Shortly after visiting the United States in the early 1920s, British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked that “America is a nation with the soul of a church.” He was both impressed and appalled by the idea.
What he observed is that Americans often fail, consciously or unconsciously, to distinguish between church and state, denying their separate spheres. This despite the fact that the Bible unambiguously defines the church as wholly distinct from “the world,” even warning the faithful that the latter is under the power and control of Satan, no less!
A few years after Chesterton’s visit, in the fall of 1930, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer arrived at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, arguably the foremost American seminary at the time.
There he was dumbstruck by how little the faculty or the students seemed interested in the Bible, theology, or the internal workings of the church. Instead, their chief interest was in fixing the world. Culture, not the gospel, was the focus, national politics having become the church’s central mission (the “Social Gospel”).
The reason Bonhoeffer was so distressed is two-fold. For one, his own Lutheran tradition admitted unreservedly Augustine’s distinction between the “city of God” and the ”city of man.”
But more to the point, he had come from an increasingly unstable Germany where all elements of society, including the church, eventually would be co-opted into a unified Nazi culture. Church and state would be collapsed into one. The church would become unabashedly the “German church.” And without the church’s dissenting voice, Bonhoeffer knew, danger lurks.
Around this same time, Reinhold Niebuhr, who taught ethics at Union for years, became the leading exponent of what came to be known as “Christian realism,” which enjoyed widespread influence in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
Christian realism, among other things, sought to reclaim the church’s independence from politics and culture, believing that the church’s proper role is one of speaking to the culture, not for it. Its independence is fundamental to its essence, lest the clarity of its distinctive moral and spiritual voice be subsumed by a hegemonic, secularizing culture.
Niebuhr understood the importance of keeping church and state, the gospel and the world, separate. The title of his 1932 book, Moral Man and Immoral Society, says it all. There he argues that if each of us were to conduct our personal lives the way nations do, we’d all be monsters. Just try starting your own bloody war, for instance. Simply put, worldly affairs are, morally and spiritually, of a different order.
Niebuhr critiqued what he called “simple moralism,” which assumes that the desire for good is all that’s necessary to effect it. As he put it, the moralist and idealist fail to understand the “brutal character of the behavior of all human collectives and the power of self-interest and collective egoism (within those collectives).”
Any child, after all, knows that war is bad and that people should be treated with love and respect. And yet, in attempting to achieve this out in the world, he or she inevitably discovers that intentions alone are not always sufficient.
The same goes for the adolescent who congratulates him or herself on successfully articulating, intellectually at least, the way things ought to be, only to confront the stubborn reality of life as it actually is.
Though Christian realism had a promising run, it passed into irrelevancy during the mid-60s or so. Suddenly, a renewed sense of urgency was placed on reforming the world, just as before. The church once again saw its mission as “out there” in the world, and less so on its more modest and unique prerequisites.
I’m continually amazed these days at how unsophisticated and naive my fellow clergy seem to be. Many appear to practice Niebuhr’s simple moralism. They look at the political landscape and assume it functions on noble terms (Chesterton, call your office!). Salvation comes through allegiance to a particular political party, and utopia is achieved through this-worldly stratagems.
As a Christian realist, I view Washington, D.C. not as the throne of heaven, nor as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, nor even the Vatican. Instead I see it as the seat of secular power, of secular kings and queens. I do not expect Jesus Christ to occupy the White House or for politicians to function as angels or prophets (not that I wouldn’t wish they did!).
As a Christian realist, recognizing that the church and the state are separate spheres, I look for public office holders to approximate the gospel as it relates to public policy, however imperfectly. Like Niebuhr, I look for relative justice, not the pure kind anticipated by the Resurrection.
Does this then mean Christians should demur from political involvement? Not at all. It’s just that we should avoid being so gullible as to expect godly perfection from our elected leaders. Rather, we should assess carefully any political order from a Christian perspective, and then act and vote accordingly, keenly aware that no political order can or ever will take us to the Promised Land.
In an altogether eye-opening book entitled, The Managerial Revolution, James Burnham makes the case that power, privilege, and wealth play a far greater role in our politics than we generally assume. Despite having been published in 1941, it describes with chilling and uncanny accuracy the economic and geopolitical world of today.
The book outlines how the West slowly transitioned during the late Middle Ages from a feudal order to a capitalist one. Power and wealth were transferred from agrarian lords to the bourgeoisie who did not hold land so much as capital and the means of production.
According to Burnham, the capitalist phase, noted for its limited government (whose chief purpose was to protect and reinforce the free market), has been replaced with what he calls the “managerial society,” beginning around the time of World War I.
The managerial society is characterized by the shift from private, individualistic capitalism to a fused government economy. Government managers, through active regulation, control what is possible within the day-to-day operations of industry, while capital holders move from ownership into finance.
Within this configuration, which has grown exponentially since Burnham wrote his book, the ruling class increasingly controls and manages state institutions which in turn control the economic and cultural spheres, thus consolidating the ruling class’ burgeoning power.
Like Machiavelli, Burnham argues that no matter what economic or political system one finds, it is the ruling elites who extract its power, prestige, and wealth. The feudal lords are overtaken by the bourgeoise who in turn are replaced by the managerial state. (The king is dead; long live the king!)
The latter differs, however, in that the managerial state requires unprecedented governmental control, unlike private enterprise. Political and social consolidation is essential, as is top-down uniformity and centralized control. Anything that disrupts this hegemony is to be ruthlessly expunged.
It is essential to repeat that while the governmental agencies effectively control the means of production, it is the rich and powerful who control the state.
Today, it is a relatively small group of fabulously wealthy oligarchs whose influence determines the managerial state’s actions. Silicon Valley and Wall Street, through their unprecedented wealth and influence, control what our politicians say and do.
A few year ago, President Obama made a startling comment. The pitched battles between the two political parties mostly take place, he said, “within the 40-yard lines.”
In other words, there really isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two parties, despite all the political theater. There is instead a kind of hybrid Uni-Party that acts with a fair degree of uniformity. The theater is just for show, a mere distraction.
Far more than we realize, it is the .01 percent who are calling the shots. The politicians and other governmental entities are simply the recipients of their largess. They do whatever their paymasters and overlords instruct them to do. Shockingly, the top 7 or 8 wealthiest counties in the United States today ring Washington, D.C. Yet what is it they produce exactly? And where precisely does their money comes from?
Sadly, a great many Christians, including especially pastors, focus their energies looking for politicians to effect spiritual and moral change. Yet in this they risk being fooled into thinking not only that the church and the state are of one accord, who together share the same vision for salvation, but that the interests of the state are in any way what they seem. Meanwhile, the true malefactors remain hidden behind the curtain, like the Wizard of Oz.
Over the years, I’ve reluctantly concluded that there are essentially two types of “social justice” pastors, those who are simply naive (who practice simple morality) and those who, wittingly or unwittingly, aspire to the social prestige that goes with being part of the “in-crowd,” the managerial elite.
Perhaps – one might hope – the recent civil and political unrest will disabuse Christians of either such fiction.