An update: tonight I heard your Faithful Presence sermon. Of course you don’t actually cite James Davison Hunter, although I believe he is the originator of the phrase, which you possibly picked up from him. But to your credit you don’t charge Christians who want “to change the world” with being motivated by hate, having a Nietzschean ‘ressentiment’ and will to power.
In fact you come across as very kind and caring, solicitous of the concerns of your congregation.
Still I must stand by everything, or virtually everything, I wrote, because good people (as people go), kind, helpful people can still do a lot of damage. Oh, I don’t view your sermon and your piece here on Substack as necessarily destructive, but I do see the potential there yes.
Certainly your heart exam is worthy, we need to not make tertiary or secondary things primary. But by categorizing literal life and death struggles for civilization as simply politics is, in my view, to trivialize the stakes. Was the Obama Administration’s prosecution, persecution of innocent Catholic nuns (who’d merely declined to be complicit in artificial contraception and abortion) just “politics?” Were those who fought to defend their First Amendment right to Free Exercise of Religion similarly just engaging in politics?
I get it, you want your church to welcome and affirm everyone to the extent possible. But that would seem to require the continued existence of your church! Do you not perceive the threat to religious freedom? President Obama’s Chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Martin Castro sounded remarkably like certain other Castros, saying that
“Religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality…the phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, or any form of intolerance.”
Meanwhile in 2016, Planned Parenthood urged us to vote for Secretary Clinton, offering in one advertisement
“3 Damn Good
Reasons to Support
Hillary Clinton
-She introduced 8 pieces of legislation with the purpose of expanding and protecting access to reproductive health care - no other candidate has introduced any.
-She's the most outspoken and frequent supporter of Planned Parenthood - and the only candidate to speak up for Planned Parenthood at the debates.
- She's the only candidate who has testified before a Congressional committee on how abortion is an essential part of reproductive health care.”
Now, can you point to serious GOP problems? I certainly can, for example the newfound Republican enthusiasm for IVF treatments.
But your diminishing of what you’re calling politics may yet deprive the world of a worthy crusader from your own church. You may have sitting in your pews or here on Substack (your virtual congregation) the next Wilberforce or Martin Luther King. They may be keen to devote their lives to moral and legal reform—until their own pastor pours cold water on this idea, telling them in effect to back off, to sit down and be quiet, because otherwise a focus on politics would necessarily pose a threat to their spiritual life.
Is it not possible that some people’s Christian life is quite properly centered around politics, as the lives of others are spent in hardware stores or behind the wheel of a big truck?
Speaking of clarity and mud, sir, let me apologize for any and all typos, editing errors. Your particular combox settings don’t allow any corrections, but hopefully you can read through my mistakes
Hi Dan- Thanks for engaging my post and for even listening to the sermon I gave! I can't quite respond specifically to each of the points you brought up, but I think it's a fair question in response to ask where the line is when a Christian needs to engage an obviously political subject. For each person and situation and the line is probably different. I didn't wrestle with that question in what I wrote, but I agree it's a difficult one to answer. In general I think you are taking my comments too far in your response. I'm not telling people to never engage politics. I'm saying there's something bigger than politics, so let's focus on that. And when we have to focus on politics, let's do it in a way that builds Christian witness and Christian unity.
I might argue that we need to break completely out of a framework that even says there’s a “line” between what is political and what is not, that we need instead to preach and promote the whole counsel of God.
If you were preaching that God made humanity of one race, and that people of all colors and ethnicities need to be treated equally, possessing rights and dignity as Made in the Image of God, what would you say to a Klansman in the congregation who said you were getting too political?
Yes there’s something bigger than politics, there is The Godhead, but His holy character and attributes mean that we must come to some moral conclusions and not others regarding economics, sexuality and many other things, and these all have political implications and ramifications. We cannot shrink back from proclaiming that “He made them male and female” just because this is suddenly now politically controversial.
Do you think there's a way to emphasize "he made them male and female" without becoming overtly political in a partisan way? I think there is and it's part of what motivates what I wrote. In fact I have taught on that exact line, even approaching the subject of transgenderism, but I have always sought to focus my comments Biblically, with no political motivation. My hope in doing that is to disarm the argument that I'm "being political" because I was not.
