The Grandmaster Strategy

How to Think About Christian Political Engagement

I once heard a politician, I won’t say who, describe their political tactic thusly: “It’s like chess. Sometimes you make sacrifices to stay in the long game. Other times, you see weak spots, then you go on the offense.”

This sort of thing makes me think Christian should play more chess. Here’s why: we evangelicals tend to have an “all or nothing” approach to political engagement. Either politics will save us, or politics will do nothing for us. 

I’m thinking right now of one of my seminary professors who had a brief stint in politics. He shared his frustration with the evangelical crowd. He’d campaigned for years to ban partial-birth abortions, then successfully created a bipartisan bill that limited abortions to within three months of conception. The bill seemed promising, until it reached the evangelical crowd. 

“They hated it,” he said. “They said I was compromising for the liberals. If it didn’t ban abortion entirely, they wanted nothing to do with it. When politicians saw the evangelical reaction, they dropped the bill like a hot piece of rubber. Which meant, rather than saving babies who were born after three months, we went back to no restrictions on abortion at all.” 

This, I think, is an important illustration of the way evangelicals tend to think about politics. If the bill can’t fix all our problems - if it can’t save us - we want nothing to do with it. And so we evangelicals tend to flip and flop about the role of politics in our country. We look to politicians who can “christen” the country we live in. And when we can’t find them, we disengage. And back and forth it goes. 

But what my professor was sharing was important. As a politician, he knew the system well enough to know only a limited amount of good can be accomplished through politics, but that doesn’t neglect the fact that politics can accomplish some good. In other words, no, politics can’t save us. But they can help us. 

He thought, in other words, like a chess master: “Where are the strategic places to take ground? And where are the places I need to cede ground for the sake of the long game?” 

Where the analogy fails, of course, is that there is no “checkmate” for Christians and politics. Thinking there is some kind of political checkmate for Christianity, in fact, is part of what makes us political idealists in the first place. My point is that Christians need to treat political engagement with the kind of back-and-forthness of a grandmaster: sometimes there is progress, sometimes regress for the long game. So, if chess were an infinite game, there might be infinite moves like this.

But why should we treat politics this way? Because of the way Jesus treats politics.

In this post, I want to take a little time to argue for how we should look at politics with three big statements that I think can help guide our political thought. 

1. Jesus didn’t destroy the political systems around him. 

Jesus, I his earthly ministry, is surrounded by Israel nationalists, Peter “the zealot” being one of them. The zealots fully expected Messiah to take the crown from Caesar, and so they often resorted to violence, insurrection and murder to overthrow the secular political system surrounding them. 

Jesus famously repudiates this view in his conversation with Pontius Pilate: “Jesus said, 'My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my servants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But, as it is, my kingdom is not from here'” (John 18:36). 

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has noted that most of us take a wrong interpretive turn here, assuming Jesus is saying “My kingdom has nothing to do with this world.” But when Jesus says his kingdom is not ‘of’ this world, the clarifying sentence in verse 36 clarifies his meaning: ‘My kingdom is not from here.’ 

In other words, “My kingdom is here. But it’s not made of the same stuff as yours. Otherwise I’d be using swords and political tactics to overthrow yours.” 

Now, you might be tempted - as I am - to read this and think, “Aw, Jesus, you’re so swell. Your kingdom is no nice and friendly, unlike Caesar’s.” But that would be missing the rhetorical thrust of Jesus’ argument, here. Because here, essentially, is what he’s saying: “Your political system is child’s play. It’s crude. My kingdom is vastly more important than this governmental system you’ve set up.” 

In other words, Jesus is not going to use destroy the political system around him because that would be giving it far too much credit. More on that in a minute. 

2. Jesus didn’t replace the political systems around him. 

Jesus also, famously, refuses the Roman crown (John 6:15). So Jesus refuses to destroy the Roman Political system. But he also refuses to use it to establish his kingdom. Why? I’m not sure we’ve given enough thought to this question. It’s not as though Jesus is intimidated by the Roman crown. I can see the temptation to read it that way, “Whoah, no thank you. Heavy is the head that wears the crown” and all that. But presumably, Jesus would have been a perfect, just Roman emperor. And a man who knows he’s about to wear the crown of crucifixion could hardly be intimidated by the crown of glory. 

No. Jesus does not refuse the Roman Empire’s crown because it’s too small. He refuses it because to take that crown would be essentially to agree with the Roman Empire’s claims. It would be to say, “Yes, you are the most important authority in the world. So I want to be at the top of your system, O Rome.” And so Jesus refuses the Roman Empire’s crown not because it’s too “big”. The Roman crown is too small. In refusing the Roman Empire’s crown, he’s also repudiating its claims to be the ultimate authority. Jesus will not establish his kingdom within the Roman political system, because the Roman political system does not have the right to claim worldwide dominion. 

Only Christ’s kingdom can make that claim. 

3. What Jesus did was relativize the political systems around him. 

Oliver O’Donavan has brilliantly argued for this in his “Desire of the Nations”. He points, in one instance, to the way Peter conceives of Roman political authority after the reign of Christ: “Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.” (1 Peter 2:17) O’Donavan notes the beautiful balance in this verse: “The ‘respect’ paid to the emperor (as it is paid to ‘everyone’!) stands in sharp contrast to the ‘fear’ that is paid to God and the ‘love’ that is paid to the brotherhood.” (Desire of the Nations, pg. 149). 

In other words, “Jesus hasn’t destroyed the political system. It still deserves to be honored for what it is.” But on the other hand, Peter doesn’t say “fear the king.” He says: “Fear God. Love the brotherhood.” 

This framework, I think, helps us understand the entire narrative of the book of Acts. Luke, in these pages, is trying to show this delicate balance: Christ’s kingdom has been established. But he has not infused himself into the Roman political order, nor has he called us to destroy it. Rather, Christ’s kingdom relativizes our political kingdoms. Cambridge NT scholar Kavin Rowe argues rigorously (and I think successfully) that the entire Acts narrative is meant to show us that Christ subverts the present kingdoms of the world without entirely repudiating them (as such). He points out how often the apostles show “respect” to the rulers (they disavow zealotry), but are always confronting kings and authorities with the message of Christ as King, to the point it feels like a palpable threat to the powers that be: “These men are turning the world upside down!” (Acts 17:6). Both of these tensions are carried through the whole narrative.

We can think also of John’s imagery in the Book of Revelation, where the Roman government is presented as a great, consuming dragon or a insatiable temptress. What he’s claiming is this: political systems will always try to overreach their proper claims. They will call us to nurse at their breasts, and protect us with their fire, and call them both mother and father. But Christ is reigning over them all. 

How can we understand this? 

It’s a bit of a silly metaphor, but there is a scene in “Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince” (which I just finished with my kids this summer) when Harry and Dumbledore walk into a house and see everything wrecked and out of place, with blood smeared on the walls. Dust, death and decay - the forces of dark magic - