LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 335

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

ical system, it is inevitable that a church that makes social statements must

choose one partisan option or another:
Ina society like ours, a church which expresses itself through official state-
ments about controversial political and social questions automatically falls
into one political category or another. There is no escaping this unless the
statements are put in the most general way possible and are therefore as
vague as possible. But those who are keen that the church should make
statements—often the church leaders themselves—are against precisely
that. What is left is that by speaking out, the churches can only approve or
reject, and in so doing make their entry into the political arena.'”

In fact, for Kuitert, doing politics through church channels actually con-
tributes to the decline of democracy itself, because church assemblies—
which have no real accountability to anyone—usurp the work and respon-
sibilities of genuinely political institutions.

Thus, there are practical and not only theological reasons to question
the wisdom of American religious lobbies. A. James Reichley believes that
church bodies that “advocate detailed positions on particular pieces of leg-
islation or administrative policies ... risk squandering their moral author-
ity on questions on which their technical competence will usually be
slight.” Robert Zwier, a political scientist, also believes that there are
even serious questions as to when political advocacy by churches becomes
an imposition or “religious establishment”:

The respondents in this study were undoubtedly engaged in advocacy
resting on moral or ethical premises, but they were very insistent that they
were not guilty of imposition. How do they perceive this fine line? How
do they avoid crossing it? ...

The typical recourse for these religious groups is to claim that they are
advocating measures that are in the best interest of all people in society,
with a particular concem for the poor and oppressed. They claim to be
arguing for social justice. Yet, their argument is at its roots a religious or
biblical argument, with which others may disagree. Others may have a dif-
ferent conception of what is in the best interests of society, a different view
of social justice. Each group in the debate is then asking Congress or the
White House to adopt its view of social justice. Inevitably someone will
win or at least dominate; someone's view of morality—or social justice—-
will come out on top. Isn’t that imposition, especially from the perspective
of those who lost?

Unfortunately, according to Zwier, Washington church-body advocates do
not have time to think about these seemingly peripheral questions, because
“most of the respondents were too busy ... worrying about how to support

Tid, 142.
* Reichley, 354.

viction and conscience must be respected, because religious liberty is the
most fundamental liberty of all. Therefore, in a principled democratic soci-
ety, the church’s powerful public influence is from the bottom up:

Under either the “total state” or the “total church,” the chief movement of
an ideology or religion is, socially speaking, always direct and from the top
down. But in a democratic society where principled participation is flour-
ishing, their chief movement is always indirect and from the bottom u
Thus in a pluralistic democracy each faith, whether transcendent or natu-
ralistic, Western or Eastern, modern or traditional, exercises its primary
shaping power morally and indirectly rather than politically and directly.
Instead of any faith being promulgated from above, each must penetrate
and influence from below.'¥

It should also be noted that the church must have a “stomach for disagree-
ments” as well as respect for differences of conscience. Also in the church,
and not only in the public square, civil but principled debate on social
ethics must be encouraged."

The critical questions, therefore, are not whether the church should be
involved with politics, or whether it can even avoid being involved with
politics, but “how church and politics are and ought to be related” and
“how each kind of political involvement affects the nature and mission of
the church."'” As a result, the remainder of this section will be devoted to
characterizing three aspects of the church’s inevitably public yoice: the mes-
sage, the messenger, and the means.

The Message

It is tempting to say that the church’s public message is simply the
Word of God. But given that God’s Word is both Law and Gospel, with
both spiritual and temporal concerns, we must self-consciously evaluate
exactly what the church has to say. We must pay attention to principles,
purpose, priority, and prudence.

"" Thid., 266-67.

"To try and bring a corrective to this [current sorry} state of affairs based on a weak
stomach for disagreements or on a reluctance to play political hardball would be useless.
Either principled persuasion is tougher-minded and more realistic than realpolitik or it will
not work. To say this is not bravado. Debate and persuasion are so incontrovertibly central
to liberal democracy that if freedom and justice are its lifeblood, debate and persuasion are
its oxygen. Not only that, in America's case the centrality of persuasion grows directly out
of three impulses that are both deeply American and fundamental to religious liberty—con-
science, pluralism, and the First Amendment.” Ibid., 268.

*© Robert Benne, “The Church and Politics: Four Possible Connections,” This World 25
(Spring 1989): 27.

