Last year I granted an interview to the Church of Ireland Gazette, a magazine that was trying to interpret US politics for its Irish readers. In view of the coming election, I have revisited that interview, editing the discussion for American readers.
The world seems to be becoming increasingly polarized and divided. We are living in a more uncertain world. Is there anything you think the Church needs to say or to be, in order to act with integrity in that increasingly polarized world?
Pope John Paul II wrote a book called Sign of Contradiction. I believe the Church should always be a sign of contradiction, regardless of the surrounding society.
One of the UK prime ministers, John Major, was trying to understand evangelicals, so he called in the head of the Evangelical Alliance. “I can’t figure out these evangelicals,” he said. “Are they liberal or conservative on political issues?”
The response: “They’re both.” Christians may well support certain policies that represent both sides of the political spectrum.
I once heard a sermon from Tim Keller in which he cited a list of what early Christians in the Roman Empire insisted on. Some examples:
- There is only one way to God. We oppose pre-marital sex, and also abortion. Those would usually be considered conservative positions.
- Christians should not serve in the armed forces. We support programs for the poor, and also gender equality. Those would usually be considered liberal positions.
Keller was making the point that people who are trying to follow Jesus can’t be compartmentalized into a binary political platform.
I hope the Church can help tear down the moats and the silos we have constructed around each other. In my lifetime, some Republicans opposed the Vietnam war and some Republicans supported it. There were Democrats who were anti-abortion and Democrats who were pro-abortion. Now, politics has become so polarized that it is almost impossible for a Democrat to be pro-life and almost impossible for Republicans to oppose the administration’s foreign policy. That is very unfortunate.
We are not called to report to a political party. We should look to Jesus for our guidelines on living. Of course, Christians will disagree on specifics, but the bottom line isn’t a party’s political platform. The bottom line is for us to carefully and prayerfully try to discern God’s will in each situation.
Christians accept a basic standard of morality, starting with the Ten Commandments. You can’t always legislate that kind of morality. For example, in the Ten Commandments there are commandments against coveting, adultery, and lying. A few countries have laws against adultery, but I don’t know any country that has a law against coveting or lying. We follow God’s moral law, not just the list of dos and don’ts that a political party holds up as important.
Living with silos: in the Church we have profound differences on big and small issues. How should we deal with situations, and with each other, when we profoundly differ on what we believe are absolutely core issues?
Jesus always honored the person behind the issues, even among those who must have been offensive to him in some ways. He associated with people viewed as moral outcasts. He engaged with occupying soldiers and also tax collectors who served the occupying government. Yet he always treated those people with dignity, respect, and compassion.
In our time, immigration presents a major challenge. It is certainly legitimate for Christians to disagree on how restrictive immigration should be. But it is illegitimate for us to demonize immigrants or to treat them as subhuman or to deprive them of basic human rights. We don’t have that option. When a politician wants to do that, Jesus-followers must oppose it.
I wrote a book titled What’s So Amazing About Grace. As I was writing, it struck me that it does not take much grace to be around someone who is just like you, who thinks like you, acts like you, votes like you. Grace is put to the test when you’re around somebody who is different from you, and who in fact may be offensive to you.
We don’t have the option of treating that contrary person as an outcast. In fact, Jesus had the opposite paradigm. He said, I came for the sick, not the well, and for sinners, not the righteous.
Sometimes the Church falls into the same trap as the Pharisees, where we start viewing ourselves as morally superior and we want people to be like us. Instead, we are called to reach out to others no matter where they are. Even if they are in bad straits because of their destructive choices, we still should respond with mercy, compassion, and healing—as Jesus did. He reached out to the poor, and stood for justice. So must we.
Are you hopeful for the future?
Not really. A lot of people in the US, especially evangelicals, are hanging on to a political agenda, even when people leading that political movement are not demonstrating the qualities of Jesus.
Historically, when the Church gets tempted by those who are in power, it bears the consequences for generations. A year ago I was in Spain, where in the last century the Church had allied itself with a strongman, Francisco Franco. Now, several generations later, many Spaniards will have nothing to do with the Church, because when they hear the word “Church” they immediately think repression and violence.
I’m afraid the same thing can happen in the US. We need Christians to act as the “sign of contradiction,” even if it costs us access to power. We were not put on earth to be part of the power structure. We were put on earth to demonstrate how God wants us to live. If people judge us, or we are persecuted for our stance—well, that too is the Jesus way. He was persecuted, indeed he was executed for not kowtowing to the religious or governmental authorities.
What does a sign of hope look like?
Wherever I travel—say, in Africa, South America,
even Communist China—I see beautiful signs of God’s kingdom doing exactly what it should be doing: standing firm against the culture, which may be corrupt, self-serving, even oppressive.
