Proclaiming the gospel is a tricky business. The good news that the eternal Word of God has assumed human flesh and borne our nature “whole and entire” throughout the earthly life of Jesus of Nazareth, into the abjection of death, into the glory of resurrection, and back to the right hand of the one who sent him, has implications for the whole of life. The Incarnation means that no human reality can be held at arm’s distance from God. This includes our moral, social, and, yes, political lives. As Gregory of Nazianzus insisted in his Letter to Cledonius, “What [Christ] has not assumed, he has not healed.”
At the same time, rarely have the results been good when the Church has directly intervened in the political arena. Imposing the values of the gospel by force (even just the force of legislation) subverts those values, which must be freely embraced to be authentic. In his temptation in the wilderness, Jesus foreswore coercive power (my reading of the temptation is most certainly inflected by Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor”). I’m a student of the ressourcement, which galvanized and renewed Catholic theology in the 20th century, and so am especially attuned to the ways in which the integralist Action Français, which sought to establish a social order in which Catholicism would be imposed to restore the lost grandeur of pre-Republican French monarchism, paved the way for collaboration with the Nazis during the Vichy period.
Of course, we can note good examples of interventions of Christians into the political order. The spiritual resistance of the French Jesuits (and others) during Vichy, or the story of episcopal and eucharistic resistance in Pinochet’s Chile narrated by William Cavanaugh in Torture and Eucharist, or the work of Oscar Romero or the Jesuit Martyrs in El Salvador all come immediately to mind.
But my point is that the Christian minister must tread carefully in this connection. When we mistake any political project with the reign of God, we pave the way for atrocities. When we mistake any political project with the gospel, we debase the gospel and put our hopes not in God’s grace, but in our efforts.
However, when we preach a gospel devoid of any political content, we cheapen the costly grace given to us in the crucified Jesus.
Christians are charged to proclaim the gospel, and the gospel has political ramifications. To mistake a story about Incarnation, death, and Resurrection, with its ultimate outcome being the resurrection of all flesh, for a purely spiritual reality is an egregious misreading of that story. Opting for a political neutrality or a both sides-ism that offers no guidance amid the conflicts of our time may seem high-minded and above the fray, but in fact it fails in the basic responsibility to read the signs of the times and interpret them in light of the gospel (Gaudium et spes, no. 4). John the Baptist was not arrested and beheaded because he stayed in his proverbial lane. Jesus was not executed as an enemy of the state because of his political neutrality. Even so, the risk of subordinating the gospel to political ends, or of equating some political commitment with the gospel is all too real, and brings deleterious results.
In this connection we need to relearn the difference between the political and the partisan. Politics names the ways in which we order our shared lives as a society. Anything involving more than one person—or perhaps extending beyond a single household—is political. Partisanship is a matter not of seeking the common good, even across our differences of opinion in how to do so—or, at times, regarding the shape of that common good—but instead of trying to ensure that our “side” wins, while the other loses. This distinction can only take us so far: sometimes we need to take sides. But it’s a start at least.
So many political issues don’t have to become partisan. To take just one currently controversial issue: Any person of good will can agree that migrants, whether documented or not, deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and any patriot should agree that all are entitled to the due process guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. To insist on these two assertions is not to take a position on immigration law, or how firmly control of national borders should be maintained, or whether deportations for undocumented people are appropriate, and if so, under what circumstances they would be appropriate.
During the seasons of Advent and Christmas, when we anticipate and celebrate the Incarnation, by which the Word of God has crossed borders—coming from heaven to earth, traversing in utero from Nazareth to Bethlehem, fleeing from political violence in his place of birth into another country, Egypt —I don’t think we can responsibly avoid being political. By his Incarnation, God has not done so. He has united himself with every human being, and especially with those who are persecuted and poor.
As we have journeyed through the eschatologically focused Advent Season, our gaze has been drawn to the culmination of history. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that will involve a judgment of the nations, based on how they treated “the least of these.” Christmas provides the basis for this judgment, because by his Incarnation, Christ has become the least of these, so that truly, what is done to them, or not, is done to him.
The Incarnation impels us to politics, but the politics of the Incarnation need not (and in most cases should not) be partisan. If we tell this story, if we preach the gospel, we can’t avoid being political. But within the incarnational politics of the gospel, there remains some opacity. We can know that the dignity of all must be honored at all costs without knowing precisely by what policies we ought to do so. The mission of the Church, clergy and lay alike, is to tell the story authentically, while inviting those who hear to discern for themselves how best to live in accordance with the politics of the Incarnation.
Eugene R. Schlesinger, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. He is the author of several books, including Salvation in Henri de Lubac: Divine Grace, Human Nature, and the Mystery of the Cross (Notre Dame, 2023). Schlesinger served as Editor of Covenant, 2019-2024.
