One of the founding distinctives of Denison Ministries is that we are stridently nonpartisan. However, there are days when my Daily Article is criticized by those who thought I was too supportive of a particular politician or party and by those who thought I was too negative toward them—and both were responding to the same article.
Today may be one of those days.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth has condemned a Memorial Day social media post by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that featured the images and names of thirteen soldiers killed during the military conflict with Iran. The reason: the images were displayed under the words, “Remembering the Americans who have died in Trump’s war with Iran.”
Sen. Duckworth is a Purple Heart recipient who lost her legs and partial use of her right arm when the helicopter she was piloting was hit by an RPG in Iraq. She said of the post, “It is incredibly distasteful to use our heroic dead for a political attack on Memorial Day. I’m a Democrat and I condemn this post by the DNC.”
After similar criticism on both sides of the aisle, the DNC deleted the post.
A “reign of terror created by false alarms”
If you’re a Democrat, right now you want me to cite examples of Republicans committing similar acts of partisan politicization. If you’re a Republican, you want me to offer more examples of Democrats doing the same. If you’re neither, you’re shrugging your shoulders, condemning both sides, and hoping I’ll move on.
If only I could.
It would be one thing if the bitter partisanship of our day were limited to contemporary politicians and political parties, but such rancor is as old as contested elections in American history.
In 1796, supporters of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson lambasted the other side in editorials and other campaign tactics. In 1800, the rhetoric got even worse. One of Jefferson’s supporters warned that if Adams were reelected, the nation would be “divided without a cause” under a “reign of terror created by false alarms to promote domestic feud and foreign war.” Ministers supporting Adams, in turn, accused Jefferson of being an atheist and warned that his views would lead to unchecked vice in the infant nation and the judgment of God.
From then until now, politics in America have often been practiced on a level approaching religious fervor. Our next election season begins as soon as the last election is over. Our era of 24/7 news coverage, social media, and narrated algorithms turns up the heat even further.
But there’s another factor at work, one that transcends politics and is vital to us all.
“Compromise begins to resemble betrayal”
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal is titled “The Gospel According to Karl Marx.” Author and filmmaker Robert Orlando writes: “Marx argued that modern economic life had produced alienation—workers estranged from the products of their labor, from one another, and ultimately from themselves,” creating what The Communist Manifesto calls “the history of class struggles.”
Orlando, therefore, notes:
When politics adopts the structure of salvation history, it inherits the moral intensity of religion while losing its restraints. Opponents are no longer merely mistaken but obstacles to history’s inevitable future. Compromise begins to resemble betrayal.
This mindset explains why Marxist critical theory has so inflamed its adherents against Israel, evangelicals, and anyone perceived to be “oppressing” the “oppressed.” Politics becomes the means of secular “salvation” and a zero-sum game in which any means are justified by the ends.
However, such secularization of salvation predates Marx in America by generations.
“He it is that bears much fruit”
Our founding declaration famously claimed that all people are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Note the next sentence: “To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The Founders believed that the government they were creating could “secure” rights endowed by our Lord.
Can any secular system fulfill this promise?
The Founders knew their secular government could flourish only if its practitioners possessed character that their system could not produce. John Adams spoke for many with his observation, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Absent godly character, our politics have been and will always be ungodly. The same is true of business, law, and any other relational vocation. What Robert Orlando observed regarding Karl Marx’s worldview is true of all secularism: its concepts “can’t produce justice on their own, because justice depends on the moral character of the persons who act within those systems.”
Here we find yet another reason we need the intimate, transformational relationship with the living Christ we’ve been discussing this week. Our Lord was clear: “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, my italics).
Which outcome do you choose for yourself today?
Quote for the day:
“Holiness, as taught in the Scriptures, is not based upon knowledge on our part. Rather, it is based upon the resurrected Christ indwelling us and changing us into his likeness.” —A. W. Tozer
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