Politics, the individual, and the church

As the campaign season is heating up (like it has been for a year now) I thought I would post some words by two authors about one of my favorite scholars and theologians, J. Gresham Machen.  His words on culture, the church, and politics offer a perspective that is refreshing, though now nearly a century old.

Though Machen's views on culture may have shifted as a result of his first-hand account of WWI, his background in the Presbyterian Church in the South--with its more explicit doctrine of the spirituality of the church--likely would have led him to the conclusions he reached later in life.  The Great War and the controversies in the PCUSA in the 1920s (and before) simply accelerated his thinking.  A blog post from last November touched on similar themes.

The first citation comes from Stephen Nichols' short book on Machen's life and thought (pp.142-43).

Machen intended his call to the consecration of culture to be heard by all Christians, and he wanted it to be exercised in all walks of life. He desired the consecration of culture broadly and actively applied in all areas of public and social life.

But here is a crucial piece of his social philosophy not to miss: he made a radical distinction between how the church collective response and how individual Christians respond. He advocated that the church collective not become enmeshed with speaking to political issues because that tendency easily distract from the gospel.

The Christian as citizen is another matter altogether. He once wrote that the church should not be a political lobby, but added, “That does not mean at all that we deprecate advocacy of good political measures and opposition to bad measures on the part of members of the church; on the contrary we think that such activity is a very important Christian duty.” He continued, stressing his commitment to individual liberty in political matters, Christians ought to organize themselves in accordance with their consciences for the furtherance of political and social ends that they think right.”

One other area of Machen’s ethic needs to be addressed:  in the words of D.G. Hart, Machen’s commitment to the doctrine of the spirituality of the church. This commitment leads Machen to work out a different public ethic from the modernists and liberals on the one hand and from the fundamentalists on the other. He avoided the progressivism of liberalism, which identified the kingdom of God with the kingdom of this world and allowed social concerns to eclipse the gospel. He also avoided a certain triumphalism, which saw the church as manifested in its cultural power and clout, a tendency manifested in certain fundamentalist camps.

Further, he avoided a defeatism, or the withdrawal from the attempt to impact culture. Instead, he advocated the distinction of the kingdom of God from this world., as opposed to progressivism. He maintained that the Christian had responsibility in the world, as counter to defeatism. And he viewed the solution to cultural woes not in wielding political power, contrary to triumphalism, but in the power of the gospel and in what he termed a “radically ethical” Christianity.

The other citation comes from David Calhoun's second volume on the history of Princeton Seminary (pp. 516-17):

In social and political issues Machen consistently defended religious liberty and cultural pluralism, stressed the importance of personal freedoms, and opposed almost any extension of state power. Machen’s civil libertarianism and his Southern perspective kept him from identifying America and Christianity as many twentieth-century evangelicals have.

D.G. Hart has written: “Machen’s view on the relation between church and society alienated most Presbyterians and were an important factor in the Presbyterian controversies. His conception of the church meant that rather than being a dominant institution, it was to represent only one viewpoint within the marketplace of ideas in America.

"Indeed, Machen blamed the privileged position of Protestantism within America for the demise of conservative Christian beliefs. In order to maintain their established position within a culture growing increasingly pluralistic, mainstream Protestant churches, he thought, had accommodated viewpoints that undermined the gospel.

"For Machen, the church had to be intolerant to retain its identity, and if intolerant, it could not provide leadership for a culture that encouraged religious pluralism. To be sure, Machen hoped that the church would grow and that Christians would someday outnumber unbelievers in America. Still, he held that the church’s authority extended only to the faithful; it could not set the cultural norms for non-Christians.”

A modern-day equivalent of Machen's thoughts, I believe, can be found in the short, but insightful book Republocrat by Carl Trueman. When it was released Trueman discussed his book in a clip put out by Westminster Seminary. He is not saying people shouldn't vote. Though he is British, he has lived in the U.S. for over a decade and can ably comment on the cultural and political scene in each country. He is not, therefore, being anti-American by taking advantage of American freedoms while being critical of some of its policies (though I'm sure Machen was accused of the same thing).

He is not equating America with ancient Rome or Nazi Germany in all aspects, but only on one particular aspect and that in a way that is unique to our current context. We are certainly not anything like those two examples (though there is little doubt in my mind of an empire-like mentality to US foreign policy, despite what good it does do in many places). To continue the "not" explaination, Trueman is not anti-capitalist.  He simply says that capitalism is not the capstone on the economic temple. The rebuttal "if you don't like it leave" is a cop-out and does not address the issues in a constructive manner.  Now you may watch the clip.