W ashington Watch Christian Faithfulness and Government Policy God’s preferred way of relating with the world is the church—people following Jesus in community and seeking to live the way God desires. The church is meant to be the inbreaking of the desires of God where God’s will and way are most visible. The community of the faithful should—right now—be experiencing and revealing the ultimate future of all humanity, as if we are stories from heaven being told here on earth. Although we often fail at this, the church must seek to be the present embodiment of God’s heaven, an embodied politics that is more powerful than the politics of any nation. The church, as embodied in local churches, can seek to do this since we claim to understand some things more clearly because we learn from Jesus. For instance, we learn that peacemaking is blessed while war-making is not. We learn that forgiveness is God’s desire while vengeful or violent retaliation is not. We learn that when someone has an economic need, we provide for that person, not turning away from anybody who is in need. We learn to love our enemies rather than kill them. We learn not to be prejudiced against other ethnicities but to dismantle racist structures in our churches. We learn not to discriminate against women but to empower women in leadership. We learn that God is love and that God’s empowering grace enables followers of Jesus to be more patient, more forgiving, more generous, and more truthful than any earthly government could ever be. Governments are not the church, and the church can get things “right” in ways that governments generally cannot. Not only are governments not the church, but governments are also less than the church. Jesus’ kingdom is international, and since Jesus is the King of all kings, President of all presidents,
40 PRISM Magazine
and Prime Minister of all prime ministers, our citizenship in his kingdom should certainly trump our citizenship in any other nation. This means that when Christians speak to nations about their better and worse practices—their policies—Christians are not addressing institutions that are preferred by God over the church. In other words, there is more potential in faithful churches than in all the governments of the world put together. My threefold approach to church engagement with public policy starts with the church, rather than with the government. Regarding any particular “policy,” we must first discern the most faithful ways followers of Jesus should live related to that “issue.” We must discern the most faithful perspectives and actions for (1) churches—who we are and what we do regardless of whether others join with us; (2) individual followers of Jesus—who I am and what I do, regardless of whether others join with me; and (3) policy recommendations to the nations (emerging from our Christian attempts to be faithful to God)—who they are invited to become and what they are invited to do. Often step three will not be anywhere near Christian and church faithfulness, and Christian faithfulness should not be expected of the nations; step three is usually suggesting practices that are simply a bit more just than what is currently practiced. This method could be applied to every policy issue, but let’s explore immigration. First, we learn from the Scriptures, and especially from Jesus, that we should welcome any strangers or foreigners into our lives and make sure they are treated well, for we too are immigrants whose primary citizenship is in Jesus’ kingdom. And since churches should be communities of character that create people of integrity who live generously, churches can work with any and all immigrants in their area in structured ways to help with the difficult issues of residence change, such as language learning, legal assistance, citizenship processes,
Paul Alexander childcare, living wage jobs, medical attention, educational assistance, and exploitative employers. Second, I can work with my church in the above ways and also provide food, shelter, and friendship in my own home. If this is against the law, Christian love and faithfulness sometimes necessitates civil disobedience. If Christians treated immigrants as Jesus would (or as if they are Jesus, in a “whatever-you-do-to-the-least-ofthese” fashion), then our public policy recommendations would be informed by God’s life-changing politics that we already embody. Therefore, third, the US should make the pathway to citizenship easy for anybody who arrives, whether documented or not. This country is wealthy enough to accommodate those who want to immigrate, and much of that wealth was (and still is) extracted from their countries of origin to begin with. So if immigrants arrive in the US to share in the wealth that their countries produce for accumulation here, then the least the US can do is help them become citizens easily, without fear of deportation. As Esperanza for America (Esperanza. us) suggests, “All undocumented immigrants must register, pass a criminal background check, pay unpaid back taxes, learn English, and remit fines for illegal entry and overstay.” Esperanza’s recommendations are not as Christian as Christians can be, but they’re better than the immigration policies currently in place. Both churches and governments are broken, but Christians have Jesus’ example and the Holy Spirit’s empowerment to help us live faithfully and to help governments do un poquito mas de justicia—a little bit more justice.
Paul Alexander is ESA’s director of public policy and a professor of Christian ethics and public policy at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.