Messianic Politics

Transcendence and Politics

Union of church and state has been the norm for most of human history, and today’s secularists who point to medieval Europe as its most egregious instance are quite mistaken. Their frequent prejudice against Christianity fuels their factual errors. Historically, the most vicious church-state tyrannies occurred in nations in which paganism dominated.1 Nations and civilizations in which men are deemed gods or god-like—and particularly in nations in which the political rulers are so designated, like ancient Babylon, Egypt, Rome, and more recently in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, dynastic Japan, Maoist China, e.g.—are also quite conspicuous examples of the leading tyrannies in human history. Whenever the state or its earthly representative is considered a god-like or ecclesiastical figure, tyranny flourishes.

By contrast, societies which presuppose a transcendent order, in which justification for the existence of society and the state stands beyond the temporal, historical order, tend to be less tyrannical and often actually free societies. The most obvious example of this sort of society is the Christian society advocated and spawned by the Reformation.2 In fact, one despairs to find a clear example of free society (apart from the original Hebrew commonwealth) in history before Protestant Reformation society. Medieval society, while creditably based on a theistic transcendent order, retained that aspect of the pagan vision of the church as the virtual mediator between God and man and the Papacy as the visible expression of that mediation. Reformation society, on the other hand, expelled any ontological unity of the transcendent order—that is, in Reformation thinking, God and his infallible Biblical revelation—with human government in family, church or state. That is, man stood under God’s revelatory law; man is not an aspect of that law or a divine legislator. The leading example of this “separation of man and God” is Rutherford’s notable work, Lex Rex, that is, the Law is King. It was a revolutionary concept in the era of statist monarchies that the king stands under divine law. In historic Protestantism, the king’s word is not law; the king’s word is judged by divine law.

Unfortunately, the penetrating insight of Protestant (specifically Calvinist) social thought and the unprecedentedly free societies it generated suffered assault since the eighteenth century and today are in danger of vanishing: the Protestant society based on a transcendent divine order governed by inscripturated revelation has been increasingly supplanted by messianic politics, a revival of pagan politics. The chief instance is modern political liberalism.

Messianic Politics of the Left

Political liberalism was initially a revolt against what it considered the tyranny of retrogressive, repressive institutions: church, monarchy, mercantilism. Freedom and individualism have been the key tenets of liberalism from its inception: “[L]liberalism, in the broadest sense, seeks to protect the individual from arbitrary external restraints that prevent the full realization of his potentialities.”3 While some perceive the seeds of political liberalism in Puritan constitutionalism in England, the origin of the Great Liberal Experiment is more accurately located in the French Revolution. It was in that epochal event that for the first time social engineers sheared the twin concepts of individualism and freedom of all Christian presuppositions and thereby justified a secular reordering of society.4

The state was originally a prime target of liberal opposition, since it (and often in union with the church) was perceived as stultifying individual freedom. Soon, however, and especially in response to the economic inequalities brought to light by the Industrial Revolution, liberalism became obsessed with opposing what it deemed the economic tyranny of capitalism or the free-market economy. Over the last century at least, liberalism has been quite eager for the state to employ its power to redistribute wealth more “equitably” in society. Thus it has more recently preferred “economic freedom” (essentially socialism) to “individual freedom,” and in some ways transformed its original agenda into almost its opposite.

Liberalism has increasingly relied on the state as the instrument not merely of justice (which it is), but also of virtue (which it is not). Thus the state is accorded responsibilities a Christian society places in the hands of individuals, families, churches, and private groups and organizations. Soon in a liberal society the state assumes the center of life and existence. It assures justice and equality (as defined, of course, by statist elitists); guarantees health, education, welfare, and old-age provision (by confiscating private wealth, of course); and presses for a “virtuous” culture—it even has about it (and even in its most blatantly secular form) an aura of religion and “spirituality,” with its mammoth state architecture mirroring Christian cathedrals or pagan temples of worship; its pomp reminiscent of religious ceremony; and its embracing of civil religion, according to which loyalty to the state becomes a religious service. The state becomes the virtual messiah: it endeavors to furnish in modern secular society what God himself pledges to his covenant people and to nations who adhere to his law-word (Dt 28:1-14; 29:1-15).

