Can the churches justifiably step into the secular political realm to help guide the nation?

The Christian church was originally designed to be one of the important civic institutions of the nation, joining with secular agencies in assuring a level of peace and justice based on the democratic doctrine of human equality. (Photo by Hayes Photography/Getty Images)

There is a lot happening in the nation’s capital and state capitals across the country. There is an executive department power movement underway that may ultimately affect what churches are able to do at the altar on the Sabbath, including their collection plate activities.

Churches tend to believe that their mission is purely spiritual; that is, helping people obtain eternal salvation by means of righteous living, together with devotion to specific doctrines of the denominational church.

Most churches subscribe to the idea that in order to maintain separation of church and state they must not involve themselves in political/governmental issues, or else they will be breaking the long tradition of the church in America and possibly even the constitutional law of the nation, the First Amendment of which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.”

However, that worry among churches today does not seem to have been Jesus’ worry. The anti-civic engagement concerns of the church today have ensured that it falls well short of emulating the broad-reaching socio-economic teachings and activities of the historical Jesus.

The Jesus that most churches pay respect to today is a distinctly privatized and revisionist Jesus. Contemporary church denominations have forgotten that Jesus once was so seriously upset about unregulated consumer interest rates that he went to a very public place to participate in an act of civil disobedience — overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the temple.

He seriously upbraided violence as a means of pursuing both domestic and international relations, since he told Peter to put away his sword and told his followers to peacefully pay their taxes to the Roman occupier rather than go the way of violent insurrection like the Zealots of his time. Zealot activities soon enough resulted in the disappearance of Israel as a nation for the next 2,000 years.

Jesus himself supported public judicial affairs as a criminal judge having a rabbinical civic legal education. This he made clear when he presided in the case of the woman taken in adultery.

Perhaps one of the most important ways Jesus demonstrated how people and their religious denominations can and should advocate for how government should be run is by teaching them about the Ten Commandments, the original constitutional law of the twelve tribes of Moses. This he accomplished in the Sermon on the Mount as well as in his parables. The Ten Commandments today occupy a central point in religious scripture because scripture is intended to encompass secular wisdom as well as moral and spiritual wisdom. The Bible, at bottom, is a book of comprehensive history of a nation in an important era of time.

Theologians today distance themselves from those civic doctrines by presenting Jesus as a disengaged civic citizen, only really concerned about teaching kindness and personal repentance from sin. The original Mosaic laws that Jesus supported, however, presented a timeless, classical republican organizational and operational system of government designed to ensure socio-economic justice. Those 10 laws interpreted against the historical backdrop of Hebrew oppression in Egypt, have been used to undergirded democratic governments across the Western world ever since. The great monotheistic God schooled Moses and the Hebrews in a system of consensual government that the Hebrews had lost sight of during the 400 years they sojourned in Egypt. The heavenly teacher of the Israelites later called prophets like Ezekiel who passed on God’s view of the political reality across much of the world, “Are not my ways equal, are not your ways unequal?” (Ezekiel 18:29)

On the other hand, traditionally the liberal Judeo-Christian churches have not been bashful about engaging in the “social gospel.” That is, participating in lobbying activities relating to secular measures like Afro-American civil rights, the Vietnam War, women’s rights/welfare rights, education/children’s rights, and identity rights. Conservatives seem to have made a big splash today in the political realm, especially the evangelical wing of the church who support big business and smaller government. They lobby for returning prayer and the Ten Commandments to the public schools and keeping liberal curriculum out of the schools.

The MAGA movement has virtually anointed its own leader as a new American prophet of economic righteousness and religious righteousness, if not moral and ethical righteousness. In fact, there is nothing wrong with the churches of either liberal or conservative persuasion lobbying for their favorite way of secular social/economic/political life. The scripture abundantly supports this assertion. It can be done without enforcing an established religion across the land.

Churches today, unfortunately, are silent while egalitarian/consensual government is being radically overhauled by an extra-legal movement that is switching over the institutions of government from democratic republicanism to autocratic/oligarchic monarchy. The new system of government features a racially, religiously, economically, and politically discriminatory two class system of government, with an aristocratic class having special privileges overseeing a commoner class with many fewer privileges. This is happening outside of the specified process for changing the form of government by constitutional amendment, which requires much more than a thin margin of electoral consent, but rather a two-thirds margin in the Congress and a three-fourths margin among the states.

In sum, the Christian church was originally designed to be one of the important civic institutions of the nation, joined at the hip with secular agencies in the task of assuring a level of peace and justice based on the democratic doctrine of human equality in rights and responsibilities. It is time for the church to step up.