Marvin, Jonathan, and Jennifer have been going around a bit about some of the same issues I talked about here regarding Christians, patriotism, politics, and Stanley Hauerwas. Now, unlike these three, I’ve never formally studied theology, much less under the man himself, so I always feel a little underqualified jumping into these discussions. But, fools rush in…

I agree with Jennifer’s point that there are lots of ways of being “political” that can’t simply be reduced to voting and conventional political activism. Moreover, she’s right to point a finger at the mainline: all too often mainline Protestantism assumes the shape of a vaguely religious humanism that seeks to usher in utopia through political activism, seemingly willing to replace the gospel of Christ with the UN Millenium Development Goals.

But Marvin gets at what I was trying (rather long-windedly) to say when he says in a comment on Jennifer’s post:

the same scriptures that call the Church to be a different polis demand respect for the Emperor while ascribing fear to God, and demand subjection to the governing authorities while acknowledging the Lordship of Christ. The family, the corporation and the state do have legitimate claims on us. Subordinate to the claims of Christ and his Church, to be sure, but legitimate claims. Hauerwas frankly has nothing to say about how to do this balancing act, and this is the crucial pastoral theology issue of our time. How do you be a faithful Christian when you’re also a cog in the machine?

I think there are resources in the Christian tradition for addressing this issue–concepts like natural law, vocation, “orders of creation” and so on–which have long been endorsed by mainstream Christians. But these are also the very things the “Hauerwas school” have railed against for downplaying or sacrificing Christian distinctiveness.

My view, though, is that these are still useful approaches, even if they might need retooled a bit (e.g. a version of natural law that takes evolution seriously; a concept of vocation that doesn’t reinforce the status quo). There are resources out there for this which, as far as I can tell, the churches haven’t made a great deal of use of. But I do think they provide a more promising way forward.