Of course neither I nor anyone I greatly respect in this area would ever ask you, especially from the pulpit, “Vote Republican,” or “Vote for this particular candidate.” That seems to be straight out partisan activity, and whatever its merits, until the prevailing “Johnson Amendment” legal regime is overturned, this is forbidden by the IRS and might well threaten your church’s tax exemption for charitable donations.
But! Your Biblical, moral stand is, in our highly politicized environment, nonetheless a political stand.
Compare the 2024 Party platforms of the Democrats…
“Trump is running on an extreme plan to punish doctors who treat transgender youth and to ban gender-affirming care, and his MAGA Republican allies have pushed a tidal wave of extreme anti-LGBTQl+ bills in statehouses across the country. Democrats will vigorously oppose state and federal bans on gender-affirming health care and respect the role of parents, families, and doctors - not politicians - in making health care decisions.
Democrats will continue to fight for LGBTQI+ youth…”
Knowledge and Skills, Not CRT and Gender Indoctrination
Republicans will ensure children are taught fundamentals like Reading, History, Science, and Math, not Leftwing propaganda. We will defund schools that engage in inappropriate political indoctrination of our children using Federal Taxpayer Dollars.
Republicans Will End Left-wing Gender Insanity
We will keep men out of women's sports, ban Taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries, and stop Taxpayer-funded Schools from promoting gender transition, reverse Biden's radical rewrite of Title IX Education Regulations, and restore protections for women and girls.
So: anything you say may well be be interpreted as favoring one or the other, as a de facto endorsement. I don’t think that can be helped. The parties would no doubt offer that the whole reason they are there is to accommodate various constituencies. Yours, the pro-life, pro-family constituency is currently being courted by one party and not the other. We want, we strive for, an America where neither party favors maiming healthy bodies or beheading, dismembering helpless infants.
But until that day dawns, your only rhetorical option seems to be clarity or mud. You can speak out, speak up for endangered rights, endangered human beings, or as you say, go silent, and leave your people in the dark about where the moral/cultural lines fall, and how important their civic responsibilities are at a time when Western Civilization itself is circling the drain. Will you be an uncertain trumpet?
Esther 4:14 comes to mind,
“…who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
Going back to my question above, and my comment after, I do think there's a way to not "leave my people in the dark" without pushing a partisan agenda. Thanks for engaging the subject Dan.
I don’t think there’s a more forceful or pungent appeal for Christians and Christian leaders to speak up, speak out than that made by Eric Metaxas in his Letter to the American Church. The film version is only 60 minutes, and I’m happy to underwrite the $20 it costs.
Watch that, and see if he doesn’t thread the needle in a legal way?
Oh and of course I agreed with the statement in your sermon, that we must not think of our political opponents, however destructive they might be, as our enemies.
The only thing I might add to that is that if we’re doing our job, holding the fort, being salt and light, a voice for the voiceless, etc. that they will tend to think of us as THEIR enemies. There is no way to square the Biblical ethic, ethos, with the current postmodern amoral stances, so if the wreckers of civilization like us just fine, we know we have a “Woe to you when all men speak well of you” problem.
I don’t charge you with this, our conversation had been about our communications and public outreach, if any, but of course it’s rather old news that many in the evangelical camp have gone over to the other side, and by inaction or even action are furthering the culture of death.
See Francis Schaeffer’s The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984), Megan Basham’s Shepherds for Sale (2024) or John West’s new book, just out, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity
And sir, let me quickly say first of all, that maybe I dragged us down this rabbit hole because i misunderstood your original post. I could/should have asked, what was the change, what did you give up, stop doing when you went silent on “politics?”
Knowing the difference, the difference YOU see between being vocal and being “silent” might have helped me formulate responses.
In my defense I did see your JDH phrasing and perhaps panicked 🤓 thinking you were embracing, advocating a quietism based on pietism.
Here, let me leave you with an eloquent bit from the late Chuck Colson, Metaxas’ mentor as it happens:
In his introduction to How Now Shall We Live, Colson writes that
“Right after signing the contract for this book, and while still plagued by writer’s remorse (was I really convinced that this book needed to be written?), my wife, Patty, and I visited old friends for a weekend and attended their local evangelical church, which is well known for its biblical preaching. I found the message solidly scriptural and well delivered. That is, until the pastor outlined for the congregation his definition of the church’s mission: to prepare for Jesus’ return through prayer, Bible study, worship, fellowship, and witnessing. In that instant, all lingering doubts about whether I should write this book evaporated.
