The State and secular liberalism have an insatiable appetite for power to form policies, crave resources, shape humanistic social values, and largely cater to predatory economies, corporations, and institutions. Churches and religious conventions throughout Christendom have abdicated their responsibility to satisfy people’s common good and well-being through its distancing of political and cultural involvement. Much of it subscribes to the totalitarian inclinations of the State for economic and security reasons having to do with the Churches’ worldview differences and its sense of elsewhere. The world of the Bible, covenant promises, confessions, fellowships, and its subcultures has set the Church apart without question. It hasn’t engaged culture, society, or contributed to its interests in loving people with the Gospel as commensurate with its mission (Matt 28:18-19).
Evangelical organizations, Protestant churches, and Catholic churches have withdrawn from secular public offices and institutions. They make up local boards, municipalities, legislatures, judiciaries, and executive branches of government with very little Christian influence as an internal cultural presence that has a bearing on public policy. The Church is absent to ensure regulatory enforcement against corruption, equitable relief to the poor, and morality-based education. There are pockets of individuals in various locales. Still, people have no concentrated social and political will to ensure they are governed by consent that assures freedom and the necessary fulfillment of God’s requirements to love one another and build His Kingdom. Christianity should be involved in public policy formation and governance at every level, as an effort to install public theology, not to adapt, or to partner for the common good, but to inject a morphology and policy that reflect Godly standards centered around law and order.
Without such efforts, an outcome of privatization of faith with disparate values takes hold. It permits the conditions necessary for socialism to gather momentum with devastating consequences (e.g., holocaust, communist genocide, etc.). The Church itself becomes an empty shell as it does not fulfill its obligation to form the spiritual well-being of people through evangelism and discipleship. All the while, the State begins to carry the theological and transcendent purpose of the Church. Rather than a Kingdom of Priests or the Kingdom of God set within the world to love humanity, it becomes the Kingdom of man to perpetuate selfishness and its appetite for wealth, power, and ideological outcomes. Small and large churches that become corporate business enterprises are structured for-profit or nonprofit endeavors. In the name of separation of church and state, Reinhold Niebuhr championed imbued theological legitimacy to the State and advocated arrangements of public theology for the welfare of people. Inevitably, the church accordingly becomes relegated to activity contradictory to the interests of the State, and it becomes suppressed while members privatize their faith.
As matters become worse and tyranny grows among segments of society, and minorities, the same minorities plea and protest for liberation. They become subjected to oppression, poverty, injustices, and indifference that bring about immeasurable suffering.
It is simply not enough, or acceptable, to form policies and legislation around social, political, or special interests where the State assumes for itself theological rights to govern. There must emerge a unity of the Church adjacent to disparate doctrines about a constitutional model of governance. Reminiscent of Augustine’s The City of God (c.f. Books XX Ch.30 through XXI entire argument), there must become social awareness and imperatives for fulfilling theological mandates within the Church for spiritual liberation. The reason empires or governments are permitted to exist, survive, and prosper is to satisfy the purposes and will of God.
YHWH Himself asks of ancient rulers,
“Vindicate the weak and fatherless.
Do justice to the afflicted and destitute.
Rescue the weak and needy.
Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked. “
-Ps 82:2-4
It is proclaimed that the nations belong to God, who rules over them with the presence of His new covenant Kingdom on the Earth. To restrain evil is one of the functions of the Church, and as our LORD Jesus, Himself decrees to Peter, “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock, I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it“ (Matt 16:18-19). While there is certain to be interpersonal conflict and larger-scale disputes in opposition to the interests of Christ’s Kingdom (Matt 10:34), the Church is meant to prevail as Jesus decreed. Spiritual and worldly forces shall be unable to withstand its work as it reclaims people and spiritually liberates them through the Gospel and sanctification.
It is of urgent necessity that Protestant and Catholic churches make disciples. It is of utmost importance for Christians to become spiritually engaged and integrated into society at large for its sake because of otherwise damning consequences. Forever lost are people without Christ as they seek their interests or the interests of the State as they do their best to survive and make a living with a sense of purpose and meaning. Christians must become spiritual activists at every level, from the bottom-up and top-down. We would eat, sleep, and breathe all things under the Lordship of Christ and His commission to make disciples and teach people all that He has instructed.
The modern political process needs intervention from Christendom. Through a strategy that it executes in unison with doctrines left intact to restrain evil, mitigate structural sin, and ease the unacceptable suffering of people who need the Gospel and lovingkindness. Through the Holy Spirit, we are entrusted to bring people under the Lordship of Christ. We are to hold up a welcome banner of Godliness, truth, justice, mercy, freedom, and love for all people through the exertion of will that reaches into the realm of political, social, and economic domains of interest. Enough is enough; everything must become spiritually, theologically, and politically charged to advance God’s Kingdom and fulfill the great commission.
This is not to advocate theocratic forms of governance. Instead, it is to model constitutional accountability and a framework portable to geographies and people groups even at local levels to build environments or fields of harvest to accomplish the objectives we are given by the mission of Christ and His people. The Kingdom of God is not a domain of societies within an unachievable utopian setting on Earth. For example, secular initiatives to elevate “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” in an attempt to satisfy Social Marxist objectives (social justice) would bring about a significant removal of freedoms, loss of life on an enormous scale, and reduced access to people for Kingdom objectives. Moreover, Jesus informs us that the poor will always be with us (Matt 26:11). From an eschatological perspective, there will be “wars and rumors of wars” (Matt 24:6), “famine” (Luke 21:11), and other ongoing catastrophes until He returns. It is one thing to build Christendom by church planting. Still, it is quite another to form governance and authoritative responsibility around people under the mission of God.
Without attachment to world values, Christians must become politically active, speak up, go to church, share their faith, live their lives of faith in public, and live out loud lives of service and worship. Enough is enough with the privatization of faith and the fear of being seen as a devoted believer in Jesus as LORD and King.
