Part 2 of a 2-part series on Christian engagement in the political sphere, in which Ryan Smit, Programme Director of the Wilberforce Academy, South Africa, discusses how the Christian confession translates into faithful political action in service of the Lord’s kingdom purposes in South Africa. [See Part 1]
6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits[a] of the world, and not according to Christ. 9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
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Colossians 2:6-10
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The Christian Confession
The Christian confession is a simple one: Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:11). We seek to honour Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords in every area of our lives, including loving our fellow image-bearers as He loves us and stewarding creation under His authority. We walk in His ways, pursue His purposes, ascribe to His values and apply His principles for every part of life and culture. We believe His ways are best for all mankind, not only for His children, and therefore we advocate for its universal adoption – so that all may be blessed, especially those who are most dependent on others for their livelihood, safety and flourishing.
We live to make His Name great (Matt 5:16, 2 Pet 2:12) – because we want to, because of who He is and because He deserves it all – and at the same time, that the world may be saved through being reconciled to Him (1 Tim 2:4, 2 Pet 3:9) and benefit from following His guidance and instructions for life.
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Christian political engagement
One of the ways we fulfil the cultural/creation mandate (refer Part 1 of this series) is by participating in the political processes of the nation in which the Lord has placed us. Each party vying for Christians’ vote, including the current governing parties (nationally and provincially), have as their primary concern either God’s interests (ruling in accordance with God’s will, Word and ways) or human self-interest (of either a ruling elite class or various bases within their constituencies). With the incumbents we can track the arc of where they are headed with reference to their historic actions – and so too other parties and candidates who have been serving their visions and constituents’ interests in the political arena over shorter or longer periods of time.
Our vote is a way for us to take a stand – politically – and propose a Christian alternative – by voting a party or candidate into power that has the Lord’s kingdom purposes for South Africa as their agenda. Our vote could both be a way to protest and a way to employ constitutional means of redress – peacefully, confidentially and without the need to take expensive legal action to undo further future wrongs by state authorities whose god is not the Lord. It is also an opportunity for reconstruction, corrections and rebuilding.
The May 2024 National and Provincial Elections
Looking back over the past decade or more and especially over the past four years, including the most recent spate of legislative enactments by the government under the current ruling party, it becomes very difficult not to conclude that – “The writing is on the wall.” We do not seem to have been moving towards God’s ways and purposes, honouring and following biblical values and principles.
Let us take hold of this opportunity to honour the Lord Jesus with our vote, thankful that we can participate in His plans for our nation and ultimately trusting Him – both for the outcome of the elections and for continuing to guide and sustain us during the next phase of building that will follow after Wednesday May 29.
Wilberforce Academy South Africa’s Elections resource packs can be accessed here:
A Christian Manifesto
With the seventh five-yearly National and Provincial Elections upon us, followers of Christ have hard choices to make as we seek to honour the Lord Jesus with our vote – to put our vote in service of His Kingdom purposes in South Africa. What, if anything, can we learn from history and our present context to illuminate the path the Lord is laying before us?
(The following discussion consists of excerpts from Francis Schaeffer’s second-last book, A Christian Manifesto (ACM), published in 1981 as a clarion call to the Church in the United States. It is as applicable to South Africa in 2024 as it was at the time to the USA.)
Where ‘the people of God’ has been missing it
“The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last [thirty] years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of in totals.
They have very gradually become disturbed over permissiveness, pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family, and finally abortion. But they have not seen this as a totality – each thing being a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem. They have failed to see that all of this has come about due to a shift in worldview – that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people think and view the world and life as a whole.
This shift has been away from a [Christian] worldview [(or) what was at least vaguely Christian in people’s memory …] toward something completely different – toward a worldview based upon the idea that the final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its present form by impersonal chance.
These two worldviews stand as totals in complete antithesis to each other in content and also in their natural results – including sociological and governmental results, and specifically including law.
Why have Christians been so slow to understand this?
There are various reasons but the central one is a defective view of Christianity. This has its roots in the Pietist movement […] in the seventeenth century. Pietism began as a healthy protest against formalism and a too abstract Christianity. But it had a deficient […] spirituality.