“Don’t get me wrong. We need prayer, Bible study, worship, fellowship, and witnessing. But if we focus exclusively on these disciplines—and if in the process we ignore our responsibility to redeem the surrounding culture—our Christianity will remain privatized and marginalized.
“Turning our backs on the culture is a betrayal of our biblical mandate and our own heritage because it denies God’s sovereignty over all of life. Nothing could be deadlier for the church—or more ill-timed...”
Indeed, I especially value Colson’s emphasis on what is known as the Cultural Commission (“Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it”)
Colson:
“Understanding Christianity as a worldview is important not only for fulfilling the great commission but also for fulfilling the cultural commission – the call to create a culture under the lordship of Christ. God cares not only about redeeming souls but also about restoring his creation…Our job is not only to build up the church but also to build a society to the glory of God.
“The revitalization of the church will not be complete until it recovers its God-given mission to engage the culture. Christians are called to be countercultural, a force for moral change in a sinful world.…
“…We bear children, plant crops, build cities, form governments, and create works of art. While sin introduced a destructive power into God’s created order, it did not obliterate that order. And when we are redeemed, we are both freed from sin and restored to do what God designed us to do: Create culture…”
“…The Lord’s cultural commission is, I believe, inseparable from the Great Commission. Every part of creation came from God’s hand, every part was drawn into the mutiny of humanity against God, and every part will someday be redeemed. This means caring about all of life—redeeming people and redeeming culture.”
Pastor ~ Hey I couldn’t help thinking about our conversations upon seeing this in the New York Times this morning:
Looking for belief
Conservatives seem to be better at naming this longing. They speak to “civilizational” renewal and a restoration of moral values. They promise deliverance through politics. They use the infrastructure of evangelical Christianity to communicate their vision. It’s working for them.
I hope you don’t think I’m representing a “deliverance through politics” as such, it sounds more than a little idolatrous put that way. However, in a democratic republic, in which the people themselves determine the direction the country goes, each of us would seem to have a responsibility to vote in some ways and not others, all the more so if the basic Constitution arrangements undergirding the nation itself have gone awry. Lincoln’s points in his famous 1858 debates with Stephen A. Douglas are still relevant, that our basic rights are not be understood as a generous but revocable grant of our neighbors, rather as endowed by our Creator, as the Declaration insists. So that the Dobbs decision merely overturned Roe is hardly enough, for the voters in individual states now get to play God, for the High Court gave them the power of life or death over little ones. What needed to happen (again, on Lincoln’s view, which of course required a major war to prevail) was the Court finding the unborn are to be protected as Persons under the Fourteenth Amendment
Hey, I appreciate your calling this new post to my attention.
I do have some thoughts, as I found it about as underwhelming as I’d anticipated.
I do take seriously the grave warning from C. S. Lewis that you pass on, Thats a good reminder on any day.
Anyway, what I propose to do is briefly respond to comments of yours, which I’ll neat in quotation marks so we’ll know who is speaking here.
You write that
“since embracing this mentality I have not mentioned any politician by name or spoken in support of any specific partisan policy”
• Okay, if what you mean by stepping back from politics, embracing political silence from the pulpit, is merely refraining from specifically partisan activities that the IRS holds are illegal anyway, we might find at least some agreement!
“According to Pew Research only 4% of Americans believe that today's political system is ‘working very well.’”
• Ah, but what if our troubles are due to generation after generation of Christians failing to be salt and light in the culture, failing to articulate a winsome and compelling vision for the public square, failing to stand for truth and beauty?
“I recently shared a sermon from John 17:13-19 titled "Faithful Presence in a Political World"
• I was afraid the specter of James Davison Hunter would make an appearance here. Let me ask you, though, will you lead or even accompany a group from your church to be “faithfully present” outside an abortion clinic, to offer help, grace and the Gospel to abortion-minded women getting out of their cars?
“The overload of conflicting and often negative information can leave people feeling paralyzed, unsure of how to act or respond, and spiritually depleted.”
