It’s October. We better get serious quickly about getting the right people elected to office. Now is the time for us Christians to get busy turning this country around. There is no time to waste. So let’s start by considering what we can do to bring about change—no later than November 2108.
The year 2108 is no misprint. It is a century from now. American Christians regularly say that Christ is Lord, but we rarely think act as though He is Lord of Time and History. We rarely think seriously about time and history. Perhaps, it is due to the American historical experience. We won our War for Independence in eight years; we got our horribly destructive civil war completed in four years; we finished off the Nazi, Fascists, and Japanese Militarist empires in four years. Even the Cold War only occupied less than half a century. Americans put a man on the moon in about a decade after entering the space race. Like Caesar, we came, we saw, and we conquered. Now on to the next challenge, we think.
Perhaps it is American culture itself. We think in terms of speedy transportation, instant communication, and fast food. If we plant a magic bean today, we fully expect to climb its stalk tomorrow morning, slay a giant by noon, and enjoy his gold and wealth by tomorrow evening. We seem to think that politics can be cleaned up, redeemed, transformed in an instant, or at least in an election cycle.
American Christians entering the world of politics display all of the naivety, fears, and misunderstandings of a country bumpkin entering the big city for the first time: “Golly, let’s just go and vote.” Sometimes this naivety takes the form of finding Bible slogans to apply to political situations. Christians say, “We believe in miracles.” “Greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.” “All things are possible with God,” and so on. If Tony Dungy coached football with this mentality, he might have watched a few Superbowls, but would never have coached a winning team in one.
Then there are the Christians who got involved in politics several elections ago who have now “learned their lessons.” I cannot bear to read their confessionals. Generally the refrain is, “I got involved in politics and took my eyes off Jesus. Like Peter, I sunk in the waves.” All wet and recovering, they vow to never lose focus of the spiritual kingdom again. Politics turned out to be dirty and troublesome. Washington did not welcome them and the establishment did not accept Jesus, so they go back to the tried and true sawdust trail.
Sometimes, Christians decide to charge their lances full force toward yet another windmill. It’s the third party attraction. Perhaps it might work, but just to be sure, find and read the biographies of Presidents Henry Wallace, Strom Thurman, George Wallace, John Anderson, Ross Perot, and Pat Buchanan. (Look in the fantasy section for those books.) Successful third parties do two things in American politics. First, they cipher votes from the major candidate that most resembles them. Second, they may provide an issue or a voting block that one of the major parties successfully woos before the next election.
Those are the options for a genuine third party movement. Most alternatives to the two major parties are not third party movements, but fourth, fifth, sixth, and so on movements. These minor parties, like the Libertarians, the Green Party, the Constitution Party, and countless others, generally garner only the smallest fraction of the vote. Prior to the days of Internet access, you could not even find the final numbers such parties picked up on election day. Percentage wise, I got more votes for “Most Handsome” in my high school than most minor parties receive. Minor parties, which often involve some really sharp people and some pertinent issues, are politically irrelevant. It is like me shooting a few hoops here at home while the NBA playoffs are going on. I may make a great shot from the side, but it is irrelevant.
When Christians do edge toward politics, they are prone to shrill hysteria. Certainly, the political climate can easily engender both shrillness and hysteria, but that reaction never works. For Christians, it usually results in confusion over whether the current crop of evils guarantees a second coming before the next election cycle or whether we still have time for one more prayer rally in Washington.
As if the Christian community itself did not have internal angst and outer confusion over politics, the political and media establishment also misreads and misunderstands Christian involvement. The media love obituaries, especially those of political enemies. Every time a conservative Christian candidate loses or the more conservative and Christian leaning candidates are swept out of office, the media produces its last rites over the religious right, conservative talk radio, and conservatism in general. The media are genuinely bewildered when talking to serious Christians, and this means, serious in terms of the lowest American Christian common denominator. If a media person were to interview a Christian thinker who was on the level of an Abraham Kuyper or a Greg Bahnsen, they would be totally dumbfounded.
There are answers available to us. It is possible for us to adopt a one hundred year plan for Christian restoration. We can expect to begin seeing results long before 2108. But it will involve some hard work, some rethinking, and lots of theological and political education. Let’s first consider where we are.
The year 1973 was a watershed in American politics. Following his landslide trouncing of liberal George McGovern, President Richard Nixon began his second term under the shadow of the Watergate Scandal that would soon engulf him. America’s involvement in the Vietnam War was ending. The social revolutions of the 1960s were collapsing from exhaustion. In this climate, the Supreme Court once again sidestepped constitutional history and Christian common law consensus and blessed abortion on demand with legality through its Roe v. Wade decision.
It was 1980 before the Christian community was alert enough, incensed enough, and united enough to act. Thankfully, one of the three evangelical candidates for the Presidency, Ronald Reagan, had the foresight to unite the Moral Majority agenda to his anti-communist, pro-capitalist, conservative philosophy.
Christians who never previously knew what caucuses, bandwagons, and political campaigns suddenly became a political force. Twenty-eight years later, we find ourselves wondering why we don’t control both parties, both Houses of Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the media. We are like Gomer Pyle, who was able to fix flats at Wally’s garage back in Mayberry, but never got out of basic training in the Marines. Still some learning has gone on.
