Kingdom Politics

In Search of a New Political Imagination for Today's Church

Kristopher Norris, Sam Speers

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781498236386
• eBook ISBN: 9781498269896
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

American Christians, weary of decades of entrenched partisan feuding, are increasingly distancing themselves from politics. Some, however, continue to turn toward the state and public policy to find solutions to the world's problems. The problem is that both responses allow a narrow vision of politics to determine the church's mission and ministries, which often ends up separating its commitment to personal faith from the pursuit of social justice--the King from the kingdom. Christians too easily forget that the church is inherently political, a community defined by its allegiance to a King, its citizenship in a new world, and its call to work alongside others in pursuit of a new way of life. The church needs a political vision that is more than blind acceptance or mere rejection of past models. It needs a positive vision that takes its cues about politics not from the nation-state but from another political reality: the kingdom of God.This book tells the stories of the visits of two researchers to five diverse congregations across the United States. From the megachurch energy of Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in California, to a young Emergent community in Minneapolis, to the politically active home of Martin Luther King in Atlanta, these stories illuminate the vastly different ways congregations understand and approach politics--and offer a glimpse of a new political imagination for today's church.

Chapter 1

For King and Kingdom

Profiles in Church and Politics

Prologue

“Does anyone have the soundtrack to Braveheart . . . and a sword?” We sat dazed as Ben, a Lebanese man sporting a flawless Scottish accent, scoured the congregation for these essential elements of worship. We weren’t sure whether to laugh or to cringe at a communion service administered by “William Wallace” to a sanctuary of his embattled troops.

From the outside, this church appeared rather ordinary. But as we rushed past the stone façade and into the narthex of Solomon’s Porch—a bit late as always, neither of us blessed with the virtue of punctuality—we entered a worship space that was anything but ordinary.

The congregants of this self-described “holistic missional Christian community” sat on an eclectic assortment of old couches and armchairs, arranged in concentric circles around two stools in the center of a converted Methodist sanctuary near downtown Minneapolis. The room was full of paintings created by the church’s decidedly artsy membership; a collection of portraits surrounding a large cross at one end of the sanctuary served as a visual directory of the church, and a giant paper-mache goose hung from the ceiling, spreading its wings over the congregation. We took our seats on a floral green sofa as a crowd of mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings, some with young children, filtered into the building and out of the late May heat with watermelon and popsicles they had picked up near the door.

An array of baguettes and cinnamon raisin bread from a nearby bakery was placed on coffee tables, alongside boxed wine from Trader Joe’s—the sacred elements for today’s communion. But first, pastor Doug Pagitt wanted to introduce the church to its newest staff member, a facilities manager named Ben. The two sat and talked on stools in the center of the room while the congregation watched comfortably, some finishing their popsicles or checking their iPhones. After asking Ben about his hobbies, his Middle Eastern heritage, and his world travels, Doug put him on the spot.

“Now Ben, I’ve heard that you have a very special talent, and I think everyone would love for you to share it with us.”

Ben laughed and covered his face with his hands, shaking his head in protest as the congregation clapped and shouted encouragement. After much playful prodding, he revealed his talent: he can recite the entire climactic battle speech from the film Braveheart, verbatim. The crowd cheered as Ben stood with mock reluctance and asked if anyone had the soundtrack on their iPhone. Within moments, the sound of bagpipes reverberated through the sanctuary. We tried to conceal our look of “What is happening here?!” as Ben began pacing purposefully around the couches. Suddenly inspired, he picked up a communion baguette from a nearby coffee table, and, brandishing it as a sword, began his nearly three-minute performance, complete with Scottish accent and dramatic eye contact with his bemused “soldiers.”

This was just our second stop in a series of visits to churches across the country to talk with church leaders about their approaches to politics—and already, the diversity was profound. Just twenty-four hours earlier, we had visited the magnificent Basilica of St. Mary in downtown Minneapolis, where the communion elements are kept locked in an ornate gold box on an altar beneath a fifty-foot, marble-columned baldachin. The sacred elements are handled only by the priest and administered only to bona fide Catholics in a solemn litany of Jesus’ betrayal and sacrifice. We watched as, one by one, the congregation came forward in quiet reverence to receive the transubstantiated body and blood, drawn to the altar by the somber notes of a Latin hymn echoing off of the immense vaulted ceiling.

