In American life, the relationship between religion and democracy is uniquely complicated. In our (mostly) two-party system, the people on the political “left” are generally less religiously committed and active than those on the political “right.”
This creates quite a bit of confusion, in multiple ways. It means religious lefties are frequently misunderstood by their comrades on the left who are (for the most part) secular; and disagreed with by those on the right because we understand the Christian faith so differently.
As a result, we end up being (for lack of a term) perceived as somewhat militant because we so regularly and clearly define (because we are asked) why we aren’t the Christian Right, but we also aren't quite the secular left.
As a religious leftist/progressive, I could go the easy route and divorce my religion from my politics and make all my political arguments on purely “secular” grounds. I’m capable of doing this, as are most modern left-leaning Christians. But then I’ve conceded to a certain way of thinking by the left (which also happens to be a very bourgeoise way of thinking—but that’s a whole other topic, why the left is currently failing the working class)) with which I disagree, that faith is primarily a private matter and does not apply to public political discourse.
Those on the right do not struggle with the same issues. On the right, religious and political commitments are cut largely from the same cloth. They see this nation as a “Christian” nation and have no qualms with praying Christian prayers at political and governmental meetings. Although most may agree (at least in principal) that our current form of democracy is a useful-if-flawed way to facilitate furthering God’s kingdom on earth, ultimately there is a theocratic element to this way of thinking quite different from the leftist perspective.
The non-foundationalist secular view more common among the left is articulated well by Richard Rorty in his “Who Are We?” in which he argues that “descriptions are tools.”
“Adopting this view means replacing the choir between theological, scientific, and metaphysical descriptions of the world with a choice between human purposes. The the choice of what purposes to have is almost always, in practice, a choice among groups of people rather than a choice among abstract formulae. A choice of purposes to which to devote one’s life is typically a choice between actual or possible human communities: between the sort of people who have one overriding purpose and the sort of people who have another. So, on the pragmatist view common to both Nietzsche and James, metaphysical questions are concealed political questions, questions bout the group or groups with which one hopes to affiliate oneself, or which one hopes to create.”
Metaphysical questions are concealed political questions. Which is to say, there are no “private” metaphysical questions, no non-political metaphysical questions, because as Rorty then goes on to say,
“To sum up what I have been saying so far: I read Nietzsche and James as saying that the question “Who are we?” should replace “What are we?” as the primordial question of philosophy. For it is the one to which we shall always return—the one which has always already been answered when we answer other questions. Every account of what human beings are is, for pragmatists like Nietzsche and James, a disguised proposal for shaping a new human community… To ask who we are becomes a way of asking what future we should try, cooperatively, to build.”
Well, Christianity is very interested in the question, “Who are we?” It’s an inherently political question. Answering either kind of question is in the end a description with a purpose—that is to say, it’s political.
Now, there are many ways to be political. There are state and federal and local politics. There’s also the politics internal to church or denominational life, or the politics of corporations and business.
When we seek to answer a question like, “Who are we as Walmart Associates?” “Who are we as Republicans/Democrats?” “Who are we as Christians/Lutherans?” we are asking a political question because we are setting ourselves off against others with some different purpose that makes them a different intentionally moral community than ours. That’s what politics is.
So why am I such a radically political pastor? Well for one I am political because I’m unwilling to concede religion to hyper-individualism, as if faith were primarily simply a personal matter, a piety one comfortably selects in the context of a stable society while minding one’s own business.
Such privatization of religion is in fact its own kind of ideology—it’s secretly a defense of the status quo, or at least defense of the status quo until such time as all those comfortable private religious commitments are threatened by where the status quo takes things.
I guess I’m just with Paul Tillich (who saw alignment between social democracy and Christianity) who rejected all the kinds of Christianity that tended toward pure inwardness.
I also am political because I spent my youth listening to that Rush “Free Will” lyric, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” That is to say, even being supposedly “apolitical” is still political. I’d rather decide and be wrong (which makes me very Lutheran I guess)1.
Attempting to be a church that does not “take a side” is tacitly taking a side, and typically the side of the dominant, the oppressor, etc. If you wonder why African-American churches in the United States are so often more willing to be overtly political than white churches, this is why. Those in the struggle often do not have the luxury of attempting an “apolitical” approach.
Finally, I’m political because life lived is always in the middle of things. So often pastors and others attempt to act as if they can get above the fray, see it all from a bird’s eye view, and then proclaim detached proclamations from their supposed position of greater enlightenment. But that itself, as Rorty points out, serves its own kind of political goal, sets the viewer up as a part of a separate community of humans, those who are above it all and won’t wade into the muck.
We’re in the middle of things. We can’t act as if we aren’t, as if we already live in the kin-dom of God and can lob our opinions into the messier fray of political interactions. That’s a presumptive kind of realized eschatology.
Finally, I’m political because I believe we are in a very dire situation. As Heather Cox Richardson noted recently,
Part of the crisis in which we find ourselves today is that many people don’t understand what is at stake in the [January 6th] hearings, in part because commentators have turned the attempt of Trump and his supporters to overturn our democracy into a mud-wrestling fight between Democrats and Republicans rather than showing it as an existential fight for rule of law. Today in his Presswatchers publication, Dan Froomkin explored how U.S. news organizations have failed to communicate to readers that we are on a knife edge between democracy and authoritarianism.
We are not in a political moment where Republicans and Democrats are vying with one another for different approaches to governance within a democratic system. No, we are in a moment when Republicans are attempting to overthrown our democracy, and although I happen to think this particular democracy has its weaknesses, I still think it’s worth fighting for, not least because many of those moral values I cherish most as a progressive Christian can be centered in a world where public opinion is heard, freedom of speech and of the press is protected.
So I exercise my own freedom of speech, often noisily, read as political, and hope I’m forming together with others the kind of moral community that will make a difference, building together the kind of future we hope for.
Luther wrote: God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (or “Sin boldly”), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world.
When a person spends so much time thinking about a topic, listening to the sound of his own voice pontificating about said topic, there is rarely time or energies to actually tackle the problem at hand, much less listening and understanding what the other person is saying. If you did, you wouldn’t draw a large sweeping brush across half the population of this country, and believe that you not only have a keen understanding of their viewpoint, but are also able to put that viewpoint into one small hole. It’s pretty simple, and doesn’t require a multi-page dissertation… Matthew 7:1-3. You know, the one that starts out by saying: Judge not lest ye be judged…
Thank you for “faith out loud” in the public square.