What’s Right with the Left?

In his recent book God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, Jim Wallis asks the question, ‘Is there a politics of God?’ Wallis is writing primarily about the political scene in the United States, where it often seems that Republicanism has claimed the exclusive right to speak on behalf of God, while the Democrats, with a few notable exceptions, would prefer to steer well clear of the language of faith in the public arena. Now contrary to what a cursory glance at the news media might suggest, the world does not need to revolve around North America, so I won’t dwell any further on the political scene across the Pacific, but this state of affairs raises serious questions for all Christians: does the politics of the Right truly reflect the fullness of the Christian gospel? If not, what are the problems with the right-wing use of Christian language for political ends? Moreover, what are the alternatives?

In the next few minutes, I’d like to advocate a different approach to engaging with social, political, economic, and ecological issues that is faithful to the biblical and Christian traditions in which we stand, based on two premises:

• first, while those who use biblical language to advance right-wing views are free to hold whatever opinions they believe, in good faith, to be true, it is essential that faithful Christians who understand the gospel differently speak out, not to denigrate or belittle the views of others, but to redress the balance.
• second, the biblical tradition does not allow us to advocate a private, hidden faith that does not engage with pressing issues relating to politics and society. Personal faith is important, yes: but the Jesus who ‘would go off to some deserted place and pray’ (Luke 5:16) was also the Jesus who challenged the status quo of his society and called upon those who heard him not to hide their lamp under a bowl, out of sight, but to put it on a lamp-stand where it cannot be avoided (Luke 8:16-18).

* * *

How, in a New Zealand where the myth of the secular state has yet to be fully laid to rest, is the language of the gospel being co-opted in support of conservative political agendas? It seems clear that the main political parties in New Zealand have not been using biblical resources to shape their rhetoric. But it would, I think, be a mistake to suppose that minority parties such as Christian Heritage NZ and Destiny New Zealand are insignificant forces on the political scene. What will almost certainly be lacking at the polls is made up for by the power of rhetoric. There is a real sense in which Bishop Brian Tamaki — who of course has no connection whatsoever to Destiny New Zealand, lest you think otherwise — is the public voice of Christianity in New Zealand, but voices such as his should not be heard without honest, intelligent criticism from another quarter.

The buzz-word in the rhetoric of the Christian Right in New Zealand would seem to be ‘family’. Thus for Christian Heritage NZ, ‘[s]trong families are the building blocks of a cohesive society and a prosperous nation. Christian Heritage NZ is committed to policies that will help foster healthy family life’. Similarly, for Destiny New Zealand, ‘[a]ll of our policies are based on the timeless principle that the family is the cornerstone of society and marriage is the cornerstone of the family’. In both cases, a particular vision of what a family is forms the basis for the entire edifice of political policy. While there is much to be said, from a Christian point of view, for an emphasis on stable family life, however that might be defined, we need to bear in mind that this scarcely seems to have been the major concern of the ministry of Jesus, who appears to have been celibate and to have been brought up in a family that was more than usually dysfunctional. This rhetoric of ‘family’ is linked, for both parties, with promoting the ideal of prosperity, which, in Destiny’s case, is further linked with the rather troubling notion of ‘generational blessing’.

These rather narrow emphases, I would argue, unduly limit the potential of the Christian vision to inform public issues. Aside from the very real issue of who is excluded from the Christian Right’s definition of the family, there is the essential point that the gospel, in the tradition of the ancient prophets of Israel and Judah, advocate much broader issues of social justice. For every case of a heterosexually based nuclear family creating a stable environment for children to grow up in, Christians need to speak out against the cases in which such an environment has become the context of abuse, and become the voice of those whose voices have been silenced. Christians also need to call for honesty in acknowledging that heterosexually based nuclear families are considerably less of a ‘timeless principle’ and more socially conditioned than the rhetoric of the Christian Right would suggest. Equally, Christians also need to speak out in celebration of the times when other kinds of family unit have proved to be life-giving. On the question of prosperity, Christians need to ask the question: who must go without in order for me to be prosperous? In light of the ‘preferential option for the poor’ that seems to be a hallmark of prophets such as Amos and Micah, not to mention Jesus himself, this is a question the Christian cannot avoid asking. Where prosperity becomes linked with the idea of generational blessing, Christians need to acknowledge that the idea of blessing and punishment being passed on to future generations emerges from a rather blinkered reading of the ten commandments in Exodus and Deuteronomy and ignores the very different idea of individual answerability for wrongdoing that we find in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. We cannot have a bible with a book of Proverbs alone, for its simple answers need a Job or Ecclesiastes to complicate them.

If we are to be politically engaged, what sorts of questions might Christians consider asking? Here are some suggestions (I formulate these as questions: while my own convictions should be transparent, the question form is intended to invite constructive disagreement and debate). How might Labour’s Foreshore and Sea Bed legislation be read in light of the Israelite King Ahab’s expropriation of Naboth’s ancestral land (1 Kings 21)? How might National’s desire to ‘head off the dangerous drift to racial separatism’ be read in light of the consequences of a gentile king’s issuing of ‘a proclamation to his whole kingdom that all were to become a single people, each nation renouncing its particular customs’ (1 Maccabees 1:41, NJB)? How might the ideal of koinonia give Christians are framework in which to respond to the pervasive individualism that has National inviting those who log on to their web-site to find out at the push of a button how much they will save as a result of their flagship tax cuts, and has Labour bribing students by promising to write off interest on student loans? How might Christians engage with pressing environmental concerns, in light of a bible that begins with repeated proclamations of the goodness of creation (Genesis 1:1-2:4a), and a story about a first human who is charged with tending a garden (Genesis 2:4b-25)?

Last week I was privileged to be at a hui in Auckland where the Archbishop of Cape Town, The Most Reverend Njongonkulu Ndungane, reminded us that there are more verses in the Bible about social justice than about prayer. His words are worth quoting:

[T]he Church has always been involved in the political world — it was the driving force behind the education systems of today; the health services; the abolition of slavery (though for a while it was very divided on this question); prison reform; and more besides. In some parts of the world we have become too used to leaving such questions ‘to the politicians’ as though it would dirty our hands to become involved. That is not the faith of the Bible! Indeed, there are more verses about social justice than there are about prayer! Just consider Jesus, at the start of his ministry, reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth. You might say that these words are the ‘manifesto’ of his whole ministry: ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free’.

If this was the manifesto of the ministry of Jesus, this is the manifesto of the ministry of the Christian. Its implications cannot be reduced to the narrow concerns of the Christian Right.