2.

I ended the last entry with a question:

What is and ought to be the relationship between Christianity and politics, between church and state, now that the secularist vision of the Radical Reformers has taken its current form in “Western” nations?

In the Introduction to his Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World (1992), Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder describes a common view: that a chasm divides “church” and “politics”, “worship” and “ordinary life”, and that a bridge is needed to cross this chasm.

He then describes two perspectives on how this chasm is to be bridged.

On what Yoder calls the “liberal” perspective, and what I will call the “head” perspective, from worship we gain concepts, ideas, understandings, or insights. The way we act outside of church, in politics or in other aspects of ordinary life, is then informed by these thoughts. The practical import of worship for ordinary life is cognitive.

On what Yoder calls the “pietist” perspective, and what I will call the “heart” perspective, worship transforms our insides: our “heart”, our feelings, our motives, our will. Christians thus internally transformed by worship behave differently outside of church. The practical difference worship makes for ordinary life is affective.

So, on the “heart” model, we see that the Christian worshiper has a Christian impact on the world because she is a godly person. Good deeds flow naturally from a heart changed by Christ. The worshiper is also, outside of church, a philanthropist, politician, social worker, activist, professional, parent, or teacher, or has some other secular, “political” role in the world. How she performs her worldly role is affected by her changed heart. Worship may make her, for example, more compassionate, or more ready to forgive herself and others—this will affect her relationships in the world.

And, on the “head” model, the worshiper has a Christian impact on the world because she applies ideas (propositional concepts) to her secular activities, such as: “Every person I meet is my neighbor, whom I am to love as part of my self,” or “God demands that God’s people do business justly, without deception or favoritism”.

The “heart” model is more akin to an ethics of character virtue; the “head” model is more akin to an ethics of principles. Yet both models see the individual worshiper as the bridge between the realm of the church (where “worship” happens), and the realm of the world (where “politics” happens).

I am tempted for a moment to regard the “heart” model as better fitting a form of worship that is less socially engaged, and the “head” model as better fitting a form of worship that explicitly tackles social issues. But in fact, whether the focus of worship is changing the head or the heart, worship may or may not limit itself to “spiritual” things (such as grace, forgiveness, and the adoration of Christ), and may or may not directly and explicitly engage “social issues” such as global warming, the presidential election, health care reform, or the wealth gap. We might engage our emotions, not our principles, while showing photography that depicts economic or ecological injustice. And we might intellectualize about theological ideas with no reference to this-worldly concerns.

I suspect, then, that there is little if any difference in pragmatic meaning between these two models. The distinction depends entirely on the cognitive/affective dichotomy, a philosopher’s artifice that has in my opinion a limited usefulness.

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Yoder points out that it is more important what these two perspectives have in common: the notion that the “nonpolitical” realm of the Word of God, the realm of worship is both (1) wholly separate from and (2) prior to the “political” realm of this-worldly social issues.

Yoder also points out that in many Christian ethicists’ discussions of politics, the values, principles, and rules of the political realm are seen as autonomous (self-governing). That is, the Word of God preached and received in worship is unnecessary for the right functioning of the political realm outside of the church. He calls this “the doctrine of creation” (page viii). The idea is that that God has given human beings two vehicles of revelation: the special revelation of the Word (Christ and/or the scriptures), and also the natural or general revelation of the World. Moral and political norms, according to “the doctrine of creation”, are grounded in Nature, and these norms thus may be known apart from receiving the Word in Christian worship. (Proponents of this “natural law” view may often cite Romans 2:14-15: “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the [Mosaic] law, do by nature things required by the law…they show that the requirements of the law [ethics] are written on their hearts….”). 

We have two rather different perspectives, here: on one view, Christian worship makes a difference in what it means to rightly engage in political/social/this-worldly concerns, whether because worship changes our heads or our hearts. On the other view, natural law is the source of right and wrong in this world, and so Christian worship has nothing to add to the realm of politics.

Yoder responds to this potential confusion not by taking one side or the other on the questions: “How do the separate realms of worship and politics relate to one another?” and “Does worship make a practical difference to Christians’ political engagement in this-worldly concerns or not?”, but rather by taking the position that the confusion is prior to our asking these questions. The problem is in the way we have conceived of “politics” as something that is separate from and not immediately relevant to the activity of the church.

