The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesiological Theology

October 29, 2010 by Jason Hood

SAET Interviews in Politics and Theology #4: Richard Land

“The Christian minister has an obligation to share the whole counsel of God with his people.  He may not do it all at once, as Paul said in 1 Cor. 3:2, “I fed you milk, not solid food, because you were not yet able to receive it.”  But there should come a time, as he continues as their pastor, as he gains their trust, and as they grow in the Lord, where he gives them the whole counsel of God, which includes the obligation to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  I know many young church planters won’t like this, but when I hear them talk about not wanting to talk about abortion and same-sex marriage because it will upset people, I hear echoes of pastors in my youth who said, “I don’t want to talk about the race issue because it will upset people and divide the church.”  And so, the church stayed segregated for far too long, and it was a disgrace to the Gospel.

“Racism is no more condemned in the Bible than same-sex relationships. Shame on ministers of the Gospel who hide behind surface popularity and argue for not preaching the whole counsel of God. They are just as guilty as men who tolerated racism in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.”

Richard Land (D.Phil., Oxford University) has served as President of The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention since 1988.  In 2001 Time identified him as one of the twenty-five most influential evangelicals in America.  He appears regularly on CNN and other networks as a voice for conservative Christians on political and cultural matters.  Dr. Land’s latest book is The Divided States of America:  What Liberals and Conservatives are Missing in the God-and-Country Shouting Match! (Thomas Nelson, 2010).

1.  For those who are not familiar with your work, can you describe your contribution to the question of how the individual Christian and the Church relates to the State?

RL:   I have dealt with this issue as a Baptist, seeking to deal with church state issues in Christian involvement and public policy for four decades now. The culmination of my wrestling with these issues was the book The Divided States of America? What Liberals and Conservatives are Missing in the God-and-Country Shouting Match!, which I wrote under the working title of What Does God Have to Do with America?

I would say that my contribution has been to argue for and to solidify what I call an accommodation model, which is in between the avoidance model of the extreme church-state separationists who believe we should avoid any expression of religious belief even according to people’s own individual conscience. In other words, private individuals expressing their faith in public places. This secularist model has been the dominant one among many of the political and cultural elites for the last half century.

As Peter Berger noted when told that a worldwide survey found that Sweden was the least religious country in the world and that India was the most religious: America is a nation of Indians ruled by an elite of Swedes. Most of the elites would be most comfortable with the avoidance model or an extreme separation model.

Many other Americans are far more comfortable with the acknowledgement model, which is symbolized by the practice of having prayer and Bible reading in public schools. In that model, the government acknowledges, on behalf of the people, the majority religion. I always intuitively thought this was wrong. I went to a junior and senior high school in Houston that had about a 30 percent Jewish enrollment. And I always felt uncomfortable as the teacher or the public school official was leading us to pray the Lord’s Prayer every morning when 25 to 30 percent of the students were Jewish. I now firmly believe that that was an imposition on the constitutional rights of those students and their parents.

I reject both the avoidance position and the acknowledgement position and instead promote the accommodation position. In the accommodation position, the individual and the religious organization have the right to be maximally accommodated in the public square by the government authorities. The government should not be a sponsor or a coach or a cheerleader for religion, neither should it be a censor or a suppressor of religion. The government should be an umpire. The government should make sure that everybody plays fair, that everyone has the right to express their religious opinions in the public square, whatever they may be including atheism or anti-religion. The government makes certain that the majority doesn’t have the right to silence the minority and that the minority doesn’t have the right to silence the majority.

In cases such as religious displays on courthouse lawns, the accommodation position would say if the people in the community want to have a manger scene during Christmas season and if they purchase one, then the government should accommodate that by being willing to display it, providing lighting and police protection for it, and perhaps storage for it between Christmases. This would also obligate them to do the same thing for Muslims in the community who wanted to have a symbol of Islam during Ramadan, or Jews who wanted to have a menorah during Jewish holidays, etc.

I do not believe the government should ever sponsor religion. That’s like getting hugged by a python. It squeezes all the life out of you and you fall over dead.  I think that Wayne Grudem in his new book, Politics According to the Bible, has provided us with an excellent example of the five wrong views about Christians and government and what the right view is.

The five wrong views are:

Government should compel religion (i.e. government owns it and can dictate it for everyone.)

Government should exclude religion. This would be the avoidance position on steroids.

All government is evil and demonic and Christians should avoid any relationship to or any participation in it. This is directly contrary to teaching of Romans 13:1 that says, “Everyone must submit to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist are instituted by God.”

Do evangelism, but not politics. In other words, we just preach the gospel, try to save as many people that are on the sinking ship of the world as we can, and not get involved in government. This is a wrong position based on Jesus’ demand to be salt and light ( Matthew 5:13). If our Christian forefathers had followed it, all of the social evils that have afflicted America would have lasted longer and some would still be with us. It was the Christians who led the fight against slavery, the fight for women’s rights, the fight for child labor and labor reform laws, and the civil rights movement.

