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Reconciling Faith and Politics
I’ve recently discovered a little conflict going on between my religious beliefs and political ideology. Obviously I’ll find a way to reconcile the two because both are core to who I am as a person, so I cannot withstand such a bipolar condition for long. The first problem is one of charity. As I commented in the PIT yesterday:
So I’m conflicted between religion and politics. My church has an outreach where once a month or so they go to Seattle and distribute needed items to the homeless. I’m sure the homeless love getting new socks, clean water, and especially some of the other things like pre-stamped envelopes and writing material, but I have trouble seeing helping people in their condition as being more appropriate than helping them out of their condition.
As a heartless conservative I find some works of charity to be more like casting one’s pearls before swine. It can seem like a waste of resources to do things we know won’t change outcomes one way or another. However, this is approaching the matter all too materially. As has been discovered by my fellow church members, the homeless they reach out to are much more moved by the things that confirm their humanity than by items which merely meet physical needs. Making that real connection is, in my estimation, vastly more valuable than the reasonably small cost of the items, and it is the best way to actually fulfill the goals of ministry.
So, just when I had wrapped my head and heart around that conundrum another came along. My mother posted an article titled “9 Sins the Church is Okay With.” I opened it expecting the normal cries against cultural degradation displayed mostly by our materialism and lust. I even thought I might see something about my hard-heartedness and disdain of charity. What I found shocked and enraged me, especially the 8th of the “sins” which I quote here:
PATRIOTISM
Cue the nasty e-mails. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t picture Jesus waving an American flag while showing off his “I love ‘Merica” tattoo. Jesus wasn’t against the government. In fact, if you’re a Jesus follower, the Bible calls you to pray for your nation and for your leaders (1 Tim. 2:1-4). But Jesus was very clear about how God’s name would become famous throughout the world…the church. Not the government. Not a nation. The church.
When your allegiance is torn between your country and your God, American ideals begin to shape your faith more than God. And you transpose American values onto God, believing God would be an American and think like an American.
Celebrate American values. That’s great. But, at the end of the day, your citizenship is not with America. It’s in heaven.
Patriotism is obviously not sinful and this author has apparently given his soul over to the DNC, right? Am I reading this wrong to see a perverse conception of patriotism? My allegiance is not torn between God and government. Jesus commanded us to have two separate allegiances. We are to render unto Caesar that which is appropriate and to render unto God what belongs to Him. They are only rarely competing entities fighting over the same part of me.
The blatant anti-Americanism of this item really set me off. But, therein lies the problem. Such a strong reaction only comes from a sense of righteousness, even if it’s self-righteousness. I have to do a little more searching within and open up the discussion. Can we, or do we, lift up our patriotism and our love of this nation — its institutions and ideologies — above where they belong? Is this a sin, and am I guilty of it? What say you, Ricochet?
Published in Politics, Religion & Philosophy
What if Jesus had an American flag to wave? Was any government of his time founded on several principles derived from Judeo-Christian theology? Obviously no. I’m not Jingo-istically saying “God is on our side”, but I like to imagine he often looks favorably in our direction.
It sounds like a wee bit of personal anger found it’s way into this tract.
It begins with labelling waving a flag and getting a tattoo with patriotism. Those are not acts of patriotism.
However, if you specified the winter deprivation at Valley Forge to be free of tyranny, it is harder to denigrate.
If you specified the resolve to stand fast against the beheading of Christians, it might make the Jesus comparison a bit more difficult.
The writer of the tome apparently has never made a sacrifice for freedom and it is doubtful they ever would.
My initial reaction was that he was too busy concocting sin out of whole cloth to realize we already have a comprehensive list. It stunk of liberal pieties rather than real piety.
Sometimes the socks, the water, the writing materials, are gestures that open the opportunity for the relationships that are so needed, with homeless, or anyone. But gifting forward with no demand for response is a difficult thing, and some recipients may be so damaged as to be unable to respond in what we perceive to be ‘normal.’
