Should Christians change political course?
Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on February 7th, 2010 by Laura Duke Stansbury
What if Christians were to wake tomorrow and realize that their political strategy over the course of the past century had been utterly misguided? Consider the timing. Few would argue that the Obama administration’s new culture of corruption has left the door wide open for Republican victory in November. But as it stands, today’s conservatives have become so embroiled in a philosophical deadlock that many are wondering whether unity will be possible.
I am a Christian, a so-called social conservative. Many of my colleagues are of the libertarian breed: Ayn Rand Republicans. Our party has long been divided between these two very distinct schools of thought. For a long time, I had lent my support to the legislating of virtue issues such as gay marriage and prayer in schools. Recently however, I attended an early morning lecture where business strategist and evangelical Christian Kevin Miller called into question many of my preconceived notions about the roles of virtue, politics and morality.
“Freedom Nationally, Virtue Locally” was Miller’s mantra. He pointed out that our government had only initially been established to provide this nation with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In Joseph Ellis’ The Founding Brothers, the author astutely unraveled a major conflict faced by the first Congress in 1790. “Perhaps it was inevitable, even preferable, that slavery as a national problem be moved from the Congress to the churches, where it could come under scrutiny as a sin requiring a national purging, rather than a social dilemma requiring a political solution.” In other words it was man’s heart, not his politics that weakened and eventually destroyed the institution of slavery.
Historical lessons notwithstanding, many Christians have been on a more than 100-year quest for a virtuous society by way of Congress. Enacting Prohibition through a Constitutional amendment was one such example. But according to scripture, Christians were never called to the mission of legally enforced virtue. Jesus came to change the hearts of man, and he instructed his followers to do the same.
As Christians, we instinctively argue in defense of virtue politics by reminding others that our nation was founded upon Biblical principles. But Miller points to the importance of historical contexts. During the drafting of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers were products of a more religious–and explicitly Christian–society. The timing of our nation’s founding allowed the Framers to craft a government around the principles of freedom, liberty and respect for the individual, matters of human dignity made possible only by God’s natural law.
As a Christian community, we are no longer surrounded by a society familiar with or interested in our Biblical principles. And as a Christian community, we are not called to try to have an impact. We’re called to have it. Our strategy must change so that our mission can remain the same.
In his book, The Case for Democracy, Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky described his unlikely kinship with a fellow state prisoner. Though Sharansky had been imprisoned on matters of religion and his friend on matters of sexual orientation, both had been uniformly deprived of their freedoms. Sharansky’s experience highlighted the necessity of freedom above all else.
As Christians, we claim to understand the importance of freedom. But politically we often send a very different message. Starting in the late 1800s, Christians attempted to outlaw activities like pornography, alcohol consumption, and contraception. From that point forward the legislation of morality became fair play, allowing for all variety of virtue politics to seep into the halls of Congress. And before we knew it, subjects of right and wrong and good and evil had become matters of opinion.
Now we have entered into a chapter in American history in which our elected officials have grown determined to alter our founding principles. For that we can only blame ourselves. Our leaders are nothing more than a reflection of our votes and their objectives, a reflection of our hearts.
Freedom Nationally, Virtue Locally. Perhaps Miller is onto something. Perhaps it is time for the Christian community to reflect upon how we have approached virtue and politics. Maybe, just maybe, were each of us to take a vested interest in those we pass in the supermarket or at the library or in the mall, we might need little more from our federal government than the freedom to exercise that effort. Perhaps all that our party has ever needed to unite behind were the faithful and basic principles of our Founders: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; nothing more and nothing less.
National Freedom Initiative website: http://www.nationalfreedominitiative.org/.
Laura Duke Stansbury is a political analyst, freelance writer and guest author for the Independence Institute [http://www.i2i.org/main/page.php?page_id=1]. She blogs at http://laurastansbury.blogspot.com.
David Jackson said,
February 7, 2010 @ 2:39 am
I’m glad to see one Christian finally waking up. The legislation of morality has never worked, and will never work. The stated purpose of the church in Christianity is to minister and recruit, not to cut off the sinner or try to force them into virtue. Zealots tend to overlook the fact that there can only be virtue if there is choice; remove choice by legislating morality and you remove both morality and virtue, relegating both to the legal system.
I am one of those Ayn Rand conservatives. For the first 33 years of my life, I was a Christian. It didn’t work for me. The harder I tried to live it, the more unhappy I became because I am wired analytically and the Bible and Christianity are wrought with contradictions. It drove me nuts. I still hold many of the Christian values, such as seeing lying, stealing, and cheating as wrong. The difference is that I avoid those things simply because it is the smartest and easiest way to live, and because I choose to earn what I have rather than mooch or loot it, not because I am afraid of what will happen in the afterlife if I do them.
Prayer in school is like religion in politics; for all things there is a season, and I dare say a venue as well. School is the venue for education and training, and church is the venue for Christian education and fellowship. I don’t care one way or another about abortion, but I cannot see Americans funding it with tax dollars, as that creates a situation in which the irresponsible are funded by the responsible. That is fundamentally wrong. But that does not make me your enemy. I still want the same freedoms that you want, and that includes the right to choose whether I will ascribe to a religion or not; I spent years in the line of fire in military service to protect your freedom of religion because only in a place where you are free to practice the religion of your choice am I free to choose to practice no religion at all. I have no desire to see Christianity diminished because most of my family and friends practice it.
I just want the same freedom that you want, to live a life according to the values that I choose, most of which are either identical to or compatible with the values that you choose. The biggest difference is that while many (NOT all) of you will do nothing but pray, I and those like me will again take up arms to defend America and its Constitution, because for us, there is no afterlife, meaning that it is all here, right now, and we do not choose to live in the world that the liberals and globalists are trying to establish. As the original revolutionaries declared with such vehemence that it became the motto of New Hampshire, we will live free or die; there is no middle ground. And it is those globalists and liberals with their socialistic practices and desires to dictate everything that a person thinks and feels, including their personal values, that are your enemy, not me and those like me. We don’t accept your invitation to attend your church, but we hold your right to choose to be there yourself high, because for us, personal choice and personal responsibility are paramount.
So make and exercise your personal choices, and stop trying to push them on the rest of us. Miller is onto something. He’s onto the only way that a free nation can work. Otherwise, what’s the difference in the legislation of morality here and the legislation of morality in the Islamic Republic of Iran? Theocracy is theocracy, no matter who penned the rules. Let us win back and maintain our freedom to choose how we live in our homes, while still have a chance, and worry about how we get along with each other after that battle is won.