Christian Politics and Policy

Disclaimer: Yeah, I know this will rub a lot of people the wrong way – that’s politics. Let’s discuss civilly and reasonably.

I’m going to take a rather bold (stupid?) shot at constructing a political platform based on Scripture – because I’m unsatisfied with the whole platforms we currently have. In other words, I can only cherry-pick positions from the major American parties, and I’m not even sure they have everything I need.

Let’s immediately admit the ideas we won’t entertain, before we start getting nasty over them. If we run into a mutual refusal to agree, we must suspend either disbelief or discussion. By that I mean that we can still discuss while qualifying with “assuming that you’re right,” and maybe we can even show the out-of-bounds issue to be irrelevant. We also must use discretion regarding what belongs in this discussion and what merits a new one, or belongs in another existing one.

Personally, I refuse to back down from Sola Scriptura, the doctrine that the Christian Bible is true in an obvious way from Genesis to Revelation. While I have my doubts and intend to resolve them, this is not the appropriate forum for that. I’m also closed to certain beliefs which fall within that; I’ll present them as we go along. (My hope that I’ll actually have anyone to discuss with is about as ambitious as this post’s purpose, considering how infrequently I post.)

Now, let’s start at the beginning. Mankind is both inherently beautiful and inherently flawed, being created in God’s image and having infected ourselves with sin. Our objective is to magnify God’s likeness and make our flaws as inconsequential as possible. The entirety of Scripture shows that we will never be fully successful, and what success we see will be attained by God’s grace alone. So, to rephrase the objective, we must accept and apply God’s grace at every opportunity.

Obviously, the fundamental and most significant expression of grace is salvation. Thus evangelism becomes the core of this platform. More correctly, this platform becomes a consequence of the Gospel. The more people repent and believe in Christ, the more society will experience grace.

I know that last version of the objective is very politically incorrect. “What, he wants to Christianize the world?!” Yes, and no. The popular concept of Christianization (the Crusades, Inquisition, etc.) is extremely distorted. Proper evangelism is dramatically different from this, being founded on analogy of universal experience with basic Christian theology. See Christianization for a more in-depth contrast.

Now, back to the objective: This means that current Christians are to exercise the fruits of the Spirit, all of which are manifestations of grace, in all capacities and toward all people. This naturally has modern political implications, and just what those are is the subject of this post. (I didn’t include the spiritual gifts because they apply very little to government policy.)

Following the Wikipedia link above, does anyone know an issue to which we can apply the fruits? I’ll be updating this page with more examples as the thoughts and time come to me. By the way, do you think each issue should have its own post and link from this one, or should I keep them here?

Political Discipline

I get disgusted by how loyal politicians, including pundits, are to their party fellows in light of error. Sometimes this error is just a result of poor research (e.g., Ann Coulter). At other times, it incriminates the author of being deliberately deceptive and requires a public apology (e.g., Sean Hannity). In all cases, politicians forfeit credibility when they refuse to call their party fellows out. Ironically, one website which has a policy of never doing so is the media watchdog MediaMatters.org. Wait a sec… Even watchdogs need watchdogs?

Scripture gives procedures for discipline within the Church, designed to keep it pure. I propose that the political arena should have a similar code. This would reaffirm the duty of participating politicians to call each other out, privately or publicly as the case requires, across party lines. But more importantly, politicians must call out errors which come from within party lines. Admittedly, bias may hide some of these errors, but that’s beside the point; we must alert each other to what we do see, including those who claim to abide by such a code but appear to be either lazy or selective about enforcement.

It’s been some time since I joined the Governance Wiki for this so here’s the URL for the category we’re working in, followed by the introduction URL:

• http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Category:People
• http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Using_Giki

Political Correctness

All over the world and throughout history, those in power have tended to do horrible things to everyone else. In the modern western world, those in power are often in, or are at least supported by, the majority. So members of the majority (i.e., whites) have taken upon themselves the noble cause of regulating their fellows. Opportunists, however, have ironically manipulated this trend to gain power for themselves. And now we see a curious phenomenon: A large portion of the majority combines with minorities to make a new majority, which goes under the liberal banner. And this new majority then uses politics to oppress the rest of the original majority; this brand of politics is known as political correctness.

This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point in that, if a sizable majority of whites would denounce each other for prejudice, anti-majority prejudice might be rendered baseless. But we do all of society a disservice when we over-zealously search for and counter prejudice, because this actually nurtures the same prejudice. I have no doubt that the white supremacist movement has benefited from affirmative action and taboos against such legitimate actions as calling certain blacks racist or using accurate racial terms to describe minorities.

In case you would like a concrete example of this phenomenon, see this video, whose earlier comments reinforce my previous point about nurturing prejudice.

War

To begin with, I don’t believe the Old Testament is a valid source of war policy. God is forming Israel into His ideal bride, and war is one of His primary tools. However, the war front is now only in the spiritual realm, not the physical one. Not to mention that I don’t like that aspect of Scripture in the least, although it does make a good analogy for modern experiences.

So where does that leave us? I think groups of people are subject to the same moral standards as individuals, so just war theory must draw on morals pertaining to violence. Violence is not forbidden by Jesus (Luke 22:36; John 2:15), but it is certainly discouraged in general. Indeed, loving our enemies could improve foreign relations drastically; I wonder how Iranians would react if we were to help them construct solar energy farms to replace the need for nuclear energy. Would anti-Western propaganda still work? What if we tried helping citizens to non-violently topple dictators rather than killing some while doing it on our own? Or maybe we could even lessen our general involvement in the politics of other countries; that alone might save what little reputation we haven’t soiled.

Immigration

Many Americans fear foreigners because they need jobs. Poor foreigners are even worse because they would gladly work for less. But maybe we should let them in and give them free English courses, or even a little money in case they don’t find a job immediately (Luke 10:25-37). And of course we shouldn’t abuse or despise them (Deuteronomy 23:7, 24:14).