Mennonite Weekly Review

In The Scandal of Evangelical Politics: Why Are Christians Missing the Chance to Really Change the World? (Baker Books, 2008) Ron Sider, a Mennonite theology professor, author and president of Evangelicals for Social Action, offers to educate evangelicals on sound political involvement.

Marlin Jeschke, of Goshen, Ind., is retired from teaching at Goshen College.

The provocative title follows his earlier The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World?

But the title of his present book is slightly misleading, because he offers no exposé of scandalous evangelical engagement in politics. He does twice mention the unethical act of Sen. Jesse Helms securing a subsidy for tobacco farmers in North Carolina and including tobacco in America’s Food for Peace exports to Third World countries.

Otherwise he says only generally: “Christian political activity today is a disaster. Christians embrace contradictory positions on almost every political issue… . They often succumb to dishonesty and corruption… . They too often promote their political agenda in foolish ways that frighten non-Christians, thus making it more difficult or nearly impossible to achieve important political goals.”

Sider approves of appropriate Christian involvement in politics rather than withdrawal from it. “Evangelicals today are up to their ears in politics,” he says, but then claims that they are ill-prepared and thus end up in “political engagement full of contradiction, confusion, ineffectiveness and failure.”

Sider undertakes the instruction of evangelicals on better participation in politics. He addresses the hot-button issues of many evangelicals — abortion (Sider is against it, but says Christians should also work at alleviating hunger and should oppose capital punishment); prayer in public schools (he suggests prayer should be taught and practiced in the home and church); public display of the Ten Commandments (they are an important part of America’s heritage, but Christians keeping them is more important than public display); homosexuality (he opposes same-sex marriage, but also easy divorce).

Sider addresses topics most evangelicals overlook or consider unimportant. He articulates the biblical vision of peace, supremely that of Jesus. And he cites the pre-Constantinian church’s rejection of Christian participation in war.

“We must now invest tens of millions of dollars in the first serious effort in human history to explore how much can be done to reduce injustice and war through the techniques of nonviolent direct action,” Sider writes.

On creation care, the author sides with the leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals, who recently officially endorsed concern for the environment on a subject quite divisive among evangelicals.

Finally, in a chapter on “Nation-States and International Affairs,” the author recognizes that “we increasingly live in one interconnected, interdependent global village” in which “thoughtless nationalism” is out of place, as is “the idea that America has a unique calling from God to renew the world” or be the world’s policeman.

Sider wants evangelicals to be more than one-issue or two-issue people and not simply borrow their political values from secular sources.

I fear most won’t listen to him. Intoxication with politics has seized too many. Sider would have done well to offer more warnings on the limitations of what Christians can achieve in secular politics. Evangelicals who heed his advice to be genuinely Christian in their politics should be prepared to find themselves sidelined.

But that might not be a bad thing, if they rediscover what John Howard Yoder talks about in The Politics of Jesus as the authentic Christian way to work at saving the world. The best advice to offer the church is to put its energy into demonstrating the life of Christ’s kingdom, especially since the church is called to be an alternative to the worldly political order.