A Letter to a Minister about Current Events, from an Anabaptist Point of View

(A View We Think is in Harmony with Jesus’ Outlook)

By David Maas

I’m encouraged at last to see a leader from the evangelical wing of the church state that the United States is not a “Christian nation.” For several reasons this is a message which needs to be declared clearly and loudly by genuine believers.

I wrote you some months ago expressing my growing view that true Christians have no business involving themselves in politics. In my opinion such activities are incompatible with the kind of discipleship demanded of believers by Jesus and are detrimental to the cause of the Gospel. The latter reason is of particular concern. You respectfully expressed your disagreement with me. I am hoping that your views on such matters are changing. The present “crisis” in America is only confirming my position in my own mind. I’ve been quite disappointed in the public pronouncements of several evangelical leaders calling for brutal retaliation against America’s perceived enemies using tones that smack of bloodlust. How they square this with the Bible’s admonitions to believers against retaliation (e.g. Matt. 5 & Rom. 12) is beyond me. The relevant issue to us is not the political realities with which a secular state must deal, but what Jesus requires of his disciples in any given situation. “What Would Jesus Do?” is a question superficially popular with evangelicals, but one to which it seems most believers give no serious consideration when it comes to the issue of war.

The New Testament portrays the church, at least as it should be, as the true people of God, Israel reconstituted in Christ (Gal. 6:16; Phil. 3:3), the Body of Christ, the assembly of God’s people, a people set apart to God and His service. It is to be a people without the traditional boundaries of ethnicity, nationality, gender, social and economic status. We are to be an international community without borders and with membership defined simply as being “in Christ.” We are tasked with calling all who will hear to join this same trans-national community of believers. Hyper-nationalism and waging war on others cannot promote such an endeavor. They make it impossible. What are believers in China or Germany to think when “good Christianity” requires us to be American patriots? Are believers in Cuba living under a regime hostile to America required by Jesus to be super Cuban patriots? In the New Testament I find no trace of an agenda concerned with propagating any particular economic or political theory (except that of the Kingdom of God). The concern of the NT writers, based largely on their eschatological outlook, was to call out a people to and for God, not for social, political or economic reform of present nation-states. We as evangelical believers understand that the Law of God, which was holy and perfect, completely failed to change the hearts of men. Do we honestly believe that we can now do so in America via the political process and the imperfect laws of man? If we understand this, why do we waste our precious time trying to reform society and “engage the culture?” If we understand that this world system is doomed, that righteousness will not prevail until this present evil age is ended and the new one ushered in by Jesus at his “Parousia” [Second Coming], why do we continue to spend our time working in and for the world system rather than preaching the gospel to all nations? This is completely illogical. It defies common sense. 

Due generally to the government’s occasional propaganda needs to invoke the name of “God,” and more particularly to the efforts of far too many evangelical preachers, Christianity is identified with “western civilization” and equated with America in the minds of millions around the globe, a rather strange thought considering that Jesus was a first-century Palestinian Jew brought up in a largely Semitic society. The Crusades undertaken “in the name of Christ” have served permanently to close the minds of many to the Kingdom Gospel of Jesus Christ. The same can be said of the Catholic Inquisition and the “Christian” religious wars in Europe following the Reformation. Are we as believers not concerned that by associating the Gospel of Christ with America, American foreign policy and military interventionism, we are having a similar effect on the hearts of millions? Is this the way to win enemies for Christ? Considering the damage the American government frequently inflicts elsewhere do we really want the rest of the world to equate America (or any other particular nation) with Christianity? How does this help to open doors to the Gospel? Today there are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world. Why should they open their hearts to embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ when in their minds America delivers bombs along with Bibles? Already the threats and pronouncements of America’s leaders have exacerbated an existing human disaster in Afghanistan. How does this help the cause of Christ? What will be the result when indiscriminate bombing by American planes kills thousands of civilians in Afghanistan or Iraq? Do we really expect a father whose wife or child is killed by American bombs to love America? 

