6/28: God and Government?

Location: Washington, DC
God and Government. Is it right for Christians to regularly use the government to achieve “kingdom purposes” (what God wants for the world, God’s will)? Is it what God desires—or only in special circumstances or for special purposes (Ester, etc)?

The anarchists would remind us of passages from Romans 13 and Revelation 13, reminding us that ultimately there are two kingdoms we cohabitate—one of this world, the earthly government that is, and another, being God’s holy kingdom. We American Christians can forget that very often.

So the last seminar/talk I went to at PAPAfest was entitled “Christianity and Anarchy” given by someone I really respect, and 24 hours later, and several states over, arrived at a Sojourner’s conference, basically 3 full days about how Christians should lobby the government and take an active part in politics. There was no talk of how the government was out to subvert and destroy the church. However, I was impressed with several speaker’s emphasis on the church’s need to care for the poor, not just hope in the earthly government to do the job.

We spent a day lobbying on Capitol hill, meaning for me, lobbying Texas Senator John Cornyn. I was really unimpressed with the woman from his staff. We came to talk about the poor and the minimum wage (40hr weeks on the current minimum wage places a family of 4 at almost half the poverty line, not at the poverty line—but half!). The staffer largely avoided the topic, suggesting the need to think about empowering “those people” to get better jobs….so what? How empowering? Education….ummm not funding that much are we? And then supposed people are “empowered,” then what? Then who fills the unskilled jobs. She turned to trying to refer us to the specialist on welfare, funny considering we were talking about the working poor.

Ok, so that’s really harsh, but it wasn’t the best experience. Talking to a Texas senator from a Christian perspective (as we were), you would expect some response at least.

Well, back to my thesis statement there. Having these two ideas in my head—either the one guy who’d advocated for small Christian, almost rebellious centers (growing own food, not watching tv, setting up economies not influenced or dependent on the other essentially) to the others who talked adamantly about working through the government. Well, it was a dilemma and it wasn’t, leaving back at some confusion on the issue but also feeling like that somewhat doesn’t matter really a lot right now either.

In other news, some other highlights: meeting an ex-Iraq soldier now Conscientious Objector, eating dinner with Brian McClaren, and—on a sad note, hearing what I though, in good faith, to be progressive Christians discussing race, only to find some people who didn’t believe there was a race problem in America, or at least totally misunderstood the problem (one man talked on and on about black on white racism in prisons….hmmm not to mention the fact that most of the men in prison are black, speaking of the real race problem).