Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998) exhibited the rare combination of theological competence, missiological awareness, cultural insight, and pastoral sensitivity in his lifetime. Because of this, his writings provide a wealth of wisdom in navigating the tumultuous political storm of our current days.
At the heart of much of Newbigin’s work is the conviction that the people of God, the church, find their primary identity as a missionary people. Newbigin’s position was not simply that the church should be involved in missionary activity, but that the very existence of the church is birthed out of and for God’s mission. The church has not been given a mission, so much as the mission has been given the church.[1]
This foundational understanding of the church’s identity shaped much of Newbigin’s writings. Significant amounts of his work are devoted to unpacking the argument for and implications of the missionary nature of the church. This includes implications for the political sphere. Although decades have passed since he penned his insights, their relevance remains timely because the identity of the church remains timeless. Newbigin can prove helpful as we seek to thoughtfully and faithfully engage in political discourse and activity.
The realization that Christendom has fallen in the West was a starting point for much of Newbign’s thinking. This reality served foundational as he developed his understanding of the missionary nature of the church.[2] Newbigin, who was born in England, was significantly influenced by his time serving the church in India, a more natural missionary context from a Western perspective. Upon his return to the United Kingdom, Newbigin realized his homeland was no less of a missionary context, though doctrines of the church in the West continued work from a posture “in which Christendom is taken for granted.”[3]
Newbigin knew a failure by the Western church to recognize its changing context, the dissolution of the gospel and culture synthesis that was forged in mediaeval times, would lead in one of two directions. On one side is the danger of syncretism, which embraces the non-biblical cultural stories and their idols. On the other side irrelevancy, with the danger of seeking a “refuge in a ghetto where their faith is not proclaimed as public truth from all.”[4]
Any attempt to return to Christendom requires syncretism: a marriage between the church and ruling power. A power that is in direct contradiction to allegiance to the sovereign rule of Jesus over all things. Newbigin was clear throughout his writings, there can be no return to Christendom, nor should there be.
Additionally, Newbigin did not mince words in his warning to the church regarding any attempt to return to Christendom by merging kingdoms. He writes, “The sacralizing of politics, the total identification of a political goal with the will of God, always unleashed demonic powers.”[5] Observing from across the ocean on the rise of the “Religious Right” in the United States in the 1980s and its association with political power, Newbigin declared, “This confusion of a particular and fallible set of political and moral judgements with the cause of Jesus Christ is more dangerous than the open rejection of the claim of Christ in Islam,” because, “it uses the name of Jesus to cover the absolute claims of one national tradition.”[6]
The practical application of Newbigin’s thinking in our current climate critiques Christians on the right and left. Arguments are put forth by Republicans and Democrats that their respective political alignment is the political allegiance most faithful to Scripture. Two recent examples of are John MacArthur declaring, “any real true believer,” will vote for Donald Trump in the upcoming election[7] and numerous prominent evangelicals giving a plea for pro-life evangelicals to vote for Joe Biden because his “policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life.”[8]
To argue that either party is the appropriate party for the Christian and that a vote cast for Trump or Biden is a litmus test of maturity in faith, or worse, evidence of faith in Christ is a failure to fully embrace that Christendom in the West is no more. It is a failure to appropriately distinguish between the gospel and culture, and therefore, a failure to live by the gospel alone.
At their core, Western political parties find their origins in Enlightenment assumptions, which cast religious truth out of the public square and limits it to the private sphere. Neither Republicans or Democrats declare on their respective platforms that Jesus is the Christ and true sovereign King. Because of this, there can be no serious argument that one party is more biblical than the other. To do so reduces the biblical story to a set of moral values that can be affirmed or denied by a host of individuals that would at the same time reject any notion of the sovereign rule of Christ. Something can be moral, without being biblical. Something cannot be biblical that rejects the core storyline and implications of the Bible.
This does not mean an abandonment of political involvement. Newbigin wholeheartedly rejects this option.[9] What it does mean is there is grace and charity by Christians toward other Christians as all seek to navigate the complexity of political involvement. Since no current political party can faithfully carry the weight of the Kingdom of God, Newbigin argues there “is room for much discussion,”[10] and, “differences of opinion on specific issues, certainly mistakes, certainly false starts.”[11] What should be absent in a post-Christendom society is the identification of the church with any political power. Involvement is not identification.
Newbigin argues the initial witness of the work of Christ is the existence of a, “community which lives by the life of the crucified and risen Jesus.”[12] The primary witness of the church in a post-Christendom society is not seeking to regain Christendom nor is it abandoning the common good of neighbors through retreat. It is found by living as the community Jesus has called into existence in the way he has called us to live. As this “community remembers, rehearses, and lives by the story the Bible tells,”[13] the political order of the true King is made known. To give the kingdom of God to another political order is to allow for the cross to be “converted into the banner for a fight of some against others.”[14]
The unity and unified witness of the church is one of the reasons Newbigin argued so forcefully against identification of the church with a political power. Political identification of the church produces an unavoidable result: division within the church. He warns, “the division of the church into rival and hostile bodies is something finally incompatible with the central verities of the Gospel.”[15] One need not search far or hard to see the fractured unity and outright hostility that currently exists within the American church as it relates to our current political discourse.
Whatever kingdom work is imagined to be advanced by identification with a political party, it is quickly undermined by the public division of the church. How can the church declare with any authority the restoring and reconciling power of the gospel of Jesus when there is too little reconciliation and too much hostility within the body that claims allegiance to his reconciling power?
In conclusion, Newbigin’s navigational wisdom for our current storm can be summed up in one sentence. The gospel of Jesus is most faithfully reflected, not in who we vote for, but in the unity we display with our fellow pilgrims who cast their ballot differently.
This resource is part of the series Kingdom Politics. Click Here to explore more resources from this series.
Notes:
[1] For a full exploration of this theme in Newbigin’s life and work, see Michael Goheen’s The Church and Its Vocation: Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018).
[2] Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 1953), 11.
[3] Ibid, 11.
[4] Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel of Western Culture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1986), 115.
[5] Foolishness to the Greeks, 116.
[6] Foolishness to the Greeks, 116.
[7] https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/michael-foust/any-real-true-believer-will-support-trump-in-november-john-macarthur-says.html
[8] https://www.prolifeevangelicalsforbiden.com/?fbclid=IwAR2KcsOEXarbA3I8yOlblNO1aMNBCXfAur_-XtcF0Pruj2Q0gz0nog1WpKM
[9] Foolishness to the Greeks, 104-105.
[10] Foolishness to the Greeks, 118.
[11] Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, Mich,: Eerdmans), 148.
[12] Ibid, 145
[13] Ibid, 147.
[14] Ibid, 151.
[15] Household of God, 17.
Cory Wilson serves as a pastor at City Church in Cleveland, OH. He is also a co-founder of the Ohio Theological Institute. Cory holds a Ph.D. from Reformed Theological Seminary and is a member of the St. Peter Fellowship of the Center For Pastor Theologians.
