By David Gushee
Every so often, conservative evangelical politicians, military officials, or ministers are quoted describing the outcome of an election, the actions of the United States, or the deeds of its president or its troops as if they are self-evidently the direct will of God.
In recent decades, actions ranging from the “crusade” against communism, to the war on terror, the invasion of Iraq, and the appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices have been described in these ways.
These comments then evoke outrage from those who, for a variety of reasons, strongly reject any such identification of a political or military action with God’s will.
The dust settles after each of these latest angry volleys in the culture wars , with cultural polarization and mutual incomprehension only deepening. And then the cycle repeats.
This issue has surfaced again recently in the public vetting of Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, as both Palin and her pastor are visible on YouTube with comments appearing to identify preferred policies, such as an expensive gas-pipeline project, as “God’s will.”
I think we need a deeper analysis of what is going on when Christian politicians and pastors make these sometimes-troubling rhetorical moves. I also think it is possible to draw at least some rough distinctions between harmless and harmful uses of “God talk” in relation to government and its policies.
It all begins with the Bible. Remember that evangelical Christians are taught to read the Bible every day on their own as well as to study the Bible in church and in small groups. Our pastors dream of immersing their people in the Bible, and many are really quite successful at creating churches in which their people are essentially drenched in biblical teaching. As a Baptist minister, seminary professor, and Sunday School teacher myself, this is certainly one of my own goals.
I propose that, for most evangelicals, the Bible is the primary text from which we first derive at least an implicit political philosophy — because it is our primary text for understanding the world in general.
Two-thirds of the Christian Bible consists of what we call the “Old Testament.” And most of the Old Testament tells the story of an ancient nation-state called Israel. I believe it is no overstatement to claim that for millions of Americans, the meaning of nationhood is learned more fully from the Old Testament than from any civics or government class offered sometime along the way in school.
Many scholars have documented the impact that this immersion in the Bible has on evangelical attitudes toward the contemporary state of Israel. Fewer have emphasized the impact that such an immersion has on evangelical attitudes toward America.
I am coming to believe that most of the seemingly outrageous claims that theologically conservative politicians and ministers make about America flow from a political-moral imagination in which ancient Israel provides the template for the functions of a nation — any nation, including our own. The accounts offered in the historical books of the Old Testament, running from Joshua to II Chronicles in the Christian canon, are read with a kind of authoritarian literalist straightforwardness , producing the following basic understanding of nationhood:
— The source of the state of Israel was God, who brought it into being.
— The proper ruler of Israel is therefore also God, whose will is to be obeyed.
— Any earthly ruler of Israel has been appointed by God and is answerable to God alone.
— The wars of Israel are divinely ordained, and Israel’s troops are fighting for God.
— Setbacks for Israel are not coincidental but are God’s will — and are usually punishment for the nation’s sins.
Of course, this is only one version of how to understand biblical Israel, and it has been challenged, reworked, and revised in many ways through the centuries. Such revisions and reinterpretations have come within the canon itself, from the prophets, and later from Jewish and Christian biblical scholars and community leaders. Certainly it is not the way the modern state of Israel is understood by most of its own inhabitants.
Nor is it the understanding of America taught in our high school American government classes. (Well, actually, I have seen curriculum in private Christian schools that comes pretty close to this.) I am not sure that it is a self-consciously chosen vision of America even for a majority of evangelicals. But it goes deeper than that. It lies in our moral and political imagination.
This helps to explain why many conservative evangelicals persist in describing America as an especially God-blessed and God-called nation and why they persist in calling America as a nation “back” to obedience to the God in whom, says our currency, we trust. It also helps explain why they tend to envision at least their favored politicians as God-appointed and God-anointed leaders whom it is wrong to question or criticize, and why they often lift our wars to a kind of holy status and describe our warriors as doing the work of God. Finally, it helps explain why they often attribute national setbacks to divine punishment for our sins. They are, effortlessly and naturally, applying an ancient Israelite paradigm to the modern United States.
And remember, I am not just talking about rabid ideologues or those with a particular ideological ax to grind. I am suggesting that this is the native language of millions of grassroots evangelicals.
If this is true, the implications are enormous. I will name just one implication for evangelical churches, and one for all Americans.
Evangelical churches and their leaders need to read more widely in Christian theology and ethics to develop a theology of the state that considers seriously both the difference that Jesus makes and the difference between ancient, theocratic Israel and modern, democratic America.
Americans need to take seriously the fact that millions of their countrymen are operating from an implicitly theocratic paradigm into which Enlightenment-era American constitutionalism has only partially penetrated. They certainly need to know as much as possible about the political imaginations of those who seek the highest offices of the land.