How the Nations Rage: Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age

PRAISE FOR HOW THE NATIONS RAGE

This is a book worth reading. Leeman is clearheaded, tenderhearted, and extremely thoughtful about an enormously critical topic. While I may not agree with every jot and tittle of Leeman’s analysis, I was helped, stirred, and provoked by what I read. We need more books like this.

—KEVIN DEYOUNG, SENIOR PASTOR, CHRIST COVENANT

CHURCH, MATTHEWS, NORTH CAROLINA; ASSISTANT

PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, RTS CHARLOTTE

"Jonathan Leeman’s How the Nations Rage contains truths that will make any Christian—Republican, Democrat, Independent, or otherwise—squirm, and that’s what makes it worthwhile. In this time of political polarization, Leeman offers an opportunity for people to step back from the headlines and the harangues to reevaluate what it means to represent Christ in the public square and one’s local community. If read carefully, How the Nations Rage can smooth some of the sharp edges of our current political discourse and move people of faith toward being truth tellers and peacemakers instead of mere partisans."

—JEMAR TISBY, PRESIDENT, THE WITNESS, A BLACK CHRISTIAN

COLLECTIVE; COHOST, PASS THE MIC PODCAST

Few waters are more difficult for Christians to navigate than political ones. This book helpfully steers us between the opposite errors of worrying too much about politics or investing too much hope in them. One of my biggest challenges as a pastor has been how to shepherd my people on this issue, and Jonathan has given us an invaluable resource to that end—whatever political persuasion they bring to the discussion. In his characteristically amenable but candid manner, he opens the Bible and shows us the way forward.

—J. D. GREEAR, PH.D., PASTOR, THE SUMMIT CHURCH,

RALEIGH-DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA

"These are fraught political times, both inside and outside the church. The ‘culture wars’ model of the previous century has proven inadequate in addressing the polarization of our current social climate. How the Nations Rage provides a more mature, deeply biblical, and much needed pastoral understanding of the relationship between the church and the public square. In these pages, Leeman balances correction and encouragement, as well as principle and wisdom."

—KAREN SWALLOW PRIOR, AUTHOR OF BOOKED: LITERATURE IN THE SOUL OF

ME AND FIERCE CONVICTIONS: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF HANNAH MORE

"Most thoughtful Christians know in their hearts that while government is necessary, the solution for the difficulties of life and the social order will never arise in the nation’s capital. Jonathan Leeman has written How the Nations Rage in part to show the futility of the political solution. His determination is not to have Christians avoid political agendas but rather to face honestly the insufferable difficulties in the machinations of men regarding political order. Eventually, Leeman recognizes the the church is subject to being pummeled by just about everybody in the political order, and yet, the church and its message of love in a hate-filled world is the only thing that offers any real solution. Any Christian concerned with political affairs should read this book."

—PAIGE PATTERSON, PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTWESTERN

BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Do our political convictions flow from Scripture or from American traditionalism? Do our political hopes find their roots in earthly governments or the heavenly government to which we have been called? Leeman calls Christians to reevaluate and ‘rethink faith and politics from a biblical perspective,’ reminding us that we are to represent King Jesus as faithful ambassadors working out of the heavenly embassies that local churches are meant to be. So, whether you’re on the Evangelical Left or Right, in the majority or minority culture, or from the Greatest Generation or Generation X, Y, or Z, pick up this book and start anew, making certain that our politics flows from Scripture so that we may faithfully represent our heavenly government well, as we sojourn on this earth.

—JUAN R. SÁNCHEZ, SENIOR PASTOR, HIGH POINTE BAPTIST CHURCH

"To what extent should Christians be involved in the political process? In How the Nations Rage, Jonathan Leeman provides a careful and theologically compelling treatment of the relationship between faith and politics. This book is an urgently needed resource for Christians seeking to faithfully integrate their Christian commitments with their political engagement. Leeman is careful, cogent, and unflinchingly biblical in his presentation. This book deserves careful consideration by any Christian who seeks to walk faithfully in the public square."

—R. ALBERT MOHLER JR., PRESIDENT, SOUTHERN

BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

"Jonathan Leeman has written not simply a good book, but an important book. Using the ever-deepening political divide in the United States as a starting point, How the Nations Rage exhorts Christians not to allow politics to rule our lives, but to allow God to do so. Leeman challenges readers to jettison the petty gods we often serve, and, rather, choose submission to Christ in all corners of the public square. This volume challenges our presuppositions about earthly power, informs our hopes for the heavenly kingdom, and repositions the center of our political lives inside the church of Jesus Christ."

