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

The Fourth of July has come and gone.  The election is starting to gain momentum with the first Democratic debate, and hold the memes... the food fight is beginning.  

Actually, it has been going on since 2016.  The vitriol and name-calling coming from the Left and the Right alike in America, even among church people, has been crazy.  I picked up this book in the past year because I was intrigued by the title and because if I wanted to see real change (especially in the way we as Christians in America view politics), then the change starts at home and with me. 

How the Nations Rage, Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age is a challenging book to read,

regardless of your political affiliation.  If you are the typical conservative evangelical, it is extremely challenging because it challenges us to think about how we engage and challenges our blind loyalty to the GOP (let's be honest, it's there), and some assumptions that we get from Christian political think tanks, talk radio, our filtered news feeds, etc. that aren't necessarily aligned with the Bible.  The same can be said about the Christian Left as well (just reverse the loyalties and the groups), but I'll pick on my own here.

I'm not going to summarize the points that Jonathan Leeman makes in the book, because quite honestly I want you to read it and think, especially if you would consider yourself a Christ-follower that cares about how our society is going.  My talking points aren't going to do it justice.  However, here are a few takeaways that I garnered from the book.  

The first is a challenge of the assumption of our founding to be a "Christian nation."  Now, our founders largely approached governing from a Judeo-Christian world view and our system of government has borrowed from the Old Testament "civil law" in Exodus - this is true.  Many of the founders were Christians, but at the same time you had two prominent Deists among the Constitutional signers who rejected the claims of Christianity, although they did use the Bible for inspiration and for moral decision-making (Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin).  It is true that the Declaration of Independence is fiercely religious in it's language, but the Constitution of the United States is not.  In fact, there is no religious language included in it at all other than the First Amendment that, again, is very non-specific toward any religion.  It is true, also, that in our founding that Christians and Christian principles were highly favored in the making of policy.  However, as you may see from some of the recent trends and the early debates for the 2020 election, many of these principles are now being marginalized (some of which that we assumed to be "Christian" that we need to repent of, probably should be).  

The principles of America, instead of being "Christian," (as talked about by the author) are around terms like "liberty," "freedom," and the principle that government operates based on the consent of the governed.  In the early days of our nation, these terms have been defined differently than they are today - and in our post-Christian society, the norms that our American government held as being accountable to the principles held up by scripture are now being replaced by the norms that we see today. 

As a result, perhaps we as Christians in America (either now or soon-after) need to rethink our identity as Christians apart from our identity as Americans.  I think we often mix the two, which is not Biblical.  Perhaps it's time we stopped letting our Americanism define our Christianity and let the Bible define how we engage as Americans.  

The second is thinking about what the definition of "politics" is.  The definition provided by the author was quite good.  Paraphrasing, it is how we decide what type of society we as as a people will be and how we live in that society.  I don't know how great of a definition that is, but it makes sense.  

Fast-forwarding a little bit - ultimately politics presents the goal of creating the ideal society: a society of peace, freedom, mutual respect, cherishing of life, etc.  The author quoted former speaker Tip O'Neill who said that "all politics are local" - and this is no truer today than it was then.  Ultimately, for us as Christians, the author presents that for us to present the "shining city on a hill" to our culture, these ideals should be met in our local churches.  I can't agree more.  Many of our founders viewed the American nation to be this "shining city on a hill" - in an era where Christianity is losing influence, our local churches need to be the example of that society we desire to a world that is craving it. 

Finally, the book challenges us to evaluate our political affiliations and loyalties in light of scripture, and challenges Republicans to address the evils purported by our party as well as Democrats challenging the evils purported by theirs.  There is no "sanctified" political party, only sanctified people who work within political organizations to represent Christ in those places where they work towards the good of our nation.  

We need to let our voices be heard and not just "vote Republican" or "vote Democrat" or "vote Libertarian" because we identify with a group.  I don't know (yet) how I will vote in 2020, but it will be based on issues I feel are going to move us forward and I know that my vote won't perfectly reflect my values - because I care about how we treat immigrants, equal opportunity for all of our citizens, limited federal power, empowering families, and protecting human life from the point of conception.  I don't think any vote I cast will perfectly meet all of those values, and that's where wisdom comes into play.  And living these values out is also at play.  

Please do read the book.  I gave you about a 5% "cliff notes" version because it's such a good read and it will make you think.  Also, it will make you (and me) think about how we engage people that disagree with us and learn to gain the respect of our friends who vote differently, but honestly want to see our nation flourish - which is one of the goals of government that God gave us (based on Genesis 9:5-7 - explained in detail throughout the book... this was also worth the buy and will challenge our assumptions of the valid roles of government if we let it).