CHRISTIAN COMMON SENSE ABOUT POLITICS

The Christian religion was born in the
midst of a difficult, sometimes tortuous
relationship with a political state. That State,
the Roman Empire, first ignored Christianity as
one more marginal, ethnic cult, and then was
amused by its peculiar beliefs, and then began
to regard it as a threat to the public peace and
to its own authority and to persecute it. Then
the State decided to adopt it, to make it official,
and to protect, defend and sponsor its
existence and its growth. Finally, that State, the
Roman Empire, was eclipsed by it. “Out of the
ashes of the Empire rose the throne of St. Peter

and the Papacy,” is the way the historians put it.

You might even say that the relationship of
church to state, of faith to politics, has been

critically important to Christians from the

beginning and, further, that it has been anything

but a simple matter for us.
CITE CUBA
ARGENTINA AND MOTHERS
NORTH KOREA

One day Jesus dealt with it. It’s near the
end of the story when the conflict between him
and the religious and political authorities has
deepened. A group of critics has come to
contend with him, perhaps even discredit him in
the eyes of his increasingly zealous followers.
They ask a question for which there is no good
answer: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the
Emperor?” The tax in question is the head tax,
a hated reminder that the real authority in Israel
is Gaesar. However he answers, he’s going to

be in trouble. The Zealots, a fanatically

nationalistic political organization, of which
Judas Iscariot may have been a memher, held
that the tax was illegal and should not be paid
as a gesture of civil disobedience. Many people
secretly admired them and their brave protests

against Roman authority.

If Jesus said, “Pay the tax, it is legitimate,”
he would, in fact, have discredited himself with
many people as a Roman collaborator. On the
other hand, if he took the zealot position and
advised not paying the tax, he would have been

arrested on the spot for sedition.

His response, in that circumstance, is
subtle and remarkable: “Let me see a coin,” he
says. The image of Caesar was on the coin - it

was Caesar’s money, government money.

“Give it to him,” Jesus says, “it’s his

anyhow. Give to God what is God’s”

A simplistic way to interpret his answer is
that there is no connection between religious
faithfulness and the political arena. And it
seems, at first, as if that is exactly what he
means. Religion and politics are completely
distinct. Keep them altogether separate. Be an
obedient citizen and a faithful Christian in
separate ways. lt has been a popular notion
within Western Christianity: two realms — “the
City of God and the City of Man,” with no
relationship between them. It was the
theological rationale behind the ability of some
Christians in Nazi Germany, to work in the
death camps all week and go to church on

Sunday.

That total separation of religion from
politics would have been surprising to Jesus.
Actually, he is teaching one of Israel's oldest

and most precious creeds, the sovereignty of

God. Actually, itis a sarcastic answer and his
hearers probably got it. Caesar is throwna

crumb.

“Here...look at his picture...give him
what he has coming. The Lord

God, the sovereign and only King of
all creation, owns everything.

You owe everything to God:

everything you have, everything you are.”

The ones who have come to discredit him
are astonished. It’s not the answer they
wanted. God is Lord of all: all individuals, all
nations, emperors and empires. Godis
sovereign even over religious institutions. Itis
an amazing answer. It describes an active
engagement of faithful people in the political
process, but itis very clear about where

ultimate sovereignty or authority lie.

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to
God what is God’s. The earliest Christian creed
was “Jesus Christ is Lord” and in the days of
high Roman imperialism, it was a political
statement. What it meant was “The emperor is
not Lord. The state is not Lord.” And in that
simple affirmation, Christianity deprived the
emperor and every totalitarianism in history,
from Nero to Hitler, to failed Marxist regimes in
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Soviet
Union, the one thing totalitarianism must have
and that is the unquestioned loyaity and
obedience of its subjects. “Jesus Christ is my
Lord” was first of all a political statement. And
people who said it were not scolded for their
misguided theology. They were executed for

treason.

