Healthy Liberal Theology and Politics

I write this installment with no small amount of trepidation. People who are much more articulate and learned than I am have weighed in on the present controversy surrounding Barack Obama and The Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I have read a good many commentaries and essays on the issues, but still, I feel motivated to add my voice to the chorus.

I begin with the deep sorrow I feel at the quality of discourse in our supposedly educated culture. And, if I am not careful at this moment, I can, just as easily as anyone else, be guilty of adding even more heat to the conversation without benefit of adding light. The moment we begin to judge the inadequacy of another, real conversation tends to stop and all that is left is name-calling, superficiality, and a likely increase in resentment and distrust.

What is at stake in this controversy? Is the argument mostly about Barack Obama’s qualifications for the U.S. Presidency? Has our electoral process come to the unfortunate place where the only value any issue has is its power to cripple “the enemy”? Is the conflict rooted in a desperate hope that we might legitimately expect and receive fairness and justice? Is it about the freedom to say whatever we choose, without taking any responsibility for the impact of our words? Is it about the still potent American shadow of slavery and racism? Is it about the place of the church in present-day culture, a church that no longer enjoys the status it once enjoyed as the centerpiece of every community’s religious and social life? Who really knows?

It may be that all these questions add some fuel to the fire, and increase the levels of sweaty discomfort. I am still naïve enough to believe that real discourse is possible. And furthermore, that if we are willing (and able, of course) to listen to each other and are interested in excavating the underlying issues, we can grow and learn both as individuals and as a culture.

In this context, I want to think about the relationship between church and state. Let me begin with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

You will notice that there are two parts to this amendment, known respectively as the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. So, government cannot establish a religion, not can it prohibit the free exercise of religion. This does not mean that government and religion have nothing to say to each other. Nor does it mean that they might not hold to some common values. We must, however, be clear (and here is the point of my argument) that the purpose of religion and the purpose of government are not identical. While they may use similar language in describing their efforts to address societal problems and issues, their respective definitions of what constitutes a healthy community can vary widely, and can even be diametrically opposed.

To give an example, I recently preached a sermon about Jesus’ time of temptation in the wilderness by the Devil. I argued that his temptations were essentially around comfort, safety, power, and status. I also argued that temptations for Jesus are temptations for us, and that they distract us from our spiritual mission. Politicians and governments (particularly democratic governments), however, promise to improve lives by means of those very things! This is not to say that the values of government and the values of religion are always opposites. There can be a great deal of overlap in what they work towards. This perspective also does not assume that the values of religion are necessarily better than the values of government. But, for the sake of our thinking about these issues, let’s just remember that religions and governments do not exist for the same fundamental purposes.

This brings us back to the Obama/Wright controversy. Barack Obama is a politician who is running for political office and Jeremiah Wright is a Christian minister. To judge one of them on the basis of the words or beliefs or values of the other simply makes no sense. It may, however, be useful to make use of each perspective as an opportunity to shed some light into the dark corners of the other. The founders of The United States had suffered severe religious oppression, mostly at the hands of state-sanctioned religion. They wisely challenged any religion’s capacity to impose its beliefs and values on everyone. The free exercise of religion is a fundamental value. On the other hand, religion has a long history of challenging the tendency of governmental power to increase the oppression of the disenfranchised. Certainly, the Judeo-Christian tradition is filled with prophets and saviors who challenged governmental oppression wherever they found it, (often in the strongest terms imaginable). There are so many examples of this condemning language in the Bible’s prophetic literature.

Here is just one example from the prophet, Hosea 10: 13-15

You have ploughed wickedness,
you have reaped injustice,
you have eaten the fruit of lies.
Because you have trusted in your power
and in the multitude of your warriors,
therefore the tumult of war shall rise against your people,
and all your fortresses shall be destroyed,
as Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel on the day of battle
when mothers were dashed in pieces with their children.
Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel,
because of your great wickedness.
At dawn the king of Israel
shall be utterly cut off.

(This doesn’t sound like a blessing of the government to me! It sounds more like the opposite!)

Even though the dialogue between government and religion is always important, there are some essential limitations. It is not the legitimate role of religion to bless (and by that I mean, validate) governments. Still, it is a powerful temptation to religion to do just that, although the cost of succumbing to the temptation is the loss of its soul. In the same way, it is not the legitimate role of government to sanction (positively or negatively) any religion, although, likewise, whenever governments succumb to their own temptation to do this, they tend to become despotic.

So, what’s my point? Of course, Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright don’t agree. Barack is a politician, not a minister. Still, he could benefit from observing the light that religion casts into government’s dark corners. At the same time, Jeremiah is a minister, not a politician. He has been the champion of the cause of a largely disenfranchised segment of the population for decades. He speaks on behalf of a human race that has been oppressed, marginalized, and treated unfairly in countless ways by America’s economic and governmental structures. To do his job properly, it is most appropriate for him to advocate on their behalf.

It saddens me that so many in the media and in certain political camps do so much to blur this important distinction. We are capable of much healthier discernment than that. So, don’t be bullied into settling for their superficial and inflammatory interpretations. You know better.