• Isn’t it just possible because people lack a comprehensive Christian worldview understanding, so politics to them is just smoke, heat and noise?And as for “negative information,” are you going to keep everything sunny and light in your sermons, in the manner of a Joel Osteen, or will you present the “whole counsel of God?”
“The story of Simon the Zealot and Matthew the tax collector is one of the most striking examples of the radical unity the gospel creates. In any other context, these two men would have been sworn enemies. Zealots like Simon despised Roman rule and considered tax collectors like Matthew traitors to their people-collaborators with their oppressors. Imagine Simon and Matthew sitting at the same table, walking the same roads, serving the same Lord despite being opposed by their ideological backgrounds….In Christ, we don't erase our differences—we submit them to something greater.”
• Look, I hope we’re agreed that there are not merely vital principles to be upheld in the public square, but also matters of prudential judgment, in which people of good will may legitimately differ. The only legitimate unity as to their differences that Simon and Matthew could find, even in the Gospel, regarding Roman oppression, occupation, is coming to one view of the situation. I suspect Christ Himself told Simon that Rome held sway over what was once literally God’s Country only by Divine permission, that yes, you’re being oppressed, but yes, also you should pay taxes because the Romans are this week’s appointed rulers in a real sense
“Politics today…claims to offer identity ("I am a Republican" "I am a Democrat"), hope ("once they're elected things will be better"), and even salvation ("only my party can save us"). But as followers of Jesus, we recognize that those are things only God can give.”
• So when a Presidential candidate gets their party’s nomination on an idolatrous platform that they are somehow uniquely the candidate of Hope, as in 2008, you will urge your congregation to vote against them? I didn’t think so, because that wouldn’t be silence.
• But can we nonetheless agree that voting for some candidates and some political parties involves material cöoperation in real evils, such as abortion, same-sex “marriage,” maiming healthy bodies in the name of “gender affirmation?
“When our lives revolve around partisan ideologies or when our joy rises or falls with electoral outcomes”
• Excuse me? Scripture tells us that “When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan,” and “When the wicked rise to power, people go into hiding; but when the wicked perish, the righteous thrive.” So I contend that at least some of our joy is going to quite properly be tied to elections. No, this world is not our home, yes, we’ve read the last chapter, we know Who wins in the end, but in the meantime should we not mourn when folly and depravity are exalted?
“Our mission is not to echo cable news talking points.”
• Here you seem to be dodging the question of Truth. Cable news talking points amount to truth claims. Such claims are either true or false. If they’re true, I’d hope we would indeed “echo” them!
“Most Christians I know build their political convictions off of the teachings in God's Word, but those political leanings are subservient to their allegiance to Christ….We hold loosely to our leanings to hold tightly to our allegiance.”
• We can hope that our political predilections are subservient to Christ. But allegiance to the teachings of God’s Word is allegiance to Christ, is it not? So the only breakdown here would seem to be political leanings that merely appear to be based on Scripture, or claim Biblical warrant where Scripture is silent.
“Kevin DeYoung had a similar encouragement to pastors in a recent article: ‘So much of 'speaking prophetically' or applying the Lordship of Christ to all of life amounts to little more than slapdash criticism and recycled talking points.’”
• But isn’t this just because so many pastors and laypeople are doing it wrong or poorly? If so, if we need to get much better at social commentary, the answer is not political silence, the answer is political instruction, for just to be half-decent voters we all need some real grounding in history, in the Declaration, the Constitution, and in the Natural Law that both of these documents allude to.
“Yes, we can have deep convictions about political issues, but our public witness must be unmistakably centered on Christ.”
• But a “Christ” who’d not take a stand on the Holocaust, abortion or sex-trafficking wouldn’t be the real Christ. Do you propose to gain followers or public acceptance by hollowing out the historic meaning of the words “Jesus” or “Christ,” offering us a pale, flaccid substitute for the Nazarene? Leaving aside those lesser matters that are subject to prudential judgment, I’m not seeing how you can be politically silent without equally being morally silent, offering a “Christ” who will offend no one.
Thank you for going into more detail about your discipline of silence.
Thanks for reading!
An update: tonight I heard your Faithful Presence sermon. Of course you don’t actually cite James Davison Hunter, although I believe he is the originator of the phrase, which you possibly picked up from him. But to your credit you don’t charge Christians who want “to change the world” with being motivated by hate, having a Nietzschean ‘ressentiment’ and will to power.
