Contemplative Perspectives on Christian Politics

In America, it’s either very easy or very difficult to be a Christian…it all depends on how you vote.   Christian political thought in America has been influenced by Evangelicals for as long as I can remember.  I’m 36 years old, and didn’t really start thinking about politics until I was 25 or so…and didn’t start caring about politics deeply until this last election cycle.  For years, I just thought as I was told.  I inadvertently bought into the idea that as a depraved sinner, I couldn’t very well be trusted to think for myself on political issues.  There’s too much at stake in the culture war, they’d say.  Babies are being murdered and the gays are trying to take over our country and recruit our children.  Sound a little crazy?  Well, it is.  It wasn’t too often that leaders would come out and say it like that, but the hysteria is real…the paranoia more rampant than you might believe. People really believe this stuff.

The religious Right has successfully programmed a whole generation of Christians to believe that we are in an End Times struggle against Evil, represented by a Satanic Democratic Party.  It’s the good conservatives against the evil liberals, and our very salvation is wrapped up in which team we’re on.  When my wife and I decided to vote for Obama this last election, we lost friends and found a family relationship seriously strained.  It was as though we were murdering babies ourselves.  It doesn’t matter that in voting we were following our pro-life convictions, choosing a candidate and party we felt might finally change the conversation about an ethic of life in America.  It doesn’t matter that as followers of Christ, we felt convicted of the need for change, for balance…for a different direction.  I don’t write this to make a political statement, but simply to illustrate the point that as people of God, we are not defined by our relationship with a political party or system of thought within the Church…but by our relationship with Christ Himself.  Who are you to say that I’m not following His voice, even when in doing so I vote differently than you?

It’s a very interesting time to be a young Christian in America, for there are many others who find the old divisions and stale arguments largely irrelevant.  I think there is a movement toward contemplative spirituality within the developing church.  In some ways, this movement is apparent within the Emerging Church, the term given the interesting change within the church in recent years…across denominations.  But really, it’s bigger than that.  There is a fundamental difference between a spirituality based on relationship with God (grace-based) and spirituality based on rightness before God (shame-based).   In grace-based spirituality, we become intimately aware of our own smallness, and the largeness of God’s capacity to love.  In shame-based spirituality, we are caught in the cyclical struggle to maintain control of where we stand with God, to maintain our position as keepers of knowledge about God.  The former can accept unknowns and gray areas.  The latter is often defined by black and white thinking.

In the early years following my lifestyle conversion I became a fan of Francis Schaeffer, whose logical arguments for Christianity and large vocabulary appealed to my pride.  I wanted knowledge.  I wanted to convince and be convinced, to be sure and to be able to communicate that to any who would doubt me.  I adopted the defensiveness that defined the evangelical mindset, and become drawn into a need to defend God.   Schaeffer’s writing and the following it drew played a part in creating the conservative backbone of modern evangelicalism.   What’s so interesting is that his son, Frank Scaeffer, who played an important role in his father’s work, is now a fed up, fired up critic of the modern evangelical church.   Once active in the movement, he’s now a voice warning of the dangers of fundamentalism of the Christian kind.  Check him out at The Official Website of Frank Schaeffer.

In my long-winded way, I guess what I’m saying is that contemplative Christianity…a spirituality of Christ defined by prayer and mystical union…is an answer to fundamentalism and it’s shame-cycle.  I read an article a while ago about conflict in an Islamic country, where the fundamentalist Muslim majority was seeking to silence and control the Sufi minority.  Sufis are the contemplatives, the mystics, of the Islamic worldview, and have historically (in this context at least) been peace-seekers, where the majority has continued to wage war and control.  Its interesting to see the same dynamic play out in so many contexts.  Mysticism challenges black and white thinking, just as Christ challenged the black and white thinking of the religiously certain of his time.  The reaction to Christ was violence.  We see the same today.

When your world is built upon tightly controlled rules and systems, then you fight to protect your control.  The story of the prodigal son illustrates the dynamic beautifully. The oldest son had his world fairly well under control…he had earned his fathers love and respect with hard work and dedication.  When the prodigal son returned home and was received with such joy…the love given away for free…the brother’s response was anger.  We cannot control God.   Yet, when the worldview of conservative Christians is challenged, even if challenged by undeniable logic (such as proof the earth is older than 5000 years) the response is anger and defensiveness…if you’re not with us, God is not with you.

Its a difficult time and an exciting time to follow Christ in America.  There are hints of change, hints of new life beginning to emerge as a new generation comes of age.  The last election sent a message, as did the public disgrace of some powerful Evangelicals, that the vote-getting machine of the Religious Right is losing steam.  There is an opportunity for a new Christian voice to emerge, one that truly seeks to be “peacemakers”, to recognize those that are hungry and hurting among us, to call out for an ethic of life across circumstances…one rooted in devotion, not control…wisdom, not knowledge.

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May 5th, 2010 | Tags: , , | Category: Church and Life, Journal | 4 comments
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