One of the most important and most

precious tenets of Christian faith, as we

Presbyterians see it, is the sovereignty of God
and therefore the limitations on the sovereignty
of any human authority — king, government, or
church. “God alone is Lord of the conscious,”
we like to say and by that we mean that there is
about you and me something which we owe to
no one but God and furthermore that good

government understands that about itself.

ltis why many of us are uncomfortable
with the carefully planned strategy of the
religious right to gain control of the Republican
party. The Christian Coalition is an attempt to
enforce one group’s notion of what is good and
true and moral on all the rest of us; an attempt
to assume for itself the mind of God in matters
like the right of a woman to choose an abortion,
accessibility of birth control information and
devices, what books will be available in school

and public libraries, in the name of Christian

values and the Christian character of our

nation.

The fact is that while Christian and
particularly Presbyterian influences are there
from the beginning, there is not and never has
been a Christian nation. It is a nation in which
Christians have been more free to be Christian
in whatever way they wish than anywhere else
in the world. And it has also been a place
where people are free not to be Christian; to be

Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or nothing.

The glory of this experiment is precisely its
idea of the limitations of government when it
comes to matters of conscience and faith and
its protection of the liberty of ali its citizens to

follow the dictates of their own conscience.

We're different in this respect. Leslie Geib

wrote an editorial in the New York Times a

while a go in which he observed that most of the
nations of the world are organized on some
principle of exclusion: race, religion, language,
ethnicity. And with frightening violence,
exclusive groups are willing to go to war with
other groups to protect their own

exclusiveness.

Cornel West, head of the Department of
African-American studies at Princeton, said ina
speech that the loss of that sense of community,
the inclusive community, is our greatest

danger.

“Fwo hundred and eighteen years after the
beginning of this precious democratic

project, democracy is fragile...particularly
this notion that we are all in this together,

that if the ship springs a leak, we are all

going to drown.”

West and other historians note that the
founders of the Republic, even though they did
not include the people who were brought here
as slaves, nevertheless put in place a system
that acknowledges the public arena, the
common good. It’s in the preamble to the

Constitution.

“We the people of the United States, in
order to form a more perfect union,

establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defense,

promote the general welfare, and secure
the blessings of liberty for ourselves and

our posterity, do ordain and establish this

Constitution...”
“The general welfare.” It’s for all of us, not

just those of us who came from Northern

Europe, but those who came from Asia and

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Southern Europe, and Africa and South
America and those who were already here and
who have the only really legitimate claim on the

land.

As we head toward the end of the century,
we need a renewed sense of the public good,
the general welfare. We Christians particularly
need to take our stand for a nation and a culture
which is truly inclusive, where no one is
excluded by reason of race, religion, ethnicity.
And we need to make our voice heard a little
more clearly when the name “Christian” is
misappropriated by any coalition, any church,
that claims God’s truth, God’s willis its own

private property.

We need to stop shouting slogans at one
another and learn again the gift of public
discourse, expressing differences of opinion

about important matters without calling into

li

question the political loyalty of religious

orthodoxy of others.

May | suggest to you that we cannot and
should not try to go back to a vision of our
nation as an extension of Great Britain, white
and Christian. But instead, in the name of the
God of the whole creation, who created human
beings in many colors, embrace with faith and
eagerness the gorgeous pluralism which tries

to exist here?

And may | suggest that it is our religious
duty to welcome customs and mores of others,
even when so to do means limiting our right to

practice our own publicly.

And may | suggest that among our most
precious values is a sense of the community,
the public, the whole people, and that when all

the people do not have access to the best the

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culture produces — healthcare, education,
public safety, housing, transportation, and
opportunity — by reason of economics, race or
political intent, it is our sacred duty to change
the system and to do better. And that is the

only way we will survive?

And we should, | presume to suggest, give
God thanks for the precious experiment that in
spite of its lapses, its occasional forgetfulness
about its own most precious traditions, still
intends to include all of Ged’s children and to
hold up to the world a picture of what human life

under God’s sovereignty might look like.

And may | suggest, finally, that not only
did our Lord Jesus not suggest a separation of
religion and politics, but quite the opposite,
quite radically so? May | suggest that public
political involvement is our sacred duty; that he

calls us to give Caesar his due in the context of

God’s sovereignty, the God of all people, all
nations, all races...the God to whom we owe
everything...and whom to serve is both our

sacred duty and highest joy?

ooBerevesnet

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