One of my infrequent thoughts on politics, written in 2013 and revised in September 2018 in the run-up to the midterm elections.
It was March 20, 2003. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. Then I walked out on my political party, the Republicans. I did so principally in protest against President Bush’s attack on Iraq that week, which was the culmination of months of insistence that we would rout out their weapons of mass destruction and destroy Al Qaida. With many others, I saw no serious evidence of either claim. I believe there was no conscious deception on Bush’s part, but a severe case of cognitive bias: the administration saw what it wanted to see and had a blind spot to evidence that did not fit its narrative. And years later, in 2020, there is still no trace of a single WMD ever, and overwhelming evidence that Al Qaida was never in Iraq, that is, it only entered Iraq after we invaded, introduced instability in the country, and thus opened the door to them. All this cost the US 2.4 trillion dollars, which the government had to borrow, where we lost 4000 Americans, and grossly worse, by one estimate, left 200,000 Iraqi dead.
I also had to conclude that two Americans whom before that point I greatly admired, Colin Powell and Condi Rice, had been co-opted to make the case for war in Iraq, when there was no case to be made.
In the run-up to Iraq, many evangelical leaders urged caution. Others signed the Land Letter (October 2002), which tried to put together a theological justification for a military strike: claiming that even if we made a pre-emptive strike, it was really “defensive” in nature; that it was a truly “last resort”, due (again! and without serious evidence!) to their WMDs and harboring Al-Qaida; and because the US would try to not harm non-combatants. It will repay Christians of later generations to read the Land Letter and at the same time examine the actual results of the Iraq war to demonstrate how wildly – and if it were not for the massive death toll, hilariously – off-target such sentiments can be. [1] The Iraq war was also lethal for the Christian community there.
I withdrew from my party in my heart that evening, and later did the paperwork to make it official. I only wish now that I had done it years before. [2]
For the years since, I have consciously tried to broaden my ability to praise or denounce or persuade or dissuade or anything in-between whatever comes from any quarter, to urge my representatives of either party to back whatever direction that seems to me to be in accord with God’s righteousness, and write emails to thank them when they do so. The people with whom I discuss politics – and the number is not large – know that I have spoken for or against all recent presidents.
Among us evangelicals, there are four broad philosophies of engagement in politics:
One is to throw our full weight behind the party that represents our values (to a relatively greater degree than do other parties), and to try to swing the platform to be relatively more in favor of their ideals, and to hold their noses when it comes to the rest. That’s why Jerry Falwell famously defined conversion as “get saved, get baptized, get registered to vote.” For him, this meant registration in the Republican party, in case his meaning wasn’t apparent; his university banned a campus Democrat club for many years.
Although evangelicals of my age and younger won’t remember it, Christians of 50 years ago did not necessarily look like today’s Republican party – we have been changed by the crowd we run with. Many Christians first became politically active in the 1970s, when they backed “born-again” Democrat Jimmy Carter or evangelical Mark Hatfield. A liberal Republican, Hatfield was pro-life but against capital punishment, the war in Vietnam, and the draft. Bill Bright led people in prayer in order to “call the wrath of God on Mark Hatfield.” Hatfield also had the honor of being on Nixon’s Enemies List. Today’s Republican party, which has shifted dramatically over the past 30 years, fits only jaggedly with what I think of as a plan for a just society; this doesn’t mean I’m any more in line with other parties. Besides all this, there exists a trend today, to demonize one party as the Devil’s and the other as God’s. Life is not that simple, and regarding one party the Children of Light is dangerous, and can verge even on idolatry. And when the church imagines it can tame a party to be its political arm, it will inevitably find itself reduced to being that same party’s Sub-Sub-Department of Religion.
The second option is to start our own party. But in fact, evangelical Christian parties have their own internal problems – here in Costa Rica, that has certainly been the case – and many Christians don’t want to “throw their vote away” on a party that has no chance of governing, at least not in the two-party system of the US.