Politicians of the Left thus develop a messianic complex. If driven by altruistic motives, they judge themselves the saviors of “the people.” If insincere, they constitute nothing more than political tyrants, ravenous of raw political power. Of the two, the altruistic are more to be feared, since while the disingenuous may be checked by twinges of conscience, tyrants in service of “virtue” are unrelenting in their decimation of anything that stands in their way (Jn. 16:2).

Modern messianic politics of the Left has given us the New Deal, the Great Society, and the welfare state. It has positioned the state as the protector and educator of the nation’s youth; the repository of healing, especially in old age; and the secular savior of man’s spiritual ills. In its most advanced stages, it works to transform man himself into a new being.5 The messianic politics of the Left is the key political vision of modern times. Which is to say, politics for most moderns is the religion of secular man.

Messianic Politics of the Right

The state as savior is not the exclusive province of the modern Left, however. Today it has nearly as many devotees on the Right. Messianic politics of the Right comes in two flavors: big government conservatism, and anti-big-government anarcho-libertarianism.

The first is almost equally committed to the state as the guarantor of virtue as is the messianic politics of the Left. This seems in some ways to be a reversion to the stance of the early Right in England and Europe, dedicated to the ancien regime and order, to a centralized church and civil government securing the state and society against the upheaval which free markets and ideational competition may pose. Today, however, the messianists of the Right see the state as a vehicle for social change. The only difference between the Left and the Right messianists on this score is what that change should entail. Both wish to wield state power as the guarantor of virtue. Of these political messianists of the Right, Rockwell observes:

The neo-conservatives ... are cultural modernists who endorse the forced integration and redistribution of civil rights. They believe in an imperial presidency, the welfare state, and mass democracy, and they seek to enact these ideas worldwide through U. S. military intervention.6

Seeds of this sentiment in the United States appeared as early as the Prohibition debate.7 Christians alert to the scourge of the liquor traffic appealed to civil government for regulation. The notion among conservative Christians that civil government must be employed to eradicate social evil is a fatal flaw with clear historical precedent. While left-wing messianists use the engine of civil government to forge a secular Utopia, right-wing messianists use the engine of civil government to forge a Christian Utopia. The main difference is in the content of the Utopia: the right-wing wants a Christian state inculcating Christian (or semi-Christian) virtue.

A number of specifics could be cited. Christian supporters of a “Christian” New World Order, in which a territorial and national state is subordinate to a large multinational Christian state, come immediately to mind. So too do advocates of the enlargement of federal power to curb drugs, prostitution, and pornography. In addition, one thinks of Christians calling for a large national defense dedicated to fighting wars to eradicate the world’s evils in the name of “Christian democracy.” Moreover, supporters of a reunion of church and state, or a state- established Christian church, fit the classification of political messianists.

All these rightly perceive the evil effects of social sin; they err in vesting faith in the political order to eradicate that sin and its effects. The ultimate solution to sin is regeneration by the Holy Spirit, not political power. The state does play a limited role in maintaining public justice— the magistrate is enjoined to enforce the Biblical penal code.8 The Bible does not, however, depict the state as the main human government in the earth. It is one among many, and precisely because its sanction (capital punishment) is so severe, its jurisdiction is so limited. We do not appeal to the state to inculcate virtue—even sound Biblical virtue. These are chiefly the obligations of the family and church, under strictly expressed Biblical authority.

The second version of messianic politics on the Right does not look to civil government for the inculcation of virtue—all to the contrary, it virtually opposes the existence of civil government. I speak here of radical libertarians (anarchists), the tax revolt, and those right-wing militias bent on defying every civil order which they interpret as an affront to their unlimited freedom. Many among these anarchists act under the guise of Christian principle. No law but God’s law, they trumpet. But they refuse to recognize subordinate, derivative authorities (family, church, state). In effect, they become a law unto themselves. Their political messianism consists of their transforming themselves into their own messiah, correcting all the wrongs in the earth by means of radical individual freedom, which means, freedom to anarchy, freedom to do as they wish, freedom to antinomianism. They, like liberals, believe in political salvation; but while that salvation is interpreted collectively in the case of liberals, it is interpreted individualistically in the case of anarchists. In both cases coercion—statist in the first case, and paramilitaristic or vigilante in the second— is the insurance of political salvation. In both cases physical coercion constitutes the panacea.

