Whose Justice? Which Religiosity?

Last week I attended a discussion at our church on “Christians and the Upcoming Election.” The featured speaker was Rev. Philip Krey, the president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary here in Philadelphia. The purpose of this gathering was not to decide on one candidate or the other, but to clarify the context in which Christians, specifically Lutheran Christians, understand politics and our role in the political process.

The discussion was good – it was civil, for the most part, and serious, substantive issues were discussed. The gist of Dr. Krey’s presentation was that a Lutheran understanding of politics is based on Luther’s doctrine of the “two kingdoms.” The idea being that politics is the sphere in which reason, prudence and compromise must hold sway rather than religious notions of right and wrong. This is similar two Augustine’s idea of the “two cities.” The essential functions of government are to defend from external attack, keep the internal peace, and protect the poor. (Luther would’ve agreed with G.K. Chesterton who quipped that the poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all.)

The role of the church, with respect to politics, is to hold political leaders accountable when they go astray. Luther was not shy about criticizing the German princes when he thought they were misgoverning (most infamously in his exhortation to the princes to put down the peasants’ revolt). However, the church, per se, doesn’t wield the sword, i.e. hold political power.

Dr. Krey is clearly a Kerry man. He criticized the Bush administration (and “Christian fundamentalists”) for trying to blur the distinction between the two kingdoms. He said that this is part of a movement to jettison our Enlightenment heritage and return to the model of the Middle Ages where the church held sway over political authorities. He also emphasized what he saw as the “arrogance” of the current administration’s attitude to the rule of international norms.

The question that I put to Dr. Krey was how we can simultaneously hold that it’s dangerous for the President to be swayed by religious beliefs in making policy, and that the church should criticize political leaders (since this assumes that we think political leaders should listen to the church)? In other words, how is the church supposed to “speak truth to power” as they say, without transgressing the very boundary that the doctrine of the two kingdoms is supposed to uphold?

His response was to tell a story about Bishop Mark Hanson’s (the presiding bishop of the ELCA) visit to the White House during the run-up to the war. According to Dr. Krey, Bp. Hanson warned President Bush that a pre-emptive war in Iraq was likely to unleash chaos and result in much suffering. This was an example of church leaders seeking to hold politicians accountable.

But in this case, I asked, was the Bishop speaking as a religious leader or as an amateur geopolitical analyst? If the former, then it looks like we’re back to square one with religion seeking to influence the President’s decisions. If the latter, then the Bishop is speaking with no special authority, since he wouldn’t have been any better informed about the likely outcome of a war than other sources of information at the President’s disposal (though, of course, Bp. Hanson turned out to be largely right). What do Christians have to bring to the political table if they’re not speaking as Christians?

All of which indicates, to me at least, the inadequacy of the “two kingdoms” view as applied to our modern (or post-modern) situation. It may be that Luther could allow “reason” to hold sway in the realm of politics because he thought natural justice was largely identical with the revealed moral law. Attempts to paint Luther as a proto-liberal have to reckon, it seems to me, with the fact that nearly everyone in his political milieu was Christian and would have had similar views about the common good. In this situation, it makes sense to think of clergymen criticizing political rulers on the basis of a shared morality.

But one of the most salient differences between our time and Luther’s is that not only is their wide disagreement about particular religious claims, there is also wide disagreement about what the natural law requires in the way of political and social justice. For that matter, there is wide disagreement about whether there even is a natural law! Alasdair MacIntyre’s question seems appropriate: Whose justice and which rationality will guide our political decisions?

Modern liberalism (and, in this sense, many “conservatives” are liberals) rests on the notion that we can bracket or indefinitely defer questions about the good life and the ultimate nature and destiny of human beings as far as politics is concerned. Is this the same thing that Luther had in mind when he delegated authority over the political realm to reason?