Should Faith Inform Our Politics?

If you’ve ever hiked or played golf in the desert, you’ve probably experienced the irritation of having goatheads or sticker burrs lodged under the sock in your shoe. That’s what a series of nagging questions have been like for me—ones that have bothered me most of my adult life.

Questions about:

The relationship between faith and politics.

Whether the two belong together at all.

Whether religion and politics are better left undiscussed.

The degree to which my faith should influence my politics—and whether there comes a point when that influence crosses a line.

You see, on a deep level, I care about people. I care about my country. I care about our culture. And I don’t experience those concerns as something separate from my faith. They grow out of it—out of my belief in a God who calls me to love my neighbor and care about the world we share.

For most of my adult life, I’ve struggled to put into words how that faith informs my politics.

Early this year, my sister forwarded Ezra Klein’s interview with James Talarico and introduced me to the U.S. Senate candidate for the first time. The manner in which Talarico described his politics as flowing from his faith touched something in me profoundly. He gave words to a connection I had struggled for years to express.

At one point in the interview, he talks about Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, and Martin Luther King Jr., and how each undergirded his politics with a moral foundation. Their politics, Talarico says, was “rooted in faith,” because “your politics should grow out of that morality.”

What we are seeing now, he says, is often the reverse: “People start with their politics and try to figure out the morality on top of that.”

His comments in that interview crystallized something I had come to believe without realizing I believed it. The emotional response I had as I heard him speak revealed a sense of purpose deep inside me.

In fact, the impact was significant enough that within a few weeks—after soul-searching and receiving feedback from people in my life—I decided to retire a year earlier than I had planned; I decided to devote myself to exploring the intersection of faith, citizenship, and our common life.

That decision became A Civic Pilgrim.

Understand me when I say that I have political convictions; A Civic Pilgrim isn’t an attempt to pretend otherwise. But neither is its purpose to persuade you to support my candidates or my party. Its purpose is to encourage participation in our common life and, particularly—for those of us who are people of faith—to think seriously about what faithful participation requires.

Because Talarico’s political conclusions happen to resemble many of my own, it would be quite easy for me to celebrate the way his faith informs his politics. But what happens when someone’s sincere faith leads to conclusions with which I strongly disagree?

That’s when the goathead gets lodged a little deeper.

Because I have some experience with this.

My political convictions have changed considerably over the course of my adult life. When I was younger, I argued my beliefs from the starting point of the conservative politics in which I had been raised.

Conservatism was primary. Faith, I can see now, was often an afterthought. But I didn’t recognize that sequence at the time.

I wasn’t consciously choosing politics over faith. Those were simply the political assumptions I had inherited, and they provided the framework through which I understood many of the issues around me. Over time, that began to change.

My faith was changing me, too. I was greatly influenced by a pastor who challenged the way I thought about both faith and the world around me, and gradually my political views evolved. But I don’t remember making some conscious decision to reverse the sequence—to put faith first and politics second. Only later did I begin to recognize what had happened.

Today, I consciously try to begin somewhere different. I want my politics to be shaped by who I am as a Christian—by my understanding of Jesus and what it means to love God and love my neighbor.

That doesn’t mean another person who begins in the same place will reach the same political conclusions I do. Nor does it mean I’m immune from the temptation to make my faith conform to what I already want politically.

Which brings me back to the questions that have irritated me for so long:

Why did I find this particular blending of faith and politics—as expressed by Talarico— so appealing when I have often been deeply troubled by other expressions of faith in politics?

Is the problem really religion entering politics? Or is something more complicated happening?

Maybe that's the real fork in the road. Faith and politics are going to influence one another. The question is which direction that influence is traveling. Is my faith informing my politics—or are my politics informing my faith?

Last week’s Pilgrim Note, The Myth That Our Hope Lies in Heaven, dealt with the Christian hope being found here at home—today, here on Earth, as we partner with God to bring his kingdom reality into existence. But that hope requires our openness to what he is doing, and a surrendering of our wills to his beautiful plan.

