A recent article by Tim Alberta in the Atlantic about “How Politics Poisoned the Evangelical Church” has been making the rounds. There are a lot of criticisms that could be leveled at this. For example, it ignores the even greater levels of political involvement in the black church and the Christian left movement.
It’s surreal to read that article. My organization had a run-in with Bolin. He (and others) helped sink a major prolife initiative in Michigan while pushing their own petition effort. He was utterly wrong on a critical legal point, but people just ate it up and ran with it. Damage done and they move on like locusts. The problem with populism is there are quickly new “elites” who appear, ready to ride the people to ruinous ends for personal benefit.
Public schools, mass media, publishers, and government agencies have proven themselves untrustworthy. They have proven they care more about manipulating the people than telling the truth, and they drip with disdain for non-elite Americans. The people are therefore looking elsewhere for guidance, and non-woke churches are the few credible institutions left.
I want to push back on the idea that politics is outside the authority of the church. Politics is inherent to human community, and as such, the church needs to teach us how to do politics in keeping with faith in Christ. Theology must govern our politics. The church needs to teach that just like it needs to teach how to be married as a Christian, how to do business as a Christian, etc.
Churches are being torn apart by politics because they don't have a shared politics. This is deeply problematic for the mission of the church, as we are beginning to see. Politics deals directly with the question of how we define our community and what is the acceptable range of behavior within that community. If churches take up their full role as communities of faith, instead operating as narrow functional organizations, they will have to describe the politics the community shares.
Alternatively, they can let the larger society define the politics, and when the society splits, so will the churches. But, I assert that this alternative is not fully faithful to Christ. If it is within the power of the ministers and the churches to do better, they really must do so.
This idea that a pastor shouldn't overtly support a political candidate. I get it, but, what if there are two candidates - one supports abortion up to birth for any reason, the other wants to severely restrict the practice? Should the pastor say something?
UGA Oldtimer is basically right. Churches are not supposed to endorse candidates anyway due to their tax exempt status. Abortion can be condemned and people told to weight that in how they vote. But a church that gets into the candidate business exposes itself to legal risk.
The apostles would have said "let your tax exempt status perish with you." Human law and money can't enter into the question of what a church should say. What would the martyrs say? how about the confessing church that stood against Nazism? The church has a mission and authority so much higher than law or money that to factors those into the question would be criminal.
In addition to abortion, churches need to be pushing back against sexual agenda of the left and the destruction of the family. These are political issues. The Ralph Reed method of putting a flyer in the church bulletin with a checklist of where each candidate stood on the issues was effective in getting people to vote for Republicans, but didn't have a lot of impact on legislation.
The focus of pastors should be more on keeping the community within their churches strong. Protect members of the community and provide opportunities for them in the event they are attacked by the system for their beliefs.
That may be true, but it's interesting that the New Testament writers (and Christ himself) seemed remarkable unconcerned with the policies of the Roman empire. What instructions we have for relating to it generally involve accommodating yourself to it with the least among of trouble (e.g., pay taxes to whom taxes are due, etc).
I'm not sure quite how to put it, but I think the worst-case scenario (pagan Rome) is a good starting point for how the church relates to civil government. The church can be faithful and fruitful even though the society and government are faithless. We don't have to pour our energy into futile political lobbying, because the church has more powerful tools.
That tells us how to relate to a pagan, imperial society, but we need more data if we're going figure out how to relate to a mixed or nominally Christian society, especially when the common man has the privilege of voting. At the very least we ought to know what a broad-based repentance would look like at the national level.
It's unmistakable that there's lots of political sin in the country at the moment, including hatred of neighbor, and that church-goers are not much better than the average American. There are only two ways that gets resolved: Christian repentance, or the natural wages of sin.
The New Testament audience had very little agency concerning the policies of the Roman Empire. The Old Testament was responsible for the policies of Israel and the Old Testament writers were VERY concerned about the policies of Israel. Our own situation is somewhere in between.
How do we reach them? One of the problems with social media is that anyone can find reinforcement for their kooky ideas. In the past, the threat of being ostracized from your social circle would have kept a lot of these things in check. That no longer works now.
As Charles Murray documented over 10 years ago in Coming Apart, they really are living lives of dysfunction. How do you talk them out of it? They can see numerous groups eligible for victimhood in our culture get short term benefits out of pursuing it. It makes sense that the response for so many working class whites has been to pursue victim status as well. Scott Yenor has some good points in that column, but how do you get people who haven't been thinking ahead more than a few days to start thinking in terms of not just years ahead, but generations?
Schools - as a teacher, we need conservatives and orthodox Christians in the schools. I connect to "our" people all the time via the schools. Volunteer, help, serve - even if your kids are grown or you are a home-schooler.
