I'd better come clean. My own church tradition is Baptist. Amongst the peculiarities of Baptist commitments is the clear separation of the powers of church and state. Historically Baptist was a pejorative nickname, a way of dismissing those who dissented from the universal ecclesial practice of infant baptism into the church, and who wished to stand outside the state sponsored institutional power of the established church of the day.
For such dissent Baptist were persecuted by the arm of the state at the instigation of the Church. The fusion of state power and church power, indeed the marriage of church and state, gave stability and control over a population nominally co-opted into the authority structures and imposed practices of church and state. By the early 17th Century, whether on the European continent or in Great Britain, the politicisation of ecclesial practice and the attempts to impose Christian uniformity, persuasive or enforced, created a growing number of dissenting and non-conforming voluntarist communities.
The subversive impact of growing dissident communities of faith led inevitably to persecution, and where such persecution involved fines, imprisonment and at times death and torture, these required and were granted the sanction of law and the authority of state political power. Baptist are dissenters. Baptism by immersion on profession of personal faith in Christ, and the claims of conscience to religious freedom in expressions of worship and Christian practice, and the formation of local communities of faith outside the authority and structures of state sponsored ecclesial authority, are each peculiar emphases of Baptists. They lead logically to the insistence that State and Church are separate.
Historically, Baptists have insisted that their expression of Christian faith is evangelical. Internationally Baptists have been vocal and active and indeed proud to be numbered as Evangelicals. But the Baptist kind of Evangelical holds with convictional persistence that the relationship between Church and State is one of separation, with a clear division of powers, and that the rights of religious freedom are based on the assertion of the sovereignty and obedience of each person's conscience before God. Baptists insist on the exclusive and primary headship of Christ over the Church, and over each local church; that each Christian community is free of State interference to govern its own affairs; and that the Church is a spiritual kingdom, called to bear witness to the power of the Gospel within the principles of the Kingdom of God and the Kingship of Christ. Theologically Baptist tradition stands alongside Jesus' disclaimer, "My Kingdom is not of this world."
It is therefore an astonishing and disturbing phenomenon when Baptists are at the forefront of a movement to politicise Christianity, and bring Christian faith and practice into a close and enaged relationship with the President of the United States and the current US Administration. For several decades the Evangelical Right in the United States has sought political influence to advance its own brand of Christian agenda, tied to several very specific issues.
That 81% of white Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump raises all kinds of intriguing, disturbing and theologically serious questions. The aligning of the Church's Mission with the political agenda of the secular state, and the advancing of Christian values by aligning with, suppoorting and defending the policies of a political party in power, of whatever party colour, is deeply inimical, indeed self-contradictory, for any group claiming the name Baptist. Unless of course the term is evacuated of all radical and original intent and becomes a self-defining slogan reduced to amounts of water in a baptistry.
Like many other evangelical Christians, I am dismayed and perplexed at the naked political ambition and moral accommodatuions demonstrated by US evangelicals in the power courts of Washington. As a Baptist I see no meaningful content to the word if the primary life goal of those self-describing as 'Baptist' and 'Evangelical' is influence at the White House in order to achieve the reversal of social policies with which they profoundly disagree.
That brings me to John Fea's book, Believe Me. The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. My hope is that he might help me understand how those who are avowedly evangelical, can align with an administration which pursues policies, has a style of government, and supports a President, whose modus operandi is inimical to any standard understanding of Christian values and ethics. Early in the book Fea explains why he wrote it, quoting J D Hunter, an author who describes the recession, marginalising and distortion of Christianity in the United States over the past decades. It's a careful lucidly written analysis of how the Religious Right has tried to stay influential, relevant and in control of a culture and way of life fast being overtaken by progressive change.
Fea distil's Hunter's thesis to this sentence: "In grasping for political power evangelicals have made it more difficult to spread the gospel, promote justice for the poor and oppressed, and pursue human flourishing in the places where God has called them and placed them." Letting Hunter speak for himself: "The proclivity toward domination and toward the politicization of everything leads Christianity today to bizarre turns, turns that...transform much of the Christian public witness into the very opposite of the witness Christianity has to offer." (Fea page 2)
That is as damning a conclusion as can be imagined from a sociologist who is a Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Theory. The Gospel of redemption has been turned into a pursuit for power, and the Kingdom of God identified with the kingdoms of this earth. In supporting Donald Trump, and believing his promises to bring about the social changes evangelicals seek, his evangelical supporters are adopting the tactics, politics and principles of secular power, but in the service of a Kingdom founded on a cross, and built on an empty tomb.
At the cross, and at the tomb, sin is confronted, death has been defeated, hate eclipsed by love, and in the kingdom of the cross and the tomb, those who will be called the children of God are the peacemakers, not the lawmakers. In pursuing political victory, and policy changes through courting secular power, the Gospel of reconciliation, justice, peace-making and neighbour love has become secondary. Evangelicals giving uncritical support to any Governement Administration have done what Jesus at his trial refused to do, identify his Kingdom and its methods with the kingdom and methods of the empire.
For the many evangelicals who think otherwise, and for Baptists like myself, witnessing many prominent Baptist leaders seeking influence in the secular court and power bases, such contradiction of principle take on the force of a betrayal of core convictions of evangelical witness and Baptist traditions of radical dissent. Baptists are members of a spiritual community committed to Jesus as Lord. They owe no unthinking or unswerving allegiance to anyone but Jesus. This means if the political leader one supports pursues policies contrary to the words of Jesus, and irreconcilable with Christian ethics, what is required is not approval, or defence of the secular power, but faithful truth-telling and bearing witness to the ways of the Kingdom of God.
It is out of such feelings of betrayal, and the abandoning of a tradition of dissent in order to further personal agendas by conforming to the ways of the political, secular world of power, that pushes me to try to understand both the motives for such a reversal of convictions, and the possible ways back. Fea's book, which I have now read, points in some hopeful directions. As I engage with his book, perhaps there will be some light at the end of what seems like an ominously long tunnel, leading into a darker future.
I would need to hear from the leaders of the evangelical movements in the United States and also leaders of denominations like the Southern Baptists and hear their arguments for supporting the current president. Would they have cogent arguments for their stances? I am at a loss to understand the theological arguments, if there are any, for support of the current presidential administration. I believe that the wedding of secular political stances with faith has roots that go back more than 100 years. Some social critiques attribute the consequences of the Monkey Trial, when a Tenn. teacher taught evolution, to the rise of secular politics within the evangelical tradition. When I told a member of my congregation that my citizenship was first in heaven, her response was, "Yes, But." I think that there is an integration of faith and state here that is inherent in its history or pre-history. Consider the pilgrims.
Posted by: Rebecca Maccini | August 24, 2018 at 02:15 PM