In fact you come across as very kind and caring, solicitous of the concerns of your congregation.
Still I must stand by everything, or virtually everything, I wrote, because good people (as people go), kind, helpful people can still do a lot of damage. Oh, I don’t view your sermon and your piece here on Substack as necessarily destructive, but I do see the potential there yes.
Certainly your heart exam is worthy, we need to not make tertiary or secondary things primary. But by categorizing literal life and death struggles for civilization as simply politics is, in my view, to trivialize the stakes. Was the Obama Administration’s prosecution, persecution of innocent Catholic nuns (who’d merely declined to be complicit in artificial contraception and abortion) just “politics?” Were those who fought to defend their First Amendment right to Free Exercise of Religion similarly just engaging in politics?
I get it, you want your church to welcome and affirm everyone to the extent possible. But that would seem to require the continued existence of your church! Do you not perceive the threat to religious freedom? President Obama’s Chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Martin Castro sounded remarkably like certain other Castros, saying that
“Religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality…the phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, or any form of intolerance.”
Meanwhile in 2016, Planned Parenthood urged us to vote for Secretary Clinton, offering in one advertisement
“3 Damn Good
Reasons to Support
Hillary Clinton
-She introduced 8 pieces of legislation with the purpose of expanding and protecting access to reproductive health care - no other candidate has introduced any.
-She's the most outspoken and frequent supporter of Planned Parenthood - and the only candidate to speak up for Planned Parenthood at the debates.
- She's the only candidate who has testified before a Congressional committee on how abortion is an essential part of reproductive health care.”
Now, can you point to serious GOP problems? I certainly can, for example the newfound Republican enthusiasm for IVF treatments.
But your diminishing of what you’re calling politics may yet deprive the world of a worthy crusader from your own church. You may have sitting in your pews or here on Substack (your virtual congregation) the next Wilberforce or Martin Luther King. They may be keen to devote their lives to moral and legal reform—until their own pastor pours cold water on this idea, telling them in effect to back off, to sit down and be quiet, because otherwise a focus on politics would necessarily pose a threat to their spiritual life.
Is it not possible that some people’s Christian life is quite properly centered around politics, as the lives of others are spent in hardware stores or behind the wheel of a big truck?
Speaking of clarity and mud, sir, let me apologize for any and all typos, editing errors. Your particular combox settings don’t allow any corrections, but hopefully you can read through my mistakes
Hi Dan- Thanks for engaging my post and for even listening to the sermon I gave! I can't quite respond specifically to each of the points you brought up, but I think it's a fair question in response to ask where the line is when a Christian needs to engage an obviously political subject. For each person and situation and the line is probably different. I didn't wrestle with that question in what I wrote, but I agree it's a difficult one to answer. In general I think you are taking my comments too far in your response. I'm not telling people to never engage politics. I'm saying there's something bigger than politics, so let's focus on that. And when we have to focus on politics, let's do it in a way that builds Christian witness and Christian unity.
Good morning Pastor! ☀️
I might argue that we need to break completely out of a framework that even says there’s a “line” between what is political and what is not, that we need instead to preach and promote the whole counsel of God.
If you were preaching that God made humanity of one race, and that people of all colors and ethnicities need to be treated equally, possessing rights and dignity as Made in the Image of God, what would you say to a Klansman in the congregation who said you were getting too political?
Yes there’s something bigger than politics, there is The Godhead, but His holy character and attributes mean that we must come to some moral conclusions and not others regarding economics, sexuality and many other things, and these all have political implications and ramifications. We cannot shrink back from proclaiming that “He made them male and female” just because this is suddenly now politically controversial.
Do you think there's a way to emphasize "he made them male and female" without becoming overtly political in a partisan way? I think there is and it's part of what motivates what I wrote. In fact I have taught on that exact line, even approaching the subject of transgenderism, but I have always sought to focus my comments Biblically, with no political motivation. My hope in doing that is to disarm the argument that I'm "being political" because I was not.
S i r ~
Hello again!
