A Brief Alphabet of Christianity and Politics (7)

 

Glory – Genuine Christian faith is driven by a theology of the cross, though far too many fail to grasp it or live this way. A theology of glory always contended with and more often than not triumphed over the theology of the cross which Jürgen Moltmann called “a not much loved tradition” in the church. American politics, maybe all politics, ends up operating by a theology of glory. After all, as Carl Raschke observes, a dominant view of politics in the West is that “political cohesion is of necessity grounded in some kind of consensus concerning a singular, ‘ultimate reality.’” (https://politicaltheology.com/forget-schmitt-political-theology-must-follow-agambens-double-paradigm-of-sovereignty-carl-raschke/) Theology is necessarily implicated in politics and since politics is the art of persuasion and triumph over opposition with a view toward the community’s greater well-being, or “glory,” the theology implicated in this politics is necessarily a theology of glory. In seeking to dominate the world, however the church almost always fails. No, it always fails, says the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. For even in trying to dominate the world, he writes, it “takes this same worldliness [that it seeks to combat] into itself” and thus emerges “in the church itself a worldliness devoid of spirit.” A theology of the cross, however, posits a very different view of “glory” and identifies it with weakness, insignificance, and the cruciform way of Jesus of Nazareth. How completely this way of seeing life undoes the typically conceptions of theology underwriting a politics that is about winning and gaining glory from its triumphs can best be seen by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Through his experience of resisting Nazism he learned that a politics informed by a genuine Christianity will look at life from the bottom-side-up rather than the usual, “normal” way of seeing it from top-to-bottom. He wrote, “It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.” (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works) (p. 20). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition) Further, he says, “We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.” Finally, he claims that “only the suffering God can help” (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works) (p. 465). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition) and “It is not a religious act that makes someone a Christian, but rather sharing in God’s suffering in the worldly life.” (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works) (p. 466). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition) This seeing the world from below, evaluating others by their suffering, revisioning God as the one who suffers and followers of this God as those who share God’s suffering in the world are the fruit of reading the Bible faithfully and radically and thus discovering God’s true “glory.” And it lies miles distant from the politics and theology of glory, the kind of theological politics underlying “Make America Great Again” and a politics and economy oriented to enriching the already wealthy and removing further supports put in place for those who suffer.