Gideon Strauss

My dear friend, John Stackhouse, a Regent College professor and frequent blogger, suggests:

American evangelicals need to escape the narrow (and heretical) idea that God’s Plan of Salvation is to rescue souls from a worn-out planet and whisk them off to a spiritual heaven. Their teachers and preachers need to expand the horizons of salvation to include the physical body, the church, and the whole of creation.

This divine endorsement of the whole world needs to be rooted in a strong doctrine of creation, furthermore, not just of salvation. Thus American evangelicals need to understand and embrace the so-called creation mandate, the command of God to rule over the creation, to cultivate it, to “be as God” to it as the image of God. Thus everything about the “everyday” matters to God. And in this context, politics now becomes godly work–not just for politicians, but for all citizens and all neighbors–because politics is simply the conversation and negotiation about how we’re all going to get along with each other as well as we can.

Further continuing the conversation, Stephen Lazarus, Policy Associate of the Center, writes:

Over the last several decades, many books have been written, many evangelicals have been mobilized to vote, yet most American evangelicals continue to think about politics in conventional, bi-polar terms that can leave little room for integrally Christian political engagement.  Education and the media (in both their secular and Christian forms), and the political system itself, reinforce the impression that the ideologies and policies of the Republicans and Democrats are the only political options on offer. 

 

Exhibit A: This recent article by a young evangelical (and friend) at the Institute for Religion and Democracy: Jeff Walton on “Understanding Evangelical Drift.”

 

Serious Christian political thinking and action remain in their infancy. Yet, younger evangelicals are increasingly curious about how to move beyond stale debates and tired approaches that are not fully rooted in the breadth and richness of the biblical narrative. One challenge, first,  is simply to point prophetically to a new mode of engagement which, to the majority of citizens, evangelicals included, does not seem to exist.  Second, Christians and non-Christian citizens need to see the incarnation of new policies and new political leadership that do not fit the familiar mold. They need to be provoked to ask how Christians can indeed be a source of insight and blessing in the political process that is nowhere evident in the contest between the Religious Right and the Secular Left that has so defined the debate in the US. Insights and policy approaches birthed out of principled pluralism can help guide us beyond the false choices of the often intolerant right and the often permissive left, but they are only now being deployed for the first time and in very limited ways.  More often they are left out of the debate entirely, thanks not only to notions of “the separation of church and state” but also to a large body of Christians who have accepted the privatization of their faith in public life,

 

The evangelical voice is still scattered, and often when it is loudest, it is not necessarily speaking an integrally Christian political vocabulary, but rather a compromised jargon that takes as its starting principles either those of the Right or Left.  Evangelicals need a different political formation and need to see that alternative courses are not only plausible but potentially powerful in addressing public concerns and equipping citizens with the means to manifest and work for greater shalom in public life. 

Continuing the conversation, Gordon College professor Paul Brink writes:

Evangelicals need a vision.  Perhaps this reflects my bias as a theorist–or maybe the glass of wine I’ve just poured for myself–but beyond specific policy recommendations (charitable choice, etc., which is of course huge in itself), the vision for a “new” (that is, non-liberal) way for Christians to think about politics is vital.  Perhaps you’ve had this experience when you’ve taught as well, but for many of our students, there’s a moment when, suddenly, it “clicks”–and students realize that we don’t have to accept politics-as-usual, that we don’t have to be another interest group that fits into a preexisting game called American politics.  Rather we can reimagine the game itself.  Were you at the Princeton Kuyper conference last year?  I had a group of students with me who had just “got it” and I found their enthusiasm more inspiring than the conference presentations.  I don’t know what these students are doing right now, but I know that this vision–even knowing that it’s there–is huge for them.

CPJ is unique because it represents an approach to politics largely absent in American politics.  In particular, CPJ should be able to offer policy suggestions that come out of that vision and that simply cannot be categorized according the typical American political spectrum.  It should always be hard to “place” CPJ on the conservative-liberal spectrum.

What do you think American evangelicals need, politically speaking?

One of the questions I am asking as I prepare to take on the tasks of the president of the Center for Public Justice is “What do American evangelicals need most, today, to help us discern our political responsibilities?” In response to my asking this question to the Facebook fans of the Center, my friend Matt Kaemingk, a PhD student at Fuller Seminary, writes:

We need a thoughtful balance of confidence and humility in the public square. Humility because we are a minority and should not bully others through public policy, and confidence because we must honestly believe that our faith has something substantive and worthwhile to offer the public debate. This is a difficult balance to strike.

Beyond this evangelicals need a THICKER public theology. One that goes beyond fear-mongering and culture wars. Abraham Kuyper has found a receptive audience among many evangelicals because he provides this thickness.

What do you think we need?

… do please consider becoming a fan of the Center for Public Justice on Facebook!

While there will be many discontinuities to my work life before and after October, one continuity will be Comment magazine — to my great gratitude and relief. If you are unfamiliar with Comment, do pop over to its web page, where you can see the most recent online articles, and search its growing archives. For a sense of what we are trying to do with the magazine, I suggest that you take a look at the 2008 Comment Manifesto. I also recommend that you become a fan of Comment on Facebook!

Comment is a publication of Cardus, a think tank equipping people of influence with credible theories and practices of public life that will contribute to a renewal of North American social architecture. I have been involved with Cardus since 1999, when it was called the Work Research Foundation, and owe a vocational debt of gratitude to its founder, Harry Antonides, to Ray Pennings, my colleague at Cardus from the start, and to the president of Cardus, Michael Van Pelt — all of whom are not just colleagues, but dear friends. Working alongside the Cardus crew is one of the great delights of my life, and I am grateful to be able to continue to edit Comment alongside the wonderful Dan Postma and Alissa Wilkinson, after starting my formal role here at the Center in October.

This being Memorial Day, I recommend to you the Center’s Guideline for Security and Defense, and Jim Skillen’s reflections on the guideline from late 2007. A year from now I hope to write more extensively here on this day and what it commemorates, but for now I offer only this prayer from the 1941 Episcopal Prayer Book for Soldiers and Sailors:

    O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

In her answers to my questions in the previous post, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen mentioned a course she taught on a Christian worldview. Here is a link to the course outline: Constructing a Christian World View.