Of course neither I nor anyone I greatly respect in this area would ever ask you, especially from the pulpit, “Vote Republican,” or “Vote for this particular candidate.” That seems to be straight out partisan activity, and whatever its merits, until the prevailing “Johnson Amendment” legal regime is overturned, this is forbidden by the IRS and might well threaten your church’s tax exemption for charitable donations.
But! Your Biblical, moral stand is, in our highly politicized environment, nonetheless a political stand.
Compare the 2024 Party platforms of the Democrats…
“Trump is running on an extreme plan to punish doctors who treat transgender youth and to ban gender-affirming care, and his MAGA Republican allies have pushed a tidal wave of extreme anti-LGBTQl+ bills in statehouses across the country. Democrats will vigorously oppose state and federal bans on gender-affirming health care and respect the role of parents, families, and doctors - not politicians - in making health care decisions.
Democrats will continue to fight for LGBTQI+ youth…”
https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTER-PLATFORM.pdf
…with that of the Republicans:
Knowledge and Skills, Not CRT and Gender Indoctrination
Republicans will ensure children are taught fundamentals like Reading, History, Science, and Math, not Leftwing propaganda. We will defund schools that engage in inappropriate political indoctrination of our children using Federal Taxpayer Dollars.
Republicans Will End Left-wing Gender Insanity
We will keep men out of women's sports, ban Taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries, and stop Taxpayer-funded Schools from promoting gender transition, reverse Biden's radical rewrite of Title IX Education Regulations, and restore protections for women and girls.
https://prod-static.gop.com/media/RNC2024-Platform.pdf
So: anything you say may well be be interpreted as favoring one or the other, as a de facto endorsement. I don’t think that can be helped. The parties would no doubt offer that the whole reason they are there is to accommodate various constituencies. Yours, the pro-life, pro-family constituency is currently being courted by one party and not the other. We want, we strive for, an America where neither party favors maiming healthy bodies or beheading, dismembering helpless infants.
But until that day dawns, your only rhetorical option seems to be clarity or mud. You can speak out, speak up for endangered rights, endangered human beings, or as you say, go silent, and leave your people in the dark about where the moral/cultural lines fall, and how important their civic responsibilities are at a time when Western Civilization itself is circling the drain. Will you be an uncertain trumpet?
Esther 4:14 comes to mind,
“…who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
Going back to my question above, and my comment after, I do think there's a way to not "leave my people in the dark" without pushing a partisan agenda. Thanks for engaging the subject Dan.
S i r ~
I don’t think there’s a more forceful or pungent appeal for Christians and Christian leaders to speak up, speak out than that made by Eric Metaxas in his Letter to the American Church. The film version is only 60 minutes, and I’m happy to underwrite the $20 it costs.
Watch that, and see if he doesn’t thread the needle in a legal way?
Oh and of course I agreed with the statement in your sermon, that we must not think of our political opponents, however destructive they might be, as our enemies.
The only thing I might add to that is that if we’re doing our job, holding the fort, being salt and light, a voice for the voiceless, etc. that they will tend to think of us as THEIR enemies. There is no way to square the Biblical ethic, ethos, with the current postmodern amoral stances, so if the wreckers of civilization like us just fine, we know we have a “Woe to you when all men speak well of you” problem.
I don’t charge you with this, our conversation had been about our communications and public outreach, if any, but of course it’s rather old news that many in the evangelical camp have gone over to the other side, and by inaction or even action are furthering the culture of death.
See Francis Schaeffer’s The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984), Megan Basham’s Shepherds for Sale (2024) or John West’s new book, just out, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity
And sir, let me quickly say first of all, that maybe I dragged us down this rabbit hole because i misunderstood your original post. I could/should have asked, what was the change, what did you give up, stop doing when you went silent on “politics?”
Knowing the difference, the difference YOU see between being vocal and being “silent” might have helped me formulate responses.
In my defense I did see your JDH phrasing and perhaps panicked 🤓 thinking you were embracing, advocating a quietism based on pietism.
Here, let me leave you with an eloquent bit from the late Chuck Colson, Metaxas’ mentor as it happens:
In his introduction to How Now Shall We Live, Colson writes that
“Right after signing the contract for this book, and while still plagued by writer’s remorse (was I really convinced that this book needed to be written?), my wife, Patty, and I visited old friends for a weekend and attended their local evangelical church, which is well known for its biblical preaching. I found the message solidly scriptural and well delivered. That is, until the pastor outlined for the congregation his definition of the church’s mission: to prepare for Jesus’ return through prayer, Bible study, worship, fellowship, and witnessing. In that instant, all lingering doubts about whether I should write this book evaporated.