The US seems to be going through a period much like western Europe went through: first, a cozy relationship between Church and state, and then the inevitable backlash in which people reject the Church because the state has proven to lack the integrity—the “sign of contradiction”— that should distinguish the Church.
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I hope it’s not too late to comment here. My church is considering your book for a January Bible study, so I’m researching Mr. Yancey’s writings when I came across this comment section. For what it’s worth, Christianity in America has been a useful tool for political manifestos since before the US became a country. The idea that you were your father’s child was an English proposition, but in America, the children followed the mother. This became quite useful when slaveowners impregnated their slaves so they could literally procreate their economic base. Then slaveowners used the Bible to ‘encourage’ their slaves to be obedient, casting Biblical references about slaves into the lexicon of American economic structure. That was followed by allowing for slaves to have churches, but not allowing people to sit together. When Richard Allen and others tried to pray in Philadelphia, the white church leaders demanded they get off their knees and leave the church, which led to the AME church founding. When lynchings were held throughout this country, they were held after church as picnics, so whites could attend and partake with their friends and family. When MLK was imprisoned in Birmingham and wrote a letter to his church leader brethren, they (all white) took him to task for not being humble enough. He was not going about this the right way, even though he had never condoned a moment of violence and all the violence was directed against him. So 5 months later when 4 little girls were killed on a Sunday morning at a Birmingham church bombing, the silence continued. When a half-black, half-white man who came to Christ as a young adult, married in the church and fathered two children rose to become a political leader and seek the highest position in the country, his name—chosen by his parents–signaled that he was Muslim. When 9 churchgoers in SC prayed with a white man who joined them for prayer who later turned his gun on them and killed them, this political leader attended the funeral of the church leader whom he actually knew. At that funeral, he sang a full throated Amazing Grace acapella without a note and tears flowed for the loss of life. Healing began because he shared that he felt our pain.
Nevertheless, the person who eventually succeeded him continues to posit that he was un-American, not Christian and did not espouse American values to protect ‘our American way of life’.
So, today, on the eve of an election to decide whether “Christians” will vote for a 4-year extension of the current president or choose what’s behind door number 2, we have to ask ourselves the real question.
Who does Christ say that we are?
It gives me comfort and hope to read your calm, non-partisan articles on the current political climate in the United States, and also to read several of the thoughtful comments your readers have left here.
I am agnostic, but grew up in the evangelical church, and this year it has disheartened me greatly to see several of my friends and family members (and even entire churches) go either “full woke” or completely jump aboard “train Trump” (both for equally well-intentioned reasons) in some cases to the point where they are openly demonizing and scapegoating those on the opposite side, even though it seems clear to me all Christians are motivated by essentially the same values.
But while I do find it maddening, I have come to recognize that I cannot judge them. Living in the most powerful empire the world has ever known, Americans are also facing the most sophisticated propaganda machines the world has ever known:
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/10/07/us-politics-isnt-polarized-its-in-almost-universal-agreement/
Anyway, as an anarchist, I so resonate with what you have said here:
“We were not put on earth to be part of the power structure. We were put on earth to demonstrate how God wants us to live. If people judge us, or we are persecuted for our stance—well, that too is the Jesus way. He was persecuted, indeed he was executed for not kowtowing to the religious or governmental authorities.”
Thanks again for your articles.
In God’s view, on a scale of 1 to 10, how moral is Philip Yancey and Mark Galli? They make the claim that there are morally superior to President Trump. They sound like Pharisees to me. Hard to believe that some Christians don’t understand the basic tenant of Christianity that nobody is righteous, not even Philip and Mark. Please stop teaching your false perverted doctrine. Most Christians can spot false teachers a mile away. Anyway, you have your wish with an abortion-loving Biden as President. How moral is that?
Have you really read this article? I have no idea what you’re referring to. Philip
A fellow Christian who shares my horror at “Evangelicals” supporting Trump sent me a link to this article. Thank you. I will never again call myself an Evangelical. Character of the person you vote for DOES matter–not just the political party views. My faith has been severely challenged by the hypocrisy of people calling themselves Christians & praising Trump. How are you opposed to all abortions & see nothing wrong with Trump calling Covid a hoax resulting in so many deaths that could have been avoided. How have so-called Christians come to believe America should only have policies that agree with their personal beliefs? Talk about elitist! The end does not justify the means. Now that’s been abandoned by so-called Christians. I started to read some comments & felt my blood pressure rising, so I stopped. At least I’m not the only one who hasn’t abandoned what it meant to be a Christian when I was saved. I can’t imagine non-believers looking at Evangelicals today & being drawn to the Gospel. I know those in my family are now completely turned away.