The Kingdom of God is inherently political

What is our primary role as Christians? 

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” (Matt 28:19-20, NRSV)

The Great Commission implies our job is to mold people into followers of Jesus (disciple) who repent of and renounce how they once lived and perceived reality (baptize) and, as followers of Jesus, pick up his lifestyle and perception (teaching them to obey).

It is, in essence, guiding others to accept Jesus’ overarching story of what life is about and to live their lives according to that story, dismissing all others.

And as N.T. Wright (How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels), Scot McKnight (The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited), and Matthew Bates (Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King) have helped demonstrate over the last 15 years, politics is central to Jesus’ story, because one of Jesus’ primary themes is preaching the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God in the world with him at its head, which means implicitly that all politicians of this world are rivals.

The core of what politics is about is power, and the most complete way to exert power over people and not only keep them compliant but even get them to support you is to have them believe the story you tell about reality. 

And the legacy of the Church is to confront politicians with God’s true story, especially when their story is sinfully in conflict and violation of God’s.

Several scholars, including Wright, have argued that Jesus’ claim to lordship was a direct confrontation to Roman imperial ideology.  The phrase “Jesus is Lord” is quite likely a challenge to Caesar’s cult that claimed him as a “savior” and even “Son of God” – if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not.

The Old Testament is rife with prophets confronting kings over their abuses and injustices, ranging from Amos and Jeroboam (Amos 7:10-17) to Isaiah and Ahaz (Isaiah 7) to Elijah and Ahab (1 Kings 18) and even Nathan and David (2 Samuel 12:1-12).

As Christians, it is part of our vocation to both ensure to the best of our abilities that our worldview is in line with Jesus’ and to confront those in political power about their warped worldviews and the injustice that is endemic to them.

In doing that, our politics will never look like the world’s politics – we will never completely align with Democrats or Republicans or any worldly party or group, and we must equally hold all of them to the same levels of account.

In the process of doing so, it is inevitable that we will “get political” and be perceived by those from the outside looking in as potentially aligning in a partisan way on specific issues because the world wants to fit us into its political paradigms. 

But as long as we are being true to Jesus, we will confuse the world as it notices that our paradigm doesn’t fit within its boundaries.

If we’re faithfully representing Christ, we can’t attempt to play the middle on issues because we don’t want to offend people or risk being perceived along partisan lines.

B.T. Roberts and the first Free Methodists were ardent abolitionists because chattel slavery was and is evil, despite the fact that was an incredibly divisive issue that surely prevented anti-abolitionists from associating with them.

Roberts wrote, “Open opposition to all wrong and injustice is another element of Scriptural righteousness.  Many who will not do wrong themselves will countenance it, at least indirectly, in others.  This is usually the first step in a loss of virtue.  They who, for the sake of party interest, personal relationship, or any other cause, is silent when they should reprove, will soon apologize for, then justify, then approve, and, if occasion serves, perpetuate the wrong from which, at first, their moral sensibilities revolted.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the German Confessing Church ardently opposed the Nazis because of their evil policies and violence, despite the fact that the majority of the German Church was either indifferent or ardent Nazis, themselves.

Bonhoeffer wrote, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.  Not to speak is to speak.  Not to act is to act.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders fought for racial equality because it was good and against Jim Crow laws and segregation because they were evil, despite outright opposition from a lot of the White American Church and indifference from far more of it.

King wrote, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’;   who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’  Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.  Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Lastly, we as Christians need to be able to be bluntly honest with ourselves about our own shortcomings and blind spots, even when (especially when) those issues are difficult to admit and can threaten to cause irritation or even denial and resentment.

The reality is that there is no shortage of evangelical American Christians who rightly call out the evils that are typically associated with liberal politicians ranging from issues regarding abortion to lack of tolerance of differing viewpoints to promotion of “cancelling” differing viewpoints to advocacy for increasing secularism within the broader culture.

If there weren’t a litany of voices and literature lambasting these issues, I’d make sure to do so here.

But what is lacking within evangelicalism are more voices holding conservative politicians accountable for the evils they’re associated with, and wherein that is true, it betrays a deeper commitment to American political conservatism than it does to the Kingdom of God, often in part because American political conservatism is conflated by many evangelicals with the Kingdom of God.

These issues shouldn’t be debatable for a Christian:

Housing immigrants in inhumane conditions and deporting them without due process while separating immigrant families is evil and must be opposed.

Eliminating health insurance for roughly 10 million people while redistributing wealth in such a way that the poorest get poorer while the rich get richer while nonetheless increasing the federal deficit by $3.4 trillion is evil and must be opposed.

Cutting federal funding that could result in up to 14 million deaths is evil and must be opposed.

Drastically reducing medical research funding to an extent that will cost many lives is evil and must be opposed.

Inciting and threatening violence is evil and must be opposed.

We must be consistent in holding political leaders to account; all political leaders. 

We must embrace the reality that – while we cannot allow ourselves to have our perceptions distorted by partisan interests nor dilute our witness by holding overtly secular partisan positions – the Kingdom of God is inherently political.

Jesus is Lord.  Caesar – no matter what façade he or she wears – is not.  It doesn’t get more political than that.