“Don’t get me wrong. We need prayer, Bible study, worship, fellowship, and witnessing. But if we focus exclusively on these disciplines—and if in the process we ignore our responsibility to redeem the surrounding culture—our Christianity will remain privatized and marginalized.
“Turning our backs on the culture is a betrayal of our biblical mandate and our own heritage because it denies God’s sovereignty over all of life. Nothing could be deadlier for the church—or more ill-timed...”
Indeed, I especially value Colson’s emphasis on what is known as the Cultural Commission (“Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it”)
Colson:
“Understanding Christianity as a worldview is important not only for fulfilling the great commission but also for fulfilling the cultural commission – the call to create a culture under the lordship of Christ. God cares not only about redeeming souls but also about restoring his creation…Our job is not only to build up the church but also to build a society to the glory of God.
“The revitalization of the church will not be complete until it recovers its God-given mission to engage the culture. Christians are called to be countercultural, a force for moral change in a sinful world.…
“…We bear children, plant crops, build cities, form governments, and create works of art. While sin introduced a destructive power into God’s created order, it did not obliterate that order. And when we are redeemed, we are both freed from sin and restored to do what God designed us to do: Create culture…”
“…The Lord’s cultural commission is, I believe, inseparable from the Great Commission. Every part of creation came from God’s hand, every part was drawn into the mutiny of humanity against God, and every part will someday be redeemed. This means caring about all of life—redeeming people and redeeming culture.”
He is Risen! ☀️
Pastor ~ Hey I couldn’t help thinking about our conversations upon seeing this in the New York Times this morning:
Looking for belief
Conservatives seem to be better at naming this longing. They speak to “civilizational” renewal and a restoration of moral values. They promise deliverance through politics. They use the infrastructure of evangelical Christianity to communicate their vision. It’s working for them.
I hope you don’t think I’m representing a “deliverance through politics” as such, it sounds more than a little idolatrous put that way. However, in a democratic republic, in which the people themselves determine the direction the country goes, each of us would seem to have a responsibility to vote in some ways and not others, all the more so if the basic Constitution arrangements undergirding the nation itself have gone awry. Lincoln’s points in his famous 1858 debates with Stephen A. Douglas are still relevant, that our basic rights are not be understood as a generous but revocable grant of our neighbors, rather as endowed by our Creator, as the Declaration insists. So that the Dobbs decision merely overturned Roe is hardly enough, for the voters in individual states now get to play God, for the High Court gave them the power of life or death over little ones. What needed to happen (again, on Lincoln’s view, which of course required a major war to prevail) was the Court finding the unborn are to be protected as Persons under the Fourteenth Amendment
One last* thing:
I was indeed able to gift you a showing of the Eric Metaxas film.
Look for that, at your church email address, along with (separately) a little statement of principles, so you’ll know where I’m coming from 🤓
*at least for now 😉
Hey, I appreciate your calling this new post to my attention.
I do have some thoughts, as I found it about as underwhelming as I’d anticipated.
I do take seriously the grave warning from C. S. Lewis that you pass on, Thats a good reminder on any day.
Anyway, what I propose to do is briefly respond to comments of yours, which I’ll neat in quotation marks so we’ll know who is speaking here.
You write that
“since embracing this mentality I have not mentioned any politician by name or spoken in support of any specific partisan policy”
• Okay, if what you mean by stepping back from politics, embracing political silence from the pulpit, is merely refraining from specifically partisan activities that the IRS holds are illegal anyway, we might find at least some agreement!
“According to Pew Research only 4% of Americans believe that today's political system is ‘working very well.’”
• Ah, but what if our troubles are due to generation after generation of Christians failing to be salt and light in the culture, failing to articulate a winsome and compelling vision for the public square, failing to stand for truth and beauty?
“I recently shared a sermon from John 17:13-19 titled "Faithful Presence in a Political World"
• I was afraid the specter of James Davison Hunter would make an appearance here. Let me ask you, though, will you lead or even accompany a group from your church to be “faithfully present” outside an abortion clinic, to offer help, grace and the Gospel to abortion-minded women getting out of their cars?
