There is strong biblical warrant for the engagement of religion with politics.  The prophets of the Old Testament were in ceaseless conflict with state authorities, the paradigm case being the legend of Elijah’s conflict with King Ahab and his pagan court-priests.  Yet the classical, historical prophets, like Amos, Micah, the Isaiahs, the authors of Jeremiah and others were the persistent champions of the oppressed, as Yahweh’s chief concern, against the ruling classes.  Jesus’ clash with the temple authorities and with the representatives of the Roman Empire see him fully engaged with the politics of his day.  Though some authors, such as in E. Bammel and C. F. D. Moule (eds), Jesus and the Politics of His Day, Cambridge, 1984, are ambivalent about the nature of that engagement, the certainty of it as an unflinching pacifism has long been recognized by J. H. Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, Grand Rapids, 1972 and Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew, London, 1983.  More recently, Alan Storkey, Jesus and Politics, Grand Rapids, 2005,  has dramatized the Kingdom of God as announced by Jesus as a challenge to all earthly powers, and rejects the interpretation that rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s removes Christ’s message from the political realm — a point made also earlier by Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations. Rediscovering the roots of political theology, Cambridge, 1996.

Yet the idea that the Church should have anything to do with political debate has come under serious question in those societies that are secularist liberal.  Of course, the democratic state must be secular, for, being the business of all citizens, it cannot privilege any one point of view, especially in a pluralist and multi-faith community.  As with so much connected with our political institutions, the discussion begins in America, where the doctrine of the ‘separation of church and state’ received its first institutional expression.  The term was made famous by Thomas Jefferson, who was responding to the Baptist Association in Danbury, Connecticut, concerned about their freedom to worship.  It had previously been theorized by sometime Baptist, Roger Williams, the Founder of Rhode Island, and given firmer philosophical underpinnings by the devout English political theorist, John Locke, in his Letter Concerning Toleration of 1688.  (For Locke’s place as the cornerstone of human equality based on the providence of God, see Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke and Equality. Christian Foundations in Locke’s Political Thought, Cambridge, 2002.)  The original doctrine of separation had nothing to do with secularist liberalism, but was entirely based on the free expression of the worship of God.  The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States prohibits Congress from making any law ‘respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’.  Yet political liberalism has veered in a different direction where, Locke notwithstanding, all reliance on the providence of a (non-existent) God is held to be irrational.  This was not the position of the American Founders.  In his influential Religion in Public Life. A Dilemma for Democracy, Washington, 1996, Ronald Thiemann explains how James Madison, the chief drafter of the Constitution and a fierce champion of the ‘separation’, defended the free worship of God.  As Madison declared: ‘Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.  If this freedom is abused, it is an offense against God, not against man’ (Thiemann, p. 210).

Thiemann’s account is a timely corrective to the widespread assumption that the Founders were somehow against religion.  The secularist liberal attitude is in part fed by a reliance on the alleged secularism of the Enlightenment, but that also is not an unmixed legacy, since key Enlightenment figures such as Rousseau and Adam Smith were avowedly religious, and this was also the age of John Wesley, Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke, all devout and influential Christians.  We now have a sophisticated challenge to the idea that early modernity arose from secularist foundations in Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, Chicago, 2008.

The emergence of secularist liberalism is paralleled by the process of ‘secularization’.  The magisterial exposition of this phenomenon is Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Cambridge, Mass., 2007.  David Martin, of the London School of Economics, has written On Secularization.  Towards a Revised General Theory, Aldershot, 2005.  Recent work by the American sociologist, Peter Berger, and his associates, has insisted that American religiosity is not a sign of its ‘exceptionalism’, since most of the rest of the world, apart from Europe, is either maintaining long held religious observance or is undergoing intensive evangelization (see Peter Berger, Grace Davie and Effie Fokas, Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations, Farnham, 2008; cf. Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy, New York, 1990).  On Europe, Philip Jenkins has suggested that the deep seated religious symbols of secular Europe — not least its towering cathedrals — may well come back into political prominence the more Muslim immigration demands special legislation to accommodate Islamic sensibilities (Jenkins, God’s Continent. Oxford, 2007).

