Our Politics Are Too Small

Is politics part of our faithful life? And if so, what does this mean?

On Saturday afternoon, August 12, 2017, I returned home grief-stricken, angry, stunned by the Unite the Right rally’s chaos and violence. For months, we’d been preparing for the Alt-Right and Neo-Nazis to land in Charlottesville, having endured the KKK protest a few weeks prior. And that Saturday night, our church leadership pondered possibilities they don’t cover in seminary: What do we do if protesters arrive at church toting guns? How do we respond if people want to walk into church wearing Nazi symbols and paraphernalia?

I drove to church early Sunday morning, the disorientation and Virginia humidity both heavy and thick. A question clarified, became clearer, more demanding and necessary to answer. Did anything we were about to do — gathering to sing songs and pray Psalms and pronounce the gospel and gather around the Eucharist — matter amid death and catastrophic troubles? Were we gathering on a Sunday to participate in a collective act of tone-deaf, religious irrelevance? Were we wildly out of touch to return to worship amid trauma and evil? Should we abandon worship and head out to the streets to be part of the real action?

These questions reflect a common (often just below the water) assumption that goes something like this: Church is good for those private bits of our life, good for finding peace when we’re anxious or good for organizing cultural rituals like weddings and baptisms. Religion can help connect us to spiritual elements. However, when it comes to the grittier stuff, when we need to really get things done — worship and Christian devotion takes a backseat so serious people doing serious things can actually make things happen.

That morning, I faced the questions head on. Does God’s story truly define reality — all of it? Even the sulphur-stench streets of August 11 and 12? Is prayer really at the center of the action, the action in this world now? Is, as the New Testament insists, the declaration that Jesus is Lord truly the essential salvo for the re-creation of everything, the cosmic righting of wrongs, the in-breaking of healing we must have if there’s going to be hope for any of us? What does Christian faith have to do with our public life, with justice and our social order and economies and war and the many ideologies that compete for our allegiance?

All this to say: what does our faith have to do with politics?

Some of us might answer: “not a thing at all because God’s concern is only about souls and eternity.” But that tack won’t do because this world is, after all, God’s world (God made it, rules over it). And how can we understand Scripture’s many instructions about how to live — how to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God — other than guidance (and commands) about how to order our shared, public lives (in other words: how we’re to go about our politics)?

However, others of us might say: “my faith has a lot to do with politics; it’s the language I use to frame my political action. Religion is how I compel others to action.” But that won’t do either because God isn’t an errand boy in service of our predetermined ideologies. Rather, we need God to teach us how to even know what’s true or good or beautiful, what to love and desire. We need God in order to have the first idea about how to pursue justice and truth in ways that are themselves just and righteous. Otherwise, we end up trying to douse fire by pouring on napalm. Politics don’t come first, God does.

On that Sunday morning, I stood amidst a room of tears, a cauldron of sorrow and rage and disbelief. My voice cracked with the invitation: “Let us pray.” And most of us, with whatever voice we could muster, answered: Our Father, who art in Heaven…

Is it possible that this act of worship, this prayer, sits at the heart of what it means to be a Christian who cares about neighborhoods and histories — about our social order — as much as God does?

In 1985, Eugene Peterson wrote Earth & Altar (later republished with the more bland title: Where Your Treasure Is), where he offered a clarion call for “Christians who want to do something about what is wrong with America.” Though Eugene sold millions of books, I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who’s read this one. Booksellers swiftly discarded it to the bargain bin. Maybe Eugene wrote it a few decades too early. Perhaps we weren’t ready for it. Maybe the time’s now.

Eugene insists that politics (properly understood) is crucial to being human and living responsibly as God's image-bearers in the world. But everything hinges on prayer, on a life awake to God, listening to God, responding to God. This is the starting point for what it means to be a political Christian. This posture is the furthest thing from disengagement and “spiritual” aloofness. But just as much, this expansive conviction will never neatly accord with the cacophonous, parochial, self-infatuated powers of our age. Our normal politics are far too small.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll write a few reflections, responding to Eugene’s engagement with eleven political Psalms — Psalms that formed Israel’s faithful and, Eugene believed, can form us too. If you’d like to snag a copy, read along, and join the conversation, we’ll do this together.

Josh Eckstein