What good is a public witness, anyway?
Reflecting on Christian witness in an increasingly hostile culture
A few years ago I was at an event sponsored by a prominent Christian legal organization. One panel featured notable Christian writers discussing how Christians ought to respond to the Trump presidency, which was then in its relative infancy.
The most interesting part of this panel came when two writers—you would likely recognize both of them—butted heads over how Christians should carry themselves in the Trump era, namely, whether they should reject or embrace Trump’s confrontational and incendiary style of politics. Writer #1 maintained it was imperative for Christians to avoid the combative elements of Trump’s politics for the sake of maintaining a public witness honoring Jesus Christ. Writer #2, on the other hand, argued Christians must get tough with cultural opponents a la Donald Trump, lest we fall in the inevitable legal, political, and cultural battles to come.
This question is not especially new, but with the rise of social media and the past four years of the Trump administration, it is especially relevant. Which is why a recent tweet from Andrew Walker, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and one of conservative Christianity’s brightest young voices, caught my attention:
In a follow-up, Walker later tweeted:
Walker is essentially responding to Writer #1’s emphasis on public witness being the most important aspect of a Christian’s political engagement. I’m sympathetic to Walker’s point and, to an extent, share his frustration. Christians who emphasize the importance of public witness while failing to pursue public policy consistent with our beliefs are missing an important point of what it means to engage our culture and our politics faithfully.
However, Walker’s self-described facetious comment seems to miss an important point, too. Christians are called to engage our world of the sake of God’s Kingdom. As such, we should fight hard for the common good and the marginalized, for Christians and non-Christians alike. But if in the process of these battles we cease to model our Savior to a world in desperate ignorance of who He is, what is actually gained? The concern of Writer #1 is that Christians may turn a generation of people off to the Gospel as a result of our political posturing. Even important political victories will not outlast eternity.
To be clear, Walker does not believe public witness is irrelevant for a Christian’s political engagement; he calls such a thing “legitimate” and “important.” But he is clearly troubled by some Christians’ emphasis on the primacy of this principle for our political engagement, particularly when it could foster or lead to undesirable policy outcomes.
It is no accident that Walker is writing this as we await the inauguration of Joe Biden as the country’s next president. Biden is, at first glance, everything Donald Trump is not — empathetic, decent, and seemingly driven by his faith. And therein lies the tension for Christians in this particular age: For those maintaining a public witness opposed to Donald Trump’s style of politics and, in their minds, maintaining a witness more faithful to the words of Jesus, their reward is a “good” man whose administration will most likely pose serious challenges for religious traditionalists and some of the most vulnerable in our society. This tension is real, as are the consequences.
This tension does not have to be zero-sum, though. Christians must fight for policies reflecting the truths and commandments of our faith without neglecting essential aspects of our identity in Christ, such as love, humility, grace, and wisdom. At the same time, we must maintain a “decent, dignified, and principled” public witness without contentedly being rolled and trampled by a hostile culture. Importantly, our political engagement must stem from our public witness, rather than our witness stemming from our vision for political engagement.
Donald Trump’s administration brought four years of cultural chaos along with favorable policies and judicial appointments for people like me. Joe Biden’s administration will likely tamp down on the overt chaos while adopting policy positions at odds with certain Christians’ conceptions of the common good. Christians should not be comfortable under either administration. Our allegiance belongs to another Kingdom. Our public witness, along with our political engagement, should reflect that.