When Christians Gain Political Power
I was happily test-driving our newly repaired little 1994 pickup when I was distressed to hear a radio preacher state that the earliest Christian creed— “Jesus is Lord”—is a political statement.
The preacher went on to say that attempts to separate Christian faith and politics are misguided. He believes that the church needs more people like Peter Muhlenberg, the Lutheran pastor from Virginia, who concluded his January 1776 sermon by stripping off his clerical robe to reveal a militia uniform. By the end of the Revolutionary War, Pastor Muhlenberg had become Major General Muhlenberg!
What the first generations of believers were NOT doing was offering their loyalty and support to any of the competing leaders who wanted to be Caesar.
In contrast to the radio preacher, I believe it is a significant error to characterize “Jesus is Lord” primarily as a political statement. To call the statement political rather than theological separates it from an affirmation about where final authority lies. It separates the kingdom of God from the biblical story of God bringing eternal salvation to people from every nation who submit to his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus did not seem confused about the nature of his kingship. Under questioning by Governor Pilate, he would not confirm or deny that he was “King of the Jews,” but clarified that his kingly domain was “not of this world” and “not from the world” (Jn 18:36 RSV).
As people who belong to Jesus, we are reminded by Paul that our citizenship (a word with definite political significance!) is “in heaven.” Peter urges that our collective identity be that of a “holy nation” giving witness to the marvelous light of God’s mercy not as citizens enmeshed in political allegiances, but as “sojourners and exiles.”
But I also believe it is naive to think that saying “Jesus is Lord” has no political implications. Of course it does! The authority to demand obedience and loyalty is foundational to effective government, and a political system unconcerned about authority is hard to imagine.
This is precisely the point at which I think the early Christian creed was correctly understood to be political: it frustrated the leaders of the Roman Empire in their goal to unite society around a loyalty to Caesar that was both civic and religious. By refusing to offer sacrifices to the Emperor, Christians were making a statement of dissent from what those in authority expected of good Roman citizens.
What the first generations of believers were NOT doing was offering their loyalty and support to any of the competing leaders who wanted to be Caesar. Their political statement was, in essence, a refusal to divide their ultimate loyalty between the Kingdom of Christ and the Empire of Rome. Or even, at the price of their lives, to make those loyalties one and the same. That confusion came soon enough.
If we see the creed— “Jesus is Lord”—as a political statement, it can easily be tacked on to any number of political ideologies and can serve (like Muhlenberg’s vestments) as a religious cloak for political or military campaigns. When this happens, it leads inexorably to the church fully supporting or even fomenting political violence in the name of God.
This happened early on after the first Christian emperor, Constantine, died, and his sons engaged in civil war to determine who would succeed him as emperor. All three competitors identified as Christian, but the eventual winner subscribed to the Arian heresy, and his experience of violence from orthodox believers apparently encouraged him to use the power of the state against them.
The start of the Crusades is often pegged to a 1095 speech in which the French people were challenged as “a race chosen and beloved of God…set apart from all nations” to wrest Palestine from “the wicked race and subject it to [them]selves.”
What followed included the pillage and slaughter of Jews, Muslims, and even fellow Christians. The response of the crowd to that inaugural speech that launched the first of many Crusades was “God wills it!”
If we listen to the rhetoric throughout Christian history where violent aggression has occurred, we often find that people wedded their national and spiritual identities, confused loyalty to Christ with loyalty to country.
For example, we find little objection from German Christians in the 1940s to Nazi soldiers wearing belt buckles declaring “Gott Mit Uns” (God with us).
Jesus is Lord of all things and all peoples for all time. To make the declaration of his lordship a territorial or political statement trivializes and distorts it at best. My hope is that God’s people in our time will not make that tragic mistake.
6 Responses
While recognizing the lordship of Christ, all Christians are at the same time subject to their respective governments as ordained by God (Rom 13). The challenge is in knowing when and how to resist Caesar’s penultimate authority. And how can we discern the will of God in a time of grave international crisis? I suppose humility requires us to acknowledge that the German Christians in the 1940s who fought in Hitler’s army included Mennonites, and that those German Christians were praying and fighting other Christians who were convinced that Hitler’s madness must be stopped at any cost.
And a century earlier, what did it mean to be non-resistant when some American Christians continued to tolerate or even condone slavery while others were sure that if God willed a civil war to continue “until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'” (Lincoln)
Yes, mistakes were made and continue to be made, but it’s always easier to see the mistakes of other people and other times than those that we may be making at the present time. What tragedies might be unfolding as we speak, and how do we find the mind of Christ in the moral and political chaos of this present moment?
Well said, Phil.
Are we willing to say affiliation with the military is an unacceptable breach of the belief that “Jesus is Lord”? Not so far, it appears. Until we are get serious about cleaning our own house, the issue remains pretty much academic. Interesting perhaps, but conceding mistakes and not correcting them makes us look less than serious.
Thank you for this, Phil!
Thanks, Phil. The phrase “Jesus is Lord” is not unlike the phrase “separation of church and state” in our context. Much of the American church is spending a lot of energy on the political question of the relationship of church and state. Unfortunately, what is often missed is the foundational issue of the ultimate loyalty demanded by the Kingdom of Heaven in the context of earthly rulers.
A fine article. Well stated. In this case, I think the series could be relabeled “Mistakes are Being Made.” God’s people in our time are indeed already making this tragic mistake.