Christian Activism and God's Plan for America

Politically active Christians fight for policies they feel support their god's agenda. In this statement of belief about why Christians should be politically active, Michigan businessman, inspirational speaker, and born-again Christian Stacy Swimp argues that "True Christians have a responsibility to God to fight any law or policy that would violate God’s will and, in the end, our own conscience."

Swimp and other politically active Christian leaders urge believers to engage in the entire process from prayer to the polling place, and to work in private, in small groups, and in crowds in an effort, as Swimp articulates, to remove " the demonic stronghold which has, for decades, lead us down the path of moral relativism, socialism, broken families, record levels of unemployment, and leadership that has forgotten that righteousness exalts a nation!"

Taking a shot at Swimp for his hasty generalizations would be easy enough, but he is here not as a punching bag, but as an example of Christian political activism and an introduction my argument that, from the perspective of a believing Christian, political activism has no bearing on political outcomes, and from the perspective of a non-believer, Christian political activism seems almost contradictory to the faith's tenets.

Let's begin with solidarity. While Christians in general claim the same broad beliefs, their politics (and indeed their doctrine, but that is best left to a shelf of books) are anything but homogeneous. What one might support depends on one's particular sect. Let's take a look at two politically active Christians' views on the minimum wage. The first, Stacy Swimp, you've already met.

Stacy Swimp

Swimp is a businessman and conservative Christian and is connected with The Crossing Church in Farmington, Michigan whose pastors, Randy and Debbie O'Dell, are married. I only point this out because although Swimp does not directly associate himself with a particular sect, it is safe to conclude he holds generally Protestant religious views because the Vatican does not allow ordained clergy to marry. Swimp urges his readers to fight a political battle against the minimum wage which is, in his words, "inherently discriminatory. It can be argued that they are racist in consequence, if not in intent" and "furthermore, show partiality for one segment (a very small part) of our society, to the detriment of the masses. Hence, they are not only morally wrong, they are unrighteous. Spiritually wicked." Got it? God says we should pull back on government entitlement programs and increase the freedom of the individual to move in a relatively unregulated capitalist marketplace.

Charles Clark

Economist and staunch Catholic Charles Clark disagrees with Swimp, and in an interview published in U.S. Catholic, argues for legislating a raise in the minimum wage. He emphasizes that "research clearly shows that once you raise the minimum wage, the whole bottom wage structure rises with it. The last study that I saw found the bottom 40 to 50 percent of wages start to creep up once you raise the minimum wage. That’s a way of creating rules to push people up." Furthermore, Clark, like Swimp, frames this as an important issue for the faithful, "Poverty is exclusion, and people are excluded from more than just the economic life of the community: exclusion can be social, political, cultural, and even spiritual. These are areas where the church, I think, can be most effective." And . . .got it? God says we should use government power to manipulate the capitalist marketplace and decrease the individual businessperson's range of choices when comes to paying his or her workers.

So how does God decide which view to support? Is there some sort of polling switchboard and He just goes with the majority? How does He weigh the prayers and protests and votes of politically active Christians on opposite sides of an issue or who take various differing positions within an issue?

Actually, Christian religious texts have the answer to these questions, and at least for those who take the Bible as truth (often spelled with a capital "T"), reveal that for true believers, activism intervention can have no possible impact on the outcome of any political struggle.

Let's postulate (if you aren't Christian) or present as a given (if you are Christian) that:

The Abrahamic god worshiped by Christians exists. I will, according to convention, use the masculine pronoun and refer to him using the proper pronouns "Him" and "He" and the proper noun "God."

God is omnipotent. He can exert His will over anything in His creation at any time or any place simultaneously. Nothing can resist His power.
"And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." (Revelation 19:6). 

 God is omniscient. He knows all things at all times, including the past actions, ongoing actions, and future actions of everything in His creation. Nothing is hidden from Him, including even the most fleeting thought.
"I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.'" (Isaiah 46:9-10).  

God is omnipresent. He is everywhere at all times and in all places and has been and will be for all eternity. God's presence cannot be escaped.
"Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account" (Hebrews 4:13).

 God has a plan for His creation. He has a plan not only for the larger scheme of things, but also the lives of every individual creature, including and especially humans, in His creation.
"This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men" (Acts 2:23).

Because of His overwhelming power, it is quite easy for Him to affect His plans. He enacts His larger plans through the actions of individuals and groups of individuals regardless of the personal desires of those individuals.

This, for example, occurs in Exodus when God tells Moses to ask Pharaoh for release, but apparently for PR reasons, God says to Moses, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart that I may multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 7:3). Pharaoh may well have let Moses and his crew go without all the death and pestilence, or maybe just after Aaron did the whole my-snake-rod-swallows-all-your-snake-rods thing, but that was not part of God's plan.

Dude, your breath.

Likewise, Jesus's public torture and blood sacrifice was also part of God's plan, a plan in which He created a dramatic tableaux using his former pal and fallen Archangel Satan and patsy Judas Iscariot: "Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve. And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus" (Luke 22:3-4). 

