Beyond Nations: The Scope of Christian Political Vision

I was at work this morning, turning on televisions to start the day, when I noticed that one of the TVs was on the wrong channel. Best Buy has their own internal channel that they pipe through their televisions, but someone had changed the channel on this one so that it was showing one of those extra channels that have cropped up since the switch to digital broadcasting. This is not uncommon, but it caught my attention because the TV in question was showing a news story on a movement called “Charlotte 714,” which is apparently a shindig going on in Charlotte, NC in which a group of area churches have gotten together to call for Christians to look at fixing their own churches before worrying about fixing the government (The article, which is a transcript of the TV segment, can be found here).

I have to say, I am very excited by this movement. Finally, a grassroots movement I can get behind! I’m really excited that people are starting to outgrow the Religious Right’s domination of the Evangelical political imagination, and starting to think more theologically about their role as Christians in society. I had to stifle an “Amen!” when one of the pastors being interviewed said, “We believe that getting the White House right will not fix America, but we must first get the Church house right.” Fantastic!

I hope I’ve made it very clear that I am very supportive of, and encouraged by, what I have heard about this movement, mainly because I don’t want it to sound like I’m being overly critical in the rest of this blog. After all, this group is closer to what I believe than any other I’ve heard of in this mess of an election. That being said, I would like to encourage anyone else who agrees with the sentiment of this movement to expand their vision even more. Evangelicals have been hamstrung for so long by the political vision of the Religious Right—a vision which says that being a Christian means that you have the obligation to “retake” America, that our role in this society is to “restore” Christianity to national political dominance—that we have lost the ability to think about our political calling in the proper scope.

Let me explain. The title for the article is “Charlotte 714: Fix the Church First, Then White House.” Now, I am in complete agreement with the first clause of that statement; we ought to look to our churches and the deplorable state they are in, and begin our activism there. It is the second clause, however, with which I disagree. If I had written that tagline, I would have wanted it to say, “Fix the Church first, instead of the White House.” You see, the problem is not just that we have focused our political imaginations on the American government first—the problem is that we’ve put the government on the list at all. If we were to make a list of the priorities of the Evangelical Church, “fixing” the White House should not appear at all. The first reason is because the American nation is not a focus of God’s attention. The name of the movement, “Charlotte 714,” is a reference to 2 Chronicles 7:14, which states,

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (ESV).

Now, here’s the important thing to notice about such a passage. When God says “my people,” he is speaking first and foremost about the nation of Israel at that time. In the modern day, however, when God says “my people,” he is referring to the new Israel: the Church. See, America will never be God’s people. Even if every American became a Christian, that would at best make America a nation filled with God’s people, but it wouldn’t make the nation itself a focus of God’s attention. It is those called into His Kingdom that God calls “his people.”  So when God says that “his people” need to repent, and that if they do he will bless them, he’s not talking about blessing America—he’s talking about blessing the Church in America. See, we are tempted to think of America as the new Israel, as a nation that used to follow God but has since lapsed. A more proper analogy, however, would be to connect America with, say, Nineveh: a godless people who have no relationship with God, being called by his people to repent, not to return. It is the obligation of the Church to return to God, while Americans outside the church must turn to him for the first time. The blessings, curses, and expectations of being “God’s people,” however, belong only to the Church, never to America.

The second reason why “fixing” the White House should not be a part of the Christian agenda is because accomplishing the goals we should be focusing on would make fixing the White House redundant. See, our first calling is to spread the gospel, make disciples of all men, and to seek first the kingdom of God. That calling is total, it is constant, and it is non-negotiable. The only way we could fit “fixing the White House” on the agenda is if we put it after our first calling. And even if we did fully accomplish our first calling (which we never will—only Christ can do that), then the White House wouldn’t need fixing! I mean, if we filled America with disciples of Christ who always sought first the kingdom, what else would we need to change about the White House?

But there’s still one more problem with our logic. The main issue with the logic of “taking back America” is that it divides up humanity in a totally arbitrary way. Why should we be concerned only with making disciples of Americans? Does Heaven make a distinction between Americans and everyone else? Did Christ say that I should focus on people in the same nation as me first, and everyone else second? And if not, then why should we even bother speaking of a “Christian America”? Isn’t a Christian North America more important than just a Christian America? And isn’t a Christian Western Hemisphere more important than that? And a Christian world most important of all? If we are serious about the Great Commission, then the scope of our vision cannot afford to be anything less than global.

But of course, Christianity is a religion of paradox and mystery, and so we find it here, because even though our vision must be global, Christian politics can never be anything more than local. See, we are in the business of making disciples, and disciples can only be made through relationships. And so, while we are interested in nothing less than converting the entire human race, we also know that we can only accomplish that one soul at a time. Christian political vision, then, never extends farther than the people in front of us, the people in our neighborhoods, our jobs, our schools. So while America is far too small a goal for the Kingdom of God, it’s also far too big to be the goal of a Kingdom that spreads one soul at a time. If we ever were to “win” America for Christ, I think it would come to us as a surprise, since we were so focused on reaching the people around us that suddenly we realized there was no one left in America to reach. Of course, that will never happen, but it’s more likely to work than taking over the government would be. If there’s one thing that Western history has taught us, it’s that governments claiming to be Christian do more harm because of it than good.

So, in closing, here is what I believe the Christian political vision should be. First, I agree whole-heartedly that the Church should look first to itself, that we must turn to God and repent for the sorry state of Christianity in this nation. Second, I would argue that the second step after that is not to “fix the White House,” but to seek the Kingdom of God. Third, the scope of the Kingdom of God is both broader than the nation, in the sense that we are after the whole world and nothing less, and more narrow, in the sense that we build the Kingdom one soul at a time. There are no shortcuts, no package deals. We cannot convert a nation by winning an election, and it does us no good to win the election if the people remain lost. The proper political scope for Christianity, in summary, is one which is essentially blind to national boundaries, one which is focused on people rather than political entities and offices. Let the nations do what they want, we will do the work of the Kingdom, making disciples of nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that Jesus Christ has commanded us (Matthew 28:19).