Jesus is Lord.
This is the one political statement that Christians make that places a giant question mark next to every other political claim that humans make. Including Americans.
What do Christians have at stake in that confession of our faith? Everything.
Christians will always carry two passports: One, for the country in which we happen (through the happen-stances of moral luck) to be borne into. The other, that baptismal country that knows no bounds -- a people taken from every tribe, nation, tongue, socio-economic class, gender. This is a nation we don't create or sustain, and it's composed of those whose knees and wills and wants have been bent to Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
I've studied Dietrich Bonhoeffer for most of my life. Bonhoeffer understood, as the storm clouds of Nazi Germany, gathered -- in a way that was almost unique among Germans -- just what was at stake. For him, Hitler was Verführer (mis-leader, or seducer). Bonhoeffer understood that any political appeal to the salvation of the human race by anyone other than Jesus is a lie. Rather than offering unique Christian alternatives to the intractable problems of Germany during his day, Bonhoeffer insisted that Jesus himself is the solution.
At the same time, Karl Barth was preaching that Christians in Germany should go on as if "nothing has happened". That "nothing", for Barth, was Adolf Hitler. Barth urged preachers not to waste pulpit time condemning the Nazis. Demons were on the prowl which could not be exorcized except through prayerful proclamation of the Word of God. Barth's famous Barmen Declaration (which never mentions Hitler) was a defiant statement that the church must be free to preach and that Christians listen intently to no other word than that of Jesus Christ. When the Nazis forced Barth to resign from his teaching position in Bonn, his last advice to his students bidding him a tearful farewell was to remain centered on scripture, exhorting them: "Exegesis, exegesis, exegesis!"
Both Bonhoeffer and Barth have been accused of encouraging Christians to abandon politics altogether. But that would be a misunderstanding of what they really encouraged. For Bonhoeffer and Barth, the confession Christians make -- "Jesus is Lord" -- is the premier political confession. It relativizes every other political claimant and every other political claim. Hitler attempted to theologize his secular rhetoric of Volk, Land, und Blut ("People, Land, Blood") in messianic appeals to the salvation of his country ("land") from its corrupting influences of lesser peoples ("blood").
Here's the take-away: Politicians who assume a messianic bent are always suspect to me. Especially when they start making the claims I've heard ever-so-often in nationalistic tones.
Contemporary American political speech makes really just one demand of Christians. It's an accommodation that allows every other accommodation: Don't use your theological speech 'round here. If you jettison Christian speech -- talk like "Jesus is Lord" -- from the political conversation, you can be certain you'll end with a lie. Many mainline Protestants, and an embarrassing number of American evangelicals, cling to the hope that by engagement with secular politics within the limits set by the modern democratic state, we can wrest some shred of social significance for the Christian faith. This is how evangelicals became Republican and Episcopalians became Democrats. Both of whom, I hasten to add, are made less Christian in the accommodation of their speech.
The Church is Jesus' Body on earth. Either what we say and do reflects Jesus or it doesn't. This includes our political speech and act. Either we are political as Christians or we aren't. There's no middle way here that doesn't end in the proclamation of a lie and the actions of a hypocrite.
Either we are irrefutable proof that Jesus is Lord, or we are not.
The great question make placed next to American political claims -- even the claims of one so great as Donald Trump -- is a simple statement that thunders into political speech: "Jesus is Lord".
It's not the task of Christians to attain political power. That power is held by Jesus alone. It is the task of Christians to show Jesus -- to be Jesus -- in a world that knows only its political and economic divisions. That easily divides the world into "us" and "them". That finds places in God's world to be "shitholes" and prefers people from predominately Anglo-Saxon blood heritages.
I wish more people doubted Donald Trump. Not because of Donald Trump, but because of Jesus.
Jesus is the question mark next to every Donald Trump that American politics might produce.*
________________________
*The foregoing should not be read as an attack on American political conservatives in a way that preserves American political liberals. They're flip sides of the same coin. For example, if Haiti is a "shithole", it's because Clinton and Obama (through the international policies of the Democratic Party) made it a "shithole". You can't attack what Trump said without acknowledging how it became that way. At least not without telling a lie.
