The Anti-Manichaeist

I got into a discussion with a young anabaptist, Greg, a southern evangelical conservative political wag, James Atticus Bowden(JAB) and Liberal Baptist historian Streak over at Haysoos Politicas after I stated that I thought John Yoder got the NTestament wrong in stating that the state is to be viewed as an irreparably pagan institution that Christians should generally avoid direct involvement with.

I wrote for Greg,

“Just because Jesus’s kingship of not of this world doesn’t mean that it has nothing to do with the kingship/rule of this world.

My simple point is that Jesus rejected the use of violence to capture the state. This very critical precedent doesn’t prohibit Christians from capturing in peaceful ways aspects of the state and that includes running or holding office.

Yoder was wrong to identify his understandable Anabaptist prejudice against statecraft with what the Bible did teach the early Christians and what ought to be held for all Christians today.

This led to a simple question from JAB,

Jesus rejected using violence to overthrow the Roman state. But do you think He did for all time? If so, our Revolution was wrong.

I responded,

JAB, that is a good question that I will need to think about some.

Off the top of my head, I think it was just as important how so many americans came to judge that England’s right to rule(or tax) us without allowing us some representation.

We did use violence and were successful mainly because England had too many irons in the fire and couldn’t deal with us properly and we had friends in the gov’t who were sympathetic to our desires for autonomy.

But then the success of our “revolution” led to the disaster of the “french revolution” and many revolutions elsewhere which mainly resulted in a conservative thermidorean reaction where things got worse.

And so perhaps it may have not been wise for us to use violence to claim our independence? What if we had pioneered nonviolent ways of continually demanding more local political autonomy? We would still have given our lives for independence.

I am not opposed to Christians serving as police or in the military, with some stipulations about their need to put ethical deliberations as paramount to prevent the use of violence or to constrain its need. But I think the use of violence to capture the state(whether it be our state or someone else’s like Venezuela) is something that all Christians must reject as an option as they seek to be Christ-like.

I then faced a good question from Greg,

I’m sure the Anabaptists misread it[the Bible] in places as well; I just don’t think this[the proper Xtn view of the State] was one of the places. The history of Xtns using peaceful means to capture aspects of the state is just as mixed as when they used violent means.

I disagree with your account. I agree our track record for statecraft by peaceful democratic means is mixed, but that it is not as mixed as it is for statecraft by violent means. And I don’t consider the recent history of the religious right as being a good example, on account of how they have relied too much on political/religious elites with the majority of them spending precious little time and energy in deliberation on what is right political conduct.

Ultimately, to become the state means losing the ability to speak prophetically to the state.

I prefer “To acquire some political influence means accepting that others will have influence over you.” Yet, inasmuch as I advocate for voluntaristic arrangements among Christians(and Non-Christians) that would act separately from our church institutions, like the NAE(This is a quite different from how the Social Gospelist movement was organized.), and would avoid the use of absolutist language to advocate for reforms; I think our direct influence and the degree we are influence by political elites would be constrained enough so that prophetic influences would enable us to shift gears.

I can’t think of a single example where Xians were in charge that things went well. At the end of WWII, the US could have conquered the rest of the world and we did not.

The willingness of US Baptists to get political made James Madison champion religious freedom in the US.

If Abe Lincoln had remained in power, he would have been more reconciliatory to the South and the level of regional economic/political disparities between our country would not have been so great.

They[Early Christians] did not seek power, nor did they seek positions of influence in government. The state was a religion that involved regular worship of Caesar. Caesar worship had to be brought down before Xtns could with good conscience serve in the state.

If we can pray for politicians, we can also convert them and expect for them to help us change the rules of the game so that noone grips the sword of the state too tightly and so the security provided by the state’s order is more evenly distributed across interests.

If you read Thorstein Veblen’s “The Nature of War“, you’ll see that decentralizing influence in the state is pretty essential to ward off imperialistic military excursions. IMHO, Christians can and should participate in such decentralization, which is quite distinct from taking over, and that is why I wrote my Christian Pragmatic Progressive Party platform.

My selective and excessively terse references to history to justify how Xty can and should statecraft brought some questions from Streak.

Quite a few leaps there. Is the result at the end of WWII because of Christians being involved in power?

I think indirectly. Christian groups have traditionally helped to marshall political involvement in the US and religion/demographics have affected party affiliations. We had a competitive democracy where the two parties got along reasonably well and dynamically took on issues brought up by third parties. I think this sort of political culture where there was trust between the different parties made power-sharing more possible and helped to check the imperialistic tendencies of our gov’t and I think that stems ultimately from Christian ethics.

As for Lincoln, again what is the connection. You think Lincoln might have responded better, but one can make a reasonable argument that reconstruction fails–not because we were too harsh, but because we didn’t actually give the freedmen viable alternatives and make a committment to protect their civil rights. I don’t see evidence that Lincoln would have done that.

I think it stems from my theory that a good deal of the vituperous form of racism that developed in the south was due their hatred of the north for leaving them so far behind development-wise. If the North had had to share more equally with the south then the forms of racism and regionism that eventually emerged would have been mitigated.

My point was that a more forgiving, reconciliatory president would have likely improved our nation’s history considerably and inasmuch as these virtues stem from a Christian worldview they show that Christian involvement in statecraft can make a big difference.

And the debate continues…

dlw