If Christ is King . . .

This Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King. Claiming that Jesus Christ is King is pretty radical. And it is a claim that raises questions about where our true loyalties lie.

I once saw a woman wearing a t-shirt that I found disturbing and very telling. It was a white t-shirt that had JESUSAVES written across the front. I believe he does. But that was not the only message on the shirt. All the letters were blue except for those in the middle - USA - which were red. [A similar shirt is here] It was a telling icon of the confused syncretism of many Christians in America. Who saves? Jesus? The USA? Or, are the two so emotionally entwined in our imaginations that we can't tell the difference? It is an illustration of Stanley Hauerwas' assertion that for many Americans, the nation is their true church. For many Americans, America is the social body to which their ultimate allegiance is pledged regardless of what religious affiliation they formally claim.

Patriotism might not always be idolatry. A distinction must be made, however, between holding dear or celebrating the particular culture and history of a place/people and the sort of nationalistic exceptionalism that too often gets expressed. Even if patriotism is not always idolatrous, Christians should be wary of its appeal and suspicious of those who appeal to it to shepherd them in one direction or another. If Jesus Christ is the King, Christians need to beware of the temptation to confuse that King with other entities, including Uncle Sam, who would claim the kind of loyalty and emotional attachment that belongs to him alone. If Christ is King, do we have any business pledging allegiance to anything or anyone else?

Related posts:
Idolatry of a Certain Sort
The Impossibility of Religious Pluralism

Idolatry of a Certain Sort?

I voted on Tuesday. While I usually vote Democratic, I am registered as an independent and voted a split ticket this time around. For representative to congress, I voted for a pro-life, enviromentalist Democrat. Given the local politcal realities and the fact that his own party did little to support him, this candidate was unlikely to be elected. And he wasn't. Still, I was glad to have the opportunity to vote for someone who messes with the given categories.

Messing with the categories is something Jesus did. It seems to me that if the church is going to be faithful it needs to do the same. At the very least, the church needs to take care not to fall into the trap of identifying with one or another set of political, social, or cultural categories and prejudices.

This has me wondering.

In his book, “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart”, Bill Bishop writes,

We now live in a giant feedback loop,” says Mr Bishop, “hearing our own thoughts about what's right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear and the neighbourhoods we live in.

Economist.com.

I wonder about the Episcopal Church's participation in this sorting.

I am concerned that General Convention and our national leadership have a propensity to collude in this sorting by creating an Episcopal “brand” that is decidedly reflective of and geared toward one “sort” of American. We have cultivated a specifically “liberal” ethos in which certain sorts of people are culturally more comfortable than other sorts. When we speak on public policy and social issues, we invariably endorse what is already the standard liberal/progressive position. One starts to wonder if TEC as a whole or its leaders can distinguish a gospel imperative from a liberal prejudice. We risk a sort of idolatry in which whatever else we might or might not be willing to say about God, we are pretty sure God is our sort of God - a Big American Liberal In The Sky.

No matter how much theological gloss we give it, the predictability of our Liberal/Progressive positioning leaves many of our members – and potential members – not so much challenged by our “prophetic witness” as wondering if we are not just the church of a certain sort of American (sub)cultural identity. The result is not conversion, but alienation. If the challenge only ever goes in one direction, we end up congratulating ourselves for how uncomfortable our Jesus is for some sorts of people while actually making Jesus safe for us and our sort of people. Consequently, we screen out a certain sort while only truly welcoming another sort. Such sorting compromises our catholicity and our ability to welcome people of all sorts and conditions to respond to the good news of what God has done – and is doing – through Jesus Christ.

Unless we are content for our identity to be that of chaplain to one sort of American, i.e., the 22% that self-identify as liberal, we need to rethink the way we engage political and other issues. We might first of all acknowledge that people can agree on a goal (reducing poverty, for example) while disagreeing on the politcal means to achieve that goal. If we believe we must make political statments, we would do well to focus more on the goals and less on specific policies. And, if we want to avoid the idolatry of a certain sort, we would do well to mess with the categories.

Spirituality and Politics from the Angle of Eternity

I've just finished one of the my Lenten books, The Spiritual Life, by the great Anglican mystic and spiritual writer, Evelyn Underhill. It is a wonderful little book full of insights. I was particularly struck (in light of recent comments made by a certain radio/tv opionator) by the link she makes between the spiritual life and politics.

With regard to saying the Lord's Prayer, Underhill affirms, "It is useless to utter fervent petitions for that Kingdom to be established and that Will done, unless we are willing to do something about it ourselves."

She goes futher:

That means trying to see things, persons and choices from the angle of eternity; and dealing with them as part of the material in which the Spirit works. This will be decisive for the way we behave as to our personal, social, and national obligations. It will decide the papers we read, the movements we support, the kind of administrators we vote for, our attitude to social and international justice. For though we may renounce the world for ourselves, refuse the attempt to get anything out of it, we have to accept it as the sphere in which we are to co-operate with the Spirit, and try to do the Will. Therefore the prevalent notion that spirituality and politics have nothing to do with one another is the exact opposite of the truth. Once it is accepted in a realistic sense, the Spiritual Life has everything to do with politics. It means that certain convictions about God and the world become the moral and spiritual imperatives of our life; and this must be decisive for the way we choose to behave about that bit of the world over which we have been given a limited control.