"A Party of the Church"

My wife and I are about to have our second child any day now. This birth has something in common with the last birth: both coincide with earth-shattering events in my political world. Last time, it was my opportunity to serve as delegate to the county and state GOP conventions, in which I felt it was necessary to weigh in on the future of the party subsequent to the 2016 presidential election. You might think that this time it is the midterm election coming up in a few days, but that is not the case. I certainly would not dismiss the importance of the midterms for the nation or for local politics in my current state of Washington, but they do not affect me anywhere close to the way that a recent article by Yuval Levin in National Review does.

The article's title might sound like something that would only interest political or legal nerds: it is called "Publius the Institutionalist" and, as you might suspect if you are knowledgeable about the Constitution, it deals with the Federalist Papers (a series of articles in defense of the Constitutional Convention). But it is one of the recommendations of the article, that there be a "party... of the church," that is so revolutionary. If this suggestion came from some obscure and unserious person, it would not be worthy of a second thought. National Review is not an obscure publication, however, and neither Levin nor his article are unserious.

Here is the quote in its context: "It matters how we encounter one another, and what the structures of our interactions and accommodations look like. And those structures are established in the forms of our institutions. So a revival of our political culture requires us to focus not just on ideology but at least also on institutions—their internal cultures, and their capacity to forge integrity.

"That means that part of the solution to the frenzy of contemporary partisanship needs to come from partisans of our institutions—a party of the university (as Rita Koganzon has suggested) rather than a bunch of political partisans who use the university as just another platform in the broader culture war, for instance. And similarly, a party of the newsroom, of the law, of the church, of the family—people within each of these vital institutions whose concern is for the integrity of the institution and its capacity to build integrity in others. And it means thinking about institutional design with an eye to social psychology."

Now, I doubt that Levin was referring to the "church" in a Bible-centered theological context, as a Protestant Christian usually would. More likely, he had in mind something more along the lines of Jefferson's statement about separation of church and state: that religious institutions and the interests they promote are distinct from the political realm. Obviously they interact, but there is not a hierarchy in which political leadership is over religious leadership, or vice versa. In relation to their distinctive proper roles, they are independent of one another.

The state, however, can not unilaterally set the terms of its relationship with an independent entity. Each "church" has a say on what its own role will be in society and in politics. It is a reasonable assumption that its position will be based on the religious community's institutional history and on a theology that is consistent with that history. For Protestant Christianity, that boils down to conformity to the Bible. Ultimately, no Protestant individual or institution gets to set the agenda: the Bible itself must do that.

Here is where we get into those differences of Biblical interpretation and application that are so despised by many outsiders and often a cause of concern to insiders. If everyone agreed on the interpretation and application of the Bible, there would be one church, not many. These differences are, we believe, anticipated by the Bible itself, which gives us a template for handling them. Part of that template is thinking together and evaluating together religious teaching and teachers.

Most churches have statements of faith that express the doctrinal consensus of the church or denomination. One advantage that Presbyterians and a few other groups have is that systems such as the Westminster Confession pre-date the founding of the United States. If anyone has a political argument against such a confession, then, the standard of proof is much higher for the critics than for the defenders.

There is a statement in the confession on the role of the church in politics that Presbyterians will most likely agree on and that I would encourage non-Presbyterians to consider. Its chapter on synods and councils ends with these words: "Synods and councils are to handle, or conclude nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or, by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate." In the United States, the civil magistrate could be the government itself, the sovereign people as a whole, or a part of the people who are capable of representing the whole. Now, it's your move.