It’s surreal to read that article. My organization had a run-in with Bolin. He (and others) helped sink a major prolife initiative in Michigan while pushing their own petition effort. He was utterly wrong on a critical legal point, but people just ate it up and ran with it. Damage done and they move on like locusts. The problem with populism is there are quickly new “elites” who appear, ready to ride the people to ruinous ends for personal benefit.
Public schools, mass media, publishers, and government agencies have proven themselves untrustworthy. They have proven they care more about manipulating the people than telling the truth, and they drip with disdain for non-elite Americans. The people are therefore looking elsewhere for guidance, and non-woke churches are the few credible institutions left.
I want to push back on the idea that politics is outside the authority of the church. Politics is inherent to human community, and as such, the church needs to teach us how to do politics in keeping with faith in Christ. Theology must govern our politics. The church needs to teach that just like it needs to teach how to be married as a Christian, how to do business as a Christian, etc.
Churches are being torn apart by politics because they don't have a shared politics. This is deeply problematic for the mission of the church, as we are beginning to see. Politics deals directly with the question of how we define our community and what is the acceptable range of behavior within that community. If churches take up their full role as communities of faith, instead operating as narrow functional organizations, they will have to describe the politics the community shares.
Alternatively, they can let the larger society define the politics, and when the society splits, so will the churches. But, I assert that this alternative is not fully faithful to Christ. If it is within the power of the ministers and the churches to do better, they really must do so.
This idea that a pastor shouldn't overtly support a political candidate. I get it, but, what if there are two candidates - one supports abortion up to birth for any reason, the other wants to severely restrict the practice? Should the pastor say something?
UGA Oldtimer is basically right. Churches are not supposed to endorse candidates anyway due to their tax exempt status. Abortion can be condemned and people told to weight that in how they vote. But a church that gets into the candidate business exposes itself to legal risk.
They may even tell their congregants to weight it as a matter of the utmost importance.
The apostles would have said "let your tax exempt status perish with you." Human law and money can't enter into the question of what a church should say. What would the martyrs say? how about the confessing church that stood against Nazism? The church has a mission and authority so much higher than law or money that to factors those into the question would be criminal.
In addition to abortion, churches need to be pushing back against sexual agenda of the left and the destruction of the family. These are political issues. The Ralph Reed method of putting a flyer in the church bulletin with a checklist of where each candidate stood on the issues was effective in getting people to vote for Republicans, but didn't have a lot of impact on legislation.
The focus of pastors should be more on keeping the community within their churches strong. Protect members of the community and provide opportunities for them in the event they are attacked by the system for their beliefs.
That may be true, but it's interesting that the New Testament writers (and Christ himself) seemed remarkable unconcerned with the policies of the Roman empire. What instructions we have for relating to it generally involve accommodating yourself to it with the least among of trouble (e.g., pay taxes to whom taxes are due, etc).
I'm not sure quite how to put it, but I think the worst-case scenario (pagan Rome) is a good starting point for how the church relates to civil government. The church can be faithful and fruitful even though the society and government are faithless. We don't have to pour our energy into futile political lobbying, because the church has more powerful tools.
That tells us how to relate to a pagan, imperial society, but we need more data if we're going figure out how to relate to a mixed or nominally Christian society, especially when the common man has the privilege of voting. At the very least we ought to know what a broad-based repentance would look like at the national level.
It's unmistakable that there's lots of political sin in the country at the moment, including hatred of neighbor, and that church-goers are not much better than the average American. There are only two ways that gets resolved: Christian repentance, or the natural wages of sin.
The New Testament audience had very little agency concerning the policies of the Roman Empire. The Old Testament was responsible for the policies of Israel and the Old Testament writers were VERY concerned about the policies of Israel. Our own situation is somewhere in between.
Yes. He should say that abortion is wrong. He should point out why. And that's it. Stay out of politics.
How do we reach them? One of the problems with social media is that anyone can find reinforcement for their kooky ideas. In the past, the threat of being ostracized from your social circle would have kept a lot of these things in check. That no longer works now.
As Charles Murray documented over 10 years ago in Coming Apart, they really are living lives of dysfunction. How do you talk them out of it? They can see numerous groups eligible for victimhood in our culture get short term benefits out of pursuing it. It makes sense that the response for so many working class whites has been to pursue victim status as well. Scott Yenor has some good points in that column, but how do you get people who haven't been thinking ahead more than a few days to start thinking in terms of not just years ahead, but generations?
Schools - as a teacher, we need conservatives and orthodox Christians in the schools. I connect to "our" people all the time via the schools. Volunteer, help, serve - even if your kids are grown or you are a home-schooler.