The High Church Hipster Pretentions of Being “Above Politics” and “Non-Partisan”: It seems a trend among the more intellectually sophisticated high church Christians to be for above the political fray and aloof from current political contentions. I can understand the dismissal of the relevance of politics, or at least it’s relegation to that of a lesser significance, from Low Church Protestants who believes that the Kingdom of God is purely a spiritual matter to do with the inward soul or mind and has no direct relevance or implication to civic polity or form. This stance can range from the optimistic folks at the Calvinist International who affirms the cogency of a common natural law, known to both Christians and pagans, for a common participation in a common civic life, regardless of one’s religious affiliations, or the downright sceptical Proto-Protestants who thinks that the Kingdom of this World is ruled completely by the devil and our only task as Christians is to suffer his malice in passive patience awaiting the apocalypse. The High Church Christian necessarily identifies the Kingdom of God with a visible empirical entity, normally a civilly incorporated Church. An empirically and visibly robust Church requires empirical resources and capital, whether that of financial, social or political. The Good Samaritan, as Thatcher never fails to remind us, would not be remembered if he had no money. You need government approval, funding, etc, etc, to run your hospitals and buy your expensive medicines and heal the sick and feed the poor, etc, etc. Your visibly enacted Gospel needs money, good social networking and powerful friends in high places. There was an article I wrote about the clash between our local Archbishop and the government and the fundamental incoherence at work in trying to have both one’s cake about being involved in social and civic issues and trying to eat the non-partisan mantra: “On the one hand, they maintain that their faith necessarily has “practical implications” for social or political issues. Yet they also hold that the Church or faith is fundamentally “above” politics or non-partisan, that they do not take sides in politics or social agendas, etc. It is clear that these two convictions are contradictory. Something cannot at the same time have “practical implications” for social or political issues and yet be “above politics”. If it has practical implications, then it must make an actual difference to determining which “politics” or “social agenda” is “entailed” or “implied” by the faith. But if the faith makes an actual difference in determining a political or social agenda, then it is not above politics but thoroughly involved in it. This either-or simply cannot be evaded. If one’s faith truly has practical implications or makes an actual difference for civic issues, then one should be able to say, “The practical implications of the faith entails voting for the PAP” or “the faith implies that we should take a such-and-such stance on such-and-such social issues”. But this is clearly—and uncomfortably—partisan and divisive. But if one insists that one’s faith does not entail any voting choice or choosing sides in civic issues, it would imply that one’s faith makes no actual practical difference for politics or civic issues. If one’s faith is perfectly compatible with voting for any party or taking any stance on any social issue, it does not make any difference at all and therefore has no practical implications. Granted, one may say that it may be difficult to know what the political or social implications of one’s faith are, given the contingency and masses of empirical facts involved in the dirt and grime of politics or social issues, but they must admit that there is such an answer, even if it is difficult to know what it is. They simply cannot have their cake and eat it.” High Church Christians of course are welcome to the Protestant doctrine of the Two Kingdoms where the proper business of the Church is the spiritual kingdom in the true sense of right belief and conviction in the heart while the business of the civic world is not determined solely by Christian theology and has at most a prudential, pragmatic and penultimate relation to the Kingdom of God. However, high church denominations, for most of their history, have understood the Protestant “Two Kingdoms” as fundamentally incompatible with their principles. Popes and Cardinals has consistently maintained the necessity of the confessional state, for they know that without state support, as well as the financial and political patronage which she receives, the Roman Church cannot be visibly and empirically sustained. This is the either-or which cannot be evaded, either the Kingdom of God is spiritual in the Protestant sense, in which then once can consistently speak of a Kingdom and concern “beyond politics” which is merely penultimate, or the Kingdom of God is “realised” in this spatio-temporal world, in which case the business of this spatio-temporal world, in all its messiness with financial and political movements, becomes the business of the Kingdom. The “hipster” high church Christian who wants to sit aloof from the fray of politics wants all the benefits of the Protestant peace of a Kingdom promised, believed but not seen and above the things of this world, and none of the drawbacks of a Church withdrawn empirically into an invisible Church, the bogeyman of the high church Christian. They can’t have their cake and eat it.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 03:45:17 +0000
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