King Charles III addressed a joint session of Congress on Monday afternoon. Watching on television as he entered the chamber to a standing ovation, I wondered what our Founders would have thought as the British monarch was welcomed into our highest cathedral of independent governance.
The king expressed solidarity with our nation, bringing “the highest regard and friendship of the British people to the people of the United States.” As he noted, our “democratic, legal, and social traditions” stretch back to Magna Carta, showing that “time and again, our two countries have always found ways to come together.” He added that our defense and military alliance is “measured not in years but in decades.”
The king also stated that “for many here—and for myself—the Christian faith is a firm anchor and daily inspiration that guides us not only personally, but together as members of our community.” He then spoke to our shared duty to “value all people, of all faiths, and of none.”
His remarks illustrated the balancing act a British monarch must perform daily. On one hand, he is the sovereign of the United Kingdom, the leader in whose name the government is formed and acts. On the other hand, he is constitutionally bound to remain above politics. His role is to represent the UK rather than to speak for its government. The monarch often gives political and practical advice to prime ministers and other leaders, but always in private.
As the English poet Tennyson once noted, Britain is a “crowned Republic,” one in which the monarch reigns but does not rule.
“America’s greatest secular saint”
By contrast, the American president embodies both the performative and the practical. He is head of state as well as commander in chief. He engages with the British monarch and other visiting dignitaries in symbolic and ceremonial ways, but he also leads an administration responsible for enforcing the nation’s laws, among other executive functions.
The president and vice president are the only political leaders elected by the entire country. As a result, the Founders were especially concerned to strike a balance that empowered the nation’s leader without giving him unaccountable authority. Accordingly, he can veto legislation but he cannot write it. He can nominate justices to the courts, but he cannot confirm them. He is elected by the people, but he can be impeached by their elected representatives.
As Joseph Ellis writes in His Excellency: George Washington, our first president remains “America’s greatest secular saint.” But the “father of our country” took great pains to ensure that the precedents he set would reinforce his role as the servant of the republic rather than its monarch. If he surrendered his military authority after winning the Revolutionary War, King George III said he would be “the greatest man in the world.” And that is just what Gen. Washington did, resigning his commission and returning to private life.
When he was unanimously chosen by the Electoral College to be our first president, he visited every state in the infant nation, including sixty towns and hamlets. He consistently refused all trappings of monarchy, dressing and comporting himself as an ordinary citizen.
The true power of the country, he insisted, lay in its people. And their power, he asserted, is derived not from government but from the “indispensable supports” of “religion and morality.” What’s more, he noted, is that morality cannot be maintained “without religion.”
As my friend, the retired Congressman Frank Wolf, has observed, politics are downstream from culture, which is downstream from religion.
“Ill-equipped to govern and convert”
In a brilliant and complex article for American Reformer titled “Whither the Reformation in America?”, the political theorist Joshua Mitchell surveys the religious worldviews that are especially dominant in American history and culture. He then asks which, if any, can guide us into a perilous future.
In his view, Catholicism is too hierarchical, in ways akin to Europe and the Old World, to capture the heart of American individualism. Progressive Christianity calls for national repentance and redemption from white supremacy, racism, and other historic oppressions, but without a consequent call to transformation through personal faith in Christ. As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat writes in his reflection on Mitchell’s article, this version of Christianity “believes in sin but not God.”
According to both Mitchell and Douthat, evangelicals are unable to shape the future because we are fundamentally anti-worldly: “strong enough only to fortify the walls” against a “hostile external world” (according to Mitchell) and “ill-equipped to govern and convert beyond [our] bastions” (according to Douthat).
But this is a misreading of evangelicalism at its biblical best.
We proclaim a gospel of personal salvation because only persons can be saved. Nations have no souls for which Jesus could die, no existential reality that can live eternally in paradise. But we also proclaim a gospel that transforms persons so they can be catalysts for further transformation.
The moment Andrew met Jesus, he had to tell Peter (John 1:40–42). The moment the early Christians were “filled with the Spirit,” they had to witness to the crowds at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–41). Before long, they were building a culture centered on biblical morality and compassion (Acts 2:42–47; 4:32–37; 5:12–16). Everywhere they went, they became change agents for society as well as souls (cf. Acts 17:6; 19:18–20, 27).
The problem with “Friend Sunday”
But there’s more. Neither Mitchell nor Douthat discuss the eschatological impulse of evangelicalism by which all we do in this world prepares us for all we will experience in the next. We are not merely waiting for Jesus to return and make things better: we are preparing for his return (Matthew 24:14) by meeting needs in his name and advancing his kingdom through our glad obedience (Matthew 6:33).
This is truly a rising tide that raises all boats.
Or it should be.
The problem comes when we settle for the evangelicalism Mitchell and Douthat describe, content to know that our souls are saved and busy inside the “bastions” of our counter-cultural social monasticism.
As a young pastor many years ago, I wanted our church to conduct a “Friend Sunday.” The idea is simple: each church member invites a non-churched friend to church. I preach the gospel as simply as I can, and we follow up with our guests as effectively as we can.
When I introduced the concept to our deacons, they seemed to be in favor, though a bit reluctant. Then one of them spoke for the rest: “But pastor, we don’t know any non-Christians to invite.”
If I were your pastor, how would you respond to my idea today?
Quote for the day:
“A sign of a culture that has lost its faith: moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse.” —C. S. Lewis
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