Expecting a response would be like the clanging cymbal, if I speak with the tongues of angels, but have not love, I am as a clanging cymbal.
When I think of it, that is exactly why our government entitlements are so destructive. The ‘entitlements’ are really not given out of love, they are given as part of a flow chart. The recipients know it, and are actually damaged in the process.
Yes we can, and we do. Part of me believes Patriotism has become a godless religion. By my seeing, it is doomed to fail, because Patriotism has no foundation at its core, except itself.
We can’t disregard the mindset of our Founders, who built the structures of our government on the foundation that the citizenry accepted and embraced the idea of G-d, and the natural rights humanity owns by being recipients of his breath.
The cans and cannots of our Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution were put forth by the founders because they observed history, and saw the abuse of rulers and governments.
Our Founding Fathers knew their progeny could and would eventually behave as disobedient children, and they sought to put restraints in place.
While no specific faith was required to be American, the foundations of our government presume citizens accept the broad guidelines of the Judeo-Christian philosophy, which includes a clear moral code.
This is the struggle we face: our American structures can’t stand when its foundation is rejected.
We can pray for a remnant that will re-seed in the ruins.
Chesterton’s thoughts on the subject are relevant. While I generally detest comments where the author simply says “read it, I’m not going to summarize,” I’m going to do what I detest: Just read it. I think it’s great, and I’m not up to the task of trying to summarize.
This is what got me wondering a bit about my own behavior. Maybe I’m just in a good setting where I don’t see a whole lot of overly patriotic demonstrations, at least not to the point that it rises to the level of idolatry.
Well, anyone being Patriotic, without first crediting G-d as the author, would essentially become idolatrous. We can’t prohibit that, but we do not need to accept that is the core of “America.”
Funny, Trump says make America Great Again, but no one agrees on what it is or was that made us think that in the first place. We do not have any common goals.
We can pray for a remnant to reseed the true greatness of America in the ruins.
Much of what the article’s Sin #8 is pointing to is the notion that Christians expect their government to fix cultural problems. If we just outlaw gay marriage and pot smoking, folks will come around to a moral world view. Right?
That’s not what I got from it. He seemed more to be saying that patriotism is love of government. He’s drunk a bit too much of the bong water if that’s his definition. Heck, in America patriotism is often synonymous with being anti-government. Love of nation, which here is about ideals and ideas, and love of government are not in any way the same thing.
I thought this was the best paragraph:
Because the modern intellectuals who disapprove of patriotism do not do this, a strange coldness and unreality hangs about their love for men. If you ask them whether they love humanity, they will say, doubtless sincerely, that they do. But if you ask them, touching any of the classes that go to make up humanity, you will find that they hate them all. They hate kings, they hate priests, they hate soldiers, they hate sailors. They distrust men of science, they denounce the middle classes, they despair of working men, but they adore humanity. Only they always speak of humanity as if it were a curious foreign nation. They are dividing themselves more and more from men to exalt the strange race of mankind. They are ceasing to be human in the effort to be humane.
Sure, loyalty to God and loyalty to country are in constant tension. But before we adopt too lordly or otherworldly an approach, which can be just as obnoxious as a patriotism that conflates the two, we might ponder what Old Bathos wrote today:
Whether we like it or not we are participants – partisans. We take the side of our country, and countries get into conflicts. It’s a myth that we can just sit above it all and act as a neutral judge of all the sides. It doesn’t hurt to try for a moment, but that’s not the life we were given.
Maybe that’s what he’s saying. One of our council members and I have been having a running dialog about how the Church is abdicating it’s role in the world to government. Maybe he (the author of the article) is confusing the idea of patriotism with that concept. The problem is, he doesn’t really put forth enough of an argument to know for sure what he’s saying.
But that is the problem: different people define patriotism in different ways, and give it different importance in their lives.