This is the one political statement that Christians make that places a giant question mark next to every other political claim that humans make. Including Americans.
What do Christians have at stake in that confession of our faith? Everything.
Christians will always carry two passports: One, for the country in which we happen (through the happen-stances of moral luck) to be borne into. The other, that baptismal country that knows no bounds -- a people taken from every tribe, nation, tongue, socio-economic class, gender. This is a nation we don't create or sustain, and it's composed of those whose knees and wills and wants have been bent to Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
I've studied Dietrich Bonhoeffer for most of my life. Bonhoeffer understood, as the storm clouds of Nazi Germany, gathered -- in a way that was almost unique among Germans -- just what was at stake. For him, Hitler was Verführer (mis-leader, or seducer). Bonhoeffer understood that any political appeal to the salvation of the human race by anyone other than Jesus is a lie. Rather than offering unique Christian alternatives to the intractable problems of Germany during his day, Bonhoeffer insisted that Jesus himself is the solution.
At the same time, Karl Barth was preaching that Christians in Germany should go on as if "nothing has happened". That "nothing", for Barth, was Adolf Hitler. Barth urged preachers not to waste pulpit time condemning the Nazis. Demons were on the prowl which could not be exorcized except through prayerful proclamation of the Word of God. Barth's famous Barmen Declaration (which never mentions Hitler) was a defiant statement that the church must be free to preach and that Christians listen intently to no other word than that of Jesus Christ. When the Nazis forced Barth to resign from his teaching position in Bonn, his last advice to his students bidding him a tearful farewell was to remain centered on scripture, exhorting them: "Exegesis, exegesis, exegesis!"
Both Bonhoeffer and Barth have been accused of encouraging Christians to abandon politics altogether. But that would be a misunderstanding of what they really encouraged. For Bonhoeffer and Barth, the confession Christians make -- "Jesus is Lord" -- is the premier political confession. It relativizes every other political claimant and every other political claim. Hitler attempted to theologize his secular rhetoric of Volk, Land, und Blut ("People, Land, Blood") in messianic appeals to the salvation of his country ("land") from its corrupting influences of lesser peoples ("blood").
Here's the take-away: Politicians who assume a messianic bent are always suspect to me. Especially when they start making the claims I've heard ever-so-often in nationalistic tones.
Contemporary American political speech makes really just one demand of Christians. It's an accommodation that allows every other accommodation: Don't use your theological speech 'round here. If you jettison Christian speech -- talk like "Jesus is Lord" -- from the political conversation, you can be certain you'll end with a lie. Many mainline Protestants, and an embarrassing number of American evangelicals, cling to the hope that by engagement with secular politics within the limits set by the modern democratic state, we can wrest some shred of social significance for the Christian faith. This is how evangelicals became Republican and Episcopalians became Democrats. Both of whom, I hasten to add, are made less Christian in the accommodation of their speech.
The Church is Jesus' Body on earth. Either what we say and do reflects Jesus or it doesn't. This includes our political speech and act. Either we are political as Christians or we aren't. There's no middle way here that doesn't end in the proclamation of a lie and the actions of a hypocrite.
Either we are irrefutable proof that Jesus is Lord, or we are not.
The great question make placed next to American political claims -- even the claims of one so great as Donald Trump -- is a simple statement that thunders into political speech: "Jesus is Lord".
It's not the task of Christians to attain political power. That power is held by Jesus alone. It is the task of Christians to show Jesus -- to be Jesus -- in a world that knows only its political and economic divisions. That easily divides the world into "us" and "them". That finds places in God's world to be "shitholes" and prefers people from predominately Anglo-Saxon blood heritages.
I wish more people doubted Donald Trump. Not because of Donald Trump, but because of Jesus.
Jesus is the question mark next to every Donald Trump that American politics might produce.*
________________________
*The foregoing should not be read as an attack on American political conservatives in a way that preserves American political liberals. They're flip sides of the same coin. For example, if Haiti is a "shithole", it's because Clinton and Obama (through the international policies of the Democratic Party) made it a "shithole". You can't attack what Trump said without acknowledging how it became that way. At least not without telling a lie.