The Church Is Always Political. Always.
The church is
always political. Always.
The state is
always religious. Always.
In
a fitting finale to his Cultural Liturgies series, James Smith points out in
Awaiting The King what seems obvious once he’s said it, namely that:
“citizens are not just thinkers or believers, but lovers.”
The
political institutions we live within are not simply seeking to shape our
thinking, but to capture our hearts with a vision of the good life which they
inculcate. So in that sense they are rival cults; competing centres of
worship to the church.
This
means of course, that there can never be separation of church and state, as if
separation were merely a spatial reality. No, for as Smith says, politics
is a project, not simply a realm in which different stuff
happens to what happens in church. Laws that the state puts in
place are what Smith calls “social nudges” that make us certain kinds of
people with certain kinds of values. We are nudged towards
practices that we enact, that in turn shape our loves, all of which feeds back
into the vision of the good life we wish our state to promote.
https://stephenmcalpine.com/2018/01/04/the-church-is-always-political-always/
Comments
Post a Comment