By Tyler McKenzie
I heard it said recently that we are living through a revival of fundamentalist religion, but the revival is among nonreligious political groups. A revival of religion among the nonreligious. I agree. In our modern efforts to get rid of God and secularize in the USA, we had to find somewhere else to go for leadership, morality, hope, and meaning. We had to find something transcendent that could bring people together. So, politics took on a new religious fervor. Politicians are now our messiahs. Media personalities are our prophets. Political parties are our churches. Political platforms are our gospels.
Christianity hasn’t totally disappeared. Instead, politicians use it: (1) to lure Christians in, (2) baptize their pre-existing party beliefs, and (3) create a sanctimonious sense that “I’m on God’s side!” For example, earlier this year President Trump endorsed the Lee Greenwood “God Bless the USA” patriotic Bible. It was sold for $59.99. Inside this Bible, it includes copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and other historic documents. INSIDE THE BIBLE! Right next to Genesis, the Psalms, Paul’s letters, and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount! To be clear, “I’m proud to be an American,” but I’m prouder to be a Christian. I find it concerning that a kingdom of this world would put their constitutions or declarations inside the Bible. We should be irritable when people add stuff to our sacred book. This is the inspired Word. When people elevate writings of men even close to this level, we ought to call it out and protect the integrity of our faith. Don’t you see what’s going on here? This is political religion. They are using a perversion of the Bible (1) to lure you in, (2) baptize their pre-existing beliefs, and (3) create a sanctimonious sense that “We are on God’s side!”
The left is just as guilty of political religion, they just don’t pander to evangelicals. In an Atlantic article titled, “America Without God,” Muslim journalist Shadi Hamid showed that for 60 years (1937-1998), church membership remained steady in the USA at around 70 percent. Then over the last 20 years, the number dove to below 50 percent. The left celebrated this trend, assuming that less religion would make people more rational in politics. That has not happened. Hamid writes:
If secularists hoped that declining religiosity would make for more rational politics, drained of faith’s inflaming passions, they are likely disappointed. As Christianity’s hold, in particular, has weakened, ideological intensity and fragmentation have risen. American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever; it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief. This is what religion without religion looks like.
Helen Lewis builds on this in a 2020 Atlantic article where she compares protest culture to religion. The article was titled, “How Social Justice Became a New Religion.” She begins quite cheeky, “Quick question. If someone is yelling ‘repent’ at you in the street, are they more likely to be (a) a religious preacher or (b) a left-wing activist?” It’s interesting how Christians always get pinned with the caricature of the “angry street-preacher downtown with a megaphone telling people they are evil and need to repent.” Ironically, it is more common now to find activists, not preachers, doing this!
Lewis argues that younger people are the least religious generation today. That is why they are more likely to be involved in protest culture like what we’ve seen this year on college campuses. When you don’t have a church, you must go somewhere to find “collective effervescence.” This is the sociological term for the emotional electricity people feel from singing, chanting, or worshiping in community. Hamid recalled that after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020, droves of mourners gathered outside the Supreme Court, kneeling, weeping, and holding “religious candles” with an icon of Ginsburg stamped on them. Hamid wrote, it was “as though they were at the Western Wall.” This is a slicing metaphor. Jews pilgrimage to the Western Wall of the Temple to pray, but also to mourn the loss of their holy space to Islam. When Ginsburg died, it was a time of mourning because many on the left knew they were losing the holy space of the Supreme Court. She would soon be replaced by a conservative judge. Do you see? The left is just as guilty of political religion, but instead of stealing our symbols, they mimic our practices.
The human heart is made to worship, and when we get rid of God, we have to find something else to give our hearts to. Politics beckons us with open arms. We must resist. Swiss theologian Karl Barth, theologizing about the complicity of the German Lutheran Church with Hitler, once said Christians should be an “unreliable ally” to government. This would be faithful to the example we were given by the earliest Christians.
Jared Stacy, a political ethicist, suggests that the word Christian was first created by Rome as a partisan label. In Ancient Rome, people signaled their political affiliation to a city or a leader in this way. The Augustianoi were the people of Caesar. The Herodianoi were the people of Herod Antipas. The Pompeiianoi were the citizens of Pompeii. The Christianoi were the people of Christ. Stacy argues this label was originally given to Christians by Rome to “other them.” Christian wasn’t a label invented by the church. It was applied to the church by outsiders, then redeemed by the church later. It wasn’t an identification; it was an accusation.
“Christian” was a different political party, a party of citizens who worked for civic renewal, built strong families, moved the moral compass of their community, served the poor, nursed the sick, shared their wealth, loved their enemies, prayed for their leaders, and cared for the souls of their neighbors; but also a party who had no King higher than Jesus.
The problem with political religion should be obvious. Politicians make big promises but are bad saviors. Political parties make fanatical communities but bad churches. When politics become religion, Christian unity is poisoned and our more meaningful relationships die. As I recently heard Curtis Chang say, we must have the mind of Christ rather than the mind of a partisan (see Philippians 2:5 and the hymn that follows). As the election year reaches its boiling point this November and December, may we meditate on this. “Who is more religious – the Left or the Right?” I’m not sure. But my concern is that both may be more religious than the “Christians.”
Tyler McKenzie serves as lead pastor at Northeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky.
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