Political Engagement as Biblical Mandate. Paul D. Hanson
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compassion have demonstrated to the world the profound relevancy of the Bible for contemporary political policy and action.
One cannot avoid the question: “What is it about the culture of creaturely comforts and assumed security that turns our attention inward and leads to a dulling of the sense of shared global humanity and the preciousness of every single newborn baby?” The answer comes through pilgrimage to Nelson Mandela’s cell on Bird Island, through conversation with a Jesuit priest fasting in solidarity with Manila’s impoverished shanty dwellers, and in the testimony of a parish pastor in a district of India threatened by anti-Christian prejudice and violence. In the visitor’s homeland, liberty is taken for granted and demands little in return; in the host society, liberty is a daily struggle demanding great courage and entailing suffering. In the visitor’s homeland, a sense of the contemporary meaning of Hebrew slaves escaping willy-nilly from a ruthless oppressor must be sought through a scholarly exercise; in the host society it is encountered daily in crowded streets and marketplaces. In the visitor’s homeland, the thought of a God who would sacrifice his own son to win back rebellious children hell-bent on their own destruction is about as comprehensible as forfeiting all one’s possessions and giving them to the poor; in the host society only such a God can offer hope to those experiencing all earthly forms of power as agents of their exploitation.
The reflections found in this book arose specifically and concretely from one visitor’s encounter with his hosts. For the gracious and courageous Christians with whom I became friends, the reality of a global spiritual family is as real and essential to humanity’s survival as a healthy global economy. Thus, for example, when Fr. Victor Salanga invited me to address the Annual Convention of the Philippine Catholic Biblical Society under the theme of “Scripture and the Quest for a New Society,” he had in mind not a new society designed for his country alone, but a society defined by the universality of the Kingdom of God. And he was not timid in making the connection between the two realms: “Our Bible has much to say about economics and politics.”
Much indeed, enough to fill many volumes, but the advantage of a short book is that it behooves one to move immediately to the heart of the matter. And as I see it, the heart of the matter pulsates with a central truth that flows through the length and breadth of Scripture: For the person of faith and for the faith community, there is but one government to which we owe our ultimate allegiance, and that is the universal government whose Ruler is the author and source of all that is just, compassionate, and respectful of the dignity of every creature. Our shared citizenship in that regime places upon us concrete responsibilities in relation to our specific nation-states. And the common task that thereby unites Christians throughout the world is unambiguous and urgent, namely, to clarify the mandate of Scripture for all those whose political starting point is the Bible, to aid one another in drawing forth implications for domestic and international crises that transcend nationalism and political ideology, and to forge strategic alliances with justice-loving adherents of other religions in obedience to the Creator and Redeemer of all families, creeds, and nations.
A History of Nationalistic Idolatry
If there is one fundamentally important lesson that nations have not learned from the tragic events of the past, it is the lesson of resisting the temptation of confusing human rule with divine rule. Let us consider the policy adopted by the United States towards the fledgling independence movement in the Philippines at the beginning of the twentieth century as an example.
In pre-colonial times, the inhabitants of the Philippine archipelago regarded the forests, fields, and waters as communal property, to be cultivated for the good of all. Of course there were differences in status between clan heads and their subjects, but one pictures a gentler way of life than the harsh conditions imposed by the importation of European feudalism by the Spanish, the ill-effects of which still afflict the lives of a large percentage of the Philippine populace. After the liberation struggles of the early 1890s were interrupted by the Cuban revolution and then the Spanish-American war, memory of their own nation’s earlier struggle against colonialism was lost by President McKinley and his cabinet as they strove to enhance the competitive edge of the U.S. in the increasingly lucrative maritime trade routes connecting East and West. In the congressional debates of that time over the annexing of the Philippines, national hubris rose to new heights, as illustrated by the speech in defense of U.S. intervention by Senator Albert Beveridge:
God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns . . . He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples. Were it not for such a force as this the world would relapse into barbarism and night. And of all our race He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world.1
Such imperialistic policy arises out of the blasphemous identification of one nation’s destiny with divine purpose. In ancient Egypt the corollary was found in the belief that the Pharaoh was the incarnate god Horus. Rome based its authority to impose the Pax Romana on the clans and nations it conquered on the claim of Augustus and his successors to be divine. The persistent tendency for the U.S. to claim the right to determine the political destiny of other nations rests on a typological connection, namely, that it is the new Israel. This was a notion the Puritans brought with them from England, but it matured in the nineteenth century in step with the growth of U.S. imperialism and was christened by John L. O’Sullivan in 1839 as “Manifest Destiny.”2
The reason why the concept of “manifest destiny” must concern us here is this: The primary warrant enlisted in its defense is the Bible. At the apex of Spanish colonial power, conquest was understood not simply as the means of advancing the cause of Philip’s kingdom, but as an instrument for the spread of the Kingdom of God to Central and South America and the Philippines. In recent U.S. history, the most ardent supporters of the Pax Americana in the Middle East and in East Asia have been the leaders of the Religious Right, that is, those religious and political figures who claim to understand the bearing of Scripture on international developments.
Citizens of nations that have not yet become as secularized as countries like France and Sweden but retain the biblical story as part of their own epic understanding of nationhood face a particular challenge: The Bible remains ensconced in the cultural ethos as a powerful warrant in political argumentation. And, as Willard Swartley has documented, it can be used with equal force on opposite sides of moral struggles involving issues such as war, slavery, and women’s rights.3 Any reflexive, uncritical invocation of biblical authority in defense of a policy or action that places millions of people at risk must raise serious moral and theological concerns for all people of faith. Have not the testimonies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Desmond Tutu burned with sufficient clarity into our modern consciousness the urgent need to treat any political interpretation of the Bible with diligence and attentiveness to the critical scrutiny of interlocutors of all nations and creeds? Dare we lack the courage to name every self-serving domestication of the Bible an heinous act of nationalistic idolatry?
Harold Lindsell in 1976 published a book defending biblical inerrancy under the title, The Battle for the Bible.4 Fifteen years later and from a very different, though no less deeply committed Christian perspective, James Davison Hunter authored a book bearing the title Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America.5 More recently, in a book titled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Harvard professor of government, Samuel Huntingdon, predicted increasing strife between the Muslim East and the Christian West leading to a decline of the latter and the emergence of China as a world power.6 While these books differ widely with each other in their underlying assumptions and conclusions, they converge in painting a somber picture of a future in which religious and ideological differences will be a driving force in cultural and international conflict. Conscientious believers dare not stand by passively as imperious religious and political leaders exploit the Bible to defend reckless foreign policies in the pursuit of self-serving economic and geo-political objectives.
What Is the Nature of Biblical Authority in Relation to Politics?
What this question requires is a hermeneutic capable of translating the meaning of Scripture into contemporary political, social and economic