Neither expression—big government conservatism, or anti-big-government anarcho-libertarianism—is materially different from the messianic politics of the Left. Each of them accords man the authority to reshape his fellow man and society by political means.

A Caveat for Christians Involved in Politics

Even devoted Christians engaged in politics can be seduced by the promises of messianism. “Power tends to corrupt,” asserted Lord Acton, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Because modern politics is an exercise in power rather than ministry (Rom. 13:1-7) or statesmanship (Dt. 17:14-20), it tends to corrupt any insufficiently vigilant to guard against its lure. Especially vulnerable are those whose political views are not anchored in a sound theology, who perceive in power politics the fulcrum for accomplishing supposedly virtuous or altruistic goals. If they are of a libertarian bent, they are impressed and persuaded by profreedom, Randian, and Objectivist arguments, assuming secular libertarianism somehow constitutes the most Christian political option available. Too frequently all these uncritically assimilate conservative politics which they merely tack onto their Faith. They thereby maintain an implicit dualism: Christianity as their religion and conservatism as their politics, assuming the one is necessarily intimately associated with the other.

Christians involved in politics must recognize that their politics must issue from their theology. Christian politics must never be nothing more than warmed-over conservatism with a Christian label attached. World conquering, confessional Calvinism is the most consistent theological foundation on which to erect a virtually impregnable political edifice (the New England commonwealth is an historical instance). For this reason, Christian politicians must be grounded in Christian theology. This is not to imply Christian politicians must be professional theologians, or that on the stump they should preach sermons. It does mean their political thought must find its source in their theological thought, and thus that they must devote considerable attention to matters theological. Christian politicians whose theological grounding is tenuous at best usually suffer from woefully incongruous thinking and thus espouse mutually inconsistent views. One thinks immediately of the candidate who pushes for a return to the gold standard while simultaneously advocating “enterprise zones,” “affirmative action,” and the retention of the Welfare State, or the unflagging Christian abortion-rights foe who defends antiabortion picketing on the grounds that “sit-ins are a part of the great American tradition of protest, in the vein of Martin Luther King” [!].

Christians involved in politics should assiduously resist the temptation to be governed by politics. Politics is a valid calling for a Christian, but ours is not a political vision; rather, it is an intensely religious and theological vision with political implications. Christians are charged to honor God in their politics as in every other sphere of life (1 Cor. 10:31). Christian politics is an essential effect of legitimate Christian theology.

Conclusion

The exclusive hope of man’s salvation rests in the sovereign triune God (Eph. 1), the redemptive bloodletting of God the Son (2 Cor. 5:21), and the efficacious regenerative ministry of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9-11). The redeemed man obeys the word of the Lord in his individual life and works to “reconstruct” in terms of the Bible all areas of life which he contacts. He does not hold that politics is the sphere of salvation, but that it is a sphere of obedience. The consistent Christian’s is not a political vision, but a religion vision with political implications.

He serves one Messiah and one Messiah alone, who bears government—and all things else—on his shoulders (Is. 9:7).

1 M. Stanton Evans, The Theme is Freedom (Washington, D. C., 1994).

2 Karl Holl, The Cultural Significance of the Reformation (New York, 1959).

3 H[arry] K[.J G[iretvz],“Liberalism,” Encyclopedia Brittannica, ed., Philip W. Goetz (Chicago, 1988, 15th ed), 27:471.

4 James Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York, 1980).

5 Mikhail Heller, Cogs in the Wheel: The Formation of Soviet Man (New York, 1988).

6 Llewellyn H. Rockwell, “Realignment on the Right?” Conservative Review, Vol. 1, No. 3, 18.

7 See Second World’s Christian Citizenship Conference [collected addresses] (Pittsburgh, 1913).

8 R. J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law (no loc. [Craig Press]), 1973.