IRD Basics:  George Weigel and the Public Church
James Tonkowich
November 20, 2008

The following originally appeared in a recent IRD Weekly e-newsletter.  If you would like to receive our weekly e-newsletter, click here and select "IRD Weekly."

On Monday President-elect Obama met with Sen. John McCain. According to Beth Fouhy of the Associated Press, before the meeting Obama said he was looking forward to, “a good conversation about how we can do some work together to fix up the country”— interesting choice of words. 

In his latest book, Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, IRD board member emeritus George Weigel comments on “The Sovereignty of Christ and the Public Church.” “This essay,” he writes, “which reflects some of IRD’s founding themes, grew out of discussions I had with fellow-members of the Institute’s board of directors as we prepared for a statement to mark the Institute’s tenth anniversary in 1992.”

His update of that thinking serves as a refresher on the IRD’s reason for being—a needed refresher in an era where even in the Church we are tempted to applaud government action intending to “fix up the country.”

Weigel begins with Philippians 2:1: “Jesus Christ is Lord.” All Christian reflections on politics and power must begin here not only because Jesus is the ultimate authority, but, says Weigel, because, “Jesus Christ reveals, not only the love of God and the glory of God, but also the full meaning of humanness and the ultimate destiny of human beings.”

Jesus, in perfect submission to his Father, was by that fact most perfectly human and most perfectly free. This is the paradox summed up in the cross, the great scandal that is “the ultimate Christian answer to the claims of the world and all its sovereignties.”

From Christ crucified springs the Church, for the Christian, “the first community of commitment, the privileged community of identity and allegiance.” This first allegiance, Weigel goes on to argue, “gives ‘Christian citizenship’ a distinctive character. The Christian is always a ‘resident alien’ in the world.” When the culture is compatible with a Christian worldview, the emphasis is on “resident.” When the culture is less compatible, the emphasis is on “alien.”

In either case, says Weigel, Christians live with the end of all things in mind. The sovereignties of this world are temporal; the sovereignty of Christ is eternal.

Because Christians know how the story is going to turn out, and because they know that the worst that could happen in history has already happened—on Good Friday—Christians can live within the unfolding of the world and its story at a critical distance. That critical distance allows Christians both to affirm the world as the arena of God’s saving acts and to challenge the temptation of the world’s sovereignties to assume an ultimacy that is not theirs. 

But the temptation to “assume an ultimacy that is not theirs” is common to all human societies including the Church. As St. Augustine pointed out in City of God, libido dominandi, the lust to dominate, marks all our earthly life. Weigel writes:

The typical way in which the Church has succumbed to the temptation… is by forging inappropriate alliances between altar and throne, so that the coercive poser of the state is put behind the truth claims of the Church. 

This alliance between altar and throne happens today when, to use the World Council of Church’s old motto, “The World Sets the Agenda for the Church.” Weigel comments that this:

…is to subordinate the sovereignty of Christ to a worldly sovereignty, to subordinate the mission of the Church to a political agenda, and to subordinate the unity of the Church to a partisan definition of communio.

The Church is not and should not become a political organization. It is beyond our competence. God has not revealed to the Church policy details for the social and political issues we face. Nonetheless, Weigel writes, “Because [the Church’s] competence engages the most urgent questions of human life... it can help to orient the public discussion of less urgent issues toward ends worthy of human beings.”

Above all, Weigel argues, “The 21st-century world badly needs a vital Christianity that proclaims the sovereignty of God and bears witness to human freedom.” In this, the Church must stand against totalitarianism of every sort. We are called to be the defenders of human freedom and human dignity under the sovereign rule of God. Weigel concludes:

“The implications of all this? No partisan Church, but rather a public Church. No sacred state, but a limited state at the service of human dignity and the common good. In short: a public Church in a civil society served by a limited state. Or, in the American shorthand, a free people under a limited government.”

Democracy is not perfect and America is not perfect. Nonetheless, we will need to govern ourselves. It is in accord with these biblical and historic Christian teachings that the IRD seeks to renew the social witness of the churches. This helps renew democracy, serving the cause of the Gospel and human flourishing until the return of Jesus Christ who even now is Lord.