Pietism made a sharp division between the “spiritual” and the “material” world – giving little, or no, importance to the “material”. In particular, it neglected the intellectual dimension of Christianity. Christianity and spirituality were shut up to a small, isolated part of life.
There are things the Bible tells us as absolutes which are sinful – which do not conform to the character of God. But aside from these the Lordship of Christ covers all of life. In this sense there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual.
Related to this, it seems to me, is the fact that […] Christianity is true, or Truth. [Many Christians] believe in, let us say, the truth of creation, the truth of the virgin birth, the truth of Christ’s miracles, Christ’s substitutionary death, and His coming again. But they stop there. When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total reality – Truth about all of reality. And the holding of that Truth intellectually – and then in some poor way living upon that Truth, the Truth of what is – brings forth not only certain personal results, but also governmental and legal results.
The problem: How to decide between right and wrong
The problem always was, and is, What is an adequate base for law? What is adequate so that the human aspiration for freedom can exist without anarchy, and yet provides a form that will not become arbitrary tyranny?
The Reformation refined and clarified […] the point of authority – with authority resting in the Scripture rather than church and Scripture, or state and Scripture. This not only had meaning in regard to doctrine but clarified the base for law.
That base was God’s written Law, back through the New Testament to Moses’ written Law; and the content and authority of that written Law is rooted back to Him who is the final reality. Thus, neither church nor state were equal to, let alone above, that Law.
Humanism, with its lack of any final base for values or law, always leads to chaos. It then naturally leads to some form of authoritarianism to control the chaos. Having produced the sickness, humanism gives more of the same kind of medicine for a cure.
Where do we find ourselves now?
Law in this country has become situational law, using the term Fletcher used for his ethics. That is, a small group of people decide arbitrarily what, from their viewpoint, is for the good of society at that precise moment and they make it law, binding the whole society by their personal arbitrary decisions. [W]e are indeed very, very far down the road toward a totally humanistic culture. At this moment we are in a humanistic culture, but we are happily not in a totally humanistic culture.
The law, and especially the courts, is the vehicle to force this total humanistic way of thinking upon the entire population.
Christian educators, Christian theologians, Christian lawyers – none of them blew loud trumpets until we were a long, long way down the road toward a humanistically-based culture.
[I]f we are going to do better we must stop being experts in only seeing these things in bits and pieces. It concerns truth in regard to final and total reality – not just religious reality, but total reality. And our view of final reality will determine our position on every crucial issue we face today.
Where do we go from here?
What is ahead of us? I would suggest that we must have TWO tracks in mind. The FIRST track is a unique open window [-] we should be struggling and praying that this whole [humanist] world view can be rolled back with all its results across all of life.
We must understand that there is going to be a battle every step of the way. And we must press on, hoping, praying, and working that indeed the window can stay open and the [humanist worldview] will be pressed back rather than the whole thing ending only in words.
Some of us, however, who have some position of leadership, must unhappily be thinking of the possible SECOND track. THE SECOND track is, What happens in this country if the window does not stay open? What then?
The harvest we could be in for
And if the window does close [-] there will be some form of an elite authoritarianism. [A]n elite composed of intellectuals (especially from the academic and scientific world) plus government [-] an elite composed of select intellectuals made up of those who control the use of the technological explosion, a technocratic elite.
[I] think we should not rule out the courts, and especially the Supreme Court [of the land]. They rule on what the other two branches of government can and cannot do, and they usually go unchallenged.
I hope the window does not close. I hope those with a humanistic worldview who have increasingly controlled our culture for the last 20, 30 [-] years, something like this, cannot close the open window with all their efforts. But if they do, if they take over with increased power and control, will we be so foolish as to think that religion and the religious institutions will not be even further affected than they have been so far?”
Interlude
Part 1 of this two-part series concluded with a discussion of the state’s biblical/God-ordained mandate and the biblical response when the state turns against God.
The bottom line – responding to the worst-case scenario
“The bottom line is that at a certain point there is not only the right, but the duty, to disobey the state. Through the ages Christians have taken the same position as did the early Church in disobeying the state when it commanded what was contrary to God’s Law.
