This question isn't an academic one for me either, our Friday morning bible study is mostly made up of Black factory workers who are life-long Democrats, while our Wednesday night Bible study is mostly white military guys who are all strongly Republican, if I were to develop a penchant for injecting my party politics into my preaching and teaching, I would inevitably make myself unnecessarily obnoxious to one group or another. So, I stick to alienating friends and family, (oh and you lads - sorry), with political banter.
A while back I was sent an questionaire from a prof. at a local university who was working on a thesis advocating greater involvement on the part of clergy in partisan political issues (if you can believe it). After filling out his questionaire I attached the following letter [my apologies for the length]:
Dear Dr. ...,
In answering the questions included, I wish to note that I have done so as a private citizen, and not in my official capacity as the pastor of Providence PCA church. While it is commonplace these days for preachers to address political issues from the pulpit or even to invite politicians to speak in their churches on the Lord’s Day, our denomination strongly affirms the principle that the calling of pastors is to preach the Gospel, rather than to become involved in disputations over the political issues of the day. This does not mean that we may not speak to ethical issues, but only in so far as they are addressed in the Bible, and we would affirm the principle that Gospel ministers should avoid even the appearance of being involved in the party political activities. As Pastor R.B. Kuiper put it:
"Just because the preaching of the Word is so great a task the church must devote itself to it alone. For the church to undertake other activities, not indissolubly bound up with this one, is a colossal blunder, because it inevitably results in neglect of its proper task. Let not the church degenerate into a social club. Let not the church go into the entertainment business. Let not the church take sides on such aspects of economics, politics, or natural science as are not dealt with in the Word of God. And let the church be content to teach special, not general revelation. Let the church be the church."
The best summary of the dangers of Pastors becoming directly involved in civil affairs and thus becoming “political preachers” that I have yet read was in a short article written by the Presbyterian Theologian, R.L. Dabney in the 19th century:
PREACHERS AND POLITICS
By Robert L. Dabney
The appropriate mission of the minister is to preach the gospel for the salvation of souls. The servant who, by diverging into some other project not especially enjoined on him, nor essential for him to perform, precludes himself from his allotted task, is clearly guilty of disobedience to his master, if not of treason to his charge. Now, questions of politics must ever divide the minds of men; for they are not decided by any recognized standards of truth, but by the competitions of interest and passion. Hence, it is inevitable that he who embarks publicly in the discussion of these questions must become the object of party animosities and obnoxious to those whom he opposes. How then can he successfully approach them as the messenger of redemption? By thus transcending his proper functions, he criminally prejudices his appointed work with half the community, for the whole of which he should affectionately labour.
God has reserved for our spiritual concerns one day out of seven, and has appointed one place into which nothing shall enter, except the things of eternity, and has ordained an order of officers, whose sole charge is to remind their fellow-men of their duty to God. ... But when the world sees a portion or the whole of this sacred season abstracted from spiritual concerns, and given to secular agitations, and that by the appointed guardians of sacred things, it is the most emphatic possible disclosure of unbelief. It says to men, “Eternity is not of more moment than time; heaven is not better than earth; a man is profited if he gains the world and loses his soul, for do you not see that we postpone eternity to time, and heaven to earth, and redemption to political triumph—we who are the professed guardians of the former?” One great source, therefore, of political preaching may always be found in the practical unbelief of [the preacher] himself; as one of its sure fruits is infidelity among the people. He is not feeling the worth of souls, nor the “powers of the world to come,” nor “the constraining love of Christ” as he should; if he were, no sense of the temporal importance of his favorite political measures, however urgent, would cause the wish to abstract an hour from the few allowed him for saving souls. We solemnly protest to every minister who feels the impulse to introduce the secular into his pulpit, that he thereby betrays a decadent faith and spiritual life in his own breast. Let him take care! He is taking the first steps toward backsliding, apostasy, damnation.
Weak defences of this abuse have been attempted. It is asked, “Is not the minister also a citizen?” The answer is, “He is a citizen only out of the pulpit , and on a secular day. In the pulpit he is only the ambassador of Christ.” It is urged again, that Peter, Paul, and the Lord Jesus Christ, taught political duties. We reply: Would that the pests of modern Christianity had truly imitated them; had taken not only their texts, but their discourses from them, instead of deriving the latter from the newspapers. Let them do as the sacred writers do: teach the duties of allegiance from the Christian side and motive only, “that the word of God and his Gospel be not blasphemed.” Another plea is, that Christianity is designed to produce important collateral results on the social order of nations; as that the social order reacts on Christianity. The answer is twofold: that these secular results are the minor, the eternal redemption of souls is the chief end of God in his Gospel.
...
“The preacher’s business is just to show the people what is in the Bible,” as God has there set it forth. This principle cuts up by the roots the whole fashion of “preaching up the times,” as it was quaintly called by our Scotch forefathers. If the preacher’s business is the redemption of the soul, and his instrument is the Bible truth, it is plain that he has no business in the pulpit with …politics … and all the farrago of subjects with which infidel ministers of Christianity essay to eke out, as they suppose, the deficient interest and power of the message of salvation. The preacher’s business in the pulpit is to make Christians, and not to make … statesmen, historians, or social philosophers. His message from the pulpit is that which God has put into his mouth, and nothing else. The question may be asked: “Are Bible principles never to be applied, then, to the correction of the social evils of the day by those who are the appointed expounders of the Bible?” So far as God so applies them in the Bible, yes; but no farther. Let the preacher take the application of the principles, as well as the principles applied, from the word of God; let him take, not only his starting position but his whole topics, from God’s word, and he will be in no danger of incurring that sarcasm, as biting as it is just, directed against those who “take their texts from the Bible, and their sermons from the newspapers.” Many preachers seem to think that if it is a scriptural principle which they use, it matters not how unscriptural or extrascriptural is the use which they make of it. They forget that it does not follow, because a man has drawn his weapon from the king’s armory, that therefore he is fighting the king’s battle; soldiers have sometimes used the sovereign’s arms to fight duels with each other. It may be asked again: “Is the preacher to forego and disuse all that influence for social good which his Christian intelligence gives him? Has he ceased to be a citizen and patriot because he has become a minister? No. But when he appears in the pulpit he appears not as a citizen but as God’s herald. Here is a very simple and obvious distinction much neglected. The other channels of patriotic influence are open to him which other citizens use, so far as he may use them without prejudice to his main calling. To cleave to this alone is made his obvious duty by three reasons. The importance of the soul’s redemption is transcendent. All social evils, all public and national ends, sink into trifles beside it. Hence God’s ministers owe this practical tribute and testimony at least to this great truth; to devote all the machinery and power of religious ordinances—that single domain into which the all-engrossing world does not intrude—to this one grand object. That minister is false to truth and to his Master who says by his conduct that there is anything on earth important enough to subtract one atom of sacred time or sacred ordinances from their one great object. Again, by securing the redemption of the soul, the preacher will secure all else that is valuable in his hearers. Let him make good Christians, and all the rest will come right without farther care. ... And last, he who undertakes the work of the social philosopher, the legislator, the politician, will diminish his energies, zeal, time, and influence for promoting his higher object. He will waste on the less those energies of head and heart which were all needed for the greater. He will shut up his access for good to all the minds which are opposed to him on these secular questions, and thus incur a hindrance which will incapacitate him for his own Master’s work, by undertaking work which belonged to other people. What is this but treason?
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