(Sunday School) PFT: Week 2

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We're going to get started. Thanks everybody for being here. Glad to see you all. This is our second week in our course on preparing for Thanksgiving, and the purpose of this class is really not about sharing recipes for Thanksgiving. If you want those, I am not the right family member to ask for that. It is preparing for the gatherings around table with family and friends, and especially in this political season, thinking about how we prepare for conversations, maybe with people we disagree about on politics.

I want to particularly have in view relationships that have been disrupted or disregulated by the political season, either four years ago or even just the last several years in a continual way. And how you plan to prepare to engage people. My hope is really to help you think about your own views and know how to engage other people.

Review from Week 1

Last week, we talked about the first century and how complicated first century Judaism was in a Roman occupied territory and how there were seven different groups, some which were for opposing the Roman authorities, some for collaborating, and how divisive that was. Jesus ate with those people from various perspectives, and Jesus included in his followers people from different perspectives. We looked even at the disciples' names, which ones are more Hellenized or Greek, which ones are more Aramaic, Hebrew, which ones therefore are more conservative families, more progressive families. And again, how Jesus combined all those people in his group. Then we ended last week talking about Matthew chapter five, the Sermon on the Mount and how that's a model for us of engagement.

This is the second of those classes and we're doing three weeks on perspective, then three weeks on movement. Today we're going to talk some about political theology or political philosophy. I've got a bunch of stuff for you there, but if you will take a moment and read that passage from Mark chapter 12 and ask these questions: What are we supposed to render unto Caesar, and what are we supposed to render unto the Lord?

Mark 12: Render Unto Caesar

In looking at Mark 12, I want to hear from you, what are we to render unto Caesar?

[Audience responses]

Money with leaders' faces. Taxes. Anything else? Services.

And what are we to render unto the Lord?

[Audience response]

Everything else? Yeah. It's really everything. Caesar's stuff is just too. That's right.

This is a tricky question, and they're trying to trap Jesus because if he says you don't pay taxes to Caesar, he's stirring up an uprising. If he says render Caesar what's his, he could be accused of collaborating with the Roman authorities. It's sort of a tricksy Jesus moment. He's able to get out of the trap. Maybe we don't realize how complicated the situation was.

The Roman coin in question here came out and was minted around the time of Jesus' birth. It has a picture of Augustus Caesar on there and says "Divi filius"—son of God. Already on the currency, there's a claim for a son of God who is a Caesar. The Romans believed that Augustus' mother was impregnated by a serpent who was in the Temple of Apollo while she was asleep, and that's how he was conceived. He was the son of the gods.

I just want you to think about the sense of that in the Roman times and the first century occupation of Judea. There is a real, not perceived, but a real rival claim to who is the ultimate God of the universe that was imprinted on their money. I know we think we live in maybe the worst time right now, and maybe for many of us, it has been the most complex and confusing time politically. And yet, the world in which Jesus inhabited was an extremely difficult time.

The other thing that's interesting about this passage is that Jesus does not offer a full blown political philosophy. The Bible doesn't present us with a full blown political philosophy and this is difficult. This is one of the reasons that Christians are wrestling right now with our political theories. I want to walk us through this morning a series of taxonomy, if you will, of how people view the relationship between religion and government. I want to walk through this both historically and for current day.

If you will find those categories on your paper there, I'm going to take us through view one through seven and then a couple of observations.

There's also a second page for visual learners. If you would rather have this one that looks pink and blue at the end of your table—that's not boys and girls, that's government and politics and religion. So if you'll pass those down, those correspond to the same categories that I'm talking through. Can y'all pass in a couple more of the original pages down there to Sean and Brittany too?

Alright. So today's a little teachy, more so than last week, and I'm gonna walk us through these things. If you will, you can take notes or just follow along with the diagram.

Position 1: Secular Suppression

Position number one is secular suppression. The secular government suppresses religion. This means that the position is the government—that government and religion should be completely separate. And that because, particularly, God doesn't exist. This is an anti-theistic, anti-Christian view of religion.

Historic example of this is, of course, Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses." Some modern examples are the former Soviet Union and North Korea today, which view religion as officially atheist governments. This is secular suppression.

Position 2: Religious Separation

Second one—which is the picture with the person on the right side of the wall there—this is religious separation. Religion must be radically separate from the government. The government and religion should be totally separate in the sense that they are distinct spheres and should not overlap at all. Because government is worldly, any involvement with the government is worldly. Voting is worldly. Anything beyond paying taxes is worldly and corrupting. Individual Christians must separate from the government. Individual Christians should not run for office. To do so would be to cooperate with a sinful institution.