For years I have found it disturbing that whenever evangelical preachers rail against America’s “moral decline” they invariably bring up adultery, homosexuality, pornography and the like. Yes, these are egregious sins. But why do I hear not even a peep of protest from them about the hundreds of thousands of innocent people killed in other countries directly and indirectly by the actions of the American government? Certainly such preachers decry the horrific crime of abortion in America, but why no concern over the deaths of foreign children? Is it only murder when a child is killed inside the womb, or do we just not care about foreign children? Is God more upset over the less than 2% of Americans who practice homosexuality or the estimated million or so Iraqi men, women and children who have died over the last ten years as a result of a US-enforced economic blockade? Is God more angered by sexual sins or the shedding of innocent blood? 

I am not arguing for anti-Americanism or some alternative political agenda (though I find I cannot turn a blind eye to the many horrific acts committed by America over the last century). I’m attempting to demonstrate that something is seriously wrong in the thinking of far too many American evangelicals. I’m arguing for nonparticipation in politics and war, which is the political process taken to its ultimate extreme. I am advocating this first for the practical reason that such activities do damage to the gospel; they serve to close minds to the truth. Obviously dropping bombs on someone will not engender positive sentiments in response. Similarly politics creates as many enemies as friends. As practiced in western democracies politics is a game whereby competing groups work to benefit themselves at the expense of others. A farm subsidy may help the farmer but how does the taxpayer compelled to pay for it feel? When evangelical leaders ally the cause of Christ with the Republican Party, does that help acceptance of the gospel by those who perceive that Republican policies are detrimental to their own interests? Frankly many of the policies championed by Republicans and our current President will be harmful to my own family when implemented. I’m not afraid of others taking offense at my Christianity but should we offend them when there is no need? And by voting for politicians do we not incur some culpability in any evil deeds they subsequently do “on our behalf”? 

I also oppose political participation and war for reasons of biblical principle. We find it convenient to use modern ideas of distinctions between the “secular and the spiritual” and individual and collective action to help us tone down the commands of Scripture. Hence “personal” retaliation is sinful and forbidden whereas “collective” revenge carried out through the secular state is perfectly acceptable. But such distinctions do not appear in Scripture, which presents Jesus’ Lordship as a sovereignty extending over all things, whether above, on or below the earth. The kind of obedience and loyalty demanded of Christ’s true and willing subjects is so total that it is incompatible with the kind of absolute loyalty so frequently demanded by secular states. Is this not borne out by history? Do we not understand that totalitarian governments persecute Christians not due to theological differences but because true Christians answer to an authority much higher than the state, an attitude the state simply cannot tolerate? Properly understood the teachings of Jesus will inevitably be viewed by society and government as so “radical” as to be subversive. That’s why they killed Jesus.

I read yesterday the words of one prominent columnist referring to the “freedom we worship” in America. I like freedom as well as the next man, but “worship” it? Does not the love of country, flag and all things military so prominent in American evangelicalism border on idolatry? Do we identify ourselves first and foremost as “Christian” or “American”? We like to think that if we had lived under a regime like Hitler’s we would never have supported or participated in the government and policies of Nazi Germany. The behavior of the churches and Christians of Germany at the time argues otherwise. How many American Christians protested the incarceration of Japanese-Americans or Jehovah’s Witnesses during World War 2? Were any voices raised in protest against the deliberate firebombing of purely civilian targets in Germany and Japan by American forces in 1944 and 1945? We rightly condemned the German Luftwaffe for the London blitz but cheered on our own boys when they reduced places like Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo to smoldering rubble. Is it not blasphemous when Christians advocate killing other human beings for whom Christ also died? 

I write this in the hope that you and others will begin to teach believers correct perspectives on such matters and, over the long run, perhaps help to disassociate Christianity and the gospel of Christ from the American body politic. Again, my reasons are not political and I am not advocating anti-Americanism. But should we not look at things from the biblical perspective? America like all other nations is part of the present world order; it is a product of this present evil age. As a national unit it will not survive the return of Christ. My point is that we as believers need to spend our lives, energies and talents preaching the gospel to all nations. Anything that impedes that mission must be avoided, and equating the policies of the United States, “democracy” and the like with Christianity only serves to create more impediments to the gospel. I fear that we have only begun to see the enormous damage done to the cause of Christ by equating it with America and “western civilization.”