When I was a student at Princeton Theological Seminary I met the Swiss-German theologian Karl Barth. He lectured at the university in the spring of 1962, and he met informally with a group of us who were seniors at the seminary. He invited questions, and I had one for him, written out, dated May 2.
“Do you believe the church can be true to its witness to Christ by involving in political movements of the day, i.e., by giving support to a particular political program it believes to be right, over some other program?”
“Yes,” he answered. Then he added, “But there is no political program in Scripture itself.”
There are people in my Protestant church tradition who will say you shouldn’t mix politics and religion. But that’s impossible. The teachings in Scripture in any of our religious traditions call for responsible action based on central affirmations of faith. Otherwise, religious practice becomes airy and pious, fluff like clouds in the sky while we don’t see or claim not to see what we’re walking in on earth. Or the religion becomes ossified, fit for a museum.
What Barth said as a qualification is important. Our Scriptures do not advance a particular political system. But theology and its moral imperatives do lead us to take action in any governance we find ourselves in, whether open or repressive, with free expression or underground resistance.
I’m writing from my own perspective. I value our constitutional democracy. One thing is clear from the First Amendment, that while there is freedom of religious expression, there is no establishment of religion. A present Christian nationalism is a clear violation of that. When Barth said there is no political program in Scripture, that would include Christian nationalism.
When this has happened previously, thinking of Germany in the 1930s, what was called the Confessing Church of Germany opposed a state religion of “German Christians.” The 1934 Barmen Declaration of the Confessing Church said: “We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of proclamation, apart from and besides the one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.”
A corollary of constitutional freedom of religion is that we respect religions and traditions that differ from one’s own. That seems like such a commonly understood precept from within the First Amendment, how could it need to be said? But of course it does need to be said. It’s under assault. We are a fractious people, and we have allowed the fractures to become chasms of distrust and hostility, augmented by cries to establish a Christian state. Even the Supreme Court by its majority is becoming cozy with that idea.
We have antisemitism and Islamophobia, and hatred of peoples coming from Latin America. I’m not addressing a border policy, which we all know is complex and challenging. But we have attitudes of mind that expel “the other.” Antisemitism is the one that is especially acute. With conflict across several Israeli borders, there is a corresponding rise of hatred of Jews. There are personal attacks on Jews.
I think the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians is a moral calamity. It is also true that Israel is surrounded by hostile forces. The situation seems intractable. But to attack Jews because of that is wrong.
When Abraham Lincoln gave his second Inaugural Address, facing his adversaries toward the end of the Civil War, he famously said “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” Sadly, the president-elect is devoid of charity and abounding with malice. It does not portend well.
I agree with Barth that Scripture does not support a particular program. We have points of view. But when one program is propelled to exclude all others, as with Christian nationalism, we run toward a system that is its own religion, with a leader wielding a sword of enforced truth.
I am not an alarmist by nature, but I am alarmed. I will not retreat into a monastery of mind and spirit to wait for the dust to blow over. There are times when that is necessary for survival. But at present we retain our freedom of conscience and a social responsibility, in religious traditions across boundaries, to love God and to love our neighbor as ourself.
The Rev. Robert Stuart is pastor emeritus of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church. He lives in Springs.