The idea that Christians should not be political has no teeth. As I have written elsewhere, the Gospel is inherently theo-political just at the point that its very premise is: Jesus is KING. The Gospel has implications; it is first an indicative, but as an indicative it presents imperatives that theo-logically flow from its antecedent and indicatory reality in the Triune God. Scottish theologian, and my theological mentor, Thomas Torrance writes the following in regard to the eternal indicative of God’s grace (en extenso):

To sum up: Grace in the New Testament is the basic and the most characteristic element of the Christian Gospel. It is the breaking into the world of the ineffable love of God in a deed of absolutely decisive significance which cuts across the whole of human life and sets it on a new basis. That is actualized in the person of Jesus Christ, with which grace is inseparably associated, and supremely exhibited on the Cross by which the believer is once and for all put in the right with God. This intervention of God in the world and its sin, out of sheer love, and His personal presence to men through Jesus Christ are held together in the one thought of grace. As such grace is the all-comprehensive and constant presupposition of faith, which, while giving rise to an intensely personal life in the Spirit, necessarily assumes a charismatic and eschatological character. Under the gracious impingement of Christ through the Spirit there is a glad spontaneity about the New Testament believer. He is not really concerned to ask questions about ethical practice. He acts before questions can be asked. He is caught up in the overwhelming love of Christ, and is concerned only about doing His will. There is no anxious concern about the past. It is Christ that died! There is no anxious striving toward an ideal. It is Christ that rose again! In Him all the Christian’s hopes are centred. His life is hid with Christ in God. In Him a new order of things has come into being, by which the old is set aside. Everything therefore is seen in Christ, in the light of the end, toward which the whole creation groaneth and travaileth waiting for redemption. The great act of salvation has already taken place in Christ, and has become an eternal indicative. The other side of faith is grace, the immediate act of God in Christ, and because He is the persistent Subject of all Christian life and thought, faith stands  necessarily on the threshold of the new world, with the intense consciousness of the advent of Christ. The charismatic and the eschatological aspects of faith are really one. In Christ the Eternal God has entered into this present evil world which shall in due course pass away before the full unveiling of the glory of God. That is the reason for the double consciousness of faith in the New Testament. By the Cross the believer has been put in the right with God once for all—Christ is his righteousness. He is already in Christ what he will be—to that no striving will add one iota. But faith is conscious of the essential imminence of that day, because of the intense nearness of Christ, when it shall know even as it is known, when it shall be what it already is. And so what fills the forward view is not some ideal yet to be attained, but the Christian’s position already attained in Christ and about to be revealed. The pressure of this imminence may be so great upon the mind as to turn the thin veil of sense and time into apocalyptic imagery behind which faith sees the consummation of all things. Throughout all this the predominating thought is grace, the presence of the amazing love of God in Christ, which has unaccountably overtaken the believer and set him in a completely new world which is also the eternal Kingdom of God.[1]

You might be wondering how I am attempting to use TFT’s thinking on grace, and apply it to a discussion on theopolitics. The point for me is this: it is precisely because Christians are so overcome with the in-breaking reality of God’s grace for them in Christ, as that confronts them afresh and anew moment by moment, that our senses for God’s righteousness are heightened to levels that not only transcend our particular groupings and tribes, but then descend back into our groupings and tribes in such a way that we can do nothing but bear witness to the very esse of our human being (who is the Christ) in the world. As the prophet, Jeremiah has cried out: ‘Sometimes I think, “I will make no mention of his message. I will not speak as his messenger anymore.” But then his message becomes like a fire locked up inside of me, burning in my heart and soul. I grow weary of trying to hold it in; I cannot contain it.’[2] This is how I see God’s grace, who is Jesus, implicating the political positioning of the Christian.

As Aristotle rightly understood, humans are political-animals through and through. Being political simply means being human in an inter-webbed relationship with other human beings who are seeking to live in an ordered and organized way. As Christians, of all people, as we have already been referring to, we have an intimate relationship with the God who is the only real order this world can ever hope for. This means that the Christian’s position in the world, is even more so, one that has the greatest possibility for being the most genuinely political. Even as the Apostle Paul has noted: “But our citizenship [πολίτευμα][3] is in heaven—and we also eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, …”[4] Of import, in regard to the Christian’s citizenship, is that we are a genuinely ‘political’ community of people, just as we find our order of life as we are participatio Christi, participants in Christ’s life, and thus ‘partakers of the [triune] divine nature.’ So, while we are a societas, as Christians we are a fellowship of people who have a message to proclaim; a message that Jesus is King, and that in His Kingdom the straight is straight, and not crooked.

Thus far, I don’t think that what I have shared is all that remarkable. In other words, I think Christians of all stripes would affirm, based on what I have communicated so far, that we are truly a political people; a Christo-political people, if you will. Where the impasse comes, which also is rather unremarkable, is how ‘our politics’ as Christians comports with a given political party’s policies in this current world iteration. My lowest common denominator, when it comes to understanding how my Christo-politico correlates, or doesn’t, with any given party’s politik, and its policies, is a question: which party comports best with my LCD? And my LCD is the sanctity of human life. The most obvious concrete example of this for me is the highly politicized (and it shouldn’t be, in regard to its sanctity before God) issue of abortion. With 60M+ abortions in the USA since Roe v Wade, this remains a watershed issue that no Christian of any sort of sensitivity to the Holy Spirit can simply reduce to a “single-issue.” The way the Christian, or the person in general, thinks about abortion will indicate just how deeply God’s grace, the indicative of God’s grace, has penetrated said person’s heart. Further, it will implicate whether or not a person has the capacity, or not, to choose life or death, when it comes to the broader complex of life. I take this ‘single-issue’ as being an indicator of just where someone’s ethical and holiness barometer is at in regard to their ability to reason about life and death in grace-filled ways, or not. But this is just one example of many that we could consider; yet it is my lowest common denominating standard for considering all else in regard to the ground of my human being as a Christian.

Can a Christian avoid politics? Nein. We are the most political animals in the cosmos precisely because we know the One who upholds all things by the very Word of His power, Jesus Christ.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers, 34-5.

[2] Jeremiah 20.9, NET [emboldening mine].

[3] The word translated ‘citizenship’ comes from the koine Greek word, πολίτευμα, and its semantic range (or meaning) is such: 1) the administration of civil affairs or of a commonwealth  2) the constitution of a commonwealth, form of government and  the laws by which it is administered  3) a state, commonwealth  3a) the commonwealth of citizens (see Greek Bible).

[4] Philippians 3.20, NET.