SHOULD CHRISTIANS INVOLVE THEMSELVES in civic life? Should they formulate policy positions, organize, and act on the basis of specifically Christian views and values? In 1999, Paul Weyrich, an important figure in a number of evangelical Christian organizations, wrote a public letter declaring that Christians had largely failed in their attempts to influence society and should forthwith abandon politics in favor of a strategy of cultural change. While there remains a good deal of wisdom in Weyrich's letter (he himself has since reversed course), Christians would be well advised to reject its central claim and instead engage in civic life as Christians in ways that both honor what Scripture tells us about government generally and respect the basic contours of American democracy more specifically.

One of the chief difficulties in articulating a clear and authentically Christian view of government is that Christians have all too often been miserable failures at it, as many happily point out. Historically speaking, Christians have most often failed to take seriously enough the distinction between what Augustine referred to as "The City of God" and "The City of Man"what we might today call the church and the world. Especially after the fall of the Roman Empire, church and state became tightly linked, and Christians largely viewed the state's role as being the church's servant, providing a stable political order, giving public support and money, and, of course, using its coercive powers to enforce religious orthodoxy where needed. In time, membership in the church and state became so indistinguishable that the unbaptized could not even be citizens.

This sort of arrangement, though it was not without virtue, carried a whole host of problems, practical and theological. A church that wields great political influence becomes itself essentially a political institution and thus attractive to those who wish to wield political, rather than spiritual, authority. A politicized church is, perhaps inevitably, a corrupted church; the profound disorder in the Catholic Church at the end of the Middle Ages illustrates that well enough. More spectacularly, when the unity of the church was fractured after the Reformation, the potent mixture of competitive religious fervor and nationalist state-building erupted into wars whose ferocity and horror were unmatched until the 20th century. Just as importantly, however, the tight linking of church and state ignores the Lord's teaching in Matthew 22:21 (NIV); there, responding to the Pharisees' question about taxation, Jesus said, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's," clearly distinguishing between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. If Christ refused to wield directly the political authority that was rightly His, how could the churchwhich didn't hold such authoritydeign to do so? The question answers itself.

These theological and practical problems pushed both Christian and secular thinkers to develop arguments for toleration and religious liberty, efforts that eventually found their fullest expression in the American experiment. Here, for the first time, religious liberty was to be guaranteed to citizens, and the state was to be clearly distinguished from churches. To date, it has been an extremely successful experiment. Nowhere in the world are people freer to practice their faith and nowhere in the developed world has the church flourished as it has in the United States. When we see our brothers and sisters severely persecuted in places like Sudan, China, or North Korea, or simply ignored in a deeply secularized Europe, we should be thankful.

Even this success, however, carries its own temptations and pitfalls. Over the past fifty years or so, the healthy distance between church and state has been reconceived as a high and nearly impregnable wall; many of our intellectual, cultural, and political elites have decided that politics at large, not just the state, must be independent of anything religious. Recall, if you will, the distaste of editorial pages around the country over then-candidates George W. Bush and Joseph Lieberman's public affirmations about how their respective religious beliefs mattered a great deal to their politics. Violations of "political secularism," some warn, threaten the very fabric of our civil order, pointing us toward the return of religious wars, inquisitions, and all manner of dark oppression.

Christians can't accept this radical separationismnot because combining these two spheres never results in such outcomes (sadly, it does), but because to do so denies our clear responsibilities as Christian citizens. Sixteenth-century Anabaptists, recoiling from the corruption and vice attendant to the close alignment of church and state, argued that since the state necessarily employed harsh means in the course of its God-given duties, Christians could not participate. Similarly, some white (and not a few black) churches, faced with the obvious evil of racial segregation, cited a similar kind of separationism in their refusal to engage for reform. But God's sovereignty rules over all of His creation and it is incongruous, to say the least, to suggest that there exists a realm of life whose proper functioning requires the violation of His moral law. At its most extreme, separationism tends to make the civic realm independent of God's rule, subject only to the prerogatives of power and interest. When Jesus distinguished between what we owe to God and Caesar, he did not mean to suggest that Caesar is not under God's judgment or is not meant to serve God's purposes. Moreover, since we as citizens in a democratic society claim responsibility for our government's character, any attempts to divide completely our faith and our civic life leaves us schizophrenic, confused, and ill-prepared to exercise our obligations, both civic and Christian.

We can recover a better Christian vision by returning to Scripture and understanding God's purposes for civic authority. Romans 13 shows us how He has established government precisely for the purpose of restraining evil and commending good. Government is not separate from God's providential care for us, but neither is it meant to save us, spiritually speaking. It is meant to provide justice, not salvation.

This means that when Christians think and act, they should not conflate the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God, but neither should they think that God has nothing to say to the former. Indeed, in thinking about what justice requires, Christians must think as Christians, rooted in Scripture and the "cloud of witnesses" that have come before us. Who can read Amos's proclamation of God's judgment and remain indifferent to the poor? Can we ignore the most vulnerable among usthe sick, the elderly, and the unbornwhen we read repeatedly in Scripture that God places importance on them? We serve a God who has not only revealed Himself through His Word and incarnation, but has also revealed man to man. We cannot know justice, and thus the ultimate purposes of government, apart from God's revelation. So to the degree we are interested as Christians to fulfill God's purposes, we should be eager to reflect on civic life as Christians and act accordingly.

Two cautions are in order, however. First, we must be careful to ensure that what we take to be the proper Christian understanding of a disputed issue really is the proper Christian understandingnot just our own interpretation covered over with a fig leaf of religious rhetoric. It is all too easy to allow self-interest or everyday "common sense" to triumph over a proper understanding of God's purposes. When thinking about the use of U.S. military force, our sole concern can't be just our own national interest, but must include how and whether such force will advance justice for us and for others (including, I might add, our earthly enemies). Christians who support, say, economic policies that will put a few more dollars in their pockets need to think more deeply about the nature and purpose of government. These often won't be easy issues to decide, and thoughtful believers will no doubt continue to disagree on them; but the point is that we need to interrogate carefully our own views in the light of God's purposes, not in the shadow of what's best for me and mine.

Second, we need to realize that when we engage as Christians, the world around us will judge our engagement as being reflective of Christ and the Gospel. Attempting to influence society can be a rough business, and the achievement of our objectives, however noble, often seems to require less than savory means. When we pursue public goals as Christians, we should recognize that we are inviting others to think that our conclusions and actions are a part of what it means to be a Christian. You probably know the old saying that you might be the only Bible that someone ever readswhat if they see only your public life? That's an awesome responsibility, and we can't evade it by complaining that we're unlikely to get a fair shake from the media or our opponents.

We live in times when rapid technological changes, threats of global terrorism, and cultural disintegration have made it difficult to act as a Christian. But our duty to think carefully and faithfully about the world we inhabit is not an obligation only for sunny days. While we must be careful not to meld the Cities of God and Man, we must also guard against driving them apart and imagining that God has no purpose for our common civic life. While these issues are complicated, when we seek the truth, God will illuminate which guiding principles and path He wants His children to follow.

B.T. McGraw