Christian political involvement Archives

Cover image of "The After Party" by Curtis Chang and Nancy French

The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics, Curtis Chang and Nancy French. Zondervan Books (ISBN: 9780310368700), 2024.

Summary: How we might shift toward a better Christian politics through humility and hope.

There are many Christians longing for a better way to engage in politics. We’ve lost friends and family, who have “disappeared.” We recognize that we will always have political differences, even among Christians, but believe this shouldn’t result in demonizing those who differ with us. We are concerned that we cannot sustain the fabric of civic life with the level of hostile discourse we see around us. But we wonder if a better way is possible.

Earlier this year, Curtis Chang and David French of The Good Faith Podcast, teamed up with Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, to produce a six part free video curriculum to help churches move toward a better Christian politics, titled The After Party. This book is a companion piece, written by Chang and Nancy French, an award-winning journalist, and the wife of David French, a columnist with the New York Times. The book and the course complement each other but may be used independently.

The focus of the book is a call for us to allow Jesus to shift us from the what of politics (ideology, party, and policy) to the how of politics (spiritual values, relationship, and practices). They point to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus calls for mercy, peace-making, refraining from angry mocking of opponents, prioritizing reconciling over winning, avoiding sexual scandals, and truth-telling. This is not a critique of politicians but rather how we engage in politics. The authors focus on humility and hope as two key spiritual values that help us move toward a better engagement.

They use these two qualities as X and Y axes identifying four types:

The Disciple: high in both humility and hope
The Combatant: high in hope, low in humility
The Exhausted: high in humility, low in hope
The Cynic: low in humility and hope

They include an assessment tool accessible through a QR code. There is a written version in the appendix, allowing readers to identify the type that may most closely fit.

Most of the remainder of the book explores each of the types. As it turns out David French, Russell Moore, and Curtis Chang identified as the Combatant, The Exhausted, and the Cynic. The chapters include narratives of each on how they matured as disciples, growing in hope, humility, or both.

The final chapter invites us to move from us-versus-them politics to the after party of peace at the foot of the cross. While we cannot fully embody that this side of kingdom come, we can be living icons, signs of what is to come as we live in humility and hope across our differences.

This book offers a clear alternative to our politics of division. Is it too simple? I don’t think it is the be all, end all solution. But it offers a starting point, with tangible practices we can try with our “disappeared” friends. Rather than waiting for politicians that practice a better politics, it proposes that Christians, particularly evangelicals, in churches across this country take the first steps.

Will it be enough? I don’t know, but true disciples of Jesus don’t ask those questions. They listen for the call of Jesus and follow. At least they’ve taken the first steps toward a better politics, and nothing good can happen until someone does.

One Nation Under God, Bruce Ashford and Chris Pappalardo. Nashville: B & H Academic, 2015.

Summary: Explores whether and how it is appropriate for Christians in the American context to engage in politics, how one brings one’s faith into this, and applies this to seven contemporary issues.

Politics is front and center right now in the middle of the presidential convention season. The question of how people of faith engage in the political process is a larger question than just how we pursue electoral politics. Whether and how we engage our political processes is a question over which Christians have pondered from New Testament times down to the present. What Ashford and Pappalardo provide here is a thoughtful primer addressed particularly to the current American context that can be useful for both adult education classes in churches and as a text in Christian colleges as part of a political science reading list.

The first part of the book seeks to frame a perspective for participation in the political process. It seeks to understand politics within the framework of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation–a process that reflects us as image bearers, has been affected by the fall, and is shaped by Christian hope. The book surveys four approaches to cultural and political engagement, similar to H. Richard Neibuhr’s Christ and Culture. They draw on Kuyper’s concept of “sphere sovereignty” to discuss the relation of church and state under the overarching Lordship of Christ, avoiding extremes of statism or theocracy. And this part concludes with the need for wisdom and conviction as we engage a post-Christian and plural public square. We need to be skilled at articulating both “thick”, biblically informed positions, and “thin” public articulations that use shared language and points of common ground to make our arguments.

The second half of this book explores seven contemporary issues of public discussion and seeks to exemplify the “thick-thin” approach to these. The issues are those of life and death, marriage and sexuality, economics and wealth, the environment and ecological stewardship, racial diversity and race relations, immigration, and war and peace. What a struck me was the inclusion of issues of race, environment, and immigration in a book published by a conservative, Baptist-based press. While still leaning toward some of the positions of “the religious right” the section on environment refuses to engage in climate-change denial but advocates creation care, the section on race admits our long and sad history and the work to be done, and the section on immigration challenges both parties for their stands and actions. Similar to Russell Moore’s Onward (published by the same publisher and reviewed here), this takes a more “prophetic” prospective arguing that the church must indeed speak “truth to power” to those in both major parties without becoming captive to either.

In fact, this is the theme of the concluding chapter, which commends the example of Augustine as one who was steeped both in the scriptures and the great works of Roman culture and could speak with both “thick” and “thin” language, depending on context and need.

As noted above, this is a great introductory book for discussions on Christian political involvement. It introduces the thoughtful contributions of a wide range of people from Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Novak to Martin Luther King, Jr., Francis Schaeffer, and Rosaria Butterfield. The “issue” chapters conclude with discussion questions and suggestions for further reading. I hope this book will be widely used and might foster a more constructive engagement of Christians in politics and a more thoughtful and gracious discourse in future years.

____________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.