Why should Christians care about the general election?
Following on from last week’s reflections on Advent as a season of liberation, we continue to think about Christians’ role as citizens of a heavenly kingdom but living under earthly ones. British voters will go to the polls tomorrow, and the American election cycle turns ever on, and Christians are apt to wonder how to think and act in these situations. Fr Simon Cuff offers this essay as a guide. His book on Catholic social teaching, Love in Action, is now available.
Two cities. Two kingdoms. Two nations. Christian theology—and political theology in particular—is littered with these binaries. An election is approaching imminently in the United Kingdom, and in the near future in the United States. The politics of the United States can add a two Party political system to our list of binaries. The British electoral system of “first past the post” means that many constituencies face a two horse-race between any two of the major political parties.
The binaries we’ve mentioned all articulate different aspects of the challenge of living the Christian life in any society. Augustine (354 - 430CE) with his notion of ‘two cities’ draws the contrast between the communities in which we live now, and the eternal city which is our home. In a number of places, he articulates this distinction between these two contrasting cities, most famously in his City of God 14.28:
Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord.
These two cities have nothing properly to do with each other, even if they are found side-by-side and intermingled in this life.
This imagery from the City of God builds on a set of similar binary motifs that had been developing for some time in Augustine’s thought. Earlier in his True Religion (50) he drew a similar contrast between two kinds of people:
one, formed of the crowd of the impious, which bears the image of earthly man from the beginning of time to the end; the other, made up on generations devoted to the one God, but who from Adam to John the Baptist, led the life of earthly man with a sort of ‘worldly justice’
Shortly after Augustine developed his account of two cities, Pope Gelasius described two powers ‘by which which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power’ (Letter to Anastasius, 494CE). Gelasius identifies two legitimate authorities: priestly and political. For him, the priestly takes superiority as even Kings have to render an account to the divine judgement proclaimed by the clergy. However, earthly powers are allowed legitimately to govern if
in things divine you bow your head humbly before the leaders of the clergy and await from their hands the means of your salvation. In the reception and proper disposition of the heavenly mysteries you recognize that you should be subordinate rather than superior to the religious order, and that in these matters you depend on their judgment rather than wish to force them to follow your wil’.
Gelasius articulates a distinction between church and state, so long as the state follows the church in the matters the sacraments and matters pertaining to salvation, and presumably any other such matters which the church judges are within its authority. In turn, he calls on clergy to recognise the supremacy of the earthly powers ‘granted from heaven in matters affecting the public order’, obeying secular laws ‘lest otherwise they might obstruct the course of secular affairs by irrelevant considerations’. Beware of turbulent priests.
In time, Gelasius’s two forces develop into the two swords of spiritual and temporal power. Whilst Christendom persisted, both were in the power of the Church, as Pope Boniface writing in 1302 indicates:
the spiritual and material sword… the former is the to be administered for the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest
(Unum Sanctum).
Whilst Boniface’s use of such a distinction serves to preserve the authority of the Church across society, today similar distinctions are used to keep the Church firmly in its place. Religious leaders are often told to restrict themselves to matters of religion, and stay well clear of politics. In election season, any intervention by a religious figure is considered inherently political in a narrow sense. For example, the publication in 2015 of Who is My Neighbour? saw the Church of England House of Bishops set forth a vision for life and politics across the United Kingdom. It was criticised in certain quarters as being partisan, its focus on poverty regarded as bias in favour of the policies of the British Labour Party. In subsequent elections, perhaps in light of the culture of political animosity generated by the referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union, the Church of England has spoken with less confidence at election time. In 2017, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York released a substantive letter, highlight the importance of faith in political life, but with a much more limited scope and vision than that of the 2015 intervention. The letter by both Archbishops in the face of this upcoming election was shorter still.
The 2016 referendum created a binary of its own: ‘leave’ or ‘remain’. A political mechanism designed to settle an issue instead created a deep division in contemporary British political life: a divide which persists in poll after poll.
In any election, voters face choices. Choices between parties, candidates, and policies. Some of these choices are choices between some of the binaries we have been tracing here. However, some binaries are false. The binary that restricts Christian opinion to religious matters is as false as the binary that reinforces Church control over society as a whole. The binary between “leaver” and “remainer" is as false as the binary between male or female, slave or free in Christ (Gal 3.28).
There are, however, binaries which have something of the truth about them. We have already encountered Augustine’s two cities above. We are able even in this life to be orientated towards God and our eternal home, or we are not. We can persist in focusing solely on our selves and our own selfish interests, and turn away from God. Yet, crucial in Augustine’s formulation is that we can live in relation to this binary even in the midst of the world which is passing away. In fact, we have a duty to do so. And our living in this world, orientated towards our heavenly home changes the way in which we inhabit this world, and causes us to inhabit this world in a way which changes our political engagement away from ourselves and towards the eternal city of our heavenly home. In fact, living as inhabits of the heavenly city causes us to care deeply about the nature of the earthly city and communities in which we currently live. For Christians, this inevitably draws us in to the world of politics. Our membership of the heavenly polis (city) has implications for how we relate to the community in which we live - the earthly polis (city). Our heavenly politics leads us inevitably toward earthly politics. This realisation overcomes that binary which seeks to separate religion and politics, and confine the Christian contribution to society to a ‘religious’ realm. Such a division is itself a political one, serving to silence any Christian vision or contribution to our society’s political life.
Sir Thomas More. Hans Holbein the Younger.
St Thomas More was executed by Henry VIII for refusing to acknowledge him as Supreme Head of the Church of England. He is also the author of Utopia, and was declared the patron saint of statesmen and politicians.
If we are living as citizens of heaven in this life, transforming our membership of the earthly polis as we look toward the polis of our heavenly political home, this binary between religious and political is not the only binary that we are required to overcome. The Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli referred to another important binary in his identification of ‘two nations’ within his novel Sybil:
Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws… the rich and the poor.
As Christians, our political intervention requires a commitment to overcoming this fundamental divide between rich and poor. This is not the only binary that a Christian political commitment overturns. The contours of a Christian politics are given to us by Mary’s song heralding the birth of Christ: the powerful brought down from their thrones, the lowly lifted up, the hungry filled, the rich sent empty away (Luke 1.46-55). Of the very many binaries and choices we are called to make and overturn in the Christ life, the divide between rich and poor, powerful and powerless is persistent. The poor are with us always because the processes of marginalisation that lead to poverty in all its forms are persistent. As Christians, each and every day we face the choice to further or confront such processes, to side with the poor and victims of marginalisation in all their forms or to ignore them, to live heavenwards or towards ourselves. The realities of this choice take us inevitably to the ballot box, to take our part as Christians in the political life of whichever society of which we are a part, and to reflect carefully about how to vote in such a way that begins to overturn those divides which God is already over-turning in Christ.
