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{"id":1463,"date":"2020-12-10T20:56:30","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T01:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/betweentwokingdoms\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2020-12-11T09:56:58","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T14:56:58","slug":"living-christianly-in-the-face-of-political-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/betweentwokingdoms\/2020\/12\/living-christianly-in-the-face-of-political-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Living Christianly in the Face of Political Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ As a rule, I spend more than enough time on this site challenging expressions of<\/a> political theology<\/a> that, in some way or another, strike me as missing the mark.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because, in surveying the contemporary field of political thought, I find myself theologically and intellectually dissatisfied with the range of \u201cideological\u201d options on offer. Liberalism, such as it is, paradoxically forfeits the happiness that comes from living within bounded limits, in the pursuit of an always-deferred exultation in the elimination of all constraints. Marxist traditions all too often treat the improvement of material circumstances as a comprehensive social panacea, capable of eradicating depression, suffering, and criminality in a single blow. Integralism and its variants presumptuously assume an exhaustive knowledge of God\u2019s commands, one that denies all possibility of \u201cuncertainty this side of heaven\u201d and attaches an unchallengeable divine mandate to the will of a single papal sovereign. All of these systems, when absolutized, seem to suffer from profound internal vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

What if the answer, then, is \u201cnone of the above\u201d?<\/p>\n

Over the last few months, I\u2019ve been exploring the work<\/a> of Ethiopian Lutheran theologian Gudina Tumsa, who was martyred by Marxist revolutionaries in 1979. Gudina\u2019s work is fascinating for many reasons\u2014for one thing, Gudina\u00a0<\/span>opposed<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>moves by European churches to supplant mission work with secular relief funds, and outright rejected Western squeamishness about \u201ccolonialism.\u201d (That is certainly not a story you\u2019re likely to hear in many places.)<\/p>\n

To my mind, though, perhaps the most helpful element of Gudina\u2019s theology is his emphasis on the ongoing life of the church\u00a0<\/span>as the church<\/em>\u00a0<\/i><\/span>during a time of political upheaval.\u00a0<\/span>For Gudina, since \u201cChrist is the living Lord who was raised from death by God the Father,\u201d and \u201c[a] living person cannot be identified with any impersonal system,\u201d a Christian \u201ccan work in any system, and the living Lord Christ commands us to go out and proclaim his presence, the good news.\u201d That is straightforward enough, even if the destiny of any particular political order is not. And while there are obviously certain moral limits on the extent to which a Christian can participate in the work of a given regime, Gudina recognizes that opportunities for Christians will likely always be available at some level.<\/p>\n

There is an element in Gudina\u2019s work, it seems to me, that pushes beyond some of today\u2019s intellectual impasses. The implicit assumption of much Western political theory (and, relatedly, political theology) is the theoretical possibility of regime continuity\u2014a belief that one can design and structure institutions that, once properly configured and calibrated, can largely operate on their own indefinitely. (Even Marxism, for all its talk of revolution, posits a finally enduring communist society as the scientific culmination of history). Yet for Gudina, faced with transformative change and an uncertain future, the preservation of regime continuity was not really the point of political theology at all. The questions of political theology must instead always be posed at the level of the individual Christian.<\/p>\n

What this suggests is that there is no single, valid-for-all-time Christian answer to the question of the \u201cbest form of government.\u201d That question can only be answered by reference to any number of contingent circumstances. In a monarchy, is the king wise? In a democracy, are the people virtuous? Ex ante<\/i>, removed from any particular circumstance, these questions are entirely unanswerable. (Even St. Thomas Aquinas admitted a degree of ambiguity<\/a> on this point.) But Gudina goes beyond Aquinas (and the integralists who claim to follow him) in working out an expression of Christian faithfulness in the midst of dramatic regime change. If God\u2019s kingdom is administered by way of two swords\u2014temporal and spiritual\u2014is it possible to live rightly when the former sword is blunted or broken? Gudina certainly believed so.<\/p>\n

These cursory observations, of course, are the very farthest thing from a comprehensively worked out political theory. But they are also very far from the endless jeremiads against modernity that seem to occupy rather too much room in conservative heads. If the recent Polish example<\/a> is any indication, the sociocultural clock is not turning back anytime soon. The first-order question is not a matter of one ideology against another, but rather how to live faithfully and well in a profoundly\u00a0<\/span>dis-integrated<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>society.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"