—THOM S. RAINER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, LIFEWAY CHRISTIAN RESOURCES

"What has the church to do with politics? Is there a proper, biblically informed relationship between church and state? In How the Nations Rage, Leeman exhorts the church neither to withdraw from nor to dominate the political sphere, but to represent heaven to a world in turmoil. What timely counsel, especially to the American church! This work is highly accessible and deserving of praise."

—JOHN MACARTHUR, PASTOR, GRACE COMMUNITY CHURCH,

SUN VALLEY, CALIFORNIA

As the son of Korean immigrants, I grew up wishing I was an Irish American Catholic, like all my friends at St. Mary’s grammar school. Identity inspired a good amount of confusion and angst in my life. Even earlier in life, as a five-year-old in the year of our nation's bicentennial, I distinctly recall my father insisting to my mother and all his friends in the immigrant Korean church we were part of, that Christians had an obligation to vote for a faithful, Southern Baptist peanut farmer from Georgia named Jimmy Carter—my first run-in with identity politics. Thank you, Dr. Leeman, for spurring me to deeper rethinking and reflection on the issues involved through this title. When Christians overcomplicate their identity in Christ (we are simply ambassadors of his kingdom rule and reign), we tend to settle on oversimplifying our politics to partisan and identity. This must change.

—WON KWAK, LEAD PASTOR OF MARANATHA GRACE CHURCH IN

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NEW JERSEY (WWW.MARANATHAGRACE.ORG)

As a pastor on Capitol Hill, I’m often asked what book I would recommend on politics for the Christian. Jonathan Leeman has produced a new standard. Well illustrated and engaging, this carefully reasoned book should be read in our churches before we come to an election year contest again.

—MARK DEVER, PASTOR, THE CAPITOL HILL BAPTIST CHURCH,

WASHINGTON, DC; PRESIDENT, 9MARKS

© 2018 Jonathan Leeman

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017956957

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To my daughters, Emma, Hannah, Madeline, and Sophie, for the sake of the world you will inherit

Contents

Chapter 1: A Nation Raging, a Church Unchanging

Chapter 2: Public Square: Not Neutral, but a Battleground of Gods

Chapter 3: Heart: Not Self-Exalting, but Born Again and Justified

Chapter 4: Bible: Not Case Law, but a Constitution

Chapter 5: Government: Not a Savior, but a Platform Builder

Chapter 6: Churches: Not Lobbying Organizations, but Embassies of Heaven

Chapter 7: Christians: Not Cultural Warriors, but Ambassadors

Chapter 8: Justice: Not Just Rights, but Right

Final Thoughts: Why the Battle Might Get Worse, but Our Political Hopes Can Remain Unchanged, Untroubled, Untouched

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

1

A NATION RAGING, A CHURCH UNCHANGING

I am writing this late in the evening on July 4. My daughters are in bed. The sizzle and crackle of fireworks are over. But the music from PBS’s coverage of the concert outside the US Capitol building still rings in my ears. The show combined patriotic music, words from well-known American heroes, and photos of iconic American images—the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Monument, the Grand Canyon, the Golden Gate Bridge, and so on.

O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain.

I feel a swell of emotion. Independence Day, for me, brings with it a sense of nostalgia, almost like a birthday does. A birthday evokes memories of childhood. July Fourth evokes memories of, well, how do you describe it? Memories of America? What it is, what it represents, what we want it to be.

I don’t recall when I first became conscious of my affection for the United States. Maybe it was amid the glint of sparklers on the Fourth of July as a child, or during an elementary school lesson on Abraham Lincoln, or into my third helping of sweet-potato casserole at Thanksgiving, or while watching a Cubs game at Wrigley Field in high school.

I do remember discovering Walt Whitman’s poem I Hear America Singing in college and being enlivened by it.

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear . . .

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else . . .

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.¹

I also remember discovering the American composer Aaron Copland in college. His ballets and orchestral suites inspired thoughts of Appalachian songs, prairie nights, and Western hoedowns. To this day when I hear his music, I can feel a deep yearning for decades I’ve only read about and places I’ve only seen in black-and-white photographs—all deeply American.

These snapshots are some of the symbols of my own love of country. What has been difficult for me over the last decade or two, however, has been to watch a growing divide between America and my Christianity. I might even say the relationship is becoming downright contentious.