Interpretation of the ‘Establishment Clause’ by the court system in America has been erratic and inconsistent.  Yet there has a risen a ‘culture of disbelief’, which has been aided and abetted by court decisions and political argument, as is demonstrated by Stephen Carter, The Culture of Disbelief.  How American Courts and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, New York, 1994.  The courts have propagated Roger Williams’s metaphor, the ‘wall of separation’, especially following a judgment by Justice Hugo Black in 1947, but in more recent times law schools in America have been almost held in thrall to the philosophy of the Harvard professor, John Rawls, who argued powerfully in Political Liberalism, New York, 1993, that public discourse should be kept free from the influence of ‘comprehensive doctrines’, mainly religious beliefs.  The idea seemed to be that if people were attached to a particular dogma, their ability to participate in free and open discussion would be cramped.  He argued for an ‘overlapping consensus’ which admitted of points of view that could be accepted as ‘reasonable’ by all participating parties. Rawls held that some such dogmas would be dangerous, since they would risk the imposition by force of narrow religious teachings that would suit neither people of different faiths nor people of no faith.  Issues like abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage are hot-ticket issues in American politics, and many secularists are aghast at the prospect of succumbing to legislation that was introduced on the authority of the Jewish and Christian Bibles.  After the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York there was an rise in sectarian feeling, and a brief surge of Christian religious fervour.  In the heat of conflicting passions, some conservative Christians, forgetting Christ’s declaration that his kingdom was not of this world, asserted that ‘God wants us to take dominion’.  It was probably an unfortunate slip of the tongue when George W. Bush announced a ‘crusade’ against terror after the attacks; at least he did not repeat the gaffe.

John Rawls’ position incurred much critical debate, not least from people defending a Christian point of view.  If contributing to an overlapping consensus meant that people should discard the beliefs that struck deepest in their personalities, that constituted their being, then their participation would mean a discarding of their essential selves.  In any case, it seemed curious that a liberal arena of free speech should be set up to exclude any particular point of view.  Earlier liberals, like the deeply Christian John Milton, and the Utilitarian John Stuart Mill, had argued that the arena of free speech would allow truth to surface and to submerge false and pernicious arguments.  According to the Princeton philosopher, Jeffrey Stout, democracy is a tradition, the product of historical evolution, and not a matter of ‘agreement’ or ‘consensus’ at any moment in time.  A Christian has no option but to accept Christ as the Truth, Karl Barth proclaimed (Stout, Democracy and Tradition, Princeton, 2004, p. 109).  Stout opposes Stanley Hauerwas’s exclusivism, which construes Christians as ‘resident aliens’ in a hostile world: if Christianity is true, then liberalism must be false (Hauerwas, A Better Hope. Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy and Postmodernity, Grand Rapids, 2000).  Stout says Christians should not be identified by what they are against.  Liberalism, of course, is scarcely beyond criticism. Timothy Jackson, in Love Disconsoled: Meditations on Christian Charity, Cambridge, 1999, sees that a community is not possible without a measure of self-scrutiny based on standards that come from outside itself.  Liberalism typically rests its confidence in the autonomous self, but Jackson argues that ‘…in the absence of standards and interests “not just our own”, we tend to be incapable of any standards all, even prudence’, quoted in Stout, p. 257.  In this, he recalls Luther’s famous asseveration that our theology is sound because it sets us outside ourselves.  The liberal pragmatist, Richard Rorty, is even more forthright than Rawls about the exclusion of all religious discourse from the realm of policy formation; in some respects his fear of the powerful conservatism of the ‘religious right’ justifies his position, but again, the exclusion of people with legitimate concerns from the democratic square is unacceptable.  Cornel West, in Democracy Matters.  Winning the Fight Against Imperialism, New York, 2004, is a fervent advocate for religious influence in politics.  He agrees with Stout that two of the most far-reaching democratic reforms — the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s  — were motivated by Christian precepts about the dignity and equality of humankind before God. 

A wariness about the influence of the Christian Right does not come from liberals and secularists alone.  Some devout Christians are staunch advocates of the separation of church and state, a principle that demands considerable sacrifice on the part of religious bodies.  Barry W. Lynn is a minister of the United Church of Christ and has been executive Director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.  His Piety & Politics. The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom, New York, 2006, expresses a fear for the integrity of Christian worship threatened by those who would impose on their whole country a ‘biblical’ faith allegedly without interpretation, when in fact the Bible is used as an ideological weapon to support their own eccentric political views.  Lynn argues against religious interference with school curricula, such as the imposition of creationist science or biology, the adoption of religious symbols in courthouses and other public places, religiously motivated censorship, and an obsession with sex that amounts to a ‘war on our private lives’.  The costs can be substantial, because holding to the separation of church and state with integrity means forgoing tax concessions and public subsidies, and the administration of public funds for religious charities — Bush’s so-called ‘faith-based initiatives’.  Above all it means avoiding all advocacy of war and violence, which includes the Religious Right’s seemingly strong approval of the death penalty.

