Citizenship and public policy through a theological lens
What does it mean to be a good Christian citizen?
If we’re honest, it’s not a question many of us think that much about. We know whether we lean to the right or the left politically, whether we favor limited government or not, and we may feel strongly about a number of hot-button issues. But have we considered how our theology and our understanding of Scripture ought to shape the ways in which we practice citizenship? Have we thought theologically about citizenship?
Being a good Christian citizen means a lot more than going to the voting booth once every four years and forwarding emails to relatives in the time in between. But an election year is as good a time as any to give some thought to citizenship and what it might mean for us to be good Christian citizens.
Stephen Monsma, author of Healing for a Broken World: Christian Perspectives on Public Policy (Crossway) and former member of the Michigan state House and Senate, believes we need to start with the big story of the Bible. “Thinking about creation, sin and redemption,” he writes, “are crucial to right thinking about today’s public-policy issues.”
Creation. Sin. Redemption. Not where we usually start when thinking about public policy, is it?
Starting in Genesis, we see that when God created the world and put Adam and Eve in the garden, they experienced shalom. “Shalom,” Monsma writes, “is the peace one finds among people who delight in living, working, and achieving together.” That’s God’s design for life on earth. Obviously, that’s not life as we know it. Humanity disregarded God’s intentions and rebelled against him in sin. We see the collateral damage around us every day. But God didn’t give up on us. In Christ, he has brought about redemption -- restoring humanity’s relationship to God, and enabling us to be reconciled to each other and to the world in which we live. Shalom is a real possibility again. It won’t be fully realized until Christ returns and brings about the new heavens and the new earth, but there are bits and pieces of it everywhere, even in the places we’d least suspect.
Even in government.
Drawing on Abraham Kuyper’s “sphere sovereignty” teaching that there’s an important purpose in God’s design for every sphere of society, including family, church, state, business, art and academia, Monsma shows that despite what some Christians and pundits may lead us to believe, government does have an important role to play in the flourishing -- yes, the shalom -- of society.
In the first section of the book, Monsma lays out the biblical principles that are needed as a foundation before considering specific application in public policy terms. Building on the creation-sin-redemption motif, he argues that “acting as Christ’s agents of redemption in the political realm” we’re to support what is just. The Bible is clear in its condemnations of injustice, whether at the hands of his people, at the hands of unbelieving citizens, and at the hands of the government. Doing justice and working against injustice is a crucial part of what Christian citizens are to do in their own lives as they’re able, and they are right to ask the same of governing authorities. This is directly tied to the principle of solidarity, “the conviction that Christians cannot simply sit idly by when their fellow human beings are suffering and in need.”
While Monsma affirms the positive role the state can and must play, he also clearly understands its limits, and sees “civil society” (social institutions and organizations) playing a crucial part as well. Indeed, as Monsma says, some of the best work the government does to contribute to human flourishing is in partnership with nonprofits and social service providers, including many faith-based ones.
The second half of the book tackles specific issues: church and state; abortion and euthanasia; poverty; creation care; human rights; poverty in Africa; and war and terrorism. While Monsma wisely refrains from making pronouncements about the particular positions all Christians ought to take on each of these complex issues, he does explore them in detail and in light of the creation-sin-redemption story of the Bible, and carefully considering the implications of those central principles of justice and solidarity.
Thinking theologically about citizenship is an essential, ongoing process that will equip us to better participate in politics and civil society -- not just once every four years, but as a regular part of following Christ and living in light of the implications of the good news, “far as the curse is found.”
Thinking theologically about citizenship should also give us a measure of humility, as we recognize the sheer complexity of the issues, and as we realize we're not innocent bystanders in the undoing of shalom. May that humility serve us well as we in turn seek to love our neighbors as Christian citizens.
How might the biblical story of creation, sin and redemption change the way you consider citizenship and public policy? Are the principles of justice and solidarity central to your understanding of citizenship and public policy? If not, what principles are foundational for you, and how do they relate to the Christian story?