“The overload of conflicting and often negative information can leave people feeling paralyzed, unsure of how to act or respond, and spiritually depleted.”
• Isn’t it just possible because people lack a comprehensive Christian worldview understanding, so politics to them is just smoke, heat and noise?And as for “negative information,” are you going to keep everything sunny and light in your sermons, in the manner of a Joel Osteen, or will you present the “whole counsel of God?”
“The story of Simon the Zealot and Matthew the tax collector is one of the most striking examples of the radical unity the gospel creates. In any other context, these two men would have been sworn enemies. Zealots like Simon despised Roman rule and considered tax collectors like Matthew traitors to their people-collaborators with their oppressors. Imagine Simon and Matthew sitting at the same table, walking the same roads, serving the same Lord despite being opposed by their ideological backgrounds….In Christ, we don't erase our differences—we submit them to something greater.”
• Look, I hope we’re agreed that there are not merely vital principles to be upheld in the public square, but also matters of prudential judgment, in which people of good will may legitimately differ. The only legitimate unity as to their differences that Simon and Matthew could find, even in the Gospel, regarding Roman oppression, occupation, is coming to one view of the situation. I suspect Christ Himself told Simon that Rome held sway over what was once literally God’s Country only by Divine permission, that yes, you’re being oppressed, but yes, also you should pay taxes because the Romans are this week’s appointed rulers in a real sense
“Politics today…claims to offer identity ("I am a Republican" "I am a Democrat"), hope ("once they're elected things will be better"), and even salvation ("only my party can save us"). But as followers of Jesus, we recognize that those are things only God can give.”
• So when a Presidential candidate gets their party’s nomination on an idolatrous platform that they are somehow uniquely the candidate of Hope, as in 2008, you will urge your congregation to vote against them? I didn’t think so, because that wouldn’t be silence.
• But can we nonetheless agree that voting for some candidates and some political parties involves material cöoperation in real evils, such as abortion, same-sex “marriage,” maiming healthy bodies in the name of “gender affirmation?
“When our lives revolve around partisan ideologies or when our joy rises or falls with electoral outcomes”
• Excuse me? Scripture tells us that “When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan,” and “When the wicked rise to power, people go into hiding; but when the wicked perish, the righteous thrive.” So I contend that at least some of our joy is going to quite properly be tied to elections. No, this world is not our home, yes, we’ve read the last chapter, we know Who wins in the end, but in the meantime should we not mourn when folly and depravity are exalted?
“Our mission is not to echo cable news talking points.”
• Here you seem to be dodging the question of Truth. Cable news talking points amount to truth claims. Such claims are either true or false. If they’re true, I’d hope we would indeed “echo” them!
“Most Christians I know build their political convictions off of the teachings in God's Word, but those political leanings are subservient to their allegiance to Christ….We hold loosely to our leanings to hold tightly to our allegiance.”
• We can hope that our political predilections are subservient to Christ. But allegiance to the teachings of God’s Word is allegiance to Christ, is it not? So the only breakdown here would seem to be political leanings that merely appear to be based on Scripture, or claim Biblical warrant where Scripture is silent.
“Kevin DeYoung had a similar encouragement to pastors in a recent article: ‘So much of 'speaking prophetically' or applying the Lordship of Christ to all of life amounts to little more than slapdash criticism and recycled talking points.’”
• But isn’t this just because so many pastors and laypeople are doing it wrong or poorly? If so, if we need to get much better at social commentary, the answer is not political silence, the answer is political instruction, for just to be half-decent voters we all need some real grounding in history, in the Declaration, the Constitution, and in the Natural Law that both of these documents allude to.
“Yes, we can have deep convictions about political issues, but our public witness must be unmistakably centered on Christ.”
• But a “Christ” who’d not take a stand on the Holocaust, abortion or sex-trafficking wouldn’t be the real Christ. Do you propose to gain followers or public acceptance by hollowing out the historic meaning of the words “Jesus” or “Christ,” offering us a pale, flaccid substitute for the Nazarene? Leaving aside those lesser matters that are subject to prudential judgment, I’m not seeing how you can be politically silent without equally being morally silent, offering a “Christ” who will offend no one.