By the 1980s, Christians realized that the world of political actions, like ideas, have consequences. Since that time, Christian political action has netted some electoral changes. Christians sent some powerful humanistic and liberal political leaders to the unemployment lines. Christians elected some Christians and conservatives. The two political parties, but especially the Republican Party, began flattering, cajoling, and wooing evangelicals. Some politicians and some of the media began attacking. Some of our political agenda has made it to the table. Some of our issues have become the defining issues. Along with all that, we have seen promises broken, elected officials disgraced, our agenda ignored, our beliefs ridiculed, and our political work shredded to shambles.
These failures are among the reasons why Christians so quickly abort political involvement. When you play football, you should expect the other team to block, tackle, and to seek to score. When you grow a garden, you should expect weeds, weather, insects, and varmints to attack, hinder, or devour your crop. When you get involved in politics, you must expect failure, unjust attacks, ridicule, betrayals, and the like. In politics, success is short lived and disaster is ever present.
Christians need to realize how the world of politics functions. Politics must be distinguished from church and theology. We don’t walk into a room of religious types and expect to compromise the Ten Commandments and the Nicene Creed. In the field of politics, it is essential, however, to learn the processes, the compromises, and the rules—external and internal—to political success.
The political hardball, the rough and tumble, and the realpolitik of the legislative process may turn many of us away from actual involvement. That is okay. Not all Christians are constituted to be soldiers, surgeons, pastors, or politicians. But all Christians need to recognize that we need salt and light in all those and many other fields.
Christian education, now taking place in homes and Christian schools everywhere, gives us great hope for our political future. A renewal of sound Biblical theology and practice and the recovery of rigorous academic standards provide foundations for reformation in all areas of life, including the political realm. Christian students are now learning history in ways that highlight the Christian political and social impact upon culture. Christian students are mastering the great literary classics and rhetorical skills that created Western Civilization. They are, to use Dorothy Sayers’ words, learning how to learn.
Now we can focus on a generation of Christians who can specialize in the many fields related to political action. I know the bevy of criticisms leveled against Senator John McCain, for I have made them myself. He is not conservative enough; he is a moderate, a compromiser, a political insider, and is the epitome of status quo politics. I still puzzle over how and why the party of Ronald Reagan ended up with him. I don’t have great hopes of a McCain Revolution like that Reagan brought to the nation. But I think there are some good reasons to support Senator McCain.
I don’t want to deal with the usual and quite convincing conservative and Christian reasons for voting for McCain. I have no interest in reminding ourselves of the potentially disastrous consequences of an Obama Presidency. Here is my basic hope: President McCain will appoint and nominate several hundred people to fill cabinet positions and executive branch offices. He will also choose quite a few judicial nominees. Some, maybe a lot, of his choices will be good. Some will be awful.
But down below the list of cabinet secretaries, assistant cabinet secretaries, executive office holders, and political pawns, will be a nameless group of young college graduates who are learning the ropes of politics and power. Unknown, young, inexperienced, and working at low levels, young Daniels, Hananiahs, Mishaels, and Azariahs will be learning the “language and literature of the Chaldeans” (Daniel 1:3-7). In another generation, these novices will be the political pros, judges, cabinet officers, and leaders. For now, these low level positions are going to be held by young people who either have Abraham Kuyper and Ronald Reagan as role models or Bill Clinton and John Kennedy as role models. I am voting for the first group of young Turks.
If we Christians are to have an impact on the political future of this country, some Christians are going to have to get university training in political fields. This means law, economics, foreign affairs, and other areas of political science. Add to that, the need for degrees in journalism. This will also entail attending graduate school at some major universities, including the Ivy League schools on the east coast. Graduates of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other prestigious schools frequently occupy positions of power from the White House to the Supreme Court. Our local Christian college may have some attractive features, especially for the undergraduate years, but a degree in religious ministries from Klunk County Bible Institute does not open doors in Washington.
If we Christians are to have an impact on the political future of our country, in some cases, we will be seeing our daughters entering politics. Part of political wisdom is realizing that the male-dominated world of colonial history is history. Presbyterian Condoleeza Rice, Presbyterian Ann Coulter, Catholic Laura Ingraham, and other Christian women are involved in policy making, the media, and the political world. We grant that most of our daughters will be wives and mothers, just as our sons will be husbands and fathers. Those called to politics will have to balance the demands of family with political careers. This is not essentially different from families involved in church work, for pastors and teachers have their own family and career balancing acts.
Christians will need to get involved in politics at many levels. We are enamored by the idea of electing a president who reflects our views. To the same degree, we are bored by the thought of attending a local precinct meeting. We love signing petitions forbidding same sex unions, but have little desire to register church members to vote. We pore over the red state/blue state patterns, but don’t know the conservative voters in our neighborhood. We get worked up in a frenzy every four years, but we don’t know how to implement a plan for one hundred years.
We rightly honor and almost idolize the generation of Founding Fathers.
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, Witherspoon, and others astound us with their intellectual wisdom, rhetorical depth, and political saavy. We forget that by the year 1776, the colonial legislatures had been honing political skills and practicing for independence for over a century. All of those men we regard as Founders were once students, readers of political books and journals, junior officers in the colonial militias, and local political leaders.
We have a hundred years of work to do. Let’s get started.
[This article originally appeared in the October 2008 newsletter for the Center for Cultural Leadership]
