Filtered Moral Values

By Joseph Wakelee-Lynch

The U.S. elections of November 2004 have been framed by some as a referendum on moral values, specifically Christian moral values. Progressive Christians may be tempted to dismiss that insight as blather. In America's political discourse, for example, moral values often are the decorative frill on party platform planks. Voting analysis now tells us that the presidential election was not won because of the turnout of evangelicals. Instead, I believe, the Democrats lost the presidential election on September 11, 2001, because only a president who failed to retaliate for the attacks that day would have failed at re-election.

Yet, the debate about voters who vote their morals is important because of what it reveals about how American Christians manufacture their moral yardstick, and because it can help us understand how we should respond to this election's lessons.

I am convinced that a list of the Christian values that I hold dear would not differ greatly from that of many politically conservative Christians. Faithfulness, repentance, forgiveness, mercy, justice, love, hope, hospitality, charity . . . George W. Bush may even agree with that list, and I would not be surprised if he does.

I am convinced that a list of the Christian values that I hold dear would not differ greatly from that of many politically conservative Christians. Faithfulness, repentance, forgiveness, mercy, justice, love, hope, hospitality, charity, belief in the dignity of each person, respect for life and all of God's creation – all of these unite me in faith with those whose political decisions are often drastically different from mine. George W. Bush may even agree with that list, and I would not be surprised if he does. My list also includes nonviolence, which, perhaps, is not a value but is, to me, inseparable from the Gospels' message about how to follow Jesus; the president's list certainly does not.

But, how we live our values often makes up the gulf between us. In the United States, many Christians have melded their faith in Jesus with a faith in the righteousness of the nation in which they live. On these shores, a long-standing belief in America's exceptionalism endures; it has been our national hubris. Today, the timeless message of the Gospels is subordinated to the self-interest of Americans and their nation, an ironic development for a country whose governmental structure was designed to prevent the government from establishing any religion.

Most U.S. Christians, then, filter their faith through their allegiance to the state: Forgiveness is dosed with retribution; mercy, with recrimination; hospitality, with vilification of immigrants; hope, with political prudence; stewardship, with domination; the dignity of the individual with commodification of human life; justice, with privatization; nonviolence, with patriotism; and the reign of God, with international economic hegemony. This is why I believe that our primary response to Election Day 2004, and to America's captive Christianity, should be evangelization.

The Americanization of Jesus' message can only be countered by people of faith. Although many of our political alliances are constructed with non-religious liberals and the progressive left, their critique of America's Christian right is weak because they cannot respond at the level of faith. The sorry theological state of much of American Christianity places a burden on us to educate within our own house and, in effect, to evangelize our fellow Christians over very basic questions, such as:

•  May we obey the state's command us to carry out an act that the Jesus proscribed?

•  What rightful claims may the state make on the individual Christian?

•  Can those claims conflict? If so, how do we discern which has priority?

•  Did Christians who lived in earlier eras under different forms of government than ours face similar issues? What were those issues, and how did our forebears respond?

•  Does Paul's teaching about role of governments and rulers apply to all Christians regardless of the government that they live under?

•  What are our obligations to fellow Christians in other countries whose governments are considered to be enemies by our government?

•  Could Jesus' teaching about loving the enemy apply differently to followers of his era than it does to Christians today?

Each time one of our congregations sends a son or daughter off to war, we have answered those questions even if we have never asked them. And any young soldier who signs up without ever having heard these questions in a young adult group has been poorly prepared by her or his pastors.

For many of us, these are not new questions, and ours is not the first generation to ask them. Yet, they remain infrequently taken up in small groups, bible studies, or adult education fora. But, although they may strike some as topics of arcane political theory, they are some of the most important questions about how to be church in this nation and in this time. Indeed, they are pastoral questions, regardless of whether our clergy recognize them as such or whether our seminaries prepare clergy to deal with them. Each of us lives out answers to those very questions every day, either consciously or obliviously. Each time one of our congregations sends a son or daughter off to war, we have answered those questions even if we have never asked them. And any young soldier who signs up without ever having heard these questions in a young adult group has been poorly prepared by her or his pastors.

As the electoral season approached its end, I became increasingly dismayed by the superficial treatment of voters' moral values. Like “weak on crime,” or “restoring honor to the White House,” or “trust, but verify,” the subject sounded like other election themes that come and go, only to be resurrected when expedient. Yet, like few elections I can remember, November 2004 presents us with a teaching moment, an evangelistic opportunity. The impassioned issues that enflamed the election remain in play, perhaps precisely because a mismanaged war goes on, still with no end in sight. Although the tallying is over, the sense of urgency that surrounded this war and this administration's conduct remains. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that wartime is an appropriate time for evangelization

Joseph Wakelee-Lynch is a Witness contributing editor, and his regular online column is The View from Sardis . He lives in Long Beach, Calif., and may be reached by email at wakeleelynch@earthlink.net .