Christian Involvement In Politics

If Christianity is true, the moral obligations it entails govern politics just as much as they govern the rest of human life.  This means that there is no such thing as a split between obligations in the "Christian" and "political" realms, since the same moral obligations exist in both arenas.  There are not two separate moral standards that God holds people to.  If a thing is wrong, one who commits the act is not free of guilt by not being a Christian.

That politics is inescapably about the worldviews of politicians [1] is easily demonstrable.  As such, every politician has goals and beliefs that either conform to reality or do not.  The significance of this for Christians is obvious: isolation from politics cannot be a righteous endeavor.  After all, it cannot be admirable or upright to avoid moral obligations in any area of life.

The most important ethical dimension to politics is often not recognized as such.  The enforcement of justice, concerning which the Bible prescribes specific legal penalties for crimes, is an inherently political matter, since it always involves a hierarchy where one person punishes another.  A penalty does not become just simply because a government uses it.  As with all other ethical matters, justice cannot be revealed by conscience or tradition, but by divine revelation.  This is one of the most important reasons why Christians are obligated to integrate themselves into politics.

Instead of pursuing actual justice, many Christians of the modern age treat the arbitrary legal codes of their nations as if they are just by default, simply because they exist.  Unfortunately, this is not a novel problem; people claiming to represent Christianity have stooped to this error since the early generations of the church.  It is as if many Christians are so desperate to avoid the clear, universal instructions of Mosaic Law regarding criminal punishment that they will accept almost anything else as a replacement (no wonder they condemn the words of their own Bibles on this matter but say practically nothing about the injustice of pagan legal systems throughout history).

Christians should involve themselves in politics, but only to in a way that does not endorse irrational or unbiblical policies.  This rules out both conservatism and liberalism as legitimate positions for those who have a right regard for both reason and Scripture.  Nevertheless, do not expect many fellow Christians to exemplify the correct form of involvement in politics--many either try to avoid explicitly political matters altogether or are committed to the conservative or liberal party, both of which have a multitude of flaws that disqualify them from moral and intellectual legitimacy.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/09/politics-application-of-worldviews.html