Instead, we should begin by recognizing that the church itself is a political reality.

This, then, is how Yoder begins his project in Body Politics:

Instead, this study will pick up the topic of the church as body, for its own sake, from the beginning. The Christian community, like any community held together by commitment to important values, is a political reality. That is, the church has the character of a polis (the Greek word from which we get the adjective political), namely, a structured social body. It has its ways of making decisions, defining membership, and carrying out common tasks. That makes the Christian community a political entity in the simplest meaning of the term.

1. Secularism and Questions about Christianity and Politics

One of the marks of Anabaptism, as I have come to understand it in recent years, is what I might call “secularism”, or the political doctrine of the separation of church and state. The members of the Radical Reformation in Europe came to be called “Anabaptists” (lit., “re-baptizers”) because they regarded the baptism of infants into a state church whose membership is determined by birth nationality as illegitimate and unbiblical, and they practiced instead the baptism of adult believers into a faith community whose membership is determined by voluntary association. For this, the Anabaptists were slandered and persecuted.

Note that the issue of baptism is really, for the Anabaptists, an issue of what defines or determines church membership, or religious identity. The Anabaptists broke with the (at that time normative in Christian Europe) State Christianity model, according to which the Church and the King work together to govern the spiritual and worldly affairs of the kingdom. In a Christian kingdom (or, nation-state) membership in the church (a particular Christian religious identity) is mandatory, for the good of the social order. In a secular nation (as some at least regard the U.S. today) membership in the society (i.e., citizenship) and membership in the church (i.e., one’s religious identity) must be kept separate. This secularism is good for the social order because it means all citizens are ruled by the same laws, regardless of their religious identity. And, this secularism is good for the Christian faith community because it means all are free to respond to the call of God in a genuine decision to follow Jesus, accepting baptism as his disciple, and becoming part of the faith community. The church is thus made up of voluntary disciples of Jesus, not of those who are compelled to join for other reasons (for example, in order to be eligible for employment). (See John 1:12-13)

I would argue that secularism and religious pluralism provides a more ideal context for mission than does a “Christian nation”.

If we Anabaptists are secularists, this raises questions about whether and, if so, how, we should involve ourselves in politics: that is, concerns of social and legal policy in the larger society of which we are citizens alongside our Buddhist, Muslim, Catholic, and Presbyterian (etc.) neighbors. At least some of the early Anabaptists seem to have rejected involvement in the affairs of the state: refusing to take public office, as well as refusing to bear arms on behalf of the state. And the most visible communities of Anabaptists to many Americans today are the Amish, whom Americans imagine as living separate from the rest of the world, refusing connection to the larger society whether by the electrical power grid or by access to Social Security.

Anabaptists are not the only Christians in North America who ask questions about the propriety of our involvement in politics. Until the birth of the “Religious Right” as the “Moral Majority” in the hey-day of Jerry Falwell and others, it was the most common position for American Protestants (at least white fundamentalists) to keep themselves uninvolved in American politics: many did not even vote. In black churches, too, at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, religious leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. faced some criticism for calling for the church to engage in direct political action (I need to verify this fact).

It seems today that there is a growing trend within the world of white, North American evangelical Christianity (including the Mennonite Church) that sees our faith and theology as having necessary political consequences. We argue and preach that good Christian theology means caring about ecological justice, international relations, human rights, hunger, AIDS, economic inequality, and other issues beyond the Religious Right’s bugbears of abortion and “the homosexual agenda”. We say that followers of Jesus cannot fail to care about political matters outside of the church. I have made a habit of reciting: “All theology is politics and all politics is theology.”

What is and ought to be the relationship between Christianity and politics, between church and state, now that the secularist vision of the Radical Reformers has taken its current form in “Western” nations?

Casual Reflections on Personal Identity and the Church

How different could you be from the way you are, and still be yourself?

This is the sort of question that some students of philosophy find fascinating and that some other people find make them a little bit crazy! But think with me for a moment. List some of your identifying characteristics (from your driver’s license): hair color, eye color, height, weight. If these things about you changed, would you still be the same person? OK, what about your skin color, hair form, and other physical characteristics that we are trained to notice in order to sort the people we meet by race? Imagine yourself, but Black, Indian, Latina, White, Arab, Japanese. Is the person you are imagining still you?