Every time I try annotating or underlining the best parts of Chesterton, I realize that I want to just underline the whole book…
I know that’s a quote, but it just seems like a personal challenge. ‘Cause I can do that.
As for the patriotism thing, just let me say that I understand the meek shall inherit the earth. Until Christ returns I’m leaning on the United States Marines.
It seems (having not read it all) to have some “emergent” feel to it. No, bro, love is not the opposite of fear, though hate, which is the opposite, can be connected to fear.
I think that patriotism thing sets up a false dichotomy, and a caricature, which isn’t helped by many modern country songs. But one can still feel a certain political/cultural allegiance to their nation so long as that isn’t at the cost of their faith in Christ. Saying patriotism is a sin is silly.
My faith started out in Palestine, then spread to Asia Minor, Greece and Italy. From then, it went north to Germany, France, England and Scandinavia, North and South America and is now blossoming in South Korea and Africa. Rebuilding this country is important. Getting the citizens of this country in the right relationship with their maker is importanter.
[sorry, changed my mind about commenting]
If you went by reasoning of that writer, loving your children would be a sin too.
The writer has a political axe to grind.
BTW, C. S. Lewis considered pacifism to be a sin.
I consider the two mutually inclusive, not exclusive.
The fathers of the Second Vatican Council called the split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age (GS43).
We Christians must take our faith into the public square.
I didn’t really get involved in politics until I entered the Catholic Church in 2004. Deacon Keith Fournier opened my eyes with his essay Catholic is a Noun. I don’t see myself as a Catholic American, but as an American Catholic. That doesn’t diminish my love of this country, but it keeps it in perspective.
I think we can, but there is always a balance. In a Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life, the CDF said:
I find it helpful for my own soul to remember that the author of goodness and grace is God. At times we all may act in a way that honors God and blesses our fellow man and this includes the collective ‘we’ of our country and our government. But expecting any of us individually or collectively to remain constantly in this state is dangerous. To quote David, “my sin is continually before me”. Still, I am a patriot and always shall be.
Christianity is a catholic religion, not a national one. “We are one in the spirit…” That’s what I’d take from that article, not that love of country is sinful. There are those who look down on people in other parts of the world. That is wrong. We can believe that the USA is the best country on Earth without thinking others are less than us. They simply are less fortunate. Proud to be American. Grateful to be Christian.
There’s no monopoly on God
Nor man yet can describe Him.
To some he’s just irrelevant
(Perhaps even malevolent.)
Nor is it not very wrong or odd
To love countries that ascribe Him?
Are you sure?
I listened to every minute. That warmed my heart and gives me hope.
I don’t know if he was in the video, but thank you to your son, and all his peers for their service.
Two thoughts.
We’re to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves, and also to give to those who ask… For my part, with my very limited means, I’m willing to give something I know can’t be misused, even without a full knowledge of the situation, when something arises. But I do find it appropriate to target what I do carefully into something I have confidence in. Adult literacy programs, for instance, can be a meaningful way of helping someone get out. I wish conservatives talked more about those practical ways.
Second… I wouldn’t assume that writer is a Democrat, although that could well be. I’ve read similar stuff from Christians trying to make a somewhat legitimate point in ill-conceived form. Here’s what I think is the legitimate point: “My country, right or wrong” is not a legitimate stand for a Christian, pride is dangerous, and an American Christian should remember that our Americanism gives us no special place with God.
But we are citizens here, too. Even Christ had some citizenship here on earth… He wept over Jerusalem as He did not over Athens — not because the Athenians were less valuable, but because in a unique, tragic way His city and His people had rejected Him.
(cont.)
I believe God made it natural and right for human beings to feel a deep, passionate love of country, in roughly the same category as family affection. In America, that should come coupled with deep gratitude, and a sense of responsibility to use well what we have been given, and to protect it for others… it should for the Christian be a deeper, more serious thing than the shallow, casual pride the author mocks. He’d have served the audience better without that.