[Photo credit: latimes.com - a swearing in ceremony for 18,000 new U.S. citizens in Los Angeles in 2008.]
Christian ministry on gang turf
By now, many have heard of Father Gregory Boyle, the Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries to create opportunities for gang members in Los Angeles to leave their lives of violence and to start doing something life-giving. I blogged about his excellent book Tattoos on the Heart in September and included it as one of my favorite books of the year last week. The work he has done to transform the lives of so many in LA is truly inspiring.
Unfortunately, LA isn't the only place where gangs are rampant, and Father Gregory can't be everywhere at once. The good news is that he apparently has a kindred spirit in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. He's Father Antonio Lopez Tercero, or "Padre Toño", and his parish happens to be one of the most violent neighborhoods in a terribly violent city. While he hasn't quite matched Father Gregory in entrepreneurial terms, it seems that his ministry is one of the few things holding that neighborhood together and pointing young men to a better way.
Al Jazeera English's Witness program featured Father Anthony on this recent episode.
If you're a praying person, please say a prayer for Father Anthony and those he serves in San Salvador. And pray that many more will follow Jesus, the Prince of Peace, into the hard places as instruments of shalom.
[Photo credit: yoni via Photobucket.com]
Until Justice & Peace Embrace (Part 3/3)
In the first part of this series, I introduced Wolterstorff's ideas about world-formative Christianity and the vision of shalom. In part two, we looked at his ideas about how responding to poverty is a matter of rights not generosity, and how unchecked nationalism destroys shalom. Here now are some final thoughts from Until Justice and Peace Embrace.
Shalom in the city
Shalom is about having and enjoying right relationships, and nowhere is the need for this seen more clearly than in our cities. Wolterstorff writes that this extends beyond the considerations we might normally consider:
It is customary to view the city simply as a large collection of buildings in close proximity to one another, each more or less self-contained and possessed of its own degree of architectural distinction. I propose... to break away from that sort of atomistic way of thinking, however, and view the city instead as an integral entity in which the individual buildings are abstracted parts. Adopting the holistic perspective, we see the city as a unit orchestrating paths and partitions to establish gathering places for human beings on a given amount of the earth's surface.
The city both expresses and shapes the lifestyles of its residents, for better or worse. Architecture and aesthetics, in other words, aren't neutral -- not if shalom has to do with delight. "Could it be," he muses, "that living in a city devoid of sensory delight is itself a form of poverty?"
Justice and liturgy
"Amidst its intense activism," Wolterstorff writes, "the Western world is starved for contemplation." He continues:
I want to explore the possibility that a rhythmic alternation of work and worship, labor and liturgy is one of the significant distinguishing features of the Christian's way of being-in-the-world.
Work and worship are connected, he says, and they both spring from grateful hearts, in step with the six-plus-one rhythm set into motion by our Creator:
This rhythm was given to be practiced as a remembrance, as a memorial of the pattern of God's creative activity and of the pattern of Israel's liberating experience: the very rhythm of everyday life was to be a liturgical practice.
Activists of all kinds would do well to practice this kind of liturgy.
Theory & praxis
Wolterstorff concludes, not surprisingly given his original audience, with a challenge to academics and scholars that applies just as well to each of us:
My call here is not for theorizing that emphasizes the theme of justice; it is for theorizing that places itself in the service of the cause of struggling for justice... The goal is not to describe the world but to change it.
Wolterstorff concludes with the book's single most poignant sentence:
By listening to the cries of the oppressed and deprived we are enabled genuinely to hear the word of the prophets -- and of him who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped at, but took the form of a servant, walking the path of humble obedience to the point of accepting execution as a despised criminal: the Prince of Shalom.
Justice and peace, you might say, find their embrace in Jesus.
What do you think of Wolterstorff's ideas of justice and shalom? Does his understanding resonate with yours? Where do you part ways?
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