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Does the church have a political function?

Having discovered that neither road conditions not availability of gas stations across Yugoslavia would permit the continuation of our Vespa expedition from Rome to the Holy Land, that my wife Peggy and I had undertaken in 1955, we arranged to store our Vespa in Trieste. We would continue by Dalmatian steamer, narrow-gauge railway and market bus. The delay brought to light a Waldensian (the oldest Protestants) parish paper with a bold headline: “La vocazione politica de la chiesa.” I give it to you in the original Italian because that is the way it has tumbled around in my head for sixty-four years. The English is obvious enough: “The political vocation of the church.”


But does the church have a political calling? I recall long ago Newfoundland air cadets from conservative Evangelical churches in the outports who not only thought it sinful to dance, drink, and view movies, but who would have thought it disobedient to Christ to get involved in worldly politics. Their operative text was “come ye out and be separate.” There has, of course, been a monumental shift in fundamentalist Christianity. Under the influence of the mega-churches it has moved in an aggressive opposite direction that helped put Trump’s finger on the nuclear button. Christopher Hedges, in is recent book America, the Farewell Tour is essential reading in this respect.


A Christian political vocation endures. The guidance is found mainly in Paul’s assertion in Romans 13, “The powers that be are from on high” and in Augustine, the 5th century theologian who argued that God gave the state to human kind as a “Divine remedy for sin.” Without coercive law and order we would probably be in a worse mess than we are now. What kind of polluted water would we be drinking, what kind of contaminated air would we be breathing, or noxious food eating, were it not for state regulators? Admittedly, a problem remains for Christians: How do we reconcile the apostle Paul with Jesus’ radical non-violence and non-resistance in the Sermon on the Mount? But that’s what serious Bible study should be about.


In the meantime, apart from small dissenting groups like the Bruderhof and the Amish Mennonites, the Christian church has gone with Paul and Augustine. The United Church has been especially vigorous in pursuing a Christian witness in the everyday life of politics and economics. The names of Jim Mutchmor and Al Forrest still reverberate in the memories of aging members. Mutchmor was Secretary of the powerful Board of Evangelism and Social Service and Forrest was editor of the United Church Observer. Many wondered whether the stress induced by opposition to Forrest’s testimony for the Palestinian’s precipitated an early death. The present challenge is to formulate an authentic Christian political vocation for our time. I want to propose a strategy.


The United Church of Canada is presently undergoing a reorganization into regions, networks and clusters that provide us with an opportunity. Instead of local communities of faith going it alone, Christians can now utilize the new church structure to exercise their political witness. Some heroic networks are already doing something like this. What I did was contact my provincial and federal members of parliament asking for constituency maps upon which I could subsequently superimpose United Church maps to determine the scope of political lobbying. The provincial (NDP) replied; the federal (Liberal) did not. I will store my political grievances and expectations until elections are called. Then I will ask, “Where do you stand on this and this? Will you work to implement such and such a program? Depending on the commitments you make, I will vote for you or not.”


The principalities and powers may be infinitely more efficacious than a ragtag network of Christians. But you never know. And there is something spiritually bracing in being faithful to the heavenly vision.

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