CONTENTION AND DIVISION

I was in Southeast Asia several weeks ago spending time with a friend, Michael. Michael is an American missionary, and his family has been absent from the United States for more than a decade. Over dinner one evening we strayed into politics.

I keep up on the news, he said. But what’s it really like?

Missionaries are kind of like cultural time capsules. They leave the homeland, and their sense of the homeland’s trends and styles gets frozen in time. Why are you wearing baggy pleated pants, brother? It’s not the 1990s. Keeping up on the news, of course, doesn’t give someone a feel for what it’s like living in the States.

Honestly, it’s really intense, I said in answer to his question. There’s a lot of division and contention. I then spent several minutes trying to give Michael a feel for that division.

For instance, the political Left and Right used to talk and reason with each other. Now they just shout. When a liberal guest lecturer at the University of Notre Dame was asked if she could find common ground with conservatives on race and gender, she answered, You cannot bring these two worlds together. You must be oppositional. You must fight. For me, it’s a line in the sand.²

Then there was the man who spent $422 million bankrolling the campaign to make same-sex marriage legal in all fifty states. When asked about his plans, he replied, We’re going to punish the wicked.³

And there was the Harvard law professor who described his posture toward conservatives: The culture wars are over; they lost, we won. . . . My own judgment is that taking a hard line (‘You lost, live with it’) is better than trying to accommodate the losers.⁴

It’s a nasty time. It’s a nasty time,⁵ concluded the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as he thought about the modern climate and recalled how Republican and Democrat powerbrokers fraternized and clinked glasses at Washington, DC, dinner parties in the 1970s and ’80s. This doesn’t happen anymore. Scalia was elected to the Supreme Court in 1986 by the US Senate in a 98–0 vote. Today’s Supreme Court nominee battles, however, are nearly straight party-line votes.

Scalia made these comments in 2013. Think of what’s transpired since: the Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage in the Obergefell case, the legal showdowns between LGBT rights and religious liberty, the explosion of police-brutality videos and the emergence of Black Lives Matter, the sudden prominence of the transgender movement, the rise of the alt-right, the growing divide between globalists and nationalists, and the still-bewildering 2016 elections.

Meanwhile, a conservative lobbying organization in Washington sent out a fundraising e-mail shortly after Donald Trump’s election. With all caps and bold-faced warnings, it promised the "radical Left won’t accept the election’s results but will subvert the future. The Left has already violently protested the election with money from Hollywood-Washington elitists. Everyone who loves faith, family, and freedom should therefore watch out for the Left’s massive attempt to DECEIVE, INTIMIDATE, AND SIDETRACK lawmakers. It would try EVERY POLITICAL TRICK IN THE BOOK. But you can fight back and help win the 2017 policy war. So donate now."

Whether or not you agree with this release, consider its language: radical, subvert, violently, deceive, intimidate, fight, war. I asked a friend who works at a similar religious-right organization whether such strident language was typical.

It’s the standard vernacular, he said. It’s us versus them. Either we’ll take our country back (for God) or they (the progressive liberals) will take over. He also explained, By and large politics is no longer about people participating in a shared project of societal order. There is very little desire to actually persuade. The strategy nowadays is to acquire enough political power to have your way. There may be more groups that are more nuanced and charitable in their language, but groups on the Far Right and Left set the tone on the ground.

In fact, Pew Research shows that Democrats are more left-leaning and Republicans more right-leaning than they were two decades ago. And both increasingly see each other as an existential threat to the nation.⁶

The contentiousness is hardly limited to DC interest groups. Ask Jordanna. She’s twelve. Her parents are Christians, and her father worked for a previous Republican administration. Those two facts alone have made her the butt of jokes and ridicule in her public school. Meanwhile, the teachers and administration increasingly advocate for Gay Pride and other such causes. Shortly after the 2016 elections, Jordanna’s school (teachers and students) participated in an anti-Trump march. Jordanna’s parents were not Trump supporters, but they asked if their daughter could be exempted from the march. Permission was granted, but Jordanna became the lone standout. Students bullied. Old friends stopped speaking to her. Why do we have to be so different? she pleaded with her father through tears.

I didn’t give Michael all these examples as I laid out how things have grown increasingly divided, but a number of them were fresh in my mind. It’s as if we are in a contest between two warring planets—the Left versus the Right, I said. Or perhaps it’s more like one planet that has broken into multiple pieces, with guns shooting every which way as the pieces drift apart. Remember that game Asteroids on the old Atari systems from when we were kids? That’s what it’s like.