The third is one that appealed to many Christians up to a few decades ago, to withdraw from the political sphere altogether, since political action was considered “of the world” and not a fit forum for Christians. I can follow the logic of these believers, but cannot agree with them: not formally participating in politics is in itself a political decision; one cannot escape politics.
The fourth is to give no guaranteed or lasting loyalty to any party, but to speak prophetically to all and act in favor of broad principle. This is the route I have chosen. [3] A noteworthy example: Charles Colson – with whom I disagreed on many political points – won my deep admiration for his decades-long commitment to the reform of prisons and the justice system. He swam against the current of his Republican party and the evangelical church, which tended toward a punitive approach to criminals and a Get Tough on Crime judiciary.
This fourth approach has become more and more elusive, especially in the past few years:
The evangelical church largely aligns itself with one political party – in 2016, 85% voted for Trump – making itself part of a coalition of disparate and sometimes competing interests. We parents tell our children that they will become more and more like the kids they hang around with. And this is precisely what has happened with American evangelicalism. I’m not concerned with evangelicals converting to Mormonism (candidate Romney in 2012). But the other two large influences within the GOP are libertarians and big business. And so we see Christians reading the tomes of anti-Christian and oligarchic Ayn Rand, because others of their party said she has serious insight. I see people who believe in the Fall of Man voting for libertarianism; many Christians will disagree with me, but as a Christian, even more as a Reformed one, I cannot follow premise that people, if left alone, will act in their own enlightened best interest; nor do I agree that it is always true that, the government that governs least governs best (this quote, by the way, never spoken by Jefferson, as is popularly asserted, but by Thoreau in his 1849 argument in favor of Civil Disobedience). And Christians are now supporting the interests of big business, often against labor, perhaps without having thought through why they do so.
Although more and more young Christians are following the lead of the African-American church and voting Democratic, the Republican party has for the last 40 years counted on the firm support of evangelicals and traditional Catholics. In hindsight, I guess the Republicans of decades ago reckoned on my automatic vote. This means that de facto I would have been voting for a war in Iraq and the corrosive War on Drugs.
When the US used drones to kill foreign enemies, on the say-so of President Bush, I felt free to condemn it, and did; I had no need to defend “my” president. When President Obama did the same thing, in fact, much more frequently than Bush did, I condemned it, and more frequently. I had no need or right simply to mutter, “Well, what do you expect from him?” Illegal wiretappings? Both Bush and Obama earned my sharp disapproval. I care less and less about political fallout for “our side” or causing damage to “their side.” My thoughts on water-boarding (more honestly labeled as “torture”), climate change, immigration, The Wall, travel bans, the Affordable Care Act, gun laws, Israel and Palestine, trade policy, government-sponsored science research, the legalization of marijuana, whether the federal government should subsidize Big Bird [issues that were hot when I originally wrote this!] – well, I’ll just say that I know my own mind. The political stereotypes of our culture (are you a “slash and burn Republican” or a “tax and spend Democrat”?) are to my eyes getting more color and less black and white. I evaluate what I hear on cable news [update: I stopped watching the news in 2016] and what I read in the New York Times, or the Christian Science Monitor, The National Review, The Atlantic, The New Republic and The Economist with, I hope, a more discerning mind – not by tossing them into the two baskets of Lamestream Media or Rightwing Nutjobs.
Most Americans vote a straight party line. I do not say that those who are committed to supporting one party are sheeple, and certainly not that I am more discerning than thou; I only know that, personally, I have discovered more space to grow over the past decade if I ordered a la carte. When I was young I followed the call to get with the program. Now in my middle-age, no party or politician can count on me to be their “steady date” to the dance. My voting-day verse is, “You were bought at a price; do not become servants of human beings.” (1 Cor 7:23).
A Christian leader who speaks prophetically to only one side of the spectrum is a political operative, not a prophet of God. You choose your course of action, but whatever your decision, let’s learn to speak prophetically to all, without guaranteed loyalty to one group or guaranteed scorn for the others.
