Religion and politics are the world’s two biggest Rorschach tests. When engaging in either, we tend to see what we bring to the test. Fusing the two into one giant test pushes the limits of the human ability to comprehend each other. Wire it into a participatory democracy and supercharge it with social media, and you get the incoherent buzz that is early 21st-century America. Jonathan Leeman attempts to tune out the static and offer a healthy frequency for Christians.
Leeman tries to build on timeless Christian principles, but he’s naturally informed by his time, place, and sect: the latter days of the first Trump administration, Washington D.C., and conservative Southern Baptist flavored with Reformed theology. I don’t mean that as a criticism. For one thing, I’m just as conditioned as he is by time, place, and sect. For another, it’s hard to criticize Leeman because he’s such a humble guy. No doubt, this is partly pragmatic. When your church is a blend of racial and party affiliations in the most political city of the most powerful hegemony on Earth, humility is the only rational stance. But I think chalking this up only to pragmatism is unfair. Leeman has arrived at some hardwon conclusions, especially on race relations in America, both through the beautiful grind of ministry and from his theology of politics.
My reaction to Leeman’s conclusions is divided. Perhaps most importantly, we would converge on a similar praxis. Starting from a polemic against the idea of the public square as neutral, he builds a case for Christian participation in that square within my own eschatological framework: that the church exists as an embassy of a coming kingdom rather than a Committee of Building the Kingdom Now. Pastors are not policy wonks, and need to stay in their lane (which, according to Leeman’s Twitter bio, is one of the things he tries to do). That lane, though, does include matters of morality and justice. The trick is discerning between a handful of “straight line” issues where a church can bind the conscience of its members on the basis of the Bible, and a bewildering vastness of “jagged line” issues where wisdom has a weightier role and Christians need to leave room for each other to differ, learn, and love.
All of that resonates with me. I appreciate Leeman’s analogy of the church as an embassy. Embassies represent a foreign sovereign, demonstrate that sovereign’s values and authority, and bear their first and highest allegiance to that sovereign while conducting themselves with respect toward their hosts. Embassies should not be cauldrons of revolution, dens of manipulators, or engines of domination. This aligns with my own conception of the church, and Leeman and I would each prioritize evangelism over lobbying, and downgrade party politics in favor of personal sanctification. Sometimes issues are clear enough that a church has the right and responsibility to say something and even to bind the conscience of its members; but those instances are rarer than you’d think. Mostly, we have more important things to do. We are the light of the world, and we can’t afford to be playing around in the dark.
My other reaction is to swerve a bit from Leeman’s theory. He stakes out space for Christians in the public square with the common evangelical argument that everyone is religious, everyone has gods. Mine might be a traditional personal deity, and yours might be human freedom expressed as the sexual revolution, but each of us worships something. It isn’t fair for you to say that your god gets to occupy the public square but mine can’t just because you dispute his existence. Democracy means that everyone (regardless of which gods they worship) gets to debate, persuade, and vote; that someone’s moral compass will provide the foundation of law; and that Christians have just as much right as any other “worshiper” to give it the ol’ college try.
I get the attraction of this, but I think it contains a poison pill. For one thing, I consider it a rhetorical trick. A religion and a secular ideology do similar things in terms of imposing epistemological, moral, and ethical constraints on their devotees; but doing similar things doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. Out of friendship, I might prioritize your needs very highly and treat you with kindness, deference, and love. The fact that I do the same things for my wife doesn’t mean you and I are married. Friendship and marriage do similar things, but they’re not the same thing. Likewise, a secular ideology is not a religion. It lacks key elements such as the supernatural, the revelatory, the spiritually immanent. One of these things is not like the other, and I’m not willing to play semantic games just to get a foot in the door.
More importantly, though, this argument drags God down to the level of an abstract ideology. Karl Barth had the right idea when he opened his “Church Dogmatics” by positing God as the only explainer of himself, not just another subject for human investigation. Leveling the playing field by equating Christianity with secular ideologies reverses Barth’s polarity: now “God” is just another abstraction elbowing all the other abstract “gods” for a place at the table. Convincing my neighbor that Christianity and the sexual revolution are both religions doesn’t make evangelism easier; it just drags God down to the level of the sexual revolution where he can be tamed, dissected, and rejected.
I think the idea that “everything is gods” is flawed, perhaps fatally. If God is equal to every other abstract ideology, then why shouldn’t I abandon separation of church and state and try to ram my “God-eology” into law? If we reduce God to an idea so the big boys will let us play with them, then I see no reason to limit myself from imposing my idea on everyone in the same way that everyone else tries to impose their ideas on me. Leeman opposes the confusion of church and state, but his pathway to political participation has no guardrails to prevent it. Without those guardrails, there’s nothing standing between the gospel and, say, the poisonous fungal growth creeping out of Moscow, Idaho.
I’d rather stick to Leeman’s image of the embassy, and clearly represent God as one who stands apart and above. As individual citizens, we may develop theories or participate in activities that we think are most supportive of a free and healthy society. For those of us who are religious, this will certainly be informed by our faith to a greater or lesser degree. But all of that is secondary, and I’m not going to waste time trying to figure out how to enshrine God into law. He’ll take care of that himself on the Last Day. So rather than try to jury rig society along the lines of my “God-eology,” I’m going to do the church’s business: call people to a better and a higher life with the King of Kings and the Prince of Peace.
I don’t pretend that managing this balance is easy, that answers are always clear, or that democracy itself doesn’t present challenges the apostles never dreamed of. I also won’t pretend that Leeman would not also elevate a gospel mission above politics, because he does, with great clarity and humility. I would simply encourage the Christian, as Leeman himself does, to think of the public square less as a place to dominate with your cramped political theology and more as a place to shine for our most glorious God.
Author: Jonathan Leeman
Genres: Nonfiction, Religion, Christianity