Neither Satan nor Judas had any say in the matter. I suppose you could argue that Satan could have refused God, or failed to have been manipulated into possessing Judas, but that would contradict God's omnipotence.

All this helplessness in the face of an almighty deity means that if you are believer, you can take solace in knowing that even though your prayers were not answered, God heard them and didn't answer them for a reason, or He answered them in unexpected ways because it was all part of His plan.

God's plans are immutable and the individual's wants are secondary, if not irrelevant. He already knows the outcome of everything in His creation across all time and is present and powerful in each every moment. You can't surprise Him and He can't surprise Himself.

Thus, whatever path the United States body-politic is taking is being directed by God through the actions of individuals and groups of individuals whether they know it or not or whether they think their actions are making a difference or not.

By way of example, the striking down of DOMA was all part of God's plan and the exertions of protestors on both sides of the argument were also part of His plan. Like Pharaoh and Moses and Satan and Judas Iscariot, Christians might argue that yes, of course the DOMA defeat is part of God's plan. He want us to demonstrate our loyalty and commitment by fighting more strongly for His will in our nation and is testing our worthiness through political martyrdom and ability to suffer. But this doesn't make any sense because, being omniscient, He already knows the personal commitment and worthiness of every single individual.

So why do some believers feel that "good Christians" are politically active Christians? If you are not a politically active Christian, are you are something less than "good." Does that mean you are bad? Does God prefer the firebrand over the hermit? Will a prayerful, reflective, honest, introverted, studious true believer be cast out of Heaven and a prayerful, honest, exuberant, publicly passionate extrovert be welcomed? Real Christians know these are rhetorical questions.

Or not, Your call

One argument made by some religious leaders that good Christians must be politically active in order to influence the levers of power to push the United States to become a moral and righteous nation, a more Christian democracy.

But again, it won't make any difference. If God needs America to become a Western European democracy with a single-payer health care system and extensive social safety net with legalized abortions, so that later he can condemn the damn place to sulfur and brimstone, then no amount of good Christian influence is going to make any difference. If, on the other hand, He chooses to take America to the brink and save her, then He has already planned it (and relative to His existence, it has already occurred and is occurring) and He'll do it without his followers' puny exertions.

For non-believers my argument is simply a thought exercise. They understand that political activism does have effect on the outcome of political struggles, and they also understand that religion plays a big part in people's lives. Thus, non-believers realize that religious beliefs can be manipulated or invoked or rallied to successfully gain the upper hand in political contests.

For believers it is a bit more complex. They cannot be fighting for personal gain, because through faith they already have achieved the Kingdom of Heaven and in the blink of an eye will be reunited for eternity with their deity.

They also cannot believe that their exertions will help anyone God doesn't want to be helped or change anything God doesn't want changed.

This excerpt from Chapter 9 of Paul's Epistle to the Romans sums up the whole exercise:

For He says to Moses,“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

The research clearly shows that once you raise the minimum wage, the whole bottom wage structure rises with it. The last study that I saw found the bottom 40 to 50 percent of wages start to creep up once you raise the minimum wage. That’s a way of creating rules to push people up - See more at: http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/201306/catholic-case-raising-minimum-wage-27483#sthash.e6mDhtU5.dpuf

The research clearly shows that once you raise the minimum wage, the whole bottom wage structure rises with it. The last study that I saw found the bottom 40 to 50 percent of wages start to creep up once you raise the minimum wage. That’s a way of creating rules to push people up - See more at: http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/201306/catholic-case-raising-minimum-wage-27483#sthash.e6mDhtU5.dpuf

Taking God's Name

"No, not an oath . . .
Swear priests and cowards and men cautelous,
Old feeble carrions and such suffering souls
That welcome wrongs."
- Julius Caesar, Act 2 Scene 1

Five days ago, the United States Air Force Academy quietly announced that "After reviewing the cadet Honor Oath, and in the spirit of determining a way ahead that enables all to be true to their beliefs, the Air Force's Academy has decided to make the final clause optional."

The United States Air Force Academy Honor Oath

"We will not lie, steal or cheat nor tolerate among us anyone who does.  Furthermore, I resolve to do my duty and live honorably, so help me God."

As reported by Time's Mark Thompson, the original 1959 oath "was modified following a 1984 cheating scandal" and "the phrase 'so help me God' was tacked on 'to add more seriousness to the oath.'"  

The USAFA press release discussed leadership's reasoning behind the decision, but did not mention the complaint brought by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, whose mission statement reads: "The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is dedicated to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom to which they and all Americans are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment."

I am not surprised by the decision and although there will be dissatisfaction in the ranks, the US military has a solid tradition of being on the front line of equality, even if it doesn't all seem that way. President Truman's executive order 9981 desegregated the military in 1948, six years before segregation in American public schools was declared unconstitutional. In 2011, the Department of Defense eliminated punitive discharges for those who identify as homosexual.