Back at Solomon’s Porch, less than five miles away, Ben waved his communion-baguette sword high, pointing at his cheering troops as he cried, “They may take our lives, but they will never take our freeedommm!”

With the speech concluded and victory secured, communion proceeded joyfully—even boisterously—with much warm chatter and little structure. We even noticed a few folks pouring themselves a little extra wine to carry them through the remainder of the service.

The Problem: Avoidance vs. Acceptance

These two communion experiences point to a vast diversity of styles and traditions within the American church landscape: communion-baguette swords vs. gold-plated altars, Bach chorales vs. rock worship, postservice voter registration vs. sermons condemning the politicizing of the church. Despite the apparent disunity in purpose and practice, all of these churches are proposing answers to the same question: “What is the mission of the church in the world?”

Their answers are as diverse as their communion liturgies. And yet, we realized, nearly all of their answers have something in common: they have separated the pursuit of spiritual formation from the work of social transformation, and therefore struggle to produce disciples who grow in love for both God and neighbor. For some churches the focus is primarily on the individual, on evangelism and developing members’ “personal faith,” while other churches focus on public issues of social justice and government policy.

Church leaders are struggling to understand what worship has to do with missions, and how the Word becomes the Word made flesh. How are they best integrated into the lives of disciples? How should preaching impact our social vision? How can the way in which we greet and fellowship with each other shape the way we reach out to the “least of these?” What does a church’s leadership structure say about how its members should think about citizenship? And conversely, how should a church’s cross-cultural witness alter the way it worships and thinks about God? These questions aren’t new; in some ways they reflect the same struggle that Paul and James addressed in teaching their communities what faith has to do with works (Eph 2:8–9, Jas 2:14–26).

The same biblical tension persists today. Observers label these often-competing agendas in several ways: priestly and prophetic, faith and action, conversionist and activist, personal piety and social change, worship and missions. Our favorite way to frame this is that many churches worship Jesus the King, but avoid the messiness of working for his kingdom. Others work diligently to bring the kingdom to earth, but fail to recognize him as King in their personal and communal lives.1

But in reality, there can be no King without a kingdom, nor a kingdom without a King; each is implied in the other. Churches cannot engage in true social transformation without worshiping Jesus the King, or truly worship the King without also working for social transformation. This false dichotomy is creating a deep and dangerous divide among churches today, which prevents them from embodying a faithful and holistic mission while also developing committed disciples.2 When these two essential elements of the church’s identity and mission are separated, both suffer in ways that are detrimental to the church and its mission in the world. Some claim that churches tend to focus on one at the expense of the other; we contend that churches are unable to do either one without the other.

This, we believe, is a deeply biblical view: it shows up all over Scripture, from Amos’s warning that God does not delight in solemn assemblies if there is no justice (Amos 5:21–24) to James’s charge that pious talk is cheap unless followed by care for people’s physical needs (Jas 2:15–16). Just as the law began with a call to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength (Deut 6:5), Jesus began his public ministry with a personal call to “repent and believe” (Mark 1:15). Jesus integrates these within his own person by calling himself the Way (meaning a course of action) as well as the Truth and the Life (John 14:6).

To Politics and Beyond

We suggest that an underlying source of this tension may exist in an unexpected place—politics. We began this project inspired by a widely cited study that concluded that there is little politics in churches.3 Thinking that this could not possibly be correct, we started with the hypothesis that churches must operate with a narrow understanding of politics. Most Americans, Christians included, think of politics exclusively in partisan or electoral terms—actions like lobbying, campaigning, voting, or watching Fox News or MSNBC. American culture and media consistently reinforce the notion that politics is about firmly entrenched, competing partisan camps, and most churches assume this is to be true as well. In the absence of a compelling alternative vision, many churches (whether they are considered to be on the Left, the Right, or somewhere in between) are now politically adrift, unsure how to be (or not be) political, and often respond in one of two ways—avoidance or acceptance.