Do politics, but not evangelism. This is the social gospel in which we should be working on government and government reform and would be best typified by the social gospel. This ignores the Christian command to obey the Great Commission. If we’re going to obey the Great Commission, and we’re going to obey the command to be salt and light, then the best solution is for Christians to seek to influence government individually and collectively through being salt and light and bearing witness to government. So it would be Christ transforming culture, but no official relationship between the two. There ought to be a separation of the institution of the church and the institution of the state, but that does not imply a separation of Christian moral values from public policy.

For instance, the vision statement of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission says, “An American society that affirms and practices Judeo-Christian values rooted in biblical authority” and the mission statement of The Ethics & Religions Liberty Commission says, “To awaken, inform, energize, equip, and mobilize Christians to be the catalysts for the Biblically-based transformation of their families, churches, communities, and the nation.” We influence the society and the society influences the government. The government is a lagging indicator. It’s a caboose. The people are the locomotive. When the people change, the government will change. When we won the battle on hearts and minds for slavery, slavery ended. When we won the battle on hearts and minds for racial equality, civil rights acts were passed. As we win the battle on hearts and minds for abortion, abortion will cease.

2.  Richard Mouw and Carl F. H. Henry have suggested that the Church’s role is not coterminous with the responsibility possessed by individual believers. Do you agree or disagree?

RL:  The Church’s role is not coterminous with the responsibility possessed by individual believers in what realm? I believe the church is the body of Christ collectively, which is made up of individual Christians and I cannot think of any requirements that are made of individuals in the Kingdom of God that are not required collectively of the church in the Kingdom of God.  So the church as a collective group of Christians should be seeking to influence society and public policy.  I believe I would have to disagree with Dr. Mouw and Dr. Henry, as you have stated their position here.

3.  Please identify for our readers two influential thinkers or political concepts to which you often respond (perhaps one positive, one negative)?

RL:  F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Whittaker Chambers’ Witness are two books that have particularly influenced me, other than the Bible; Hayek pointing out the benefits of free enterprise over statism and socialism and Chambers pointing out the godless and evil intent of communism and statism.

It seems to me that if one believes what the Bible says about human beings (i.e. that they are fallen, depraved, and selfish) then socialism has never worked and will never work and can only be seriously attempted in a totalitarian atmosphere where people are forced to “work according to their ability and receive according to their need.” People like Jim Wallis talk about sharing the wealth, but they’re seldom talking about voluntary sharing.

When the government takes your income in taxation it is confiscation, not a voluntary contribution. The problem with socialism is, as Margaret Thatcher reportedly once noted:  sooner or later you run out of other people’s money. Socialism does not create wealth, it merely seeks to ever more equitably divide the existing pie. Capitalism bakes pie, and if the last half-century of human history has shown us anything, it has shown us that the capitalist system works at producing wealth and alleviating poverty and the socialist system doesn’t.

China, by rejecting communist economic practices, and India by rejecting socialist economic practices have alleviated many thousand times as much poverty under modified capitalist economic systems than they ever did or ever would have under their previous communist or socialist regimes. The classic example of why socialism will never work can be provided in my book, The Divided States of America?

When I was living in England it was still a socialist country, before Mrs. Thatcher liberated it. In the Oxford area where my wife and I were living, we could not find anyone to come and tune our piano for more than a year. I waited until the piano tuner went down to tune the church piano and I went down with some milk and cookies, chatted him up, and found out the reason. He made about the equivalent of $25,000 a year and everything he made over that he had to pay almost 90 percent of it to the government. So he and his fellow piano tuners made their $25,000 and didn’t work the rest of the year because they weren’t going to work for 10 cents on the dollar. That’s human nature. Now, Mrs. Thatcher, when she became Prime Minister, cut the top tax rate from 91 percent to 28 percent and the British became productive again. She led an economic renaissance in Great Britain. The sick man of Europe became the healthiest man in Europe.

When I first arrived in England, they tried to get me to join the socialist club because they knew I was a Christian. And I asked them why would they think I would want to join the socialist club. They said because I was a Christian. I said, “Well it seems to me that if I’m a Christian and believe the Bible, than I can’t be a socialist because socialism is based upon the premise that men are either neutral or good. The Bible makes it very clear they are neither.”

4.  How would you summarize the political responsibilities of the average American in the pew—that is, someone with voting rights, but little political capital, and little or no economic capital for political action?

RL:  First, they have an obligation to pray. They have an obligation to pray for all of those in authority, to pray for the nation, and to pray for God’s blessing upon the nation. They do have the right to vote, which is a powerful force. Many issues in this country have been decided by very few votes. Need I remind you that the 2000 presidential election was decided by only a few hundred votes in Florida. Personally, I shudder to think about Al Gore having to confront the crisis of 9/11 as president.

