials extolling Maries, Army, Navy. We have multiple holidays in honor of military service and military sacrifice. Should followers of a man who told us to love our enemy and turn the other cheek when attacked blindly do the same?
Anticipating some people having a very negative reaction here, let me be very clear. I’m not advocating protesting against individual military members, as we saw in the days of Vietnam. I think many military members enter the service for reasons they hold to be noble, and are willing to make sacrifices for a greater good. You can respect those that are willing to enter dangerous circumstances while seeing their task as being the misguided focus of political leaders.
What’s more, we should have compassion for those who are asked to do violence in the name of a country, because Jesus tells us “Those who use the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52) The high rates of PTSD, homelessness, mental and physical health issues and suicide among veterans? All that could be seen as a direct results of them being asked to be agents of violence. We should also note that after the first murder, God says “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.” (Genesis 9:6). Military members pay a great cost, and should be given compassion where possible.
But celebrating any and all military efforts of America is, in my viewpoint, not the best way to honor those who have sacrificed. Seeking to avoid more violence and bloodshed would be a better approach, but we understand that the military leadership longs to use the sword they wield. Duty by Robert Gates does an excellent job of demonstrating how dangerous the advice of military leadership is, where virtually every problem is a nail in need of a hammer.
The military spending of our country is categorically insane. We recently rolled out a new plane designed to drop nuclear weapons, the B-21. The cost for just that one piece of technology? $692 million FOR EACH PLANE. Overall, America is set to spend over $800 BILLION each year for the defense budget. It’s no wonder the military leaders want to constantly find new wars and conflicts. How else could they justify such obscene finances? Dr. King pointed to this issue 60 years ago, saying that a nation which consistently spends more money on military considerations instead of programs for social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Surely Dr. King, were he alive today, would be above saying “I told you so,” but he would certainly be justified to do it.
As Christians, we should not blindly support a system devoted to killing which also harms those who are asked to kill. When Peter took up a sword to defend Jesus from being murdered, Jesus ordered Peter not to fight. Defending the Messiah, an innocent man, from an unjust murder would have been perhaps the most justifiable violence in the history of the world, yet Jesus refuses to allow it. A follower of Jesus must properly wrestle with this in the face of a world where drone strikes against “the bad guys” are celebrated.
These two questions alone can forestall a deception in Christian Nationalism. Imagine if the German church had disengaged from the political process and refused to sanction national violence in the age of the Nazis. Surely the shame of their complicity would not exist. Images of Russian orthodox churches that bless AK-47s should make us queasy. But why do we then assume the violence done by our nation is righteous? Christians must stand apart and refuse to go with the flow.
Know that you will be criticized and hated.. But you will be in line with men and women of God who have faithfully stood in opposition to endorsing things the way they are instead of how they ought to be. 1 Kings 22 tells of the kings of Israel and Judah preparing to go to war, and a prophet speaking as a lone voice against the action.
Jehoshaphat asked, “Is there not also a prophet of the Lord here?…” The king of Israel replied to Jehoshaphat, “There is one more man who could consult the Lord for us, but I hate him. He never prophesies anything but trouble for me! His name is Micaiah son of Imlah.”
If you simply agree blindly with what is accepted in wide society, know that you are almost certainly out of line with Jesus. He was criticized, hated, abandoned and killed. Most truth tellers suffer at least some of the consequences. If you never deal with this, you’re likely not speaking anything true. You’re either going along, or you’re just staying silent.
Jesus was clear that his followers would encounter trouble, also prepare us by saying “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first.” (John 15:18)
There is good new, of course. We would be doomed, if not for the Holy Spirit. The church would continue to become more and more corrupt, useless and ineffective if it came down to the efforts of humans. But the Spirit renews the church. The days of Nazi Germany did not end the church on earth, and the days of unending capitalistic greed and nationalism in America will not end the church. Jesus promised that no weapon would be able to take down the church and that he would build it to survive anything.
We’re not on our own. When we stand for God’s truth, we can have confidence that he will bring about a good end, even when things seem to get worse each day. Don’t just go with the flow. Doubt everything you hear, ask hard questions and invite the Spirit to help you see clearly each day.