None of this is to say that, against the biblical warrant mentioned at the outset, religion has no part to play in public life.  The ‘separation’ requires a separation from the means of coercion or of force, which in a democracy is entirely the province of the secular state.  Robert Audi pursues this theme in Religious Commitment and Secular Reason, Cambridge, 2000, where he reinforces the separation of church and state while commending religious motives for political action, provided that they are not designed to restrict anyone’s freedom.  The idea that religious bodies should physically coerce conformity with their beliefs and opinions is entirely repugnant to religions of peace, and is completely at odds with the Christian Gospel.  As we have observed, the abolition of slavery or the advances in civil rights could not have been achieved without the exertion of government power — very tragically in the case of the Civil War fought against slavery.   Is there a paradox here, for we have affirmed that both movements were inspired by religious conviction?   No, because in each case the resort to arms and the enactment of coercive legislation respectively were carried out by the secular state.  The agitation for them came from religious movements, arguing in the political arena on the basis of their religious convictions.  The process took the form of intimations from the religious to the secular — compelling messages that could not forever be ignored, but that had to be acted upon after much serious, and reasonable, debate.  The example of Christ is to stand upon one’s God-inspired convictions, even unto the cross; in Jesus’s case the clash with the powers that be was inevitable, but there was never any hint of coercion on his part; the Kingdom Not Of This World knew nothing of physical coercion.

While Christian commitment could well entail engagement with politics, there is no warrant for a Christian political party or political movement, since Christ’s love and mercy, emanating from the Kingdom not of this world, can never be confined to a partisan cause or to any particular group of people.  He grants no political privileges to people calling themselves Christians.  Parties called ‘Christian Democrats’ are a contradiction in terms, their name bordering on the blasphemous.  Something of this point of view is espoused by Glenn Tinder, whose The Political Meaning of Christianity, Baton Rouge, 1989, advocates a ‘prophetic stance’, indicating an orientation to worldly politics that offers a Christian ‘wisdom that is pertinent to political as well as personal life’.  ‘Christian principles place one in a radical — that is critical and adverse — relationship to established institutions.  The Kingdom of God is a judgment on the existing society; the immanence of the Kingdom of God symbolizes its impermanence.’ (p. 154). J. Philip Wogaman likewise appeals to the sovereignty of God to criticize current politics.  For him the Christian message enjoins the avoidance of violence and God’s preference for the poor and defenceless.  It also supplies a shield against the arrogance of executive power, and provides wise counsel to the powerful. 

Some of Wogaman’s exposition accounts for differences in Christian approaches, particularly as between ‘mainstream liberals’ and ‘neo-Conservatives’.  These categories are not always so clear-cut.  In recent times a great deal of headway has been made by self-confessed Evangelical, Jim Wallis, who has decisively dissociated himself from the Christian Right, and has confronted their shock jock advocates with courage and resolution.  Wallis has founded the journal Sojourners, which sets out to be the embodiment of God’s preference for the poor, and challenges the state to enact more just and compassionate legislation.  Wallis is heavily engaged politically, without compromising the integrity of his Christian faith.  In three recent books he has set out his manifesto:  in God’s Politics.  How the American Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, Oxford, 2005, he launches a frontal attack on the pretensions of ‘bible-hugging’ fundamentalists to seize the political agenda.  About this book, Tim Costello says that it is addressed ‘to those who wondered how the message of Jesus ever became aligned with big business, military spending, gun ownership, tax cuts and disdain for the environment’.  Jim Wallis is much more than an author and a pastor.  He is an experienced and effective lobbyist with the powerful, an organizer of conferences and seminars, and a catalyst for petitions and letter writing campaigns, all in the cause of Christian social justice.  His The Great Awakening. Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America, New York, 2008, seeks to tap into the reserves of American religiosity, particularly on the part of those surprised to find a Christian advocating social justice reforms, and to adumbrate the future of Christian reform advocacy.  In Rediscovering Values On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street.  A Moral Compass for the New Economy, Wallis takes up the challenge posed by the global financial crisis by condemning the self-centred posture of the recently failed capitalists, discarding the ‘greed is good’ ideology that preceded it, and calling for a new consensus on what is moral behaviour in a mutually caring community.

