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Sermon: Balancing God’s call with the institutions of
man
By Nathan Empsall
Psalm 72: 1-4, 7 and Luke 1: 46, 52-53
Good afternoon. My name is Nathan Empsall. I have only recently become
involved with this Thursday community, and so am very grateful to Kurt and
Richard for giving me this opportunity to speak. The Edgerton Episcopal Campus
Ministry and the Navigators Christian Fellowship have, however, long been
central to my Dartmouth experience. I have twice interned for The Episcopal
Church, yet on campus, I am most known for my political involvement. The D
wrote a flattering article last term about my involvement with Biden for
President. I have worked for campaigns from Spokane to New Orleans, and I will
intern for a Democratic Senator this spring. Faith and politics are the two
twin pillars of my life, and they will come together this summer when I work
for the Episcopal Public Policy Network.
There are three questions I would like to explore today: what calls us as
Christians to public life; when answering this call, why must we answer it AS
Christians; and finally, how can we answer this call as Christians and still
respect a separation of church and state?
The first question is what calls us as Christians to public life in general.
The Episcopal Church is built on a three-legged stool of Scripture, tradition,
and reason, and I’d like to use that rubric to answer the question.
Scripture: I wanted today’s Scripture to focus on social justice, and it was
rather hard to narrow it down to just two passages. There’s the Palm Sunday
narrative, the Exodus story and its freedom from bondage, the Sermon on the
Mount, and even the Christmas story itself. Poverty expert Barbara Ehrenreich
told this campus on Monday that the Bible contains 3000 references to helping
the poor. Perhaps the most famous is Matthew 25: when you clothe the naked you
clothe Christ, whatever you do to the least of these, and so on and so forth.
We can talk more about these various interpretations at lunch, but as for the
selected two, I think Psalm 72 largely speaks for itself. Of more interest to
me is this passage from the Magnificat. Father Henry Atkins, the former rector
of Hanover’s St. Thomas Episcopal Church, was a bit player in the formation of
liberation theology. He got in major trouble in the 1970s – we’re talking “you
have 72 hours to leave or die” trouble – with the government of the Dominican
Republic for writing an article about Mary that said hey, if God casts down the
mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly, and if we are to try to be
Christ-like, don’t we have a Christian obligation to at least identify those
mighty and those poor?
Tradition: Virtually all of the great American social revolutions have been
brought about by people of faith. Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of the
evangelical social-justice magazine Sojourners, identifies four such
movements: the founding of this country, the abolitionist movement, the
progressive movement, and the Civil Rights Era. Wallis believes that we stand
at the brink of another such movement now, one relating to environmental
stewardship and global poverty. Christian tradition suggests that we should be
involved in politics, just as social justice tradition seems to suggest that if
change is to happen, then people of faith must be involved.
Reason: The United States government has more resources available to it than
any church, non-profit, or individual will ever possess. Its influence has
spread farther than even the cultural influence of Bart Simpson. We have a $10
trillion budget, the image of our non-violent election handovers, and the
historical and moral reputation we built with the Marshall Plan and Berlin
Airlift (a reputation that can be restored). These things are great implements
for change. Can we as Christians really claim a devotion to change, change of
any sort, if we deny ourselves the most effective tools for making that change
happen? Can we really claim to care about the planet if we ignore the only
avenue capable of stopping factories from polluting our rivers or our air:
regulation?
The second question is, if we are to partake in civic engagement, why must
do we do as Christians? Well, first of all, if we don’t cite our true reasons,
aside from being dishonest and inauthentic, we will risk losing our grounding
and forgetting why we do the things we do. Just look at the typical campaign
office, somewhere where I have far too much experience. Staffers quickly get
bogged down in strategic planning, vote getting, and partisan talking
points. Water cooler chatter no longer revolves around health care or tax
cuts, but on negative attacks, and the atmosphere becomes poisoned. Don’t lose
sight of your motivation or of the big picture. And what could be bigger than
God?
