All the political uproar of recent years reminds me of what our nation was going through the year after I graduated from high school. As our family sat by the shores of Bugs Island Lake on the border between North Carolina and Virginia, we watched Richard Nixon resign as US president.
All these years later I wonder where we found a portable TV and electrical source to plug into in that campground without electricity. Knowing my dad, he found a way. We may have been on vacation, but we weren’t about to miss one of the defining moments of that era.
As Nixon left the White House, Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in to replace him. Ford had become VP the year before when Spiro Agnew resigned due to his own scandal.
But the man who could have been president instead of Ford in 1974 had closed that door years before. Mark Hatfield, former governor of Oregon, was just starting a long career as a US senator. He’d been on Nixon’s VP short list in 1968 until Nixon noted Hatfield’s opposition to the Vietnam War and chose Agnew instead. The rest, as they say, is history.
What attracted this Jersey boy to Hatfield, when all I knew of Oregon was Crater Lake, was how deeply committed he was to his faith and how he had attempted to live out that faith as a man of integrity in a politically complicated world. Two of his books, Conflict and Conscience (1971) and Between A Rock and A Hard Place (1976) greatly influenced me in my 20s.
Hatfield wrote about the tensions he faced when he was asked, “How do you feel when fellow Christians say your political stand – on war, foreign policy, social concerns both domestic and world-wide – makes them doubt the sincerity of your faith?” In response, he replied, “Radical allegiance to Jesus Christ transforms one’s entire perspective on political reality.”
As straightforward as was Hatfield’s evangelical faith, how he lived out that faith in the public sphere was, to put it mildly, complicated. He found himself loved and reviled by members of both major political parties as well as by those who shared his faith.
And yet, somehow, he found a way to remain within the political system, becoming a GOP leader, a party with which he was often deeply at odds. Just as he was frequently at odds with the Democrats. And yet he found ways to work with both parties and within our fallen system.
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As with the days of my youth, we live in a time of intense national division and global tension. Like Mark Hatfield, I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to faith and politics.
Our loyalties to competing values put us in such dilemmas. Take, for example, our loyalty to our country versus our loyalty to our God. It is one that runner Eric Liddell faced at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Liddell was torn between obeying what he believed were God’s commands about the Sabbath and what his nation expected of him.
As followers of Jesus, Liddell and Hatfield attempted to put God first – far above any earth-bound allegiances. We too discover that our various loyalties – God, family, country, and so on – never jive easily.
Jesus said as much in that stark statement in Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes, even their own life – such a person cannot be my disciple.” Our loyalty to God is to be far above all other commitments.
How such commitments interface is always complicated. Prime example is “God and country,” a temptingly heartwarming slogan. Yet these two allegiances – God and country – never mesh well together. Something must always give.
Such tension would exist no matter which nation we’re talking about. Liddell was from the United Kingdom, Hatfield the US.
Loyalties are like that – they compete and conflict, and conflicting loyalties can tie us up in knots. Loyalty is a value, and in our fallen world, good values compete. Pair any combination of values – honesty versus kindness, justice versus mercy. That’s what makes living out our faith so challenging.
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As individuals, we form our values and loyalties uniquely. I can appreciate how Liddell and Hatfield worked out their salvation with fear and trembling, even if I might not agree with all their conclusions.
Our commitment to do right also compels us to do the hard work of coming together. Having staked out our own positions, we as individuals then gather as families, churches, and communities, bringing our range of opinions on matters that deeply concern us as individuals. Factions form as people with shared concerns group together to advocate for what matters most to them. They may not agree on every value or commitment, but they work to find common ground.
In the civic world, these factions form political parties, which are inevitable in free societies. Over time these parties adapt as they attempt to bring together competing factions sizeable enough to win elections.
The problem with political and national loyalties is that they threaten to override all other loyalties, creating a crisis of conscience. Such were the struggles Hatfield and Liddell faced, the one in politics, the other in international sports.
On the one hand, political parties do good things. We can find commendable civil servants, elected officials, and voters in various camps. But no party lines up fully with kingdom values. Not by a longshot. At their best, parties are a problematic mix because the people who comprise them are a problematic mix.
When parties are in power – meaning when people are in power – nations reflect those problematic mixes. One can argue that our form of government is better than the alternatives. At the least, this form of government provides checks and balances necessary in a fallen world.
