Social Control Through the Back Door?
Jim Wallis has described his religious-political view with a phrase I largely agree with: “religion is personal, but never private.” The idea is that just because Jesus is our “personal savior,” that doesn’t give Christians an excuse to live a double life, with one aspect being a personal belief system and another, sometimes contrary, lifestyle of do as we please. Our faith matters publicly, even if that faith is deeply personal. “Privately held faith” is a sort of oxymoron.
But I think Wallis wishes to go further down the road of “never private” than many Christians (or non-Christians, for that matter) should be comfortable going. It’s one thing to live our faith externally for all to see, mock, criticize, or embrace. It’s quite another to our energy on the correct political action and governmental involvement for our social agenda we have for everyone else.
Many so-called progressive Christians are politically active and engaged in changing the culture through political or legislative methods. Whether it be supporting a mandate for health insurance or placing upon some persons a tax burden inordinately large, for them, building for the Kingdom of God means using all means possible, and political means is one of those means.
Others of us like to point out that using the kingdom of the sword to do the task of that squarely belongs to the Kingdom of the Cross was not part of the mission of Jesus. Doing so legitimizes violence, disrespectfully requires others who may not share our ethics to live by them, and delegates personal stewardship and responsibility to an entity which has little incentive to steward that which has been entrusted to it.
But the retort goes something like this: “Yeah, but Jesus context was different from ours. He lived under a caesar, and we live in a democracy.” The apparent disparity in the comparison—a totalitarian caesar versus the people in a democracy—is supposedly the reason why Jesus didn’t employ political methods: Jesus simply didn’t have the opportunity to use ethical political methods. In our day, the assumption is, democracy is ethical because it is not imposed from a particular top-down authority, but rests within the people.
At first glance this may be a legitimate explanation to conclude that Christians can and should be involved politically. After all, we are part of a society that is generally involved in our own political processes, whether it be locally, regionally, or nationally. Progressive Christians believe that when they are advocating for justice by invoking government involvement, they are doing so ethically because “we are the government” or “this is our government.” Democracy becomes the back-door excuse for social control. If most people can vote a certain way, or if most people can get politicians to vote a certain way, then society will be better off.
The problem, however, lies in the fact that whatever political system we live within, political solutions are always accomplished by the use of force. However nice and ostensibly beneficial the law seems to be, at some point, there’s a gun backing up the law. Last I checked, making others do what you would rather them do was immoral. That goes for authoritarian implementations as well as democratic ones. Getting more people to agree with your social agenda is no less tyrannical on the rest of us than one person forcing us to follow it.
It’s one thing to get as many people as possible to follow Jesus. It’s quite another to twist the intention and meaning of “follow me” into compulsory and mandatory behavioral modification through the law.
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But humanism and its strong political and social issues are having the effect on the progressive church and their agenda , not the other way around . The DNC Platform which has little or no input from the Progressive Church has many of the issues the progressive church embraces . The church itself has nothing to do with the DNC/liberal issues.
The RNC Platform has many issues that have come because of the religious right , which I disagree with also in as far as using the state to promote our Faith , but the fact of the matter is the issues important to the Church of today are allowed to be used to further other political issues also . Which is the danger of linking the church with government, you can promote one issue but helped the other alliance of the party to promote an issue that indeed is not compatible with Christianity. The social and political issues are almost all accepted by the religious left if you read their blogs and spokespersons , refardless of religion , , their politics remain the most important bonding factor, not God.
They Progressive Church are closer to the culture of today then the Church is , but from a Christian point of view I would not say that was a good thing. In fact the world has steadily been creeping into the church instead of the church doing the creeping into the world so to speak. You just see it more in the progressive church and the socialistic , even at times idol worshiping of this cultures present issues from the progressive church.
But humanism and its strong political and social issues are having the effect on the progressive church and their agenda , not the other way around . The DNC Platform which has little or no input from the Progressive Church has many of the issues the progressive church embraces . The church itself has nothing to do with the DNC/liberal issues.
The RNC Platform has many issues that have come because of the religious right , which I disagree with also in as far as using the state to promote our Faith , but the fact of the matter is the issues important to the Church of today are allowed to be used to further other political issues also . Which is the danger of linking the church with government, you can promote one issue but helped the other alliance of the party to promote an issue that indeed is not compatible with Christianity. The social and political issues are almost all accepted by the religious left if you read their blogs and spokespersons , refardless of religion , , their politics remain the most important bonding factor, not God.
They Progressive Church are closer to the culture of today then the Church is , but from a Christian point of view I would not say that was a good thing. In fact the world has steadily been creeping into the church instead of the church doing the creeping into the world so to speak. You just see it more in the progressive church and the socialistic , even at times idol worshiping of this cultures present issues from the progressive church.