Historic examples of this are the Anabaptists—not Baptists, Anabaptists. If you study your history of the Pilgrims and those who came leaving the oppression of England, this is where they come from. Modern examples of this include traditional Mennonites, Stanley Hauerwas, who's a professor at Duke, and then Greg Boyd, who's an apologist and has written tons of books. I actually have a family that's part of our extended family who are in this tradition. They don't vote. They consider all involvement with politics to be worldly and corrupting. So this is still alive today. People think of this as historic, but this is still alive today.

Position 3: Religious Neutrality

View three is religious neutrality. The government must be religiously neutral. This position is that they're separate in the sense that government should be religiously neutral. Particular religions should not influence the government in any way. The government must promote religious neutrality in two ways: by promoting no religion and by keeping the peace between opposing religions, allowing for pluralism without intervention in any way. It can also promote a civil religion—that is, having a set of practices or symbols that may come from a set of beliefs that are sort of deistic, but without being very specific. Universal values. Either way, the public square should be religiously neutral. Religious people should argue based on natural law and not their religion—based on what they see in the world, not on the basis of what my scriptures say.

Historic examples of this are classic liberalism: John Locke, John Stuart Mill, with emphasis on a free market. To some degree, we could say that America had a Protestant civil religion until the nineteen fifties. Modern examples include John Rawls, political philosopher, and Daryl Hart, who teaches at Hillsdale College and emphasizes political neutrality in the church.

That's number three. The difference between that and the one I'm gonna look at next is that for view number four, we're about to step in. The public square shouldn't be religiously neutral.

Position 4: Religion and Government

Position number four—and this is turning the page over, the top one here. Religion and government. The government shouldn't promote any one particular religion, and yet religion may influence the government within certain parameters. This is the position: government and religion have sort of separate spheres.

I'm gonna use two terms that I hope you'll understand. I'll explain. The government is in charge of wielding the sword. The church is in charge of wielding the keys. Now that comes from Jesus' statement, giving the keys to the kingdom to Peter and to the apostles as representatives. And the church still exercises the keys. When we bring somebody in, we allow them to join our church. We're exercising the keys and we're saying this person, we believe, is a Christian.

They're allowed to the Lord's table. If we discipline, even excommunicate a person, again, we're exercising the keys. We're saying that person's not a Christian. So government and religion have two separate spheres: the keys and the sword.

So the government shouldn't exclusively promote one particular religion, doesn't institute a state church, doesn't spread particular doctrine, and the government should not restrict the spread of false beliefs. In our view, the government should allow a mosque to build where they want in a town. That's neutrality in that area.

An individual governmental authority may argue for a political position. A state senator could argue his position, her position based on their religion. But we look at the public square and know it's not completely neutral. It's a battle ground. It's a place where people are fighting over territory, and that could be influenced by a person's individual faith.

The government shouldn't institutionalize Christianity. So the government should not put the Apostle's Creed in the constitution, for example. That's view number four.

Historic examples of this are most Baptists—the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, English conformist separatists such as Congregationalists and Quakers. Modern examples are Wayne Grudem, Jonathan Lehman from Nine Marks, John Piper, Scott Aniol, David Van Drunen from Westminster Seminary West, Robert George from Princeton. This is who holds this view today.

So that's number four. Have I lost anybody so far? You guys okay with these classifications? Any questions on those so far?

Christian Government

Number five is where we start getting into the weeds. So you ready? Christian government is number five—that the government and religion overlap. Now I'm using the word Christian here because this is a position held really only by Protestant Christians in this country. It's a view that the government and the Christian church are two God-ordained institutions that have distinct but overlapping jurisdictions, and they should work together for God's ultimate authority.

For the Christians, the church's mission is to make disciples. Individual Christians significantly influence the government. The government may institutionalize Christianity to some degree—for example, by putting God in the constitution, by having a religious test for office even.

Government should identify as a Christian government in the sense that the laws and customs that it has derive from an ultimate authority of God. This is taking the book of Daniel and reading that onto the American constitution in some ways. Governing authorities should know that they're accountable to God for how they rule.

That's from Daniel 4.

Or it's fitting for the government to exhort Christians to fear the living God.

That's from Daniel 6.

The government should pursue justice by promoting natural law, in which the Ten Commandments summarize. That's why people with this perspective are like, yeah, put the Ten Commandments up all over the place on public buildings even.

The government should, along with the church and society, help create cultural conditions which are conducive for conversion and for common virtue and the common good. So while the government should promote and to some degree enforce a just social order based on right understanding of God and person, the government can't force people to become Christians. This doesn't force conversions, because only the Holy Spirit can change a person's heart.

