This week I am supposed to present to the Rhode Island Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission about relationality and the problems of political involvement for the church. There are volumes and volumes written about such a topic, so I mostly summarized. For now, consider the reasons why the church should be involved in the polis. We believe in a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21). If this is the case, then we should be working to live in that new heaven and new earth – we should be living by that ethic and sharing that ethic any way possible. Some, like Hauerwas and H. Richard Niebuhr would argue that we should be a witness to the community for others to observe. Our role is not to be politically involved, but to the counter to the culture, calling culture to the ethos of the church. I like a lot of what Hauerwas and others are suggesting, but in the end I don’t think I can agree. There are moments when the church needs to be more than a witness – a bystander to destruction. There are moments when the church needs to be actively involved when the culture is advocating and legal sin on the societal level. Cliché case in point – the Civil Rights movement.
Of course the church should not get so involved that it becomes complicit in the mess of bill-making and legislating. Perhaps the church is to be a witness, but within the process, if this is possible. Granted, this is a difficult and delicate balance to hold. It is not easy to be in the system and not completely in it, so I am going to be deliberately vague about the details. We do need to be engaged – it is essential, but we need to be cautious as to the how. A witness alongside those who are also working for justice and peace in the world.
1 comment:
I still say you need to read your Yoder! Reading Hauerwas, as influenced as he was by Yoder isn't quite the same. One of Yoder's major points, at least if I get what he is trying to do, is that church Isn't involved in politics as much as church is the alternative politics. This point is made most clear in his work 'Body Politic.' I think this does shift the dialogue from the question of if we should be involved in politics. We are, already. Not in governmental politics perhaps, as in aligning ourselves with democrats or republicans. The dialogue becomes one of acknowledging our own unique way of being polis, and discerning how we make are witnesses to the world. Having said this, I suppose we are still left with two problems. When a governmental policy is in serious conflict with the politics of the church, should we align ourselves with a governmental alternative? In the instance of slaver, I've been reading about the 'republican' and 'democratic' versions of the new abolitionism. Do we join with one or the other? Global Slavery will require major legislative and economic efforts to combat that the church alone cannot effect. And another complicating factor is the fact that it is harder to get the church to agree on its politics that it is Democrats! So while Yoder and Hauerwas would say that one of our political stances in non-violence, not all Christians agree, perhaps even a majority of Christians agree.
Looking forward to your presentation, if the weather doesn't get in the way, I'll be down to heckle!!!
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