PCA Conversations

by Greg Thompson

[Continued from Part 1 and Part 2]

This brings me to the final animating conviction, and it is this: one of the most urgent civic tasks before the church is the recovery of civic love.

That is to say, even more important than our positions on public policy, or our decisions for political candidates, is the need to recover a deeply Christian view of civic life, to have our impoverished political imaginations renewed. For what we want to be is not partisan machines fueled by sound-bites and mutual agitation, but Christian citizens, wise, loving, human actors in the civic order; men, women, and children who live in the civic sphere for the glory of God and the good of their neighbors. But how? What do we need God to do among us in order to make us a people of civic love? Many others will, and have already, given constructive suggestions along these lines. But for my part, I suspect that it will require several things to begin with.

First, and most generally, it will require a return to the priority of the church. The church of Jesus is the place where we learn to be citizens of the world. It is here that we are given a vision of the purpose of humanity. Here that we learn to listen to the voice of another. Here that we learn to tell the truth about ourselves. Here that we learn to forgive sins. Here that we learn to give our money away. Here that we learn to intercede on behalf of others. Here that we learn of God’s desire to feed the hungry. Here that we learn to labor toward a kingdom of peace. Each of these, enactments and foretastes of the kingdom of heaven, also provide the template for how we are to live as heaven’s agents in the kingdom of this world. And so one of the first tasks in recovering citizenship is the formation of churches, little polities of love that both model the just society, and equip us to labor for its realization. All else flows from this, and is impossible apart from it.

Secondly, it will require a return to Christian theological sources. One of the most problematic features of American Christian civic life is the poverty of its sources. After all, much (most?) of our political understanding seems to come from talk radio and the blogosphere. And as useful as these can be in framing particular issues for us, their capacity to teach us a comprehensive vision of Christian civic life is extremely limited. As a result our political discourse is characterized by a good deal of knowledge on political policies and candidates, but by little apparent understanding of the Christian vision of civic love. But before there was Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken, before there was CNN and Fox news, there was Irenaeus, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, Bonhoeffer. Part of our task is to look to them to inform our understandings of the rationale, structure, and trajectory of a just society. And this will require feeding our political imaginations on richer fare than that to which we have become accustomed.

Thirdly, it will require the cultivation of intellectual patience. One of the most difficult features of contemporary civic life is the extraordinary amount of data involved in making wise decisions. The sheer complexity of the convergence between economy, military, technology, and politics—especially in light of globalization—beggars the best of minds. As a result, our political discourse necessarily thrives on simplification and generalization—and this is good. The problem comes when we forget that our simplifications are just that—simplifications—and when we begin to take our generalizations as the true account of things. This temptation is very strong for all of us. To combat this we need to cultivate patience, especially in its intellectual form, to resist hasty simplification, and to give ourselves to the work of understanding the world more clearly.

Fourthly, it will require the nurture of public virtue. One of the most frightening characteristics of our current political life is how little reflection there is on civic virtue. In reflecting upon this it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember a single forthright discussion about what used to be called “the civic virtues ” in any mainstream, public forum. We hear lots of talk about the kind of policies we should embrace. And lots of talk about what candidates we should support. But very little talk about what kind of people we should be. This is very strange. Christians, ordered as they are around the fruit of the Spirit (which includes love, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control) could play an important role in rehabilitating this public conversation. But this will require that we first nurture it among ourselves.

Finally, it will require the opportunity to cultivate the practices of citizenship. This will perhaps sound strange, but one of the most urgent civic tasks before the church is to form people who know how to participate in the work of citizenship. That is, people who have visions of the good, who know how to speak those visions, to listen to others, to compromise with one another, and to labor together for the common good. But, as any congregational (or denominational) gathering will bear out, we often struggle in these very tasks. If we are to go into our communities and labor to love our neighbors as citizens, it seems important for congregational leaders to prepare their people for civic life—not simply to win the culture wars—but to go and labor for the common good in obedience to the law of love.

More could be said of course, and will in time. But for now, these seem to me to be some of the critical tasks before us in the recovery of civic love. May the King help us as we labor together in this way.

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Greg Thompson is the senior pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, VA. He was formerly the RUF campus minister at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.