Even so, according the Air Force Times, MRFF president Mikey Weinstein wasn't satisified with the decision and argued that "the Air Force Academy took the cowardly route,” Weinstein said after the announcement. “From our perspective, it still creates a tremendous amount of unconstitutional turmoil ... for anyone who is a religious objector." In an excerpt published in the Christian Post, Weinstein promised to press the fight "if the words are still there, if our clients are willing to come forward, we'll sue the academy in federal court aggressively and as soon as we can."

Media sympathetic to promoting and supporting public expression of religion, and specifically Christianity, reacted as you might expect. This piece published by Americans United for Separation of Church and State takes the religious alarmists to task and outlines what the writer sees as a strong push by the religious right to "invent a national Christian identity"

A blogger at Christian Fighter Pilot argues that nothing has really changed, since cadets could easily omit the phrase and nobody would notice, but is concerned that "Weinstein is calling the shots for religious liberty in the US military."

Big surprise, everybody has something to bitch about.

This decision to make "so help me God" optional allows adherents to monotheistic faiths, of which Christianity is by far the majority in the United States and by obvious extension also in the US armed forces, to express their commitment to their deity. It allows those who find deities superfluous to openly avoid mentioning a deity and perhaps move their lack of belief a little closer to acceptance alongside those who believe wafers and wine turn to flesh and blood and there is a supernatural being who punishes or rewards every thought of every human being on the planet. I also suspect polytheists will be able to insert a surreptitious pluralizing "s" to their oaths with no one being the wiser.

And, as Shakespeare pointed out, oaths are for those who expect wrongdoing. Liars are wont to lie loudly and keep their own cunning counsel.

Come the Supplicants, Seeking Favor

It’s the end of the first quarter and I am like a little god. The villagers, in their time of need, have rediscovered my shrine; they have cleaned it of seven weeks overgrowth and re-consecrated it with murmured flatteries.

I grant grades.

Or at least they believe so. It is difficult weaning the masses off blind faith and onto personal responsibility. They BELIEVE that somehow everything will be fine with just a little prayer and maybe a quick “extra credit” project. How, after all, can I really fail them? If I do, or don’t allow them an extra day to turn in late work, they can always tell their secular rulers that their little god is weak. The shifting of responsibility away from oneself and onto others, earthly or otherwise, seems to be something we are born with.

The most insistent worshipers are those who ignored my dialectical journal and vocabulary assignments for five weeks and are failing as a result. These poor souls want to know if they can “do something” to get their grade up. I tell them that since I am more forgiving than many of the other minor deities in the building, I will grant them the right to present me with all five weeks of completed work before I close the grade books. Many are appalled that I would require such a thing. “But Mr. Rice, that’s going to take me forever.” I provide my standard response, delivered with the appropriate gravity, “It will take time, probably the same amount of time it would have taken you had you done the work over the last five weeks except now you will have to do it in only a few days. Furthermore, because you will not be getting the same academic benefit you would have received by doing the work in stages and getting my feedback after each stage, I will be deducting points. The points I deduct will be based on your level of engagement with the text and how hard you work to address all of the requirements. If you submit sloppy, poorly executed work, you will receive a significant mark down. I will deduct fewer points for lateness if you submit carefully crafted and insightful work.”

No sick or lame animals on my altar, only the fatted calf will do.

Some students return the next day proud and tired. “I worked all night on this.” I have a a few of responses based on my mood. The knee-jerk response is what you might expect: “Thank you, but had you done this over the time allotted you would have gotten more sleep last night.” Sometimes I snap back, “Great, now you need to apologize to my wife and daughters for taking me away from them to grade your work in one large piece. You realize that you stayed up all night doing one series of these while I have dozens of students’ work just like your's to grade. How late will I be up because of your inefficiency?”

My favorite response was to a student who never does classwork or homework. He complains constantly and repeatedly tells me I should extend my due dates to accommodate him because, as he says, “I can’t help it if I’m a procrastinator.”

This young man came to me for some help as part of an exercise he was doing in another class. The students in this other class were being required to build a portfolio with a set of educational and career goals, a resume, and a letter of recommendation. He came to me the day before it was due and said, “Hey, Mr. Rice, will you write me a letter of recommendation?”

“When is it due?” I asked, although my god-like powers allowed me to already “perceive” the answer.

“Uh, tomorrow morning.”

“Great,” I said, “How long does it take you to get me what I asked you to provide? Did you turn in your first dialectical journal assignment yet?”

“Yeah, I turned it in this week.”

“So how long did I wait for it?

“Five weeks.”

“OK, I’ll get your letter of recommendation back to you in five weeks.”

This little god is a forgiving god but one with a feel for irony. I gave the letter to him the next day but I wonder if he is familiar with the phrase, “damning with faint praise.”

Spring break begins next week. The weeds will begin to grow again around my shrine and I will be neglected and forgotten until May. Perhaps I shall enjoy the solitude.