When we think about politics, we tend to start from where our people stand, don’t we? We look around for what we the people are saying, and we start there. Maybe that means what our preferred media outlets are saying. Maybe it means what our friends are thinking. Or maybe it means what our political party stands for, or what’s best for our country.
But what if we started thinking about politics in church? What if we started seeing the body of Christ as our people before all else? How would that change how we think about politics? How would it change what we do?
First, I think it would make a difference in how we think about authority and lordship. Those are old-fashioned words, but we continue using them in church for good reason. After the entrance rite, we settle into worship by hearing “the word of the Lord.” Not a lord, but the Lord. God has given us his Word. To be sure, it is not always easy to understand it! But if there are other words from other lords that seek to command our allegiance over this Word from the Lord, then so much the worse for them. Here is the one Word of God that we must hear and obey, in life and in death.
This means that disciples of Jesus must be people of firm principle, willing to suffer loss and even die at the hands of earthly authorities if we must. We cannot allow our notions of what is right to sway with the prevailing wind. In the old Soviet Union, the Communist Party was the sole arbiter of what was true. Pravda, or “truth,” was the name of the state-controlled newspaper; and Prosveschenie, or “enlightenment,” was the state-controlled publisher of the curriculum for every school. But we know that no person or party is above the Word of the Lord, and we know that we must one day answer to God alone—and there will be no party commissars to judge on that Day.
We need to be reminded of this every week, to be sure. There are many lords and authorities that can feel more powerful, and the pressure they can exert is immense. But simply knowing that their authority is not final has given courage to countless saints and martyrs: Polycarp, Felicity and Perpetua, Thomas More, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero. Although those were martyred at the hands of the state, many other Christians in happier times have spent their lives as faithful and principled public servants. That is as it should be, for we are called to be a blessing to the civic communities in which we live. But we will be a blessing only insofar as our first allegiance is to the one Lord of heaven and earth, obedient to his Word.
Second, if we started thinking about politics in church, it would transform who we think we the people are to begin with. That is always one of the fundamental questions of politics: who are my people? Who is in, and who is out?
When we come to the Lord’s table, we find that what we thought about who our people are has been upended. Before, we had started with our family, our race, our sex, our party, our tribe, our country, but now we find that all of that is at best of secondary concern. Christ on his cross has broken down the walls of hostility that used to keep us apart, and now there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus, members of one Body (Eph. 2:14-18; Gal. 3:28; Rom. 12:4). When young people are figuring out their identity, they are usually asking: Where do I belong? Who are my people? And here, at bottom, is the answer: You are a member of Christ’s body, made new in him, and the people gathered around this holy table are your brothers and sisters.
So many questions we think of as political would be transformed if we started here. These people are our family. And not just those we see here now, but the whole Church of every people, tribe, and nation (Rev. 7:9). So how do we treat family? Surely, with kindness and respect, with hospitality and generosity, with honor and love.
If we start there, that will not answer every political question. For those identities and communities that are no longer of primary importance, like nationality and family, are not necessarily of no importance. As a father, God gave it to my wife and me to care for our three sons. It’s our job to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, and we can’t feed all the hungry or house all the homeless by ourselves.
If this is true for families, it is also true for nations. But we can and should do something—we can and should be generous and hospitable—because God did not only give us our little family or nation to care for. In God’s family, in his house, we have many more brothers and sisters. And we are called to be kind and respectful, generous and hospitable, to them all. Especially, God’s Word reminds us, to those who are foreigners and sojourners in the land (Ex. 23:9; Lev. 19:33-34; Deut. 10:18-19; Ruth).
In the past few months, there have been many stories about the fear that those foreigners and sojourners in our land have been living in. The Living Church ran a beautiful story by Emilie Teresa Smith in April about the people of San Mateo Episcopal Church, most of whom are not U.S. citizens. Most of them are afraid of being deported. Many of their children are only allowed out of the home to attend school or church, and some have stopped attending church.
I know a young Episcopal family in which the father is in a detention center, allowed only one visitor a week, with his bereft wife and new baby at home. He had been pursuing legal status, and it is hard to fault him for being brought here years ago as a young child.
Do stories like that answer every question today about foreign aid, immigration policy, or border security? No. But what if, as we think about those hard questions, we imagine that those same foreigners and sojourners are right there with us at the Communion rail, one body with us in Christ? What if we remember that they are our family? And what if we simply asked ourselves: How should we treat our family?
The Rev. Jordan Hylden, ThD is Associate Rector for Christian Education at St. Martin's, Houston. Previously, he served churches in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Dallas, and as Canon Theologian for the diocese of Dallas. He has served as a General Convention deputy and on TEC's Task Force for Communion Across Difference. His doctoral work focused on democracy and authority in Catholic social thought. He and his wife, the Rev. Emily Hylden, make their home in Houston with their three boys Charles, Donnie, and Jacob.