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of oppose tomorrow’s congressional actions to reflect much about whether
and when successful policy advocacy leads to religious establishment.”
“Why don’t the churches just shut up?” Lutheran sociologist Peter Berg-
er once asked.'™ He was expressing the exasperation of many Americans
who are faced with a flood of social and political statements issuing from
church bodies and church leaders these days. It is becoming clearer that the
churches, if they wish to preserve the credibility of their voices, are going to
have to be more careful with their speaking than they have been lately.

B. Moral Authority
without Political Partisanship

Reichley (following the suggestion of Berger) proposes that instead of
concentrating on social action, the church should broker honest and prob-
ing dialog on the issues for the benefit of its members as Christian citizens:
“By very reason of their broad and varied memberships and the moral
standing they should naturally possess, the churches are well suited to act
as mediators or fact-finders on many issues over which technical experts
disagree.” In order to do this, according to Reichley, the ‘churches “would
have to cultivate reputations for objectivity and openmindedness as to
means. These qualities are hardly compatible with the positions that some
churches have recently been taking as partisan combatants or propagan-
dists for the political left or right.” If the churches become “too involved in
the hurly-burly of routine politics,” argues Reichley, “they will eventually
appear to their members and to the general public as special pleaders for
ideological causes or even as appendages to transitory political factions.”

Os Guinness agrees. For him, a civil public square requires “principled
participation” and “principled persuasion.”'™ Thus, people of all faiths
and worldviews, transcendental or naturalistic, should freely and fully
engage all others concerned with the affairs of public life. The public
square may, as a result, become “crowded and noisy,” according to Guin-
ness, but this is simply essential to a vital democracy. Equally essential,
however, is a commitment to persuasion rather than imposition. Inner con-

Robert Zwier, “Church and State: The Views of Religious Lobbyists,” a paper pre-
sented to the Annual Conference of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Novem-
ber 34-16, 1986.

** Quoted in Reichley, 350
“pid, 355; 359.
“The first [principlel, dealing more with action, is the expression of the freedom that

is central to the civil public square, whereas the second, dealing more with communication,
18 the expression of the duty that is central to the civil public square.” Guinness, 259

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First, the two-kingdom distinction of Lutheran confessional theology
Tequires that the basic principles of the church's public message be careful-
ty discerned. Is the message concerned with spiritual righteousness or with
civil righteousness? Is it focused on sin and grace or on the neighbor and
‘social justice? Is it grounded in the revelation of God in Christ or in human
reason and natural law as well? As we have already seen, for Lutherans the
normative principles of the civil order are reason and justice. When speak-
ing to different audiences, the church’s message must be sensitive to the
biblical principles that are most appropriate to each audience.

Second, the Lutheran two-kingdom distinction also requires that the
purpose of the church’s message be carefully discerned. When God’s Law
convicts the sinner and prepares the way for forgiveness of sins through
faith in Christ, it also seeks to restrain harmful behavior and enhance our
life in a fallen world. Speech to the government regarding sinful behavior
is less appropriate than speech regarding the social consequences of sinful
behavior. The Bible addresses both subjects and, for the Christian, there is
a profound connection between them. Yet, in the complex diversity of the
modern public square, it is the consequence and not the sinfulness that is
the focus. The church must clarify its public speech in order to speak most
helpfully to what is actually at issue.

Third, the church’s messages also must be consciously prioritized,
given the profound limitations of human existence. Even our Lord will-
ingly subjected Himself to these limitations (Phil. 2:6~8; Heb. 2:17-18; 4:15)
in such a way that, when confronted by the magnitude of human need, He
accomplished only so much within a given time-frame. When Martha was
upset because Mary used her precious moments with the Lord to hear His
teaching rather than to “help out in the kitchen” (with what were, admit-
tedly, also important human tasks), Jesus spoke clearly regarding the
importance of priorities: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled
about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good por-
tion, which shall not be taken away from her’ (Luke 10:41-42). The issue is
not good and bad, but better and best. The church must never let its eter-
nally significant witness to faith in Jesus Christ be eclipsed by the enormi-
ty of human temporal concerns. When church conventions, for instance,
literally become preoccupied with social issues—however important these
may be—Christ’s “one thing needful” is lost. The church simply cannot
speak with equal effectiveness to all human concerns. To say that all
human needs are equally important is simply an evasion of the prioritizing
that human life (and Christian stewardship) requires.

Finally, the church’s message must be shaped by prudence. With an eye
always toward the goal of the church’s ministry, our Lord has advised us
to “count the cost” before we begin (Luke 14:28) and to be “wise as ser-
pents and innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16). These considerations should

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