10 Truths About Christians And Politics

Coral Ridge Ministries
Dr. D. James Kennedy, Founder

From the 10 Truths Series
TRUTH #9 - God Holds His People Accountable for Their Civic Stewardship

Standing at the towering mahogany pulpit of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in 1982, Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer unleashed a harsh indictment against the church in the West. With his long gray hair, goatee, and compact frame stuffed into a business suit, he both looked and sounded like a modern-day prophet.

One of the most influential Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, Schaeffer outlined how a Judeo-Christian moral consensus has given way in the West to the triumph of secular materialism. Then he asked this question: “Where have the Bible-believing Christians been in the last 40 years?” Instead of protest and opposition, Schaeffer said, “There has been a vast silence.” So much so, that “it was almost like sticking pins into the evangelical constituency in most places to get them interested in the issue of human life.” Schaeffer produced a seminar and film series on the sanctity of human life with his son, Frank, and Dr. C. Everett Koop. That effort, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, proved a very hard sell to churches.

It was the same for noted theologian, author, and teacher R.C. Sproul. Of the some 60 books he has written, the first one to go out of print was Abortion: A Rational Look at an Emotional Issue, published in 1990. According to Sproul, churches refused to use the book and its accompanying educational resources for fear that the topic of abortion would divide congregations. The silence of the church has also been evident at the polls. Less than half of the entire adult population voted in federal elections between 1960 and 2006. Sadly, the turnout rate for self-described Christians is about the same.

Some Say Keep Silent
Some voices within the Christian community encourage Christians to keep silent or, at the very least, to pipe down when it comes to civic and cultural concerns. Authors Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson charge in their 1998 book, Blinded by Might, that Christian political action has proved futile. In the campaign to end abortion, “twenty years of fighting has won nothing” they say. “And our record,” they write, “is no better with other moral and social issues.”

Popular Bible teacher John MacArthur has written that “God does not call the church to influence the culture by promoting legislation. . . .” While acknowledging that there is some modest value to political participation, MacArthur believes that “In the truest sense, the moral, social, and political state of a people is irrelevant to the advance of the gospel.” The Founders took a different view. Noah Webster (1758-1843), whom we know for his dictionary, educated five generations of school children with his Blue-backed Speller books. He has been called the “Father of American Scholarship and Education.” For Webster, political participation, specifically voting, was a duty owed to God:

When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, “just men who will rule in the fear of God.” The preservation of government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty, and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws.

Samuel Adams, who has been called the “Father of the American Revolution,” thought much the same. He wrote:

Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual —or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.

The Founders were steeped in the Scriptures. They knew, as Webster indicates above, of God’s requirement that “He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God” (2 Samuel 23:3). Under Mosaic law, God’s people had a civic responsibility to choose their leaders. Moses instructed the Jewish nation to “appoint judges and officers in all your gates, which the Lord your God gives you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with just judgment” (Deuteronomy 16:18). The people even had a duty to confirm God’s choice for a leader. While there was no direct election, Moses told the people, “you shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses” (Deuteronomy 17:15).

Liable for Our Leaders
That duty to choose left the people answerable to God for their leaders. “When the citizens have a voice in the selection and direction of their civil leaders,” Ken Connor and John Revell, authors of Sinful Silence, state, “God holds both the leaders and the citizens accountable for the civil sins of the government.” That is why Isaiah aims his accusation over Judah’s sins at both rulers and ruled: “Hear the word of the Lord, You rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the law of our God, You people of Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:10). The acts of repentance to which God called Judah were not just personal, but social and political in character. God calls the people not just to “Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes,” but also to “seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17).

If God held the people of Judah accountable for the actions of their rulers, it seems quite likely that we American Christians, blessed with the freedom to organize, campaign, and vote, will face equal or greater accountability. “When Christians neglect their civil duty,” Connor and Revell write, “they need not expect deliverance from the national consequences to follow.” On the other hand, when Christians do the opposite and diligently fulfill not just their duty toward God, but also their civic duty to Caesar, they set the stage for His blessings on their land. As the Bible states, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice” (Proverbs 29:2), and “Righteousness exalts a nation” (Proverbs 14:34).

Our challenge is to fulfill both of those duties with equal fervency and faithfulness. As Dr. D. James Kennedy has said:

Salt and light are what Christians are commanded—every one of us—to be. That, I think, is the answer to the problems we face in this country, as individuals, as a nation, and as a world.… We need to proclaim the Gospel, if people’s lives are going to be changed, but we need for Christians to get involved in the culture, if we are going to bring that transforming power of Christ to bear on every facet of life.

That two-fold duty to be salt and light in the culture includes both holding our rulers accountable for their actions and exerting the influence of biblical morality on our legislators. Also, as we shall see in the final chapter of this booklet, it includes sharing with our fellow citizens the healing power of God’s grace for their lives by introducing them to the incomparable Christ.