Cruciformity: The Cross and the Empire
The recent discussion about our alma mater has resparked a concern of mine regarding the relationship between the church and government powers. Risking the fear of self-promotion, I have attempted to start a discussion regarding a very interesting, and surely engaging (a.k.a. "controversial") article on my personal blog. Since more frequent here, I would love to hear your opinions. Click here to see the "starter post".
posted by Eric at 4:04 PM
5 Comments:
In quick response, with more to follow, I reference again the two posts I wrote below - now in the archives - on this page. "The Separation of Kingdom and State," parts I & II. Part one is in the April archive.
Thanks for initiating this discussion again.
Eric,
wanted to make sure you got this. In response to Patrick Mead's blog. I didn't at all mean to point my bragging coment toward you. It was a lame attempt at humor.
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The questions you ask here and that we've discussed elsewhere turn on a question of citizenship. We have dual, but not contradictory, goals as citizens of the Heaven and as citizens and political participants in our earthly nation-state. The roles easily can be confused.
As I hoped to express in "The Separation of Kingdom and State, Part I" (our April Archive), the higher calling and duty is to Heaven, and our citizenship and political participation here requires us to act that way. Kile said elsewhere that the downfall of the USA would not affect the calling of the Kingdom; our responsibility to glorify God, to love and serve our neighbors, would remain.
The Kingdom is called to join the Lord's ministry of reconciliation, and we cannot do that in isolation. We must engage our neighbors and our government, guided by the principles I cited in Part II.
Our republican democracy affords us many tools to the ends of the kingdom, the Rule of Law first among them. The use of our constitutional government can bring peace and provision to the poor, to protect and promote justice for the weak and poor as to the affluent and powerful. Many Kingdom visions are realized in our system, because of our cultural assumption that the law rules us, not men.
Even so, power corrupts, distorts, distracts. The rich will have a difficult time making it through the needle's eye, and we indeed are rich and powerful. Thus, to contradict our contemporary imperialistic tendency at abusive crusade, I pose the question I posed to my poli-sci students: would we rather have a Christian Nation or a nation of Christians? A "Christian Nation" cannot exist, in the first part because our Lord never made use himself of political systems to effect his goals of salvation and reconciliation. He engaged the people themselves. Rather, a republican democracy will reflect the values and demands of its governed, so if its governed are interested primarily in peacemaking, service to the poor and reconciliation, the system will reflect it.
Therefore our burden as the chuch is not to dominate the government and wrest control from heathen politicians to recognize some theocractic legal dream. Our burden is to draw the people to the Father one by one, to reconcile the Church to its neighbors, to model the virtues of Jesus, to seek the deliverance of individuals whom we love and are given to love. This is a much bigger job, far more difficult than overthrowing Rome, but it is the mission Christ gave to us. If we live and love like he shown us, realizing the mission of the Kingdom, the government will respond.
(I'm having quite a nice conversation with myself here. . . )
A corollary thought to my previous post, differently formulated:
In the Separation of Kingdom and State, Part I, I drew a proposed distinction between public and private morality, I think I have now a better expression of a more general and simple idea. Government is good for some things, but not everything. As citizens of the Kingdom, we should employ all tools available to us to glorify God and lead people to Him. (Brace yourself, here comes my realism....) We Christians need to do a better job evaluating what government can do well to promote the ends of the Kingdom and what it cannot do well. For example, government can feed the poor relatively well, and it is doing so vastly better than the church. Government cannot make people moral or humble, although it may be able to impose more or less moral behavior. Thus, should not the Kingdom and its citizens make good use of the government to help feed the poor but look to other means to instill morality?
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