Politics - The Church and the World

“If the world grows too worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows too worldly, it cannot be rebuked for worldliness by the world.”

(G. K. Chesterton) 

As the election season approaches and we look at the political choices facing us, we ask: What should our priorities as Christians be? Can faith and politics serve one another in 21st century Britain? 

Let’s consider the ‘Burkean’ case for "conservatism" and wedding itself to the Church of England. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke makes a passionate case for the Church of England:

The consecration of the state, by a state religious establishment, is necessary also to operate with an wholesome awe upon free citizens; because, in order to secure their freedom, they must enjoy some determinate portion of power.  To them therefore a religion connected with the state, and with their duty towards it, becomes even more necessary than in such societies, where the people by the terms of their subjection are confined to private sentiments, and the management of their own family concerns.  All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust; and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great master, author and founder of society.

This is a true sentiment. Yet Burke’s case for the Church of England has little to do with Anglicanism, and even less to do with Christianity. And once the Church of England losses its ability to exercise that “wholesome awe” upon the English people, Burke’s view suggests it will no longer serve any purpose.

Roger Scruton offers a softer, more modest version of Burke’s. His defence for the Church of England in Our Church argues that religion is necessary because “religious beliefs shape the allegiance and coherence of a community”:

Religious experience is a specific way of encountering and solving the problem of membership, and one that engages another and deeper aspect of the human psyche, which is the recognition of the sacred and the associated fear of profanation.

He goes on:

Religion expresses a profound and species-wide longing for purity, a longing to be “cleansed” of the many and minute transgressions that are the price we pay for consciousness.  This idea—conveyed to Jews, Christians, and Muslims by the story of the Fall—is not an arbitrary addition to the store of religious dogma. It is the heart of religion in all its forms and an inescapable part of the human condition.

And because the Church of England is England’s “national church”, it is the most suitable nexus for these “cleansing rituals.”

It seems to this writer that these arguments really have little to do with Anglicanism, or Christianity, or for that matter, God. They praise churches for passing on good values, strengthening communities, providing for the needy, etc. All very laudable. But they all justify the Church by its social utility.

The trouble is that these “conservatives” diminish supernatural faith as a first principle. They may argue for an “enduring moral order”, as Russell Kirk does: 

The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.

 

In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night. (Yet conservatives know, with Burke, that healthy “change is the means of our preservation.”) A people’s historic continuity of experience, says the conservative, offers a guide to policy far better than the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers. But of course there is more to the conservative persuasion than this general attitude.

 

The great line of demarcation in modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.

But notice, they’re not talking about the grace and truth of Jesus Christ.  

Will this approach work in the long run?

Christianity is not intended to be socially useful. Jesus warns His followers that they will be persecuted by lawful authorities, that His teachings will cause social unrest, and that families will turn against one another for His sake. Very few people will perform religious rituals unless they believe in the efficacy of those rituals. “Social utility” is not enough. And are these "Christian conservatives" inadvertently conditioning people to think in terms that are antithetical to Christianity.

Our Faith is not concerned about helping us to flourish in this world. The Church’s self-identity is to get souls to Heaven. The good the Church does in this world - and it does a great deal of good - is incidental. To focus on worldly good, as many conservatives do, is to implicitly reinforce secularism’s imperative - to help men to flourish in this life, and to tacitly reject Christianity’s - to help men flourish in the next. “Christian conservatives” discourage us from prioritizing supernatural faith and the afterlife.

The problem with "Christian conservatism" is that it attempts to defend traditional values without relying on traditional metaphysical systems. It's an attempt to defend Christian values without Christian metaphysics.

Now it is better to have a “culturally Christian” society than not have any Christianity at all. It will promote virtue and the common good. But "political Christianity" can’t be defended from secular premises alone. How many Christians today support contraception, abortion, euthanasia, divorce and remarriage, transgenderism, and homosexual 'marriage'? Do we consistently promote helping the poor, just wages, the universal destination of goods, caring for the stranger, and access to health care, housing and education?

If one argues only from Enlightenment sources (nature and reason), Christian values are difficult to defend against both the "right" and the "left". While God reveals Himself through natural law, He reveals more through Divine revelation. Christianity doesn’t make sense without both reason and supernatural faith. Certainly, there are good arguments against vice from natural law. However, argue for an enduring moral order without Divine revelation and the arguments will fail to convince sooner or later - as they have in modern, 'civilised' society. So as we vote, we compromise our Christian values and accommodate secular views by voting for the "lesser of two evils" on offer from the major political parties.

And evil advances through the generations as consciences become dulled and our Christian faith slowly ebbs away.

Pope Benedict XVI once predicted that the Western Church would continue to shrink before it grew again. In 1997, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he warned:

Perhaps the time has come to say farewell to the idea of traditionally Catholic cultures. Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the Church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterized more and more the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intensive struggle against evil and bring the good into the world—that let God in.

Ratzinger doesn’t want a smaller, “purer” Church. But he expects one because lukewarm Christians are leaving the Church in droves, and will continue to do so. “Cultural Christianity” may slow the trickle, but it can’t stop it. It's people's unwillingness to practice the Faith what makes them cultural Christians and not Christians.

Man’s temporal end must be subordinated to his eternal end. As Christians, we have the same goal, which is the salvation of souls. So, from the religious point of view, there is a danger of considering the Church in the supernumerary benefits she dispenses as being the strongest bulwark of social good rather than in her end and function which is to provide mankind with supernatural truth and the means to eternal salvation.

The Church has brought countless temporal benefits to Western society. But she did so only by teaching men to forget their own temporal good. C. S. Lewis writes:

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.

It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.  Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither.

As Augustine writes:

For as far as the life of mortals is concerned, which is ended in a few days, what does it matter under whose government a dying man lives, if they who govern him do not force him to impiety and iniquity? Let Him therefore be sought after, let Him be worshipped, and it is enough.

That said, we pray for those facing an increasingly darkening world and must use our vote as wisely as possible.