Theological Journal – June 24 What Do We Mean that the Church is Necessarily Political?

It helps to distinguish being the church being political and the church having a politic. The former may lead one to think of the church being aligned with some political party or another.  The latter, proper sense, that the church has a politic , well-explained by Lee C. Camp in his recent book Scandalous Witness. By the church having a politic, he writes,

“I mean an all-encompassing manner of communal life that grapples with all the questions the classical art of politics has always asked: How do we live together? How do we deal with offenses? How do we deal with money? How do we deal with enemies and violence? How do we arrange marriage and families and social structures? How is authority mediated, employed, ordered? How do we rightfully order passions and appetites? And much more besides, but most especially add these: Where is human history headed? What does it mean to be human? And what does it look like to live in a rightly ordered human community that engenders flourishing, justice, and the peace of God?”

A church will have a politic. It’s just part of being a community. The only question is whether our politic as a church will reflect the gospel or simply be a religious version of the politic (or, way of life) of the larger community in which we live? For far too long it has been the latter. It is well past time it become the former!