Sermons

Reformed Faith and Politics

(Retitled from The Future of Faith)

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
November 15, 2009	Mark 13:1-8

I apologize if this is a repeated story, but it seems to fit this morning. Some years ago, when our family was living in Zanesville, Ohio, our school system held a bond levy, requesting the voters to increase their taxes to support increased school funding. I don’t know how this happened, precisely, but my father ended up as the chairperson of the campaign.

I remember two things about the campaign.

1. It lost.
2. My father kissed our principal.

I remember one event, a kind of rally, I believe, at the high school auditorium. The high school marching band played, and there were some speeches, including one from my dad. At some point in the proceedings, various dignitaries were introduced. The principal of our school was one of them. She was the kind of woman, I thought then, who would make Attila the Hun look like Mr. Rogers. She was introduced, and my dad gave her a little kiss on the cheek. Talk about compromising your principles for the sake of politics. I often thought later about that experience.

What I think about is less the principal-kissing drama, than the notion, the notion of a minister (or any person of faith, let me establish that quickly and strongly, any person of faith), getting involved in public life that way, in politics, in a quest for the common good.

A school levy in Zanesville is pretty small potatoes, but it makes the point. One point is to dispel a point, the question of “whether.” That is, the question of whether a person of faith should this at all.

Some would say no, that a person of faith should not dirty themselves in human affairs, particularly the affairs of politics. Our Presbyterian, Reformed, yes Calvinist, tradition would insist otherwise.

We would be guided especially by the soul of scripture, the prophets of the Old Testament, Amos and Micah, Isaiah and Hosea and more, Jesus’ efforts to transform political and economic life. For us, the transformed life embodied by Jesus happens not later but now, and is real in the present, so that calls us to work with God to transform culture and society, as well as the church, along the lines of deep biblical values, justice and righteousness, reconciliation and equality. It cannot be acceptable to embrace those values partially, or say that they hold sway in some aspects of life but not others.

That can get messy, as we will see, but the fundamental affirmation needs to be that the dictates of our faith, faith in a sovereign God who is God of all of life, leads us to work for transformation in all of life.

This extended conversation with and about John Calvin will conclude next Sunday, but this morning’s is one where Calvin’s contributions to theology and history continue to be significant.

* Calvin believed, as our bulletin cover quotation reminds us, in public justice and responsible government.
* As a political exile and refugee himself, he would have thoughts on immigration.
* He also believed in representative government – whether in the church or in society. Absolute monarchy of any kind that could lead to tyranny was to be avoided. Democracy wasn’t perfect, but it afforded checks and balances on the uses and abuses of power.
* Calvin believed, in fact, that the highest vocational calling was not the ministry (nor do I, by the way!), but the politician.
* While other theologians believed that biblical law was intended to scare us into right living so that we avoid eternal damnation, Calvin saw a better use for it, as a kind of moral shaper and former.

In a new book called Political Grace: The Revolutionary Theology of John Calvin, Roland Boer makes just that point, that we make a huge mistake if we separate, distinguish, Calvin’s political thought from his theology, that, in fact, his political thinking is a natural trajectory from his theology. Church and state, therefore, according to Calvin, had mutual concerns, the betterment of society.

Again, in Geneva, politics mixed itself up in the affairs of the church in a way that would not happen today, but Fred Graham reminds us that both church and government needed to be concerned about the poor and weak, protecting their rights, affording them services, holding the rich and powerful in check. That meant that Calvin and the church were concerned with things like hospitals and access to health care (insert your own opinion about health care reform here, but ask yourselves what primary principles are guiding it); about the welcome and care of refuges (do the same for this one); about fair wages and labor practices; about education.

Calvin respected government a great deal, but he also believed that the citizenry had the right and responsibility to call for changes and even revolution if government did not exercise its power fairly and justly.

I don’t know if any of this feels Presbyterian or not, relevant or not, but it does to me. As I said, careers have been spent analyzing this stuff, and I will stop now, at least with Calvin, but the theological affirmations are important – how the sovereignty of God works itself out in civic affairs, in matters of politics and public life, how justice and democracy are at the core matters of faith.

For us, that has worked itself out in many ways.

