How the Nations Rage
How the Nations Rage: Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age
By: Jonathan Leeman
This is one of the most fair, balanced, and helpful books I’ve read on the topic of church and politics. The last couple elections covered by the ubiquitous social media debates and passive -aggressive comments have been very discouraging and divisive as Christians.
Does voting for a particular candidate with a particular twitter account or candidate who supports a particular issue really nullify the authenticity of their faith like so many people are shouting? What does the Bible say about the government and the Christian’s role in the public square? What things are deal-breakers and where is there freedom of conscience? Though it would seem a large part of his intended audience is for pastors as they direct their congregations, I still found this to be extremely relevant and worthy of reading for everyone.
Jonathan Leeman has a master of science in political theory, a master of divinity, and a PhD in political theology. He teaches theology at several seminaries, is found on The Gospel Coalition website, and is an elder at a church in D.C. So yeah, he’s fairly qualified to provide this content. No matter what your political party affiliation is, I think you’ll respect his approach and his fairness to both sides. His book is not persuasive to the Left or the Right and you wouldn’t even be able to tell which way he votes by the way he communicates. It was done intentionally; he remarks throughout the book about the dangers of attaching oneself or attaching the name of Jesus to any one candidate or party.
One of the first things Leeman addresses is the idea of politics being a battleground of gods. Every single person worships something/someone. This then determines how one views morality and justice. He points out that people may think the public square is a neutral arena where religion doesn’t play a part. But he says,
“What happens when people fool themselves into believing that it’s possible to separate our politics from our religion? For starters you create the illusion of a public square that’s religiously neutral, or at least partially neutral. But what you really have is a square rigged against organized religion. Organized religions are kept out. Unnamed idols are let in.”
Therefore, religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are easy to identify and legislate against, but those who claim ‘atheism’ still carry their little-g gods into their politics (things like worship of self, self-expression, sexual freedom, etc) and their religion is allowed to be imposed on others because it hides under the guise of “no god” or “neutrality.”
After establishing that politics cannot be separated from our religion (because that’s what directs our morality and worldview), Leeman goes on to talk about how our group identities can cause division:
”Politics usually involves feeling defensive about the groups to which we belong, whether a family, nation, political party, economic class, ethnicity, team, gang, even workplace. Why? Because our groups give us a sense of identity.”
This inevitably creates rivalries. I’ve known these concepts from my psychology classes (in-group and out-groups) but it’s easy to operate without acknowledging them and recognizing when our minds are categorizing people according to the groups they identify with. He goes on to say, “Behind all the competition… are the desires of the human heart. The nations rage because the hearts of humanity oppose the rule of the divine Father and Son.” That’s really the core of division in the world and where this book gets its title:
Psalm 2:1-4 says, “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.’ He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.”
He addresses ways Christians wrongly approach politics- 1) disengaging altogether and viewing their cynical isolation as ‘more spiritual’; 2) surrendering to the ways of the world and not fighting against certain issues within their party that the Bible is against; or 3) putting too much hope in government and communicating that worldly peace and justice is a higher priority than the Gospel. As Christians we must strike a balance between being engaged in civics and doing our part to promote justice in whatever role we are placed, yet putting governments and legislation in their rightful place in our life and worldview- under God’s control.
In order to know how we must function in the political realm we must know what the role of government is according to the Bible, what authority God has given to the government. (Wayne Grudem’s Politics According to the Bible is an excellent resource for this as well.) We see that God authorizes governments to punish the bad, promote the good, and clear a way for God’s people to do their work. The courts pronounce judgment on crimes, legislation provides incentives and allows people to flourish, law and order creates a safe stage for the church to function.
Much of his book then fleshes out all of these working parts. As Christians, we must then use wisdom to determine what political issues are what he references as “straight-line” or “jagged-line” issues—meaning can you draw a straight line from the issue to a biblical principle, or is it a more complicated issue. (i.e. abortion and racism is a straight line issue but tax laws and health care are not, and even further, strategies to eliminate abortion are not necessarily straight line issues)
I was impressed by how much Leeman really is in tune to what is happening in the political sphere—how people are treating each other. I identified with almost everything he said.
So much of the tension out there is because Christians are prescribing judgment on issues that the Bible doesn’t take a specific stance on and then shaming others and calling their faith into question. We’re allowing the media to get us fired up and passionate about good things but sourced from the wrong authority. “The president of one think tank in D.C. observed, ‘We don’t have an anger problem in American politics. We have a contempt problem in American politics.’ Contempt he defined as the ‘utter conviction of the worthlessness of another human being.’… The only true, long-term solution to our political contempt, rivalry, and rage is a born-again heart.” And it’s a real problem when born-again Christians are adopting an attitude of contempt.
I love that he comes from a church of such diversity and that his congregation is made up of people from both the Left and the Right doing God’s work together. That’s how it should be! The media and the secular political world is doing an awesome job of dividing the church along partisan lines and it’s detrimental to the Gospel mission and the unity that God calls us to.
He says, “As Christians who prize God’s wisdom above that of men and women, we should strive to stop from time to time and say “Wait, is this biblical?” and be willing to throw anything and everything off the boat if necessary. And we should do this even with the things our nation, our tribe, and our people regard as most precious. An unwillingness to try may indicate a political idol.” That’s another convicting thought— am I truly willing to say I’ll throw out anything from “my group” that goes against what the Bible teaches?