Go along with me just a bit further; humor me, please. Imagine yourself with different sexual characteristics. I’m a boy (and I’ve always been identified as one), but for just a moment I’m going to imagine myself as a girl. I find myself, honestly, having difficulty thinking of the person I’m imagining as me. (Maybe your armchair-philosophical experience differs from mine; that’s OK).

Let’s try this experiment again, this time with something besides physical characteristics. I’m going to imagine what it would be like if I had chosen to major in Chemistry/Pre-Medicine instead of Philosophy when I was in college. Is the person of my imagining still recognizably me? I think so. I’m going to imagine, now, myself as a person who hates having philosophical conversations and loves playing American football. Hmm.

What conclusions can we draw from this shared thought experiment? It seems that we take some things about ourselves, compared to others, to be more basic to our identities.

Philosophers have, across history and in different civilizations, posed questions and proposed diverse answers to questions about personal identity and its persistence over time. The Indian thought represented by the Bhagavad Gita is that I am an eternal being that does not change. I was never born; I never came-to-be. I will never die or cease to exist. The parts of my experience, and of my body, that undergo change over time--growing and aging, for example--are not essential to who I am. This helps the Gita explain reincarnation. Just as my eight year-old self changed or “died”, becoming or “giving birth to” my twenty-eight year-old self, so at some point I (that is, this physical organism) will die and another physical organism will be born: my true self will survive this process, unchanged. (Many Christians believe something somewhat similar about the transition of the soul from life “within” their physical body to afterlife in Heaven, following physical death.)

Many philosophers, however—and not just in the last couple of centuries—have expressed skepticism of the existence of a soul or enduring self of this sort, and some have presented rather good arguments against this view (whether or not their arguments are ultimately persuasive I will not address here). If who I am is not an immaterial soul, some might suggest that everything about me constitutes who I am: from the name my parents gave me, to my sexual identity, right down to my decision to skip breakfast this morning, and my decision to take a walk in the park on Tuesday. But I rather think that had I eaten breakfast this morning, and even had my parents named me Jared, that I would still be me. And I don’t think this intuition demands an immaterial soul (although I might still have one).

Again, we take some things to be more basic—that is, to constitute the core of our personal identities—and other things to be more accidental (that is, less defining) to who we are. If we don’t have immortal souls, I think that means the lines we draw that separate the core of who we are from our accidental characteristics are at least for the most part artificially constructed. I may choose, or my society may choose, to regard my race, gender, or religion to be more important to defining who I am than my eye color or the second language I chose to study for my degree.

With all this in mind, let’s turn our attention to the identity of the Church: that is, of a religious community of Christians. I am a part of a community called Mennonite Church USA. And for a little while now there has been some talk within the community about what it means to be Mennonite (or Anabaptist, a word some of us also like to apply to ourselves). Perhaps there are certain things that constitute the core of our Mennonite identity, and some other things that are more accidental to our Mennonite identity. (I am talking here about the identity of the whole community, the whole Church, not of each of us, individually).

Can we engage in the same thought experiment about the Church that we did about our individual selves at the beginning of this essay? Imagine the Mennonite Church, only…we don’t read the New Testament anymore. Is this imagined Church still the same Church? Imagine the Mennonite Church, only…we’re twice as numerous. Imagine the Mennonite Church, only…we’ve been targeted by the government for persecution. Imagine the Mennonite Church only…the majority color and worship style is African-American. Perhaps this thought experiment can shed some light on what we take to be the core of our identity and what we take to be accidental. I am sure we will have different intuitions. Some of us will find it more difficult than others to recognize some of these imaginary Mennonite Churches.

I suspect that many of the things that identify us, and many of the things that we take as core vs. accidental to our identity are constructions: things that we choose, or history conspires with us to choose to make more or less essential to our sense of self. But I think there’s something important that we should keep in mind when we are philosophizing about the identity of the Church: The Church has an immaterial Spirit whose essence is our identity. (Indeed, this may be more true of the Church than it is of each of us individual human beings). The Spirit connects the disparate parts together into one Body. The Spirit animates the Body, making it alive.

Reflect with me on this for a while, please: If we take any characteristic of the Church to be essential to our identity, rather than the animating Spirit within us that connects us all together in mutual dependence, are we making a mistake?