Can Politicians be Followers of Jesus?

[justme]

Sure

[GaryK]

Because as i understand it, sunday morning worship service is to worship and glorify God.
So it is not advised to hijack an event specifically organized for one purpose. I mean, we already do that on mn threads, its no wonder folks think it would be ok to do it in real life too.

I agree, if that is what Sunday services are specifically organized for. However, I tend to view Sunday services being designed for more than just worshipping and glorifying God. These verses come to mind.

Ephesians 4:11-14 NKJV 11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head--Christ-- 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

[ohio jones]

Yes, but "some political pundits" is conspicuously absent from the list.

[GaryK]

Yes, but "some political pundits" is conspicuously absent from the list.

Since it is conspicuously absent, should our conclusion be that it should also be absent from our weekly lives, not just our Sunday lives?

[Ernie]

This is a bit confusing to me. Why would it not be appropriate to publicly say on Sunday what is appropriate to publicly say in the town square the rest of the week? I'm not sure I see examples of this difference in the way Jesus and the early church lived.

From the information we have, it was Jesus's custom to attend Sabbath religious services. On one such occasion, he preached the good news from Isaiah.

On another occasion, outside of Sabbath religious services, Jesus was warned that Herod wanted to kill him. Jesus told the people warning him that they should "Go tell that fox..."
In this instance, I think Jesus was speaking about a civil leader's character in this situation and I don't know that he cared so much whether they go tell Herod what he said, as he wanted the public to know what kind of character Herod was and that this would not stop him from doing God's will.

It is hard for me to imagine Jesus making this statement about Herod in the synagogue while he was preaching from the holy scriptures, but that is just my supposition looking on 2000 years later.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

I think we can always call people to a closer walk with Jesus but there is a self defeating element to doing it to politicians. Fighting fire with fire is ultimately admission that fire is morally neutral and calling out politicians is itself engaging in politics.

But not in the same way.

If in order food at a restaurant and call out the chef for burning my food, it's true that I'm engaging in culinary pursuits, as is the chef. But we each have a FUNDAMENTALLY different role. It's not fair to compare me to the chef.

Engaging in politics is not a bad thing. In fact, NOT engaging in politics is anti-Christian. That is because "politics" is just a short word that means "collaborative solutions for problems that cannot or should not be solved on the individual level." A church members meeting is "politics". A PTA meeting is politics. An amish barn raising is politics.

The thing Christians ought to stay away from is not "politics", it is "power". That's the difference between the politician and the person "calling out the politician". The former has power. The latter is speaking truth TO power. The former is playing the role of King. The latter is playing the role of prophet. Just like the chef and the patron, the politician and the prophet are two very different roles.

This is a redefinition of politics. If you ask the average person of an Amish barn raising is politics, they will say “no”.

This is kinda true and kinda not.

The actual definition of politics is pretty simple, it's collective decision-making and collective action to address collective concerns. That's the basic gist of politics that you'd get from a political theorist, or a particularly politically ideological individual (like an anarchist), or from a decent subset of average people outside the Western European/American context.

The problem is, in America especially, the governance system is set up so that "politics" is a professional undertaking. With representative democracy, we essentially say "politics is what our elected representatives do, so we don't have to." We pay those representatives LARGE sums of money to "do politics" for us, and then we call them "professional politicians" or just "politicians" for short. From there, it's easy to redefine "politics" as "the thing politicians do".
An added wrinkle to this in the American context is that what people call "politics" or "political" is actually better described as "partisanship" or "partisan". They use the word to point out that a certain topic or action is in line with this or that hobby horse of one of the two dominant political parties in America.

This is how human languages work, so you're not WRONG. But it's foreseeable to imagine this happening to any number of words. Imagine if uber drivers and food delivery drivers were just called "drivers" by people over a decade. Eventually that profession would be called "drivers" and we'd think of "driving" as "the thing that drivers do when they bring us places or or give us food." One could remind us of the fact that when WE get into cars and "go" places, we are "driving" but the popular definition of the word would have changed so much that you could say the same thing: A random person on the street would not define "driving" as getting in the car and going somewhere.
Let alone the fact that "driving" piggybacked into English from the word used to "encourage horses to go forward while they draw a carriage" and was just delivered into "horseless carriages".

Language is a funny thing, is what I'm saying. Whatever you want to call it, there are a lot of things that people would call "politics" that don't fit into what is "professional politics". A lot of things that are technically "politics" are things Christians should consider carefully participating in.

As a quick example, consider the Montgomery Bus Boycott, or Doctor King's Peace Protests. We can argue whether Christians should or should not partake in that sort of thing. What's not as expedient is arguing whether doing so is engaging in politics. On a technical level, and even on a popular level, it definitely IS.

