In the 1980s Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority and helped align the evangelical arm of Protestant Christianity in America with the Republican Party. What was significant about this was that for the first time in our history Evangelicals actually became a voting block in America, and still are. Falwell’s mantra to “take American back for God” sounds strikingly similar to the current version of “making American great again.”
The Democrats did make a feeble attempt to align themselves with mainstream Christianity leading up to the 2008 elections by publically talking about their personal faith on live television. The progressive Evangelical Jim Wallis inspired this event because he wanted the Democrats to be seen talking about God and their faith like their Republican counterparts.
The question I want to raise in this post is this: Would Jesus have identified with either one of these attempts to make American politics more Christian? Or to state the issue a bit differently: Do American politics and the Politics of Jesus have anything in common?
First to state the obvious: Jesus was neither a Democrat or a Republican. No matter how right you think your political affiliation is, or how great your candidate would be as President, aligning it with the politics of Jesus is a huge mistake. American politics and the politics of Jesus don’t mix:
It would be like trying to mix oil and water.
Second, the politics of Jesus differ considerably from American politics today and this is the point I wish to make in this article. Today’s politics is based on half-truths, lies, and blatant deception. It is laced with fear, suspicion, racism, and negativism. The 2016 Presidential campaign thus far resembles a tank of starving sharks all trying to eat the same piece of bloody meat. There’s nothing Christian in either the rhetoric or behavior of these aspiring presidential candidates.
Yes Jesus was political. He confronted the powers that be but not from a position of power. Jesus’s politics were not power-based politics that sought an advantage. His politics were not coercive or threatening. He understood that God’s Kingdom (politics) could not be legislated or made into law. His politics were not energized by self-gain, deception, suspicion, fear, and the need for power that we witness in today’s political arena. His politics were not the property of major financial donors.
What energized Jesus’s politics? Love! Not a romantic, mushy sentimental brand of love, but a real courageous self-giving love that animated his life and ministry. Jesus’s political platform was not based on the abolition of abortion, or on a stronger and mightier military, or on reducing taxes, or on the promise of a better more robust economy, or on the fear of Muslims, or on harsher immigration laws.
No, Jesus’s political platform was Golgotha! If you want to see what animated Jesus’s politics you need look no further than the cross.
Jim Wallis is right in believing that Christians ought to have an influence on American politics. I agree with him on this point. But I do not believe we influence our political system as Christians by being co-opted into its political web of disparate parties and questionable agendas. I do not believe we can influence politicians by becoming their pawns within their own political system. We will end up playing their game on their turf and we will loose. This is where I believe Jerry Falwell got it all wrong. This is where I believe Evangelicals and Progressives still get it wrong today.
You see Falwell’s tragic mistake was that he believed the American political system could be Christianized. What he did not foresee was that he and his well-meaning Evangelicals, were used as political pawns in a ruthless system that ground them up like hamburger meat.
Now this isn’t to say that all politicians are heartless or bad people. This isn’t to say that there are no Christian politicians. I believe there are. Yet when Pilate asked Jesus if he was the King of the Jews what was Jesus’s response? "My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36).
To paraphrase Jesus’s reply: “My politics and my political realm is much different from the politics and political systems of this world.”
The biggest mistake that has been made in recent memory is the attempt to Christianize American politics. It can’t be done. Allowing one’s faith to be co-opted into any political system or party is a disaster waiting to happen. When a presidential candidate publically testifies to his Christian faith in one breath and then announces he will carpet bomb ISIS and make the sand glow in another we should see little red flags warning us of just how dangerous it becomes when religion and politics become bedfellows.
What is the best way that we Christians can influence the political process in America?
It is by faithfully living as followers of Jesus rather than as pawns of either political party.
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