Leeman brings up some other important factors we must think about when considering how governments function and how people approach legislation. Many have to do with the language used. Words like justice, rights, privilege, etc., mean different things to different people. We need to define terms. And even then we won’t always come to an agreement on what is right and what is wrong and who gets to decide either because we all come in with different worldviews on ultimate truth and authority.
To wrap it up...
I think it appropriate to conclude this review with the following quote because at the end of the day, this is what matters the most and that it’s only possible through Jesus’ sacrifice. It brings some much needed perspective when we try to make much of the things we are called to die to:
“When you become a Christian, your identity dramatically changes, and you gain a new citizenship. Suddenly, the most important thing about you is not your gender, who your parents are, where you are from, how much money you have, what color your skin is, your nationality, your intelligence or beauty, whether you are married, or anything else that humans ordinarily use to identify one another. The most important thing about you is that you are united to Christ through the new covenant and made a citizen of his kingdom.”
Other things he covers in his book:
- The idea behind separation of church and state and how what the founding fathers set up originally during a time when God was largely revered has now come to backfire a bit: “When the non-Christian affirms his belief in the separation of church and state, he means separation of government from my church, not his own. He effectively says, “You can’t impose any of your beliefs and morals on me because they come from your church.” Okay, but does that mean he cannot impose his idolatrous and non-Christian views on me? Ah, there’s the catch. He has no official church and no god with a name. And there’s no such thing as the separation of idolatry and state. Too bad for me. Lucky for him.”
- The reality of self-justification vs biblical justification: “Self-justification is an argument for why you deserve to get what you want… Self-justification is the throne on which self-rule and worship sit… all rivalry, all strife, all factions, all discrimination, all oppression, and all war in the history of human politics depend on this type of self-justifying argument.”
- The mission of the church in terms of diversity, social justice, and political influence
- He lists 12 lessons in how to engage politically; he helpfully distinguishes that we are to be ambassadors for Christ not culture warriors
- Defining biblical justice and how to do justice as a church body
And now some further quotes to whet your appetite and because this review isn’t long enough already:
“We don’t have the right to impose anything on anyone. But God does. The better question is, what commands does God impose on which people and how and when?... In short, God assigns different jurisdictions to different institutions. Our task, then, is to pay close attention to what jurisdictions God has established for governments, for parents, and for churches, and only recommend those commands that he has authorized for each.”
“Let me give you my own evaluation of the two main American parties… A biblical strength of the Republican Party is its emphasis on personal responsibility and not looking to government as a service provider. A biblical strength of the Democratic party is its interest in representing the disenfranchised and downcast. An idolatrous trajectory of the Republican Party is its tendency toward an amoral libertarianism, which can function according to the utilitarian principle of sacrificing the few for the sake of the many. Its good emphasis on individual responsibility can overlook larger structural realities and deny implicit biases. And these blind spots or idolatries—and it can be one or the other—end up leaving behind the poor, the foreigner, or the minority. This is unjust. An idolatrous trajectory of the Democratic party is toward a secular godlessness that literally boos God at its national convention while also treating government as the godlike savior for all of life’s ills. Many in the party have bought into the god of self-definition and self-expression, a religion that denounces and screens out biblical morality. The party’s platform and practices prize the “liberty” of sexuality and lifestyle decisions over the life and liberty of an unborn person.”
“One sign that you identify more with your ideological tribe than you do with Jesus is that you cannot hear what’s good when it comes from another tribe. You assume that everything that people on the other side of the aisle say must be wrong.”
“This is one of the first things I want to blow up. Church and state are distinct, God-given institutions, and they must remain separate. But every church is political all the way down and all the way through. And every government is a deeply religious battleground of gods. No one separates their politics and religion—not the Christian, not the agnostic, not the secular progressive. It’s impossible.”
“What if my conscience demands things that your conscience finds abhorrent? Whose conscience wins in court? The very idea of a free conscience begins to look like an empty Trojan horse. People can pack the soldiers of any god they want inside of it.”
“Mary Eberstadt, in her book It’s Dangerous to Believe, said that “a new body of belief” and “orthodoxy” has replaced the Judeo-Christianity of yesteryear. “Its fundamental faith is that of the sexual revolution.” The starting point of this new secular faith is that “freedom may be defined as self-will.” The second principle is that “pleasure is the greatest good.” According to this new religion, the sexual morality of biblical Christianity represents “unjust repression.” Yesterday’s sinners have become today’s saints, she observed, and yesterday’s sins have become today’s “virtues” and ‘positive expressions of freedom.’”
“Your vote for candidate [A] always depends on not just a moral assessment, but a sociological assessment about what social forces are in motion in an electorate; a historical assessment that treats one interpretation of the past as correct and presumes to know which past events will shape the near future; a political assessment about the strength of various political actors; an institutional assessment about how various legislative bodies and courts and other non-state actors are pitted against one another; even a statistical assessment about the likelihood of events turning one way or another… Does your ability to conduct these assessments and render a judgment yield a conclusion that’s as plain and clear as preaching the Bible?”
“One clear indication that you are simply seeking to score points is that you paint the other side in the worst light imaginable. You point out their worst-case-scenario stories… Instead, represent your opponents in the best possible light. In time, you will earn credibility and respect, and you might learn something as you work to represent them fairly.”
“Governments cannot change the heart… it cannot make people want genuinely righteous things.”
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