Church, Politics and Partisanship

Political issues are by and large moral issues, and the Church not only has a right but a duty to speak clearly about them.  Matters relating to life and sexuality and discrimination and economic, social and legal justice are all highly political, but they are also deeply moral.  How can we Christians not teach and preach about such things?  We have to, of course. But while the Church must often be involved in political issues, it should never be partisan. To be political means the Church is teaching and preaching about issues with political import. To be partisan means it supports a particular political party. To be partisan does not mean that the Church takes positions which are also the positions of one of the political parties.  Rather, to be partisan means that the Church takes positions because they are the positions of one of the political parties. 

As long as the Church stuck to the Word of God, partisanship has historically been easy to avoid because the basic moral positions of the Church have usually been shared by both parties. In the past what has divided the parties was not the moral ends they sought but the best way to achieve moral ends about which both parties agreed — although admittedly this underlying moral consensus between the parties may be breaking down. Nevertheless, regarding the morality of political ends, the Church must speak. Regarding the wisest and best way to achieve those ends, the Church must exercise more care.

The Word of God often addresses moral issues and makes clear moral demands of society while not addressing at all the practical question of how best to meet those demands. For example, the Word tells us we must feed the hungry and care for the vulnerable among us. That is a universal moral command, and the society that does not do this sins. Therefore the Church should instruct its members that they must, as a matter of conscience, demand that the hungry and vulnerable among us be fed and cared for, and actively work to that end. On the other hand, the best way to do that is not definitively stated in Scripture. Solutions will vary from culture to culture, place to place, and age to age, and reasonable and faithful people will disagree as to what those solutions are. As a rule, the Church should carefully teach its members about the moral and theological questions involved in any given issue and let the members decide, at the ballot box, on the party, the candidates, the causes and the policies which in their judgment offer the best path forward.

But hasn’t the Church been very partisan on the issue of abortion?  No, it hasn’t. The Church did not adopt a pro-life position because the Republican Party adopted it.  The Church has always been pro-life.  Maybe the Republicans cynically adopted a pro-life platform to win over Christians, I don’t know.  I don’t care. I wish the Democrats had done the same, and the fact that they didn’t doesn’t make us partisan! The problem here is that the Democrats have adopted, almost universally, the immoral position of allowing abortion on demand. This is a position the Church has never held, and can never hold.

The difference between Republicans and Democrats regarding elective abortion is not about the best way to achieve an agreed moral outcome.  It is a division over the morality of the outcome sought. The policy end – abortion on demand – is wrong in itself, and the party, or candidate, or proposal is wrong that adopts it. That is an unabashedly political statement, to be sure.  But it is not partisan.

James D. Burns
Pastor, First Lutheran Church (LC-MS)
Benton, Arkansas