A Politics of Love in A Polarized Time

November 26, 2022 Glenn Wishnew

Glenn Wishnew | Est. 4-5 minutes

A Rough Moment

"Agh, they’re all idiots.”

My dad thought little of politicians. He was ahead of his time: public trust in government began to sharply decline in 2007. As trust has waned, partisan hostility has increased. Today, both Right and Left view the other side as “closed-minded, dishonest, immoral and unintelligent.” A democratic system of government doesn’t work, it turns out, when we don’t trust the other half of the demos. In more famous words, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

There are many explanations being given for how we got into this sad state of affairs. Some blame social media. Some blame longer-term, more fundamental social disruptions. Others blame identity politics. Their reasoning goes like this: if your politics is core to your identity, then when your politics are threatened, you are threatened. In such a state, core democratic virtues such as compromise or civil disagreement become tenuous at best.

However, the more intriguing question to me is not what forces produced this political environment, but how do Christians engage faithfully within it?

Withdrawal

The first approach to this fractious period is what I’ll label Withdrawal. Many argue that Christian leaders should help their congregants pray and read the Bible, but not correlate their faith to contemporary politics. Attributing the ‘Christian’ label to a policy position feels at best arrogant and at worst a violation of the third commandment. Further, Jesus was a-political; His kingdom was “not of this world” (Jn. 18:36). The Church should therefore follow His example. Moreover, these folks argue that Christian political involvement damages the witness of the Church to the watching world. When the gospel becomes identified with a political party, Christians unintentionally confirm the world’s suspicions that religious conviction is a thin veneer for an inward will-to-power. As of a 2019 survey conducted by Pew, what I’m labelling Withdraw is Americans’ majority view when asked whether Churches should engage in politics.

I want to commend this position on two accounts: First, Scripture gives many principles for justice; but discerning how those principles should manifest in concrete policies is the work of practical wisdom, not biblical command. Christians should be thoughtful when applying Biblical principles to partisan issues. Second, in agreement with the withdrawing stance, history is replete with examples of churches diluting their message and disgracing their witness by involving themselves in national politics.

Nevertheless, there are many reasons why Christians cannot evacuate the political sphere. I’ll highlight three.

First, God commands Adam (and therefore us) to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” (Gen. 1:28) All humans, including Christians, have been entrusted with the stewardship of the whole earth – and that work requires collaboration. To fulfill this task, we have to make decisions, and elevate some people to execute those decisions. In short, we have to do politics to live together and obey God’s first command. Additionally, God institutes government to protect the humans made in His image and to punish wrongdoers (Rom 13:4). Because government is instituted by God, Christians honor authorities (1 Pet. 2:17) and support them in the fulfillment of their God-ordained task. Third, at a basic level, Christians engage politics to love their neighbors. To love them requires loving justice which requires doing politics.

War

The second model of political engagement is one I’ll identify simply as War. The label War befits this orientation because a war shifts moral mindsets. During wartime, killing isn’t murder. It’s combat. Moreover, declaring war requires a satisfactory explanation – you must justify a war before you fight it.

There’s a cadre of Christians who believe U.S. politics is a war zone. Traditional moral calculus need no longer apply. Reasoning with the other side on their terms, recognizing flaws in your own positions, aspiring to be ‘conciliatory’ and ‘winsome’ are not viable expectations anymore. That’s peacetime thinking. The justifications for war, according to these thinkers, arise from shifts in the cultural landscape. We now live in a negative world where voicing Christian convictions could cost you significantly – at least if you aspire to be the CEO of an Austrailian football club. Therefore, Christians called to fight this war must get their hands dirty by electing officials who sponsor our particular interests (regardless of their flaws), who deride opponents who disagree with our principles and who forego the need for cultural respectability.

There are merits to this approach. First, if Christians in politics aim at being inoffensive – a charge which War-folks accuse their detractors of – they will be culturally impotent. Faithfulness to truth will offend a world who “suppresses the truth in unrighteousness.” (Rom. 1:18). While we must not seek to offend our neighbor, that will inevitably be the case sometimes. Further, their justification for war is legitimate: America in 2022 is a different world. Ten years ago, only 48% of Americans supported same-sex marriage; Today, that number’s 71%. To put it mildly, there are new issues to address and new neighbors to love.

But love is also the reason why the war approach is inadequate.

If loving our neighbors is a core motivation for Christian politics, then it must also be a core value. Loving our neighbor in a polarized political climate requires reasoning with them, not publicly scorning them. It requires recognizing truths in their argument while maintaining the truths in ours. Lastly, love requires pursuing persuasion and not coercion. After all, to quote the Apostle Paul, “Love does not insist on its own way…but rejoices in the truth.” (1 Cor. 13:5)

If love became the loadstar for political engagement, perhaps Christians would be able to repel nation-wide declines in trust of government and in consideration of neighbors. More importantly, however, we would be faithful to God – the One we are ultimately responsible to.