* John Knox, whenever he was exiled from Scotland, ended up in Geneva and saw Calvin in action. He would return to Scotland and put this democracy business in action, in church and politics, and the Presbyterian Church was born.
* John Witherspoon experienced it and lived it out as the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence, an act of faith as well as an act of politics.
* Though our record isn’t wonderful, it was a handful of ministers, including Presbyterians, who led the earliest abolition movements, and it was the arrest of a white Presbyterian Stated Clerk, Eugene Carson Blake, seeking to integrate a Baltimore amusement park, that helped to shake loose our response to civil rights, and remains the proudest moment for a generation of Presbyterians while a scandal for others.
* In those same 1960’s, we wrote a theological statement that insisted that things like warfare, racial reconciliation, poverty and gender equality were matters of reconciliation for the church.

This conversation can’t be about reclaiming the 1960’s, heavens no. But can we look at those topics – war and race, poverty and human sexuality – as lenses through which we might frame our response today, new contexts but timeless commitments.

And this congregation, thorough its history, both in our denomination and in our city, has been a kind of laboratory for this to work itself out.

* We were early embracers of the abolition movement, and at the turn of the last century, the early 1900’s, supported laborers and their unions.
* We championed women’s ordination in the 1950’s, and champion new forms of ordination now.
* Some of you will remember race relationships in the 1960’s and Friends of FIGHT.

A key issue for us now, I believe, is the linkage we are discovering between our hands-on service efforts and how we work to transform systems. Some of us tutor in schools 6 and 35 – might that tutoring lead to our working for changes in public education? Some of us share our time in RAIHN, or the Food Cupboard, or Dining Room Ministry – might those commitments lead us to work for changes in the way that our poorer sisters and brothers have access to resources, so that the conditions of poverty that created these needs might disappear altogether?

It was just over we year ago that we elected a new president. Perhaps you remember it. I remember many things, including some difficult moments for each candidate as their candidacies were attached to ministers deemed controversial, one because of his positions on race and America and one because of his positions on Israel and Christianity. Perhaps that is yesterday’s news, echoes of a rigorous campaign. And yet we as people of faith must talk about race in America must talk about the Middle East, not because we are Democrats or Republicans, but because reconciliation and justice are foundational gospel commitments.

We are not Calvin’s Geneva. We are not colonial America. We are not Rochester in the 1960’s. It is a new world, a new moment. But every world is God’s, and every moment is God’s, so we are called to, and we must, find ways to bring the vision of our faith into contact with our political commitments, and see what happens.

I believe there is much common ground that we can find if we look for it. And when we can’t, we are called to a moral, not moralistic approach. In Rochester, there has to be non-partisan common ground on things like violence and education and poverty. And in our national discourse, there must be some common ground on things like health care and poverty.

Two final thoughts. Some of us heard Bishop Matthew Clark the other evening. Reflecting on the Conference of Bishops position on health care reform, Bishop Clark’s response was consistent with what I have been trying to say, and what we seek to embody. That a person of faith, or a faith community, has the responsibility to hold forth the values that it cherishes so that they may be considered in public discourse. That does not infringe on the separation of church and state. It is rather the proper exercise of faith. You can disagree with our convictions, the bishop said, but we have the right to promote them, not to be partisan, but to be principled.

Some of us gathered for a conversation on the spirituality of the rock band U2 last night. One of the people that lives in our house says that we need a whole sermon on U2. Here’s a little nugget, the singer Bono speaking to the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast, on global debt and poverty and the AIDS crisis. “When churches started demonstrating on debt, governments listened—and acted. When churches starting organizing, petitioning, and even—that most unholy of acts today, God forbid, lobbying… on AIDS and global health, governments listened—and acted.” Bono says: “You changed minds; you changed policy; you changed the world….”

It’s a good speech, though not nearly as inspirational as a U2 concert. Bono concludes, talking about Africa, but he could be talking about many things: “From charity to justice, the good news is yet to come. There is much more to do. There's a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response...justice is a higher standard...Justice and Equality.”

That’s the conversation we join, not an esoteric discussion about faith and politics, but a call to action based on the principles by which Jesus lived and for which he died, confirmed by a 500 year-old political refugee and theologian, and all the saints, who love God, love God’s city and love God’s world. Amen.