Historic examples of this—what's fascinating is how much reading is happening right now around this subject. People going back to the magisterial reformers, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, John Knox, Richard Hooker, Johannes Althusius. In other words, going back to a time where they were saying, we're trying to set up what is more ostensibly a Christian government. And studying Switzerland and Geneva and all these historic examples.

Looking back at the beginning of our country where American Puritans like John Winthrop, William Bradford, John Cotton, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards were trying to do the same thing.

Modern examples: Brad Littlejohn from the Davenant Institute, Doug Wilson, Joe Rigney from Bethlehem Seminary, Daniel Strand, some versions of Christian nationalism hold to this perspective. That's number five.

So for five, the government enforces a particular ethic tied to a religion, not enforces a religion.

Religion Over Government

For view six, we're getting to the overlapping circles right here. The government and religion controls the government to such a degree that the government enforces the religion itself. So view six is religion over government. The government enforces religion and directs the government to enforce religion.

So the doctrine here is that a particular religion governs the government and directs it to enforce its own views. The church and the state have the same sword. The most famous example in history would be the strong history where the pope ran Europe, and there was a complete overlap of religion and government in medieval Roman Catholicism. For modern examples, it's hard to come up with one for this. If you are a reader, you might have heard of Russ Dooney, who is a theonomist, who basically says the laws of God should be the laws of our states. And that's a super simplistic view of what he says. But anyway, that's view six.

View six and seven have this overlap, but view seven is government of religion. And this is the government governs and enforces religion. This is state church that forces citizens to follow one particular religion. Historic examples include ancient Egypt. The Pharaoh—this is the Pharaoh's religion. This is what we're doing. You could argue that Constantine in the Roman Empire was enforcing Christianity with forced conversions and forced baptisms. Modern examples: Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan.

So anyway, that's a big spectrum, and there's a lot of fuzzy overlap between some of those. But before I get to some observations about this, I just want to ask if everybody's clear on the categories that I presented and if you have any questions.

[Audience question about Church of England]

I think that's probably view number five—the overlap between the two, where there is a Church of England. It's not enforced in the same way it is in number six or seven, but it is the official state religion. In that sense, yes. And explicitly so. Good question.

[Audience question about Iran]

I think so. Position six. Where the religion is controlling everything in that government. That's a good observation.

Remember, as we look at this spectrum, the Bible doesn't give us a clear, full-blown political philosophy. It's not the intention of the book. And you can read into the Old Testament and overly take that as not just describing something but prescribing a particular brand of what church and state should look like. But it's really hard to come up with a unified political philosophy that is consistent in every way. And this is why there's so much discussion among Christians around this subject. This is one of those areas where there's a lot of debate.

I want to give you a couple of observations and encouragements this morning. I've got seven of these.

First one is the horseshoe effect. The horseshoe effect is that positions one and positions six and seven actually have the most in common with each other. If you're familiar with the horseshoe effect, it's sort of like the things on the ends are pretty close to one another in the sense that they're totalitarian—either in an atheistic way or a theistic way. So they're kind of similar even though they're really, really far apart from one another.

Second observation is complexity. I don't want to give a simplistic view this morning. There's a lot here that actually has to do with how we view Christ and culture—just the state and the church. But how do Christ and culture relate to one another? For example, D.A. Carson says in some sense, debates about church and state are subsets of more comprehensive debates about Christ and culture. Kevin DeYoung, who's a pastor in Charlotte, he's riffing off of an older writer, Richard Niebuhr. He gives four views of Christ and culture.

He says we have a view of Christianity against politics—that Christianity is largely seen as something that is opposed to the messy world of politics. Christians with this approach are often uninterested in what's happening in the political sphere. That's represented a lot by John Piper.

Christianity above politics. Christianity is seen as the truth that transcends all systems. It's like all truth is God's truth, and Christians—Christianity is not to be identified with a particular party or political philosophy or political party or intellectual tradition. That's Tim Keller's position.

Christianity as politics. The message of Christianity and the task of the individual Christian is seen as irreducibly political. Like, we can't not do something political. That's Doug Wilson.

Or Christianity undergirds politics.

We have a tradition, a history in the West that is behind all the institutions we have. That is Darrell Hart, Hilton College. All to say, this is not so simple as just seven views, seven different views. You're also combining into that American culture. And how you view Christ's relationship to that culture and our calling as Christians? Are we about redeeming the culture? Are we about separating ourselves from the culture? Is culture something that we appreciate but we are careful about? All those things are wrapped up in this conversation.

Polarized

Christians are becoming much more interested in political theology. And this is a hot topic and you can read lots and lots more than I have for this class because we've gone from a place where people are saying, hey, it seems like we're kind of in a Christian neutral society, to we're in a battleground society. And there's more a sense of fear that's under these conversations for the church. And that's really stirred up in a lot of this. And this is why this is so polarizing. And why people—nobody was asking a decade ago, am I a Christian nationalist? That wasn't even a conversation point. We didn't even use that term. But now that's a hot topic. And what is a Christian nationalist is a really difficult question.