If our faith shapes how we understand our neighbor, human dignity, justice, mercy, truth, responsibility and the common good, how could it not shape the way we exercise our citizenship?

Government, likewise, exists within the sovereignty of God. Paul writes in Romans 13:1, “There is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”

That does not mean every government—or every action taken by a government—represents the will of God. Scripture and history give us too many examples of rulers who abused their power to make that claim. But it does mean that our political lives cannot somehow be placed outside our discipleship.

So why should faith inform our politics? Because if I claim to be a follower of Jesus, I cannot reserve my politics as the one part of my life he is not permitted to shape.

My vote. The candidates I support. The policies I advocate. The causes to which I give my time and money. Even the way I regard people whose politics I find objectionable. All of it must be subject to the same question I ask about the rest of my life.

Is this what God wants of me?

And perhaps there is another question beneath that one: What is my influence actually serving?

Is it serving the purposes of God as I understand them—love of neighbor, truth, justice, mercy, human dignity and the common good? Or am I using my faith, perhaps without even realizing it, to serve the political outcomes I already prefer? “Inform” asks where my politics come from. “Serve” asks where they are taking me.

And answering that question requires more than attaching a Bible verse to a position I already hold. It requires discernment. It requires prayer. It requires enough humility to consider the possibility that I may be wrong.

That kind of self-examination seems especially important right now.

We are in another campaign season. Candidates are asking for our votes. Parties are telling us what is at stake. Advertisements, social media, commentators and campaigns will spend the coming weeks giving us reasons to fear one outcome and hope for another.

For those of us who are Christians, perhaps campaign season should also become a season of discernment.

Not simply Which candidate do I want to win?

But...

What is shaping the person who will cast my vote?

Am I beginning with my politics and asking my faith to support them? Or am I genuinely willing to bring my politics before God and allow my faith to shape them—even if that means being changed?

As I write this, there is an episode in the life of the Apostle Paul that comes to mind.

Before he was Paul, Saul was a deeply religious man. He was not indifferent to God. He was convinced that what he was doing was right. In fact, when he later told the story, he said, “I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth.”

He was acting out of religious conviction.

And he was wrong.

On the road to Damascus, Jesus confronted him. In Paul's later telling of the encounter, Jesus asked:

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads. (Acts 26:14)

A goad was not a goathead. It was a pointed instrument used to prod an animal in the direction it needed to go. But I can't help noticing the similarity in the images. Both are sharp and uncomfortable—and both make it difficult to keep traveling in the same direction.

Maybe that is what some of these questions about faith and politics have been doing to me all these years. And maybe the irritation isn't something I need to get rid of. Maybe I need to let it keep asking me whether I'm headed in the right direction.

Saul's story reminds me that religious conviction—even sincere religious conviction—is not proof that we have correctly discerned the will of God. If Saul could be utterly convinced that he was serving God while actually resisting what God was doing, then surely I should approach my own convictions with some humility.

Saul wasn't choosing between God and politics. He believed what he was doing was serving God—and he was wrong. Sincerity wasn’t enough. Religious conviction wasn’t enough. Even believing he was serving God wasn’t enough. Discernment was required.

So yes, I believe faith should inform our politics, but perhaps the more important question is the one underneath it:

Am I willing to let God inform mine?

Over the next several weeks, A Civic Pilgrim is going to stay with that goathead a little longer. This is the first of a three-part series on faith and politics. Today we've asked whether faith should inform our politics—and whether we are willing to examine which one is actually informing the other.

Next, we'll ask a different question: How should faith inform our politics? If faith forms us before it forms our political positions, then what kind of citizens does God desire that we become?

Then we'll take up perhaps the most difficult question: Where do we draw the line? How can my faith shape the way I exercise my citizenship without giving me the right to use government to advance an agenda?

And after those three parts, we'll end with an epilogue that turns from argument toward prayer, because maybe the necessary posture isn't one which asks God to bless a direction we've already chosen.

Maybe the posture we assume is one of being willing to ask whether he wants us to change direction, if a change is called for as we seek God's discernment.