One thing is certainly true: America is in the middle of an identity crisis. Ask those wearing the red Make America Great Again ball caps and those holding Black Lives Matter picket signs what unites us, and you’ll hear pretty different answers.

INSIDE THE CHURCH TOO

What’s even sadder, I went on to explain to Michael, is how much these battles have shown up among Christians and in our churches.

Consider the 2016 presidential election. Among evangelicals it felt like someone dropped a lit match into a box of firecrackers. Tweets whistled like bottle rockets, and Facebook posts popped like cherry bombs. Pastors who had never in their careers endorsed a political candidate from the pulpit suddenly felt conscience-bound to speak. Christian leaders with a national stage did the same thing.

Michael had picked up this much just from watching the Web. His local friends often queried him about the elections. But what Michael couldn’t know firsthand was the quibbling and tension building inside of churches too. One friend in another part of the country shared in an e-mail, We were having dinner with some friends from our church the other night. I offered a few of my thoughts on Trump. People got pretty mad. All this is crazy! I have to quit talking about the elections. They’re really putting a damper on our friendships. Too dangerous.

The media, popcorn in hand, noticed all this bickering. Headlines buzzed: Donald Trump Reveals Evangelical Rifts That Could Shape Politics for Years (New York Times, 10/17/16) and Evangelical Christians Are Intensely Split over Trump and Clinton (Faithwire, 10/17/16).

The elections especially divided Christians by ethnicity. Whites leaned hard toward Trump, nonwhites marginally toward Clinton. After the election, African American friends of mine wanted to be done with evangelicalism.

All these tensions showed up in my own Sunday school classroom, I told Michael. That fall I taught a class on Christians and government in my church, which gathers six blocks away from the US Capitol building. The Sunday after the election I opened the class with a few comments on our need for unity in the gospel. An older black woman raised her hand and lamented that she had felt no empathy from the white majority. A middle-aged white woman responded by declaring all Democrats evil.

Wait, why did I choose to teach this class?

My concern with all this was not that Christians might disagree on which candidate was best, I explained. It was the emotional temperature of the disagreements. Trust began breaking down. Relationships were jeopardized. Christian liberty was threatened.

What I didn’t get into with Michael was something I thought about later. If we truly stop and consider where all this strife came from, we’d see that the confusion and conflict American evangelicals experienced during the 2016 elections cannot be isolated to that relatively short moment in time. They were symptoms of larger confusions, larger troubles.

Pan the camera back and consider the perspective of the last few decades. Christians feel that they have been losing the culture wars on front after front. Born in 1973, I don’t remember the sexual revolution of the 1960s or the nationwide legalization of abortion the year of my birth. Yet I remember firsthand the successive waves of moral changes throughout my childhood, college years, and beyond: the positive portrayal of a cohabitating couple on television in 1984, a children’s book about two lesbian mothers in 1989, school board debates over the distribution of condoms in the early Clinton years, and the growing number of gay characters on television shows and movies in the ’90s and ’00s. Add the judicial doubling-down on abortion in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Add the state-by-state advance of same-sex marriage laws starting in Massachusetts in 2004, culminating in a nationwide decision with Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. Add the battles over religious liberty this created, such as when corporate America threatened commerce in Indiana due to Governor Mike Pence’s proposed Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Also throw in the political controversies that quickly followed in 2016 over transgender bathrooms, as well as the workplace controversy over gendered pronouns shortly thereafter.

And there you have my generation’s cultural autobiography.

Little by little Christians have felt pushed to the outskirts of whatever America is becoming. We still light the sparklers, enjoy the sweet-potato casserole, and root for our ball teams. But something is changing—has changed. It’s beginning to feel like a different America. Like the media is sneering, the universities are stigmatizing, the government is sidelining, and Hollywood is scoffing. Religious liberty, which is explicitly written down in the Constitution, seems to be losing in court to erotic liberty, which is nowhere near the Constitution.

Amid our cultural war losses and dropping church attendance numbers, Christians have bickered about how to best engage the culture. Some want to strengthen the evangelical voting bloc. Others want to pursue social-justice causes. Still others would leave the public square to the pagans and get on with the so-called spiritual work of the church.

Now zoom the camera back in on the 2016 elections, where disagreements like these finally boiled over. After several decades of losses, evangelicals felt a growing sense of desperation. It was like watching the fourth quarter of