Unhelpful Unless Undefined

You could say all from four, five, six, and seven are Christian nationalism. You could. And that's why I really discourage the term in our church because it can mean anything from Saudi Arabia to this: good Christians should have some kind of sense that religion should influence how people do their job who are in politics. And it's a sloppy term. It can mean lots and lots of things to lots of different people, and that's why I discourage it because I don't think it puts a lot of grace on the Christian church, and people assume the worst about that. And Christians do that with each other too. And so I just want to discourage that. I think it's unhelpful. I think it's more helpful defining the categories. And so if in your conversations, when you are thinking about which position you hold, it's helpful for you to be articulate about that position. Does that make sense?

Splintered

Kevin DeJong says, you know, what we've seen over the last ten years is a splintering of what used to be more of a cohesive whole. So evangelicalism, whether or not you identify yourself with that anymore, used to have more of a sense of unity around what we thought about things. And he describes kind of four circles he's seen within his friends. Those who are contrite, kind of apologetic. Those who are compassionate, like kind of bleeding heart evangelicals. Those who are careful and cautious. Those who are courageous, like, I gotta take bold action. And it's interesting to see how people are playing around that, and I just want to offer this around personality. It's kind of funny—we think everything comes from the Bible, but a lot of times, the way the postures we have come from something else. I just want us to be thoughtful, again, about where we come down on things.

No Civil Government Will Be Flawless Until King Jesus Returns

This is something we gotta hammer over and over again. And, you know, everything gets kind of flipped up and down in these discussions, and people who used to get along would have a really hard time sitting down and having civil conversations about these things. But we gotta remember all of this. This is one of those areas where we don't have clear revelation from God. God didn't drop us down a tome—as much as people would like to say this is true, there is no political theology. I want to hammer that again. And so pretending like there is one and being really entrenched in that, you gotta be really, really careful.

We're gonna talk about humility over the next couple of weeks and a call to be less certain and more curious about politics because nothing—we're not gonna find a candidate. Never gonna find a Christian candidate you're excited about that really does what we all want. What we all want is Jesus to be on the throne. What we all want is a government that's ruled by him. What we all want is like a place where people are thriving, you know, in all classes of society. What we all want is Jesus' perfect righteousness and his justice. And so, the how we get there—there is no how we get there. We are not going to get there until the Lord of Glory returns to his throne. And so I just like being really honest about like, everybody is trying to think, how can we do the best we can with what we got? And so in elections, we're always kind of like, nobody really is Jesus. So let's not pretend like anybody is. And I just want to say one more thing. That's been really important to the history of our church.

Our church serves in the state capital, and I don't know if you were at the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration, but Kevin Thumpston, our founding pastor, talked about being a church that served on the fault lines, and one of those fault lines was political. It's been very important to our elders over the years. We've had people try to put magazines on the back table, and our elders have said, "No, no, no. We're being really careful to be a place where we are about Christ and we're hoping in his kingdom."

That doesn't mean people don't have opinions, but we are not going to—and I'll talk about this more next week—promote a particular political stance. The relationship between a church and its individual members and how we make decisions is really important.

What We Can Agree On

Finally, what can we agree on? The question is not what do we hope for, but what are we commanded to do? There are some very specific things that we are commanded to do that are really, really simple:

• Be a godly man or woman
• Trust and obey God
• Be a faithful husband, wife, father, mother, daughter, son, neighbor
• Be a faithful person who helps your children and the church's children grow up and know the name of Jesus and prize the name of Jesus
• Be a faithful church member
• Work together with your church to make disciples locally and globally
• Be diligent and outstanding in your vocation
• Proclaim the gospel in your spheres of influence
• Be the salt of the earth and the light of the world

It's funny—everybody agrees on those things, even though we disagree on a lot of other things.

Perspective on Our Times

I want to point out: we think we live in a scary time. But everybody fits really into three categories, probably on this page. We're not in a culture or time where people are pushing for category six, seven, or category two that much. Our church is filled with people who believe in categories three, four, and five and have a lot of reasons why they do so.

If you can turn down a little bit of the panic or a little bit of the "I'm surrounded by crazies" mentality, you're not really surrounded by the crazies that are represented on this. We're actually in a decently sane moment comparatively in church history.

My final word is encouragement: we are not in the crazy place that we think we are. The first century—I talked about last week how hard that was. In terms of church history, we have categories three, four, and five represented. So everybody take a chill pill.

That's the end of what I have. We have some time for questions or thoughts.