Political theology Archives

Cover image of "The Good News of Church Politics" by Ross Kane

The Good News of Church Politics, Ross Kane. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (ISBN: 9780802883834) 2024.

Summary: Proposes politics as a spiritual practice by which we love each other within and beyond the church walls.

When we hear the term “politics,” our minds often go to national politics. We center a lot of our focus on a single day every four years. But what about the rest of life? And particularly for Christians, what about our life together within local congregations.

Now I realize that for many of us the idea of church politics is hardly good news. We’ve been through power struggles, often over what seem small things like music in worship, or even carpet colors. However, Ross Kane believes that the church is a place where we can learn a redemptive form of politics. Specifically, we may learn politics as a spiritual practice of interdependence in our common life. And how we engage with each other can shape our engagement with the wider world. As Kane puts it, “organizing the church’s yard sale should be a model for how we engage politics in our cities and nations.”

Kane invites us to see our ordinary activities as political. Running our weekly food pantry is not mere service but an example of ordering our lives to love God and neighbor in the warp and woof of life. How we address competing interests can be exercises of ruthless power or gospel-centered service and a yielding to one another. How we welcome those who come through the door can communicate hierarchy or radical inclusiveness and worth. Loving God and neighbor in this way calls us into interdependence both within and between churches.

But is this idea rooted in the scriptures? Kane takes us through the terminology of scripture, observing how words for salvation and faithfulness have political overtones. Then there is language like kingdom, reign, people of God, community. Political imagery infuses our sacraments and hymns. All this reflects God’s good news for the politics of the church. Throughout, we witness a vision of interdependent, serving and sacrificial love. For God, politics is how we live in love with Him and each other.

Then Kane turns to politics as spiritual practice. Prayer is the starting place. He proposes that what prayer and politics have in common is “persistence, listening, and a commitment to mundane experience.” The realities of prayer open us up and sustain us in the realities of ordinary politics. The good news calls us to love our enemies. Learning to pray for and love those with whom we conflict moves us to a place of recognizing our interdependence even with those with whom we disagree. It also takes us into the place of forgiveness. Kane discusses forgiveness both as real reconciliation, rather than a forced papering over of wrongs, and as an act of self care, when reconciliation isn’t possible. He strongly emphasizes that truth-telling must precede reconciliation.

Kane believes the good news of church politics renews leadership. This includes the practices in our meetings that ensure that all are heard and that what they contribute is valued and weighed in the church’s deliberations. He explores how leaders exercise love as political power, considering the principles of Dr. King in non-violent action. He discusses how the church faces corporate sin with recognition, repentance, and restitution. In concluding this section, he elaborates the unusual authority of Christian leaders as that of serving and empowering others.

Finally, Kane shows how this “good politics” bears fruit beyond the congregation. He argues for an approach that is both locally focused and non-partisan. He uses the example of investigating and advocating the need for affordable housing (a challenge in my community). Kane also addresses the limits of hyperlocal politics. In particular, problems (and sins) in my neighborhood are often connected to wider problems and sins. Also, focus on one’s own community may deprive others. This leads him into consideration of seeking the welfare of our cities and of our national citizenship.

Ross Kane offer a convincing case for the good news of church politics. The church can indeed be the training ground for wider Christian political engagement. On the other hand, if we cannot practice the good news in and through our local congregations, we are not ready to do so more widely. This pithy little book is a great place for church leaders to begin. Each section offers questions for discussion and further resources. Kane roots his principles in congregational and community examples that will resonate with most readers. And he makes an argument that for most of us, our most important political work is the daily life of interdependent service with our own congregation and in our own community. This offers an attractive alternative to the often toxic character of our national politics. And this may be where the healing begins.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Awaiting the King (Cultural Liturgies, Volume 3), James K. A. Smith. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017.

Summary: A theology of public (and not just political) life exploring both how public life is “liturgical” and the church “political” and the possibilities and limits on engagement in the life of the “city of Man” for those who identify their hope and citizenship with the “city of God.”

The 2016 election season in the U. S. underscored how vitally needed is a “public theology” among Christians in the U.S., both to shed light both on the outcome, and the path forward. But this is not new. People have been lodging unrealistic hopes in political figures, and churches have permitted themselves to be held captive by glittering images since the time of Augustine.

In this work, the third volume in his “Cultural Liturgies” series James K. A. Smith articulates a public theology that is both corrective and visionary. Drawing on Augustine, he develops an understanding of the two cities that both requires us to determine which city will hold our love and loyalty, and how we might live in the “city of man.” He articulates a vision that leads neither to withdrawal into religious enclaves nor to becoming captive to a particular party, ideology, or leader.

Building on his earlier works, he observes that it is not only the liturgies of our church communities, but also those of our public life that shape our loves and our actions, sometimes far more than those of our churches. He also observes that we cannot retreat from political life, because our churches, and wider Christian movements are also a polis of people who are part of the already/not yet “city of God” which is our ultimate hope and primary allegiance.

In Augustine’s day, this led him to counsel rulers to exercise Christian virtues in ruling justly as servants of the people while recognizing the disordered love of the city of man. Augustine recognized that rulers could herald the kingdom while realizing that their just and diligent rule only accomplished penultimate aims.

He makes the interesting proposal that our liberal tradition that has allowed freedoms of speech and even pluralism is both rooted in and may best be sustained by Christian principles rather than a Rawlsian secularism. He also criticizes the applications of Kuyperian “sphere sovereignty” that exclude explicitly Christian referents from the spheres of public life. What he calls for is not a new Constantinianism (which he would contend is actually the propensity of secular ideologies), so much as John Inazu’s “confident pluralism” that protects all religious expressions in the public square through the virtues of tolerance, humility, and patience. He thinks a “return to natural law” is not what is called for but a full recovery of the Christian story of the death, resurrection and coming kingdom of Jesus lived out in the church’s formative practices. These ought to primarily shape our lives and concerns in the public arena while we recognize that our ultimate concern is not to “transform culture” but to point, in our public life, to the coming kingdom.

Chapter Six on contested formations, with its example from the Godfather of a Corleone mob hit occurring simultaneous with one of the family’s children being baptized, was sobering. It explains how pious religion can walk hand in hand with invidious forms of nationalism, racism, violence, and tyrannies of the left and right. Our public formation trumps our Christian formation, and our Christian formation ends up baptizing the public one. Smith admits there is no “silver bullet” (an interesting metaphor in the context of The Godfather!) but this underscores the role of pastor as public theologian, connecting the church’s formative practices to life outside the church walls. He then concludes with four rules for ad hoc collaborations that delineate the possibilities and boundaries for Christians in public life.

Smith gives us a public theology rooted in Augustine yet conversant with Rawls, Hauerwas, Kuyper, and Charles Taylor. This is a book that needs to be read by any thoughtful Christian who cares about our public life. It is a book for pastors who want to better help their people understand the present time. It is a book for church leaders wrestling with how their church’s liturgical life, and formative practices might shape a counter-cultural people. Give this book your full attention and I believe it will open your eyes to new possibilities beyond our political divides and politically captive imagination. It did for me.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.