Additional Thoughts from 2020:
ABORTION
Nine out of ten Christians I talk to say, “I don’t like a lot of things in the Republican Party; however, I cannot vote for a so-called pro-choice candidate, and I must vote for the pro-life one. Therefore, since abortion is so important, I must vote Republican.”
I agree that abortion is one of the top issues of the day, although not the only issue.
Let’s look at some data:
Abortion rates and absolute numbers rose swiftly under Reagan, and since 1990, have generally fallen, both in terms of absolute numbers and in terms of a percentage of the population. [4]
Nevertheless, abortions tend to level off or even rise under Republican presidents.
Pro-life words save no-one, pro-life actions do. I have little interest in seeing who stands most vocally against abortion, but, what concrete steps do we take to actually make the rate and absolute numbers of abortion fall? And let us remember that for all the changes in the Supreme Court in recent years, there is zero evidence that there are fewer abortions because of it.
Beyond that, there are special Bible warnings to those who say to the needy, including the unborn needy, If you tell him, If you tell him, “Go in peace; stay warm and well fed,” but does not provide for his physical needs, what good is that? So too, faith – in context, rhetoric about faith – by itself, if it is not complemented by action, is dead.… That’s why I cannot commit to a candidate simply on the fact that he or she “really stand up for the unborn”!
In 2020, I will add: I know that there are many pro-life people who believe that they can only vote for a pro-life candidate. I would suggest that that leaves more than one option: voting for a candidate that is not the leader of a major party; or even – and I can say this only within the most extreme situations – refusing to vote for either or any candidate.
ISRAEL AND PALESTINE
Many evangelicals – not all! – argue that we must Stand for Israel, which according to Christians United for Israel (CUFI) means that Israel should confiscate all Palestinian lands, make Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and not allow Palestinians to have their capital there. I am pro-Israel. And pro-Palestine. But mainly pro-justice for all parties. For that reason, I have to doubt that CUFI is a seeker after justice in any principled sense. [6] Nor do I insist that my candidate be “pro-Israel” in the sense of “pro-expansionism.”
THIS NEXT ELECTION IS THE MOST CRITICAL ONE EVER!
Don’t be too shaken by this “the stakes have never been higher” line, because everyone uses it every election. That must mean, logically enough, that most of the people who say it are wrong. [7]
2018 – Barack Obama, “This November’s election is more important than any I can remember in my lifetime.”
2018 – Donald Trump, to Christians, the 2018 midterm is “a referendum on your religion, it’s a referendum on free speech and the First Amendment”.
Additional NOTE:
From November 2019, Michael Bird, the great evangelical scholar from Down Under, wrote a piece for the Washington Post: “Why Jesus Isn’t Interested in America’s Two-Party Division.”
NOTES:
[1] http://www.drrichardland.com/press/entry/the-so-called-land-letter. In hindsight, neither can I see how the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan (now in it’s 19th glorious year!) was justified either on principle or pragmatically – it did not destroy Al-Qaida or Bin Laden, who was killed almost decade after the invasion to capture him.
[2] Unfortunately for me and many others, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania only allows people who are registered in party to cast a vote in the party primaries. I have registered with more than one party at one time or another during my adult life, mainly to be able to vote for the candidate I wanted to see in that party, but at this stage I just register as “Independent.”
[3] I do not mean to say, “Vote for a third party just on principle.” That philosophy would be just as binding as saying, “I will always vote for one of the two main parties of the US” (so I don’t “waste” my vote) or “for one and only one of the main parties of the US.” Tim Keller wrote a fine editorial for the New York Times, making the same sort of case: “How do Christians fit into the Two-Party System? They Don’t,” (9/29/18), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/christians-politics-belief.html
[6] https://openoureyeslord.com/2017/08/03/israel-and-palestine-and-a-hope-for-peace/
[7] See https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/weekinreview/the-most-important-article-in-our-history.htm
“Why I left party politics and never looked back,” by Gary S. Shogren, Professor of New Testament, Seminario ESEPA, San Jose, Costa Rica
Open Our Eyes, Lord! 