Yesterday, I was at the March for Life in Austin, TX with over 70 students from John Paul II High School. It was a wonderful day of holy political activity! Yes! Holy... political... activity! I spent much of the day thinking about the philosophical and theological underpinnings of what we were doing. It is true that Christianity does not, in and of itself, propose a specific political program, but that does not mean that Christianity is indifferent to politics or to political life. Quite to the contrary, the Cross has political implications. I also believe it to be true that, even though we must respect persons (and associations of persons) and their political beliefs, including atheistic and anti-Christian persons and associations, that politics and religion are intricately connected and that the Jeffersonian idea of separation of Church and State is itself part of a secularist civil religion with an eschatology which specifically rivals that proposed to us by Christ and his Church!
First: to the political implications of the Cross (once again, I am dependent here on N.T. Wright) Imagine that you are St. Paul. You are writing a letter to the Christians in the capital of the Roman Empire, to Rome itself. In that city, of course, lives the Roman Emperor. He claims to be the son of the divine Augustus. The good news (evangelion) of his reign, he claims, brings salvation (soteria) to the Roman Empire. All nations have been brought into obedience to this king, this son of a god, this lord of the whole world. Yes, he has established peace in his empire, even suppressing the enemies of Rome by the use of the cross. Then, knowing that all of these things belong to the Imperial rhetoric, imagine writing these words.
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ (Christos, Heb. Messiah), called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel (evanglion) of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ; To all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom 1:1-7)If you had written these words, would you have been writing a politically neutral piece of rhetoric about private religion? God forbid! Religion and politics were married, and they would not be divorced for eighteen centuries (if even then)! The cult of the Emperor was the fastest growing cult in the first century Roman Empire. No, this Jesus was the real lord of the world, the true king, the messiah, the Son of David. His reign was the real good news, the real evangelion, bringing the real soteria, the real salvation through accepting death, even death on a Roman cross. It was he, not Caesar, who was truly the son of divinity, and not just of any divinity, but of the one true God, the God of Israel. And now Paul, his apostle, is trying to bring about the obedience of faith to this new king in all the nations. As if this point wouldn't ring loud enough in Roman ears, Paul also writes it at the end of his letter: "The root of Jesse shall come, he who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles hope." (Rom 15:12, quoting Isaiah 11:10) He wrote this, I repeat, to Rome!
What does this mean practically and politically? It means that Jesus Christ is the true Lord of the world, the true king. It is ultimately to him that every knee must bend. "God," as one early Christian martyr to the Romans put it, "is greater than the Emperor!" This martyr's cry expresses the politically charged side of what Paul is saying in Rom 13:1: "For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." The authorities are not there on their own authority: they are stewards set in place by God and subject to his rule! A wonderful example of this was a tradition started by King George II surrounding Handel's Messiah. British tradition dictated that one stand when in the presence of the ruler. When listening to Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, declaring Christ to be "King of Kings and Lord of Lords," King George himself stood in the presence of the superior royalty of Jesus the Messiah (Christ), the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And, following tradition, everyone else stood with him. Now, at performances of the Messiah worldwide, people stand to recognize the lordship of Jesus Christ. God, indeed, is greater than the Emperor!
Practically, this does not mean that we must advocate for a theocracy, certainly not imposing our religion or even our ideas by the sword. For, part of our religion is accepting the human dignity, including the right to conscience, of every person from conception to natural death. But what it does mean is that we must act, both as private citizens and as public servants in accordance with the truth we have received through Jesus Christ. Our private and our public lives must demonstrate that Jesus Christ is Lord of the whole world! A Christian person must act in accordance with his well-formed Christian conscience, recognizing that it is his strictest and most solemn obligation, as a servant of the true King, Jesus Christ, to defend the life and dignity of every human being, from conception to natural death.
This includes and extends to Christians in politics. It is not good enough to say that one is personally opposed to abortion; if one truly believes abortion is wrong one must act in accordance with this belief! It is true that the mothers (and the fathers, who often are the real perpetrators in all this, shaming and often almost forcing mothers to get abortions) of these children retain their right to conscience, even a conscience so ill formed as to allow for abortion, but that does not mean that the law must recognize their right, falsely so-called, to foist the results of their ill-formed conscience on society by robbing their children of life, by siphoning off public tax monies to ensure their ability to do this, etc. Abortion is not a private decision, even though it impacts the most private places in a family's life; it is a decision with deep public implications. In fact, because it involves the life of a child, the shape of the medical profession, and the political and economic activity of government and of large corporations, it is an inherently public act. The bare fact of the matter is that if we do not have a pro-life political order we will have a pro-abortion political order. If we pro-lifers do not win the political fight, they will, and this will result in the inevitable snuffing out of pro-life activity and pro-life laws. Why, if they really believe in "choice," do pro-abortion organizations fight sonogram laws?
Later, in part two of this post, I will comment on the absurdity, the logical self-contradiction, of secular humanism's endless lectures on the separation of Church and State.
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