JanFeb05RonSider

RON

A New Evangelical Consensus on Politics?

I’m truly excited and grateful to God for what might just be a historic document that significantly shapes evangelical political engagement in the next decade.

On October 7, 2004, the Board of Directors of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) unanimously adopted “For the Health of the Nations: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility” as its official policy statement for its work on public policy. I’m hardly a neutral observer (since I co-chaired the process that produced the declaration), but I think the document is strong, biblically balanced, and potentially very significant.

The NAE is the largest association of American evangelicals. It has 30 million members in over 50 denominations in 45,000 congregations. If even a large minority of those people started lobbying and voting on the basis of this document, American politics would change.

For many years, I have been critical of a great deal of evangelical political activity. Lacking a biblical balance of concern for all that the Bible says God cares about, it has often been narrowly focused on just a couple of issues, such as abortion and family. It has largely lacked any deep conceptual foundations in a carefully constructed political philosophy like that developed for Catholics in a century of papal encyclicals.As Ed Dobson (for years Jerry Falwell’s vice president at Moral Majority) later said:The approach was “ready, fire, aim.”

I used to dream about the unlikely possibility that a group of evangelical leaders, representing everyone from Jim

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Wallis to James Dobson, would engage in a process to develop a common set of principles for political engagement—in short, the beginnings of an evangelical political philosophy. I even proposed the idea in a few speeches and a chapter in a book. But the whole idea seemed highly unlikely.

Well, it has happened!

For the last two years, Diane Knippers (president of the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy) and I have co-chaired a process authorized by the NAE to develop just that kind of consensus document for evangelicals. Over 15 scholars wrote preparatory papers on key issues, and these will appear in March in a book edited by Knippers and myself called Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of the Nation.

A drafting committee, led by David Neff (editor of Christianity Today), produced an initial draft from these papers and then revised the document many times in response to suggestions from numerous people. Now a wide range of evangelical leaders are being invited to add their signatures to the final draft approved by the NAE. A series of meetings in Washington in March, 2005, will formally launch the document and the book.

Why is “For the Health of the Nation” so potentially important? Primarily because what it says is now the official platform of 30 million evangelicals, and it says several important things that many evangelicals have not said or practiced.

I underline four here.

First, the declaration clearly—and repeatedly!—adopts what ESA folk often summarize as a “pro-poor and pro-life, pro-racial justice and pro-family” approach:“The Bible makes it clear that God cares a great deal about the wellbeing of marriage, the family, the sanctity of human life, justice for the poor, care for creation, peace, freedom, and racial justice.While individual persons and organizations are at times called by God to concentrate on one or two issues, PRISM 2005

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faithful evangelical civic engagement must champion a biblically balanced agenda.”

Second, the declaration clearly affirms the importance of transforming both individuals and institutions. Even as evangelicals became much more politically engaged in the last two decades, researchers (e.g., Chris Smith) discovered that evangelicals still continued to think that the primary way to change society was “one person at a time” through personal conversion.This declaration reaffirms the importance of personal conversion in producing social change. But it lays equal emphasis on structural change:“Christian civic engagement must seek to transform both individuals and institutions …Lasting social change requires both personal conversion and institutional renewal and reform.”

Third, the declaration clearly calls for humility and civility in our political activity and insists that our commitment to other brothers and sisters in the one body of Christ far transcends any ongoing political disagreements: “We must be clear that biblical faith is vastly larger and richer than every limited, inevitably imperfect political agenda, and that commitment to the Lordship of Christ and his one body far transcends all political commitments.”

Fourth, the declaration clearly rejects excessive nationalism: “We confess that our primary allegiance is to Christ, his kingdom, and Christ’s worldwide body of believers, not to any nation…As Christian citizens of the U.S., we must keep our eyes open to the potentially selfdestructive tendencies of our society and our government. We must also balance our natural affection for our country with a love for people of all nations.”

I could go on. But read it for yourself on the ESA (www.esa-online.org) or NAE (www.nae.org) websites.

Consider studying it in a Sunday school class or small group (Christianity Today is producing a study guide).