In Australia, often claimed to be the great post-Enlightenment society, we do not experience America’s widespread religious fervour, nor its intense intra-faith conflicts, at least not since the sectarian warfare between Protestants and Catholics up to the 1950s.  Perhaps as a consequence, we do not have the same outpouring of polemical religious literature that one finds in the US.  There have been a number of useful historical studies that impinge on the political.  In A Crucible of Prophets. Australians and the Question of God, Sydney, 1981, the Catholic public theologian and literary critic, Veronica Brady challenged the prevailing utilitarian characterization of Australia with a fair appraisal of its spirituality.   Roger C. Thompson, in Religion in Australia, Melbourne, 2002, explores the shaping of political attitudes through sectarian religion.  Robert D. Linder, in The Long Tragedy.  Australian Evangelical Christians and the Great War, 1914-1918, Adelaide, 2000, shows how Evangelicals were taught about war as ‘God’s instrument’, and how the Great War would be a ‘holy war’.  Likewise, Stuart Piggin’s Evangelical Christianity in Australia.  Spirit, word and world,  Melbourne, 1996, demonstrates the evangelical embrace of political liberalism in early Australia, together with the evangelicals’ work in shaping civic communities in the outback.

On matters of religion and social justice, Catholic theologians, serving under the umbrella of the famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum, are prominent.  For example, see Bruce Duncan’s The Church’s Social Teaching. From Rerum Novarum to 1931, North Blackburn, 1991, or Mark O’Connor’s contribution to Peter J. Henriot, Edward p. De Berry, Michael J. Schultheis and O’Connor, Catholic Social Teaching.  Our Best Kept Secret, North Blackburn, 1992;  or on labour rights see Tim Battin’s Full Employment. Towards a Just Society, Sydney, 1997.  On the evangelical side, see Noel Weeks (ed.), Reflected Light.  Essays in Christian Social Policy, Sydney, 2005.  The Uniting Church’s social justice directorate, UnitingJustice, maintains a prolific website which makes available pamphlets, press releases and public statements on topical justice issues in Australia, at    http://www.unitingjustice.org.au/     The volumes of Spirit of Australia.  Religion in Citizenship and National Life, first volume edited by Brian Howe and Alan Nichols, Hindmarsh, 2001; and second volume edited by Brian Howe and Philip Hughes, Hindmarsh, 2003, contain much sophisticated insight on the relation between religion and politics in Australia.  There has been some recent concern about the possible infiltration of right-wing conservative Christian ideals into Australian political life, as debated by Amanda Lohrey, in her Quarterly Esssay, Voting For Jesus/ Christianity and Politics in Australia, Melbourne, 2006, and Marion Maddox, in a book titled, with delicious irony, God Under Howard. The Rise of the Religious Right in Australian Politics, Crows Nest, 2005.  Her earlier parliamentary fellowship led to a fruitful study of the level of engagement with religion by federal politicians: For God and Country. Religious Dynamics in Australian Federal Politics, Canberra, 2001.

Of course a brief survey such as this can scarcely do justice to the volume of work on religion and politics, which would fill many libraries.   The literature on the puritans in both Britain and America, for example, is vast, and has strong implications for the emergence of democracy in the modern world.  Denominational studies frequently discuss the impact of their traditions on political developments, and the list could go on and on.  Of enormous importance in today’s world is the interaction between the Muslim and the Christian worlds, a topic so huge as not to be even attempted.  The above review merely tries to deal with a few pertinent topics on the interface between the religious and secular worlds, and is offered as a brief indication of certain trends of argument.

Graham Maddox

Professor Dr. Graham Maddox is Emeritus Professor of Political Science and served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts for twelve years at the University of New England, and was a member of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton in 2006-7.  He is author of ‘Australian Democracy in Theory and Practice’, ‘The Political Writings of John Wesley’ and ‘Religion and the Rise of Democracy’, a historical and political survery of the contribution of religion to the development of democracy, from ancient Israel contemporary movements in England, America and Latin America, Poland, Germany and South Africa. 

Graham is an Accredited Lay Preacher within the Armidale, Uralla and Guyra Uniting Church congregations, and a member of the Uniting Justice Reference Committee. 

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