Indeed, God is big, and life is complex. Kurt said in his first sermon, “The
political Kurt does not wait outside when I’m in church, and the faithful Kurt
does not turn a blind eye when I enter the voting booth, attend a rally, or
write my local representative. Rather, I am one complex Kurt.” So it is also
one complex world. There is not one environment over here that lets politics
affect it and a separate ecosystem over there that only the church can deal
with. There is not an impoverished village over here created by God, but also
one over there that just happens to exist. They are all the same. There is only
one world, complex and intertwined – and since God created all of it, He dwells
in all of it. The Holy Spirit moves in Parkhurst and the Capitol Dome as much
as it does in Rollins or the National Cathedral. Faith and politics deal with
the same issues, and will inevitably cross. Because they do not separate
themselves, I will not separate them either.
The third reason our civic engagement must be Christian-specific is the
visibility that that will bring to the church and to the issues we advocate. I
am so tired of the false prophets who allow the media to portray us as a
religion focused on nothing more than abortion, homosexuality, and Hell. Even
if the religious right is correct about these issues, they are not the only
issues to be discussed. Christ talked about debt relief, poverty, children,
even women’s rights. This is what the Gospel focuses on, and we need the
world’s non-Christians to know that. When we make it clear that our civic
involvement is rooted in faith we will widen the perception the world has of
the church, simultaneously painting a more accurate picture and broadening
religion’s appeal. We will also widen the perception of social justice issues,
showing it’s not just telegenic actors and egomaniacal rockers who care about
the hungry or dirty hippies and eco-terrorists who care about the
environment.
That brings me to my final question, the one that gives this sermon its
title. Now that we have established THAT we should be involved in politics, let
us ask, HOW should we be involved in politics? I do not mean what
issues should be important to us, that is a separate sermon entirely, but
rather how can we approach those issues, whatever they are, from a
Christian perspective without violating a separation of church and state? To
keep within my time limit, I will make speak from the assumption that this
separation and the avoidance of theocracy are good things.
I have several proposals. First of all, we should remember that God created
both the secular and the ecclesiastical worlds. His fingerprints can be found
in both. If you can’t find secular arguments for your religious position, or
vice-versa, you should either look harder or perhaps reconsider where you
stand. There is certainly room for us to advance secular arguments. As I said
before, do not discount religious arguments and do be honest about your primary
motivations, but, don’t be afraid to show people of other faiths or none where
they can work with us for common goals despite our differing frameworks. Also
focus on communal issues rather than individual mandates. There is a difference
between telling an individual what he can or can’t do or who she may or may not
live with and setting directional goals for society, as the U.N. has done with
the Millennium Development Goals. We should also avoid advocating certain forms
of government or certain parties. Avoid religious commentary on structure, and
focus on what results are wrong (oppression) or what results are desirable
(social justice).
My second proposal is what I will call the Danforth approach. John Danforth
is an Episcopal priest as well as a former Republican Senator and Ambassador.
He has written two New York Times OpEds and a book condemning the religious
right for their particular approach to politics, and addressed our Church’s
governing body two years ago on the importance of reconciliation. In his book,
he writes,
“If we are convinced that our opinions on social and political questions are
the law of God, then people who oppose our opinions become opponents of God.
If, in contrast, we recognize the limits of our own understanding of God’s
truth, while acknowledging that our opponents are trying, as we are, to do
God’s will, we are able to be ambassadors of reconciliation. In that case, our
faithfulness in politics depends less on the content of our ideology than on
how we view ourselves and treat each other. Faith in politics has more to
do with the way faithful people approach politics than with the substance of
our positions.”
This position avoids arrogance, something Christ compelled us to do with his
rebuke of James and John when they asked to sit as his side in Heaven. Respect
is as much a Christian stance as is the appropriate view of sexuality, whatever
that may be.
Third is the Jim Wallis/Martin Luther King model. Wallis, who I quoted
earlier, made the point in this very room last fall that Rev. King never
endorsed a party or a politician. He did not say ok, this party is closer to
where I am so I will shift a little and join them, but instead made the
parties bridge that gap and endorse him. Wallis says we should do
the same. Instead of being in either party’s pocket, people of faith should be
the ultimate swing vote.
Obviously there is more to Christianity than good citizenship. The
individual side – furthering a personal relationship with God, avoiding sin,
etcetera– certainly matters just as much, maybe even more. But let us just
remember that one of those sins to avoid is neglect: neglecting God’s children,
and neglecting the most effective tools for helping them. Like the world
itself, these things are complex and interconnected, but no one ever said
following Christ would be simple.
Amen.
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