[JohnH]

As an example of talking to an Amishman, who briefly expressed some displeasure about President Biden circa 2021. Then he said, "Well, that was probably getting into politics," stated as if it was something we really shouldn't be doing.

"Politics" to most people means things actually involving government, outside of specific phrases like "office politics" (which is generally a pejorative term). "Church politics", likewise, usually means behavior that is not Christlike or becoming of Christians, but rather allowing the same worldly, ungodly attitudes that infest politics to infest the church sphere as well.

"Politics" is, in brief, something that plain people simply feel they shouldn't be doing. John H. Yoder might publish a book called "The politics of Jesus", the rest of us prefer to follow a king who showed us something greater than politics.

[GaryK]

This is a bit confusing to me. Why would it not be appropriate to publicly say on Sunday what is appropriate to publicly say in the town square the rest of the week? I'm not sure I see examples of this difference in the way Jesus and the early church lived.

From the information we have, it was Jesus's custom to attend Sabbath religious services. On one such occasion, he preached the good news from Isaiah.

On another occasion, outside of Sabbath religious services, Jesus was warned that Herod wanted to kill him. Jesus told the people warning him that they should "Go tell that fox..."
In this instance, I think Jesus was speaking about a civil leader's character in this situation and I don't know that he cared so much whether they go tell Herod what he said, as he wanted the public to know what kind of character Herod was and that this would not stop him from doing God's will.

It is hard for me to imagine Jesus making this statement about Herod in the synagogue while he was preaching from the holy scriptures, but that is just my supposition looking on 2000 years later.

I think this instance is the closest Jesus comes to "calling out" a "politician" that I'm aware of.

Thinking how something similar might play out today, would the following be accurate?

You are regularly out in the streets of Washington D.C. proclaiming what the NT KOG is like and inviting the common people to follow Jesus, when a local religious leader who doesn't like the message you are proclaiming, comes up and tells you that President Trump is not happy with what you are proclaiming and is going to have you arrested. You tell this religious leader to go tell Trump, who, FYI, is ungodly, conniving and anti-Jesus, that regardless what you threaten against me, I am going to keep proclaiming Jesus' Kingdom until God's time for me to die.

The primary point Jesus seems to making to those listening is that regardless the threats against Him by an earthly government, He's going to keep doing the will of His Father. If the point was to speak out against Herod's character, I think that would be reflected in what He said after using the term fox to describe Herod. Instead He bemoans the condition of "religious" Jerusalem.

[JohnH]

I will share a great way to be such a witness for Jesus.

Periodically (I believe annually), the Pentagon puts on a big lavish dinner for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Fine food and fine wine is served. Special speakers are invited. Influence is also on the table. The U.S. government wants to keep the Catholic church cozy to the military, not speaking out too much against it and eager to integrate chaplaincies, ROTC programs at Catholic colleges, support for future "special military operations" (as we might call them) under the guise of patriotism, and so on.

A bishop and a priest as well felt they could also put on a simple dinner, consisting of the food commonly found in the old Catholic Worker communities - a meal of soup, with carrots and noodles. Other bishops were invited, some who were not entirely comfortable with Arlington's courtship of Rome. For a time, this was a real witness - not a "calling out" of American politicians for being evil, or saying the other dinner was wrong, but simply presenting a third way.

We can do things like this. It often doesn't do much good to just constantly call out a politician as wrong; Herod enjoyed hearing John speak, but it never changed him, and ultimately ended up with John's head on a platter. (I am not saying what John did was wrong, but we must critique its effectiveness.) There are many good opportunities to carve out a Third Way, and it does not tend to tack either right or left.

[Bootstrap]

Are the doors of a church house where all Christians should drop their politics and then feel free to pick them up again on the way out?

The word "politics" can mean very different things. I think Christians should care about the sanctity of life and caring for the weak and helpless and sexual ethics, and that will affect our views on policy.

That's quite different from partisan loyalty to "the right" or "the left" or "conservatism" or "liberalism". I don't think that is compatible with Christianity. And I think it is also different from partisan loyalty to the United States or any other country. If we are quoting political or nationalistic talking points without thinking them through, we are someone else's "useful idiot".

As Christians, we judge all of these things by biblical ethics and also by discernment together, often beyond what is spelled out explicitly in the Bible. For instance, the Bible does not explicitly say "don't abort babies", but I think it's legitimate for Christians to judge policies according to that standard. The Bible is more explicit about refugees. I think we need to care about both, inside and outside of church.