Continued on page 37.

WASHINGTON

WATCH

ner of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.After weeks of controversy, much of it taking place behind the scenes, Mayor Koldenhoven vetoed the city council’s decision to purchase the church.The council could not muster a large enough counter-vote to override the veto, so the mayor’s decision stood.

The controversy was never really about the town’s need for a recreation center, but about fear of Arab Muslims by a large number of town residents.

Mayor Koldenhoven said he made his decision because of his commitment to protect the Constitution’s First Amendment and because Jesus said to love your neighbor. Among the mayor’s supporters was Michael VanderWeele, professor at Trinity Christian College, who could not fathom how town residents—many of them members of the town’s more than 21 churches—could condone racism or religious discrimination.

This story of fear and courage, of hatred and love, in Palos Heights in 2000 is just one of many stories about Middle America—the American homeland— told in Homeland (Seven Stories Press, 2004), by journalist Dale Maharidge with photographs by Michael Williamson. It is a book well worth reading.

The stories the book tells illuminate American life today, divided as it is along several fault lines. Maharidge traveled the

country, stopping in small towns and rural areas off the beaten path, inquiring into remarkable incidents and the heartdeep concerns of different kinds of Americans. What he found was two distinct Americas, one in places like Silicon Valley and Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the other in small, often poor, hard-up towns.

In the story about Muslims seeking entrance to Palos Heights he concluded that the tension was not so much racial as it was religious, with roots going back as far as the medieval Christian crusades.

For many Americans, the United States is a Christian country, and the entrance of too many Muslims would mean its demise. Regardless of what President Bush or any other president does to build a Homeland Security department, many Americans in heartland and elsewhere will feel “homeland insecurity” as long as the Muslim population is growing.

But is America the kind of country that should privilege Christians and secularists over Muslims? Or should we try to build an open society that rejects religious discrimination? Koldenhoven and VanderWeele believe that Christians are called to do the latter, but it takes work and listening to one another.And that is difficult to do in times of deep need when people are losing jobs and feeling abandoned.

One of Williamson’s photos shows the abandoned Homestead steel works in Rankin, Penn.Tough, hardworking men who once made steel there helped build America and also helped to defend it by working overtime during World War II.Today other countries produce steel at lower cost; jobs have moved elsewhere; and whole towns have lost their vitality.The old spirit of the steel works survives, however, in those who produced the bumper sticker that Williamson photographed on a truck in Phoenix, Ariz. It said,“God, Guns, and Guts Made America: Let’s Keep All Three.”

Is there another way to think about God and America’s future than in terms of guns and guts? Or perhaps we should ask, is there a better way to think about protecting the freedom of citizens who have the courage (guts) to honor God and to serve their civic neighbors today?

Koldenhoven showed guts in the decision he made.Where will we take our stand in the months and years ahead on the issues that now divide America? ★

Postcards From the Road continued from page 26.

Art & Soul continued from page 28.

Ron Sider continued from page 40.

by Micah, finds its counterpart in Jesus’ Big Three (again in the form of a prosecutor’s accusation, in Matthew 23:23): “You have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness.”

May we not be found negligent, but “let justice roll down” in all of life: my life, your life, the life of the church, and in our world. ■

that feed our souls and keep us moving.

Considering the darkness our cities continue to endure, I can’t help but long for more artists like Mako, for more beauty that points us upward, and for more encounters with I AM. ■

Dr. James Skillen is president of the Center for Public Justice (www.cpjustice.org). In addition to editing the Center’s quarterly Public Justice Report (from which this column was adapted), he is the author of In Pursuit of Justice: Christian-Democratic Explorations (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).

Most important, pray that the evangelical world will not only endorse but actually implement this declaration.

One-quarter of all U.S. voters are evangelicals. Think of the impact if half of them started lobbying and voting on the basis of this “biblically balanced agenda.”

Just a dream? Some dreams come Jo Kadlecek writes frequently on urban life and the arts. Her first novel, The Sound of true. Join me in praying that this hope My Voice, will be published this spring by becomes reality. ■ WaterBrook/Randomhouse.

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