The great Protestant teacher Reinhold Niebuhr devoted his life to warning against the dangerous sentimentality of a “Christian politics.” Love compels Christians to seek justice also through politics, Niebuhr insisted, but...
we must never equate our penultimate judgments about what might serve justice with the ultimate truth that impels us to seek and serve justice in the first place. In sum, we must never declare our politics to be “Christian politics,” thereby implicitly excommunicating...
those Christians who disagree with us.
Of course the more publicly potent religionizing of politics is today on the right of the ideological spectrum. Conservative leaders regularly say that they are only doing what the religious left did for decades...
Of course the more publicly potent religionizing of politics is today on the right of the ideological spectrum. Conservative leaders regularly say that they are only doing what the religious left did for decades...
...indeed going all the way back to the Social Gospel movement at the turn of the century. They’re right about that, and that’s what should worry them. The conflation of Christian faith with a specific political agenda inevitably leads to the distortion of faith.
The equally inevitable failure to achieve something worthy of being called “Christian politics” produces a crisis in which people will feel forced to choose between their politics and their faith. Devotion to “God and country” is a fine thing, but...
...when the two are given equal standing “country” will always fall far short of what people hope for and they will then find themselves faced with the prospect of “God or country.”
Fr John Neuhaus @firstthingsmag back in the day.
Fr John Neuhaus @firstthingsmag back in the day.
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