In his classic, Lex Rex, [Samuel] Rutherford set forth the proper Christian response to unbiblical acts by the state. Rutherford offered suggestions concerning illegitimate acts of the state. A ruler, he wrote, should not be deposed merely because he commits a single breach of the compact he has with the people. Only when the magistrate acts in such a way that the governing structure of the country is being destroyed – that is, when he is attacking the fundamental structure of society – is he to be relieved of his power and authority. [Is that not] exactly what we are facing today[?]
Neither anarchy nor acquiescence
Civil disobedience is, of course, a very serious matter and it must be stressed that Rutherford was the very opposite of an anarchist. Specifically, he stated that if the state deliberately is committed to destroying its ethical commitment to God then resistance is appropriate. In such an instance [-] Rutherford suggested that there are three appropriate levels of resistance: First, he must defend himself by protest (in contemporary society this would most often be by legal action); second, he must flee if at all possible; and, third, he may use force, if necessary, to defend himself.
One should not employ force if he may save himself by flight; nor should one employ flight if he can save himself and defend himself by protest and the employment of constitutional means of redress. Rutherford illustrated this pattern of resistance from the life of David as it is recorded in the Old Testament.
Rutherford cautioned that a distinction must be made between a lawless uprising and lawful resistance. For a corporate body (a civil entity) [-] resistance should be under the protection of the duly constituted authorities: if possible, it should be under the rule of the lesser magistrates (local officials). Rutherford urged that the office of the local official is just as much from God as is the office of the highest state official.
[I]t is important to keep an axiom in mind: always before protest or force is used, we must work for reconstruction. In other words, we should attempt to correct and rebuild society [first].
At this time in our history, protest is our most viable alternative. This is because in our country the freedom that allows us to use protest to the maximum still exists. However, we must realise that protest is a form of … “nonviolent resistance”.
The writing is on the wall
We must never forget that the humanistic position is an exclusivist, closed system which shuts out all contending viewpoints – especially if these views teach anything other than relative values and standards. Anything which presents absolute truth, values, or standards is quite rightly seen by the humanist to be a total denial of the humanistic position.
As a result, the humanistic worldview is completely intolerant when it presents itself through the political institutions and especially through the schools. In his book Leftism, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn writes that as humanism begins to dominate the state “religion is then removed from the marketplace and the school, later from other domains of public life. The state will not tolerate any gods besides itself.” The school is their special target.
The humanistic worldview intolerantly uses every form of force at its disposal to make its worldview the exclusive one taught in the schools.
We must realise that the Reformation worldview leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist worldview with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the centre, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.
Again we must see that what we face is a totality and not just bits and pieces. It is not too strong to say that we are at war, and there are no neutral parties in the struggle. One either confesses that God is the final authority, or one confesses that Caesar is Lord.
Taking a stand – demonstrating what we stand FOR and standing AGAINST the way of destruction
As we think about these things, we must think about one other factor: Those who have the responsibility as Christians, as they live under Scripture, must not only take the necessary legal and political stands, but must practice all the possible Christian alternatives simultaneously with taking the stands politically and legally. … not only in regard to abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia that alternatives are practiced. They must be practiced in all areas. This is so, and especially so, even when it is extremely costly in money, time, and energy.
If we do not practice the alternatives commanded in the Scripture we are not living under the Scripture.
What is now needed is to stand against the [humanist] world view. What is needed at this time is to take the steps necessary to break the authoritarian hold which the [humanist world view] has on government and law.
The result would be freedom for all and especially freedom for all religion.
With this freedom, Reformation Christianity would compete in the free marketplace of ideas. It would no longer be subject to a hidden censorship as it is now. It can and would give out the clear preaching of God’s “good news” for individuals, and simultaneously it is also the view which gives the consistent base for the form[/order]-freedom balance in government and society. It is the responsibility of those holding this view to show it to be unique (the truth of total reality) for individual salvation and for society – by teaching, by life and by action.”
2 Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. — Revelation 3:2
Notes
1This article is the second in a two-part series which commenced with a contextualising introductory discussion entitled The Christian Political Task earlier this month. To find out more about Wilberforce Academy, visit: https://wilberforceacademy.org.za/
2ACM, pp 17-18
3ACM, pp18-20
4ACM, pp 27-30
5ACM, pp 48-51
6ACM, pp 73-75
7ACM, pp 79-82
8ACM, pp 93-108
9ACM, pp 112-116
10 ACM, pp 132-138
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