On the one hand, some churches avoid politics like the plague, for understandable reasons. These churches endorse the “wall of separation” between politics and religion and think of politics as belonging to another realm—basically, none of their damn business. Pastors and lay leaders abstain from any political language or action in church. Churches, as spiritual communities concerned with the care of souls, avoid anything that resembles political activity—be it a protest, signing a petition, discussing a hot-button issue in small group, or talking about the fairness of local public transportation programs.

Recent research suggests that many American Christians, weary of decades of entrenched partisan feuding, are distancing themselves from the language and activity of politics. In their groundbreaking research study UnChristian, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons report that 110 million adult Americans—including half of conservative Christians—are concerned about the role of conservative Christians in politics.4 Many liberal Christians agree—in one major mainline denomination, less than one-third of clergy believe that the church should be engaged in public affairs.5 Numerous reports attribute the decline in organized religion, or at least religious attendance, to the politicizing of churches6: “too political” is one of the most significant reasons that “nones” (the religiously unaffiliated) cite for not participating in churches.7 Christians are catching on, and are seeking to reverse the church’s overly politicized reputation. This leads some prominent scholars to conclude that there is now “little politics in church.”8 Mainline churches worry about their church services looking like “political rallies,” and evangelical leaders like Rick Warren contend that “God’s antidote for the world is not politics.”

On the other hand, some churches reject this passive stance, and opt to break through the wall—or at least chisel away at it. They believe that the Christian gospel must have some direct political implications. Though they reject the partitioning of politics and church, most operate with the same narrow concept of politics—thinking that their involvement in electoral politics, lobbying, or activism to change public policy is a sufficient political embodiment of the kingdom of God on earth. Some scholars have recently noted that other churches are increasingly turning toward the state and public policy to find solutions to the world’s ills, believing that the primary means to affect any sort of world transformation is through policy change. For example, sociologist James Hunter claims that “Politics has become so central in our time that institutions, groups, and issues are now defined relative to the state, its laws and procedures.”9 Political activism is the “tactic of choice” for churches, Hunter laments, so much so that “the dominant public witness of the Christian churches in America since the early 1980s has been a political witness.”10 In other words, churches now allow the partisan ethos of this vision to overdetermine their own missions and practices.

The problem is that both responses reflect a poor understanding of the political nature of the church, and the type of political action the church is called to. The first response—avoiding politics altogether—ignores the church’s responsibility to address important social issues. To avoid talking about significant social (and yes, political) issues that the church has a stake in—such as immigration policy, racial justice, and abortion—is to miss important opportunities to engage with the world on issues of justice. The second option—jumping into partisan politics—often allows the church’s practices to be overdetermined by partisan agendas, and limits their political response to those actions with direct policy implications. It risks turning churches into activist organizations with a slightly religious flair. Churches that tend to align themselves too closely with a particular party or overemphasize a particular social or moral issue risk developing a misdirected allegiance to party or issue. This approach restricts the church’s imagination about the kinds of political causes it could support, or the kinds of partners it could work with.11

One of our professors has written that most churches fail to engage with the world because the only models of public engagement they have encountered are too closely tied to political and partisan agendas.12 And in both cases outlined above, congregations have forgotten that the church is an inherently political body: a community defined by its allegiance to a new King, its citizenship in a new world, and its call to work alongside others in pursuit of a new way of life. Both re...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: For King and Kingdom: Profiles in Church and Politics
• Chapter 2: Mobilizing the Church to Change the World: Saddleback Church
• Chapter 3: Growing an Organic Community: Solomon’s Porch Community
• Chapter 4: Embracing Public Activism: First & Franklin Presbyterian Church
• Chapter 5: Committing to Community: Prairie Street Mennonite Church
• Chapter 6: Living Their Story: Ebenezer Baptist Church
• Conclusion: Kingdom Politics
• Acknowledgments
• Notes