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News and Ideas from around the Anglican World |
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David A. Harris and C. Peter Molloy
Well, it’s election time in Canada - the time when Christians in democracies traditionally examine parties and policies in light of our beliefs about right and wrong, and good and evil.
In this we are no different from “secular” citizens, except that our judgments of right and wrong, good and evil are based upon our understanding of God’s mind and will.
There hasn’t always been an obvious and direct way to link our religious beliefs with our deliberations on which candidates and parties to vote for.
Sometimes Christians see it as their duty to confront a state that is set on policies contrary to their beliefs. Some Christian groups have maintained that they cannot, in good conscience, participate in worldly politics.
Our Primate, Andrew Hutchison, has issued a letter urging Anglicans to make child poverty a priority in our deliberations; this seems to be in line with two major gospel priorities: feeding the poor and caring for God’s children. The only trouble is that all three national parties will tell you that their plan for reducing child poverty is the most effective. What are we to do?
Western civilization -- the civilization that began in Western Christendom -- operated with a claim that the state’s legitimacy comes from Christianity’s God.
On Canadian coins, we still read, “Elizabeth II D.G. Regina” or “Elizabeth the Second, Queen by the Grace of God” [D.G. Dei Gratia]. Even Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms opens with the claim that “Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.”
Proceeding along these lines, it is the Christian’s responsibility to hold the state accountable to Christian standards of justice and righteousness, or at least to encourage the state to violate those standards as little as is realistically possible. On this, at least, Christians of various political stripes have agreed, even if we disagree on particular issues.
We must ask whether
this understanding of a Christian’s political duties still makes
sense. It is doubtful that there is a Canadian alive today who
Additionally, there is the problem of how standards of Christian justice and morality should apply to citizens of other religions as well as citizens of apparently no religion at all. How does a “theology of redemption” speak prophetically to secularist state power? How are “Christian family values” meaningful for public schools where neo-pagans send their children? In a way, those questions are not the most difficult political questions we face. They can be fairly easily answered, in practical terms, by reference to a universal sense of justice and morality, as outlined, for example, by C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man. And in general, Christians of various political commitments have not felt that their priorities have been made impossible by the presence of large non-Christian and post-Christian populations in Western democracies.
What is a significantly more difficult problem for the traditional understanding of a Christian’s political duties is the direction and meaning of the 21st century’s post-Christian, technological world -- not only in politics and economics, but also in its deepest cultural streams.
Here we must consider not only our own individual cultural experience, but also the witness of the last century’s greatest poets, philosophers, and leaders.
It would be somewhat naïve to imagine that either Paul Martin or Stephen Harper could affect our lives as much as Bono, Martin Heidegger and Sam Walton.
We must be aware that the guiding theme for these cultural legislators has been anything but the essentially Christian message of western Christendom. The result is that Christian and non-Christian artists alike have agreed that our time is existentially empty when measured against earlier Christian culture.
Some of the greatest of these artists and thinkers have been Christian, but their personal Christian faith has not restored the glorification of God as the cultural priority of our age.
Democratic elections occur somewhere on the surface of this post-Christian emptiness.
This doesn’t mean that it is wrong for us to participate; we should in fact vote and pray for our leaders, but we must be conscious that the leading “political” decisions of our time are not determined in elections or even in the legislatures where we send representatives. And if we make election activities our primary focus, we can quickly be lost in the cultural vacuum of this post-Christian era. The challenge is to be as diligent in weighing the policies and legislation of these informal yet much more significant cultural decision-makers against the mind and will of God, as we are in judging the platforms of our political parties.
The cultural emptiness of this age can lead to a sense of despair and hopelessness, but remember, we are not people without hope. Our hope is in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who provides meaningful direction not only to individuals’ lives but also to time itself.
Yahweh, and not the powers of this world, is our true hope in this post-Christian era. |
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January 2006|
Copyright The Anglican Planet © 2005 |