Christians Should Be Political Pacifists?

The Controversial Stand of Pastor Greg Boyd Part 2

Last time, I introduced Dr. Greg Boyd, pastor of the Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, who caused a big stink in his church in 2004 by preaching a series of sermons called the Cross and the Sword, which essentially demands that Christians practice political pacifism. Pastor Boyd has since followed up with a book based on those sermons, published in May of this year, called The Myth of the Christian Nation, which, not surprisingly, attracted the attention of the New York Times.

Pastor Boyd’s sermons generate two questions in my mind: Do the principles of the Kingdom of God preclude the participation of the Christians in the political processes of our democracy? Does participation in the democratic process contradict the sacrificial aspect of God’s kingdom?

It is tempting to answer with a simple yes or no, but then I wouldn’t have anything to write about. Besides, the answers aren’t that simple because they call into question the definition of evangelism and its place in a democracy. While many Christian leaders voice their convictions about moral and socio-political issues in the public forum, I do not believe they have forsaken power of God’s kingdom in favor of the power of politics. Rather, I believe it is precisely their loyalty to and love for the kingdom of God that motivates them to join the public debate.

Evangelism means to preach the gospel, to spread the gospel. The gospel not only glorifies the name of Jesus as the only Way to salvation, but it glorifies all that is part of the Lord's character, His wisdom, His Lordship and indeed His requirements for His creatures. On the other hand, the worldly spirit, or should I say religion, of secularism pushes a system of doctrines and practices that reject any form of religious faith and God's wise standards for a civil and just society. Without God and His standards, society has no absolute ruler by which to measure the efficacy and validity of its decisions. And yet, the secularists justify their agenda in the name of freedom. The big lie is that constitutional freedom guarantees the right of its citizens to do whatever they want whenever they want. I doubt the Founders intended an American civilization built on such a foundation of shifting sand. Christians see the folly of the secularist belief system and in turn reject it for depriving American society of the stability that religious character and influence brings. Pastor Boyd is wrong in saying that Christians defy the purposes of the Kingdom of God by utilizing the tools of the political process to take a stand for rightness in our society. Rather, Christians are fulfilling part of their evangelical purpose in God's kingdom.

Unfortunately, too many people buy the secularists’ argument that the so-called religious right is explointing the First Amendment guarantees in an attempt to install a theocracy. That's just dumb. Christian involvement in national affairs and culture has been a fact of life in America since this country’s beginning. The idea was and still is to preserve the democratic republic. The First Amendment not only guarantees the free practice of religion without the interference of government, but to also protect free practice from elements in private society that would exploit the government's power to interfere with it. How about some politically incorrect comments from a few of the august Founders?

James Madison: “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government…. We have staked the future upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to sustain ourselves, according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
Benjamin Franklin: "...the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”
Thomas Jefferson: “No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man, and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example.”
John Jay: “No human society has ever been able to maintain both order and freedom, both cohesiveness and liberty apart from the moral precepts of the Christian religion…. Should our Republic ever forget this fundamental precept of governance…this great experiment will then surely be doomed.”

Western and American jurisprudence is largely based on Judeo-Christian law. History, however, has shown that there has been, and always will be, challenges to this foundation.

A notable challenge was the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. A Dayton, Tennessee high school teacher by the name of John T. Scopes was charged with violating the Butler Act which forbade the teaching of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. The American Civil Liberties Union helped defend Scopes as a test of the statute. Although the trial’s purpose was to challenge the constitutionality of the law, it was more a test of the nation’s loyalty to its belief system. It was a contest between the Traditionalists—those who maintained traditional biblical and Christian teachings as handed down from an original divine revelation—versus the Modernists—those who wanted to redefine those teachings and doctrines in terms of modern science. Which god would win society’s heart: science or faith? Although the court ruled against Scopes on a legal technicality, the ruling was not a victory for Christianity. After the public debate surrounding the trial, the overarching result of the trial was to banish the Bible to the inside of church buildings, charged as having no serious relevancy to society. Christian influence went dormant. Secularism began to set up its own theocracy.

I believe that the absence of Christian activism in the public square contributed in no small way to the upheaval of the 1960s. Edmund Burke said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil was for good men to do nothing.

Today, America is still suffering from the fruit of the sorry legacy that resulted from the worldly spirit having replaced the Bible’s influence: enter the counter cultural revolution of the 1960s.

This is LM
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