Perspectives on evangelicals in politics

Evangelicals in the Public Square J. Budziszewski, ed. Baker Academic, 2006.

Exiles In The Empire: Believers Church Perspectives on Politics Nathan E. Yoder and Carol A. Scheppard, eds. Pandora Press, 2006.

Budziszewski is a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas.

His book deals with four major figures: Carl F. H. Henry, Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer, and John Howard Yoder. The editor’s 82-page introductory chapter is an excellent presentation of these “four shapers of evangelical political thought.”

The evaluative chapters that follow are largely responses to the editor’s descriptions of the four seminal thinkers and focus on their thought and theory, not practice.

David L. Weeks deals with “Carl F. H. Henry on Civic Life,” John Bolt analyzes “Abraham Kuyper and the Search for an Evangelical Public Theology,” William Edgar writes on “Francis Schaeffer and the Public Square,” while Ashley Woodiwiss surveys “John Howard Yoder and a Church-Centered Political Theory.” The book concludes with a thoughtful afterword by Jean Bethke Elshtain.

Weeks affirms Henry as the pioneer who has provided “the theological and philosophical framework that shapes much of current evangelical political thought,” and commends him for his 1947 path-breaking book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism as well as his highly influential editing of Christianity Today. He faults Henry for neglecting the natural law tradition.

Bolt lauds Kuyper for his sharp distinction between church as institution and as organism, his appeal to the national conscience, and his general Calvinist interpretation. I have difficulty with Bolt’s and Kuyper’s inclination to see the United States as unique in its democracy and freedom and somehow also uniquely – I stress uniquely – guided by God.

Edgar presents Schaeffer as a “culture warrior” railing against the pietistic separation of spiritual life from the rest of life, the inroads of a humanistic worldview, the usurping of power by some courts, and corruption at all levels of society and government. Schaeffer’s warning about the “immense power of the modern state” is well taken.

Woodiwiss, in a rather critical essay, states that “John Howard Yoder offers evangelicals an option we must take seriously, even if we ultimately part company with him.” He insists that Yoder “was not and never claimed to be a political theorist,” that he was not “a systematic theologian”; he was “a theological ethicist focused chiefly on particular practices that mark a specific Christian way of being in the world.” Woodiwiss faults Yoder and Anabaptists generally for “understanding the Christian faith as determined more by Christian practice than by theological systems.”

Hard-hitting critique

Exiles In The Empire consists of papers presented at the Fifteenth Believers Church Conference in September 2004, hosted by Bridgewater College and Eastern Mennonite University, on “God, Democracy, and U.S. Power: Believers Church Perspectives.” With some exceptions this volume is a hard-hitting critique of the U.S. government and “the U.S. empire.”

The book’s main theme is noted in Nathan Yoder’s introduction. Commenting on the “dawning awareness of imperial status” he writes, “Even more sobering is that the foreign, military, and social policy of an America known globally as Christian is smearing the integrity and credibility to which believers in that tradition commit themselves.” The back cover blurb adds, “This book is prepared out of the sense that many Christians in the United States are disturbed by the troubling paradoxes of their country’s appearing to be both imperial and Christian.”

This book of 18 essays, mostly by Brethren and Mennonite scholars, is part history, part theology, part analysis, and to a considerable extent lament. Although it deals mostly with the U.S. scene, it’s a useful volume for Canadian Christians as well.

Four chapters deserve comment. Myron Penner’s “Minority Views and the Wider World: Yoder and Plantinga on Particularity” is an erudite comparison with impressive academic concepts and verbiage but seems not to fit the volume’s general theme.

J. Denny Weaver’s “Living in the Reign of God in the ‘Real World’: Getting beyond Two-Kingdom Theology,” attempts to replace “kingdom of this world” with a more inclusive concept, the “non-reign-of-God.” I found the attempt unconvincing. Weaver has to use the traditional language to explain what he means, he cannot set aside the many biblical references to such a kingdom, and the novel concept deals almost exclusively with government.

“Giving Caesar his Due: A Personal Journey to Political Involvement” by Lloyd Harsch is an excellent account of positive action by a concerned citizen. “Polls Apart: Why Believers Might Conscientiously Abstain From Voting,” by John D. Roth, editor of Mennonite Quarterly Review, is a thoughtful but for me unconvincing plea for Christians not to vote.

Both volumes are important contributions to the literature and are highly recommended.

John H. Redekop is adjunct professor of political science at Trinity Western University, Langley, B.C., and a member of Bakerview MB Church, Abbotsford. See his “report card” on the Harper Conservatives after their first year in office.