Donald Trump’s second inauguration has unsurprisingly led to a hive of activity and controversy. We’ve had controversial pardons, controversial arm gestures, and we have even had a controversial sermon delivered by the Episcopal Bishop, Mariann Budde.
During her sermon, Budde specifically addressed the brand new president, and asked him to “have mercy” on immigrants and on the LGBT community who were “scared” of his recent administration. The sermon was criticised by right-wingers for being unduly political, but praised by left-wingers for bravery.
On the opposite side of the political coin, Calvin Robinson had his license to operate as a priest within the Anglican Catholic Church revoked after he copied Elon Musk’s supposed “Nazi salute” gesture while giving a speech to pro-lifers.
An obligation to talk the reality
Is it clever or, indeed, biblical for church leaders to take political stances? It’s possible to seek out examples from the Old Testament, especially of prophets, giving the word of God on to kings and people in authority.
By contrast, Jesus himself showed remarkably little interest in politics, (“My kingdom shouldn’t be of this world”) but was very focused on bringing healing and salvation to the everyman.
So which model should the fashionable church man or woman follow?
Was Bishop Budde acting as an Old Testament prophet when she asked President Trump to embody the Christian virtue of mercy? Was Calvin Robinson? Is John MacArthur acting as a prophet when he writes open letters castigating California Governor Gavin Newsom?
Perhaps.
A divided church
The difference between then and now could be that, for higher or worse, we live in democratic societies. In the Old Testament, arguably the one person a prophet needed to persuade to bring about social or religious change was the king.
Nowadays the ‘king’ is a form of avatar for the need of as much as half the population. Attacking ‘him’ is attacking ‘them’. To make matters worse, in our increasingly divided societies, the ‘other guy’ is the embodiment of evil (and so are their supporters).
What this effectively means is that ought to a priest get party political they are going to immediately alienate half of their congregation.
The church is supposed to be “one body” in Christ. It mustn’t be the case that we’ve got Democrat or Republican churches, or Labour or Tory churches.
There is little question that church leaders must feel under pressure at times to comment on pressing political issues. In some senses they’re in a no-win situation. Comment and also you’re interfering in political matters ‘not of your concern’; don’t comment and you are not being ‘relevant’.
Perhaps the wisest course is to follow preaching the message of the Gospel and let the congregation draw their very own conclusions. There isn’t any harm in conceding that big political issues exist for Christians to grapple with, but attempting to discern after which preach God’s views on Brexit, the tax rate and international affairs may be an excessively ambitious endeavour.