To be sure, my nation has done a lot of good. Think of our commitment to freeing the enslaved, providing universal education, and allowing people to speak their mind and worship freely. But just as surely, we’ve done a lot of bad. Think of segregation, denying basic rights to others, and our treatment of Native Americans.
We can try to whitewash our history, but we’d be doing something the Bible never allowed for any nation, including ancient Israel. National histories were not meant to be whitewashed any more than our own sins are to be whitewashed. Cleansed by the blood, yes! Whitewashed, no!
So, I struggle with my country because it represents things I just cannot square with God’s values.
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Now, I’m not about to flee to Canada, as Republicans and Democrats threaten to do every time the other party wins. I like Canada and know some great Canadians. I’ve seen some of its natural beauty, at least a horizon’s width from Victoria to Montreal. I just don’t like their weather. And, besides, Canada’s committed its own share of sins.
More importantly, Canada is not my country. I don’t belong there any more than I belong in Lesotho (the tiny kingdom lately in the news through no fault of its own).
Besides, God hasn’t called me to Canada. And God’s calling is where my primary loyalty lies – not to a party, not to a country. If God were to call me to Canada – or Lesotho, for that matter – I’d go. Just like He called me to Taiwan and China for a time.
So, unless God calls me elsewhere, I’ll remain where God landed me right out of the womb. Right here in the US, advocating for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. I’ll continue advocating to ensure my country lives up to its ideals. At least as far as those ideals live up to kingdom values.
There is much that pains me. The way we treat unborn children. The way we treat born children. The way we treat strangers in our midst. The way we treat our own citizens. The way we treat those who are poor among us. The way we treat the world God created for us to live in.
Now you might argue that, compared with the rest of the world, the US has a pretty good track record. Setting aside all the pros and cons of our history and status, the argument itself stinks.
When I was a boy and my parents called me out for some misbehavior, I’d never ever have gotten away with saying to them, “But what about my brother or my sisters?” Man, I don’t even want to think of the consequences of saying such an absurd statement. I might be able to plead for mercy and forgiveness for my wrongdoings, but never by trying to compare myself with my siblings.
Can you picture standing before the throne of God someday as a nation? (Jesus does picture nations standing before God.) And we as a nation saying, “Well, God, we were better than the other countries in the world”?
Nah! I cannot imagine God giving us a pass!
Not when the Apostle Paul writes that no one gets a pass. That there is none righteous, no not one. That all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And that our righteousness is just like filthy rags. (See Romans 3:10, 23; Isaiah 64:6; 1 Corinthians 15:56)
But, we might be tempted to say, Paul is talking about individuals, not nations. Then I ask, what about all the passages in the Bible that speak of God’s judgement on nations? We’d need all day to read all those passages. And if anyone tries to write off the Old Testament texts as no longer relevant, I’ll slap a Jesus quote on them faster than they can say Matthew 25.
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What is true of nations is true of parties and politicians. People often make excuses for their favorite party or politician with whatabout talk – as in, “Well, what about the other party or politician?” Like me raising a defense by pointing at my siblings, defenses on behalf of parties and leaders fall woefully short.
We live in a fallen world, and we have to work in that fallen world. We can’t opt out. But we don’t have to settle for something less than God’s best.
So, we can say to the nations, including our own, Shape up! And we can hold our leaders accountable as we hold ourselves accountable. As God holds us all accountable.
I try to write from a nonpartisan perspective. Yet I am sure my assortment of positions and values often antagonize readers on both sides of the political aisle, just like Hatfield’s did.
I spent yesterday helping people of faith advocate for shared values in our state’s Capitol, the same Capitol where Hatfield once served. Those who gathered for Interfaith Advocacy Day didn’t always agree, but they all agreed that the values of faith are meant to be heard in the public square.
Throughout the day, I reminded myself of Hatfield’s challenging words: “Our call is to faithfulness, not efficacy; it is to servanthood rather than power. We know that the most decisive action that we can take to shape history is to follow the way of Christ, to give ourselves to the building of the Body, and to pour out ourselves as he did in love.”
Interfaith Advocacy Day, sponsored by the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, allows people of faith to engage with the state’s political leaders.
For my other posts on faith and politics, see: Faith & Politics. Also on Eric Liddell and his faith, see: Where does the power come from?; Liddell’s 100-year-old Paris Gold legacy: the rest of the story.
Public domain photo: Senator Mark Hatfield
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