Politics and Religion at the Dinner Table Part IV

We interrupt this blog series to bring you an important message.

Political Idolatry

When I wrote Overturning Tables in 2013-14, I did not recognize the political idolatry which was brewing in America and has now come to a flashpoint. I wrote the book thinking of Christians who spoke about Jesus as if he was simply offering an individualistic path of righteousness for followers that did not include engaging political powers; men and women who believed that if we just focused on personal piety, the political and social would work itself out. I had not considered Christians who had fused their faith with a political party. I did not account for political idolatry.

A Political Revolution

A recent analysis has identified a sharp rise in political sectarianism in America. It reports that the level of identification with a political party has become so dogmatic it is fostering hatred, or even violence, against those of an opposing party. We are living in a period of American history where vilification of those who identify with other parties has robbed us of grace, courtesy, and the assumption of good upon the other. We have so moralized our party affiliation that to defend the party has become a holy war – and I mean a real holy war on the level of the Crusades, where taking up arms against the other is justified on religious grounds. We’ve made religions of our parties and messiahs of our leaders.

The termination of the FCC fairness doctrine in 1987, which required broadcasters to air contrasting views on controversial topics, has fed our carnal search for a demon upon which to fix our hatred and has played into conspiracy theories which give license to that hatred.

Those using violence in support of their party today believe we need a revolution. The fact is, we do need a revolution, but it’s not the kind of revolution those breaking into the US Capitol are endorsing. What we need is a revolution of civility, an insurgency of grace, a rebellion against the spirit of division.

But, this is not to say we should turn a blind eye to oppression and pretend evil does not exist.

The Conscience of the State

The role of Jesus followers is to speak truth to power when power has become self-serving. Our politic is to teach the Sermon on the Mount by how we live, to eschew violence, to measure our nation’s health by how the poor, the widow, the orphan and the foreigner are treated, and to call for the love neighbor – both locally and globally. The gravitational pull of the State is toward the hatred of enemies, to concentrate power into the hands of a few, to exclude those considered different, and to use violence to solve differences. Those who follow in the footsteps of the Prince of Peace are not of that world.

They are arbiters of grace, champions of the marginalized, and representatives of a State that is wholly unlike the States of this world. “My ‘State’ is not of this world,” Jesus said in John 18:36.

Before we turn our attention to examining how our current economic system has trapped the Christian imagination, I thought it important to pause and bring this caveat to my earlier blogs that looked at the Jesus’ engagement with socio-political powers.