Politics and Religion

Politics and religion have been dancing a long time. And every time it happens, politics ends up leading - and stepping all over the feet of religion. Mike Woodruff "The Friday Update" Woodruff is senior pastor at a multi-site church in the northern suburbs of Chicago.  My wife has been reading me quotes from his updates for a few weeks now, and I always sigh at what new Christian site she has found that I'm not going to like.  But I am entirely wrong about this and I find his simple style engaging.  I think he is doing what I do, only better.

I have aware of this concept for some time - it is very much part of Lewis's teaching, such as the "Christianity and..." of Screwtape, several of the essays in God in the Dock, and most chillingly, in That Hideous Strength. I thought we came to "the fell incensed points of might opposites" (Hamlet) in the 80s and 90s, when I was assailed by the mostly-decent but quietly self-righteous believers left and right. I was not good at being nice to either of them. 

It is back with a vengeance now, or maybe social media just gives a platform to the worst of them.  I don't think Episcopalians have heard many sermons on demon rum or adultery over the last decades - the priests reserve the hellfire and brimstone for the evils of Republicans.  I suspect it has the same effect as the old sermons did, scaring the bejeesus out of the already converted and making sure they don't dare leave and go out into the void, but chasing the unconverted away. I cannot believe the tone and accusation I am hearing from men and women of the cloth, spoken with the absolute certainty that is itself a red flag. 

Yet that isn't the whole story. Simmering up among the online young is a Christian conservatism with many good aspects, but entirely too welcoming to old demons in new disguises.  I don't know these children that well, and I doubt they will listen to one such as I.  But I have seen this before. I recall the revival weekends on church signs: Faith. Family. Country. " 

“If Affection is made the absolute sovereign of a human life the seeds will germinate. Love, having become a god, becomes a demon.” CS Lewis The Four Loves.  Yes, if even love can fall, and can fall farther than mere lust, so too can love of family and love of country. The higher a thing can rise, the greater is its fall.

My own words would be that if a Christian develops any politics, the danger of the political beliefs becoming the faith is so great as to be irresistible without Divine aid.  Our tendency to self-deception is bottomless, whether we go off a cliff or sink into the marshes. The demon discovered simply hides one level further down.