In America we all have the right to vote; we have the right to write to our Congressmen.  I can assure you that I know from personal experience that writing to your Congressman and Senator does make a difference.  We all have a circle of influence, socially through our families, our friends, our schoolmates, our work mates, etc.  Jesus’ command that we be salt and light tells us that we have an obligation to impact that circle of influence for good.  As individuals we have an obligation to be informed about the issues of the day and to help inform others and to vote as informed voters voting our values, our beliefs and convictions and encourage others to do so as well.

5.  How does Romans 13 help us understand the limits places on the church and/or the individual believer in our engagement with political matters?

RL:  Romans 13 tells us that God ordained the civil magistrate to punish those who do evil and reward those who do right, which means we have the right to expect the government to have moral standards.  We believe those moral standards should be informed by Scripture.  The limits would only be that the civil magistrate should not impose upon individual consciences and the freedom to worship God as we please for any citizens.  The civil magistrate is there to help human society in its fallen state to function in a way that protects victims of those who would impose their immorality on them. It’s not to be a conduit between God and man.  That’s the church’s responsibility.  Thus, I would certainly believe that all of the rights that are recognized and acknowledged by the First Amendment are God-given rights, and all the government can do is recognize and protect them, not grant them.  They’re granted to us by the fact that we are God’s creatures.

6.  How do biblical books such as Deuteronomy and Proverbs help us to understand God’s perspective on politics? Does the fact that they share political and ethical insights with other Ancient Near Eastern cultures (or that they offer critiques of those cultures and their political systems) influence your view of their relevance?

RL:  All of Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and thus provides perspective.  But for those of us who live in the New Covenant or New Testament era, that perspective is one removed from the immediacy it would have had in the Old Testament. Our manual for faith and practice is the New Testament.  Does the book of Proverbs give us great understanding and divine wisdom for how we live our individual lives, such as rejoicing with the wife of your youth? Yes.  Is it as immediately instructive as Ephesians 5 when it comes to husbands and wives and their relationship in Christian marriage?  Equally inspired?  Yes.  Equally instructive? Doubtful.  It’s always helpful, never wrong.  For instance, we don’t use the Mosaic covenant any more.  We have a new covenant in Christ Jesus.  Thus, we can eat shrimp and pork.

Proverbs 21:9 says, “Better to live on the corner of a roof than to share a house with a nagging wife.”  However helpful and instructive such admonitions are, they are embodied in and swallowed up in “Husbands, love your wives, just as also Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25) and “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord…” (Ephesians 5:22).

Anything the Old Testament says about childrearing is swallowed up and enhanced by the call in Ephesians 6:4 to bring your children up “in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

7.  Some political theologians note that Daniel simultaneously models service, critique and a message of divine judgment. Are all three of these to be implemented by believers? Are they postures we should always exhibit, or are they more appropriate at some times than others?

RL:  Yes, at appropriate times. One can serve a U.S. government that is fighting to destroy Nazi Germany and Japanese racism and militarism and at the same time critique the inappropriate carpet bombing of German and Japanese cities as being below the standard of Just War.  A Christian could promote, support, and defend the American Revolution and the constitutional government that came from it, and at the same time, warn as Thomas Jefferson did, of the divine judgment of God that would be visited upon the nation if slavery didn’t end.  So, yes, all three postures are appropriate depending upon the government we are posturing for or against.

8.  If a young church planter says to you, “In my social and cultural context, I need to avoid political topics. This enables me to address the gospel without any baggage and has helped our church create a community of diverse perspectives centered on Christ and his work. But am I doing the right thing? Should I be bolder?” How would you respond? Which passages would you use as a resource for guiding his or her thinking?

RL:  When Paul took his leave of the Ephesians elders at Miletus he said to them in Acts 20:20, “I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house.” And in v. 26 and 27, “Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God.”

The Christian minister has an obligation to share the whole counsel of God with his people.  He may not do it all at once, as Paul said in 1 Cor. 3:2, “I fed you milk, not solid food, because you were not yet able to receive it.”  But there should come a time, as he continues as their pastor, as he gains their trust, and as they grow in the Lord, where he gives them the whole counsel of God, which includes the obligation to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  I know many young church planters won’t like this, but when I hear them talk about not wanting to talk about abortion and same-sex marriage because it will upset people, I hear echoes of pastors in my youth who said, “I don’t want to talk about the race issue because it will upset people and divide the church.”  And so, the church stayed segregated for far too long, and it was a disgrace to the Gospel.

Racism is no more condemned in the Bible than same-sex relationships. Shame on ministers of the Gospel who hide behind surface popularity and argue for not preaching the whole counsel of God. They are just as guilty as men who tolerated racism in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

9.  What is the best article or essay a young pastor could read on politics, political interpretation of Scripture, or political theology? The best book?

RL:  I would recommend my book, The Divided States of America?; Wayne Grudem’s Politics According to the Bible; and City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era by Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner.

Categories: Interviews on Politics and Theology | Jason Hood