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Engaging the City of Man: Christian Faith and Politics
Posted by: Albert Mohler on September 3, 2004 Featured Article •
Over the last 20 years, evangelical Christians have been politically mobilized in an outpouring of moral concern and political engagement unprecedented since the crusade against slavery in the 19th century. Is this a good development? With the 2004 presidential campaign now under way, the issue of political involvement emerges anew with urgency.
To what extent should Christians be involved in the political process?
This question has troubled the Christian conscience for centuries. The emergence of the modern evangelical movement in the post World War II era brought a renewed concern for engagement with the culture and the political process. The late Carl F. H. Henry addressed evangelicals with a manifesto for Christian engagement in his landmark book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. As Dr. Henry eloquently argued, disengagement from the critical issues of the day is not an option.
An evangelical theology for political participation must be grounded in the larger context of cultural engagement. As the Christian worldview makes clear, our ultimate concern must be the glory of God. Building from that, we understand that when we are instructed by Scripture to love God and then to love our neighbor as ourselves, we are given a clear mandate for the right kind of cultural engagement.
We love our neighbor because we first love God. In His sovereignty, our Creator has put us within this cultural context in order that we may display His glory by preaching the gospel, confronting persons with God’s truth, and serving as agents of salt and light in a dark and fallen world. In other words, love of God leads us to love our neighbor—and love of neighbor requires our participation in the culture and in the political process.
Writing even as the Romans Empire fell, Augustine, the great bishop and theologian of the early church, made this case in his monumental work, The City of God. As Augustine explained, humanity is confronted by two cities—the City of God and the City of Man. The City of God is eternal, and takes as its sole concern the greater glory of God. In the City of God, all things are ruled by God’s Word, and the perfect rule of God is the passion of all its citizens.
In the City of Man, however, the reality is very different. This city is filled with mixed passions, mixed allegiances, and compromised principles. Though the City of God is marked by unconditional obedience to the command of God, citizens of the City of Man demonstrate deadly patterns of disobedience, even as they celebrate and claim their moral autonomy, and then revolt against the Creator.
Of course, we know that the City of God is eternal, even as the City of Man is passing. But this does not mean that the City of Man is ultimately unimportant, and it does not allow the church to forfeit its responsibility to love its citizens. Love of neighbor – grounded in our love for God – requires us to work for good in the City of Man, even as we set as our first priority the preaching of the gospel—the only means of bringing citizens of the City of Man into citizenship in the City of God.
Thus, Christians bear important responsibilities in both cities. Even as we know that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven, and even as we set our sights on the glory of the City of God, we must work for good, justice, and righteousness in the City of Man. We do so, not merely because we are commanded to love its citizens, but because we know that they are loved by the very God we serve.
From generation to generation, Christians often swing between two extremes, either ignoring the City of Man or considering it to be our main concern. A biblical balance establishes the fact that the City of Man is indeed passing, and chastens us from believing that the City of Man and its realities can ever be of ultimate importance. Yet, we also know that each of us is, by God’s own design, a citizen – though temporarily – of the City of Man. When Jesus instructed that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, He pointed His followers to the City of Man and gave us a clear assignment. The only alternatives that remain are obedience and disobedience to this call.
Love of neighbor for the sake of loving God is a profound political philosophy that strikes a balance between the disobedience of political disengagement and the idolatry of politics as our main priority. As evangelical Christians, we must engage in political action, not because we believe the conceit that politics is ultimate, but because we must obey our Redeemer when He commanded that we must love our neighbor.
We are concerned for the culture not because we believe that the culture is ultimate, but because we know that our neighbors must hear the gospel, even as we hope and strive for their good, peace, security, and well-being.
The Kingdom of God is not up for vote in the 2004 elections, and there are no polling places in the City of God. Nevertheless, it is by God’s sovereignty that we are now confronted with these times, our current crucial issues of debate, and the political decisions that will be answered in the electoral process.
This is no time for silence, and no time for shirking our responsibilities as Christian citizens. Ominous signs of moral collapse and cultural decay now appear on our contemporary horizon. A society ready to put the institution of marriage up for demolition and transformation is a society losing its most basic moral sense. A culture ready to treat human embryos as material for medical experimentation is a society turning its back on human dignity and the sacredness of human life.
Trouble in the City of Man is a call to action for citizens of the City of God, and that call to action must involve political involvement as well. Christians may well be the last citizens who know the difference between the eternal and the temporal, the ultimate and the urgent. God’s truth is eternal and Christian convictions must be commitments of permanence. Political alliances and arrangements are, by definition, temporary and conditional. This is no time for America’s Christians to confuse the City of Man with the City of God. At the same time, we can never be counted faithful in the City of God if we neglect our duty in the City of Man. That’s a good principle to remember as America gears up for a political season.
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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to http://www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to http://www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com.
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Values-Based Voting Not an Option, but a Scriptural Mandate
Posted by: Dwayne Hastings on July 15, 2004 Featured Article •
By the time the polls closed on Election Day 2000, 56 million American adults with the right to vote had not. Over half of those individuals (37.3 million) hadn’t even bothered to register to vote.
Those numbers concerned Richard Land and were the impetus behind the development of iVoteValues.com, an ongoing initiative to register and educate voters launched by the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Land is president of the ERLC.
The goal of the “grassroots voter mobilization and education effort” was to register two million previously unregistered but qualified Americans for the 2008 election cycle. The initiative also works to promote an awareness of the immediate and long-term importance of “values-based voting.” The effort’s linchpin: iVoteValues.com
While voter turnout among registered voters in 2000 bounced back from a modern-day low of 82 percent in the presidential contest between Clinton and Dole in 1996 (86 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in 2000), just over 66 percent of Americans who were actually eligible to vote voted in the last presidential election.
Land also is convinced many voters who are voting don’t consider scriptural precepts when they vote. And a survey of American voters proves his point. Just over a third of Americans say their faith guides their voting decisions, according to a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Another study confirmed that most Americans leave their faith out of their voting decisions. Only 39 percent of adults surveyed by the Gallup organization in November 2003 said their personal religious beliefs were very or extremely important in making choices in the polling booth. A similar study by the Pew Forum discovered 38 percent of respondents considered their faith having an impact on how they vote.
Interestingly, the Pew Forum survey found four out of ten Americans (41 percent) believe there has been too little reference to religion by politicians. Twenty-one percent of people said there had been too much reference to religious faith by politicians. Just under a third of those surveyed said there was the “right amount” of expressions of faith and prayer by political leaders.
The biblical footing for iVoteValues.com’s call to civic engagement by Christians is solid, according to Land, noting Jesus urges His followers to be “salt” and “light” in the culture. Land says participation in the electoral process should be an important element of every believer’s life.
Looking to Scripture, Land is confident God expects Christians to register to vote and vote for the candidates whose positions most closely square with His values. That is the intent of the iVoteValues.com resources, he says, particularly the effort’s Web site that allows citizens to begin the voter registration process, details elements of the two major party’s platforms, and delineates the Bible’s position on many critical issues.
Yet he knows it is an uphill battle to engage that segment of the U.S. adult population that declines to take part in the country’s electoral process.
This section of the American public came under scrutiny in the “Vanishing Voter Project” of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where the “public’s waning interest in political campaigns” has been examined at length.
The project discovered that in 1960, 60 percent of the nation’s televisions tuned in to the October debates between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy; in 2000, fewer than 30 percent watched the debates between Gore and Bush.
Why the drop-off in interest and the resultant tendency to leave one’s faith at home when going into the voting booth? More media alternatives (cable channels); increasingly bitter and longer campaigns; media saturation (24/7 news and analysis on TV and the Internet); diminishing party loyalties; and an increased number of so-call “independent” voters, reports the Harvard-based project.
In a June 2000 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll of Americans who acknowledged they don’t usually vote, 44 percent said it wouldn’t make much of a difference whether George W. Bush or Al Gore was elected president.
A Census Bureau study after the 1996 election, which saw turnout at record lows, determined the primary reason registered voters didn’t vote was because they couldn’t take time off from work or were simply too busy.
But Land believes this apathetic behavior is fueled by something other than people having too much to do on Election Day. He says too many people—voters and nonvoters alike—lack appreciation for the fact that one’s faith-based values should be impacting their decisions in the voting booth.
Once Americans understand that the Bible has something to say about contemporary issues, and by extension the positions of the candidates, Land believes more Americans will register and vote and those who already are voting will consider more carefully the policy positions of the candidates.
iVoteValues.com will provide churches with non-partisan voter registration and voter awareness resources that are well within the Internal Tax code restrictions for 501©(3) organizations, explains Land, saying once individuals are registered to vote, statistics show they normally make it to the polls on Election Day.
“Most people who are registered to vote actually vote,” agrees Amie Jamieson in a U.S. Census Bureau release. “Historically, the likelihood of actually voting, once registered, has remained high, with the peak at 91 percent in 1968.”
If Richard Land has his way, more and more Americans of faith than ever will understand the Bible does have something to say about their voting decisions. “How America votes has a tremendous impact on the future of the nation and its citizens,” Land concludes.
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