Review: A Christian Political Agenda?

First Quarter 2001

A review of Christians and Politics Beyond the Culture Wars: An Agenda for Engagement, edited by David P. Gushee

"There are still many political pundits and observers," writes Michael Cromartie, "who believe Christian conservatives represent a mass movement of cultural dinosaurs with religious views akin to what the journalist H.L. Mencken called a 'childish theology' for 'halfwits,' 'yokels,' the 'anthropoid rabble,' or the 'gaping primates of the upland valleys.' The Washington Post, while not as colorful as Mencken, more recently said they were 'poor, uneducated, and easy to command.'"

While it is still popular in many circles to speak this way about fundamentalist Christians, such talk fails to capture reality. For, if one searches across America today to discover how Christians really think about politics, one will discover that many ardent Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians are publicly engaged in ways that have almost nothing to do with the stereotype Cromartie describes.

By contrast, if one examines carefully the political agenda of ordinary Republicans and Democrats or of the writers and readers of The Washington Post, one discovers very little that is coherent, assuring, or enduring. The truth is that "the agenda" of mainstream American politics today, for all of its claim to pragmatic flexibility and problem-solving strength, is confused and confusing, uncertain and unconvincing, here today and gone tomorrow.

These are reasons enough, especially at the start of this new Congress and new presidency, to take time to read carefully a new book edited by David P. Gushee, a professor of moral philosophy at the Center for Christian Leadership at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. The book, Christians and Politics Beyond the Culture Wars (Baker Books, 2000), offers a glimpse of some of the most thoughtful and careful work being done today on Christianity and politics. Michael Cromartie's essay (quoted above)—"The Evangelical Kaleidoscope"—leads off the volume. While one will not find a full-blown national political agenda in these pages, one will find much that should constitute that agenda.

Charles L. Glenn's thinking on educational policy reform is a decade ahead of contemporary policy making. Stanley Carlson-Thies explains how best to advance welfare reform. Stephen Monsma gives guidance, ahead of the curve, to all three branches of government on how to deal properly with constitutional church/state issues. Gushee carefully weighs policy options to deal with the divorce epidemic. Additional essays take on abortion, refugees, and peacemaking.

Monsma illuminates one of the principles underlying most of these essays with his argument that all citizens should be treated equally in regard to the exercise of their religious freedom in public life. All Americans should be able "to live out their deepest beliefs in all areas of life, without the government favoring or disfavoring any particular system of belief." Religion, in other words, is something that cannot and must not be forced by court order into private quarters. Instead, Christians and people of every other faith and secular ideology should be treated equally in welfare and education policies.

The book is more than a collection of essays on issues. It begins with historically informed reflective essays on the political orientations of con temporary Roman Catholics (John L. Carr), Evangelicals (Ron Sider), and Reformed Protestants (Skillen), as well as commentaries on American and Third World politics by Jean Bethke Elshtain, Harry L. Poe, and Paul Freston.

It would be too much to say that all of the authors in this book agree on a Christian political agenda, but the book certainly reflects a greater degree of coherent, balanced, and creative thinking about politics than you will find in most other American political circles these days. John Carr, Secretary of the Department of Social Development and World Peace for the U.S. Catholic Bishops, makes a plea at the end of his essay that expresses something of the book's spirit as a whole.

"So, what should [Christians] do? We need to change the culture, reshape the debate, and challenge the political status quo. We need a new politics that focuses on moral principles, not the latest polls; on the needs of the weak, not the contributions of the strong." We need evangelicals and Catholics working together for a pro-life, pro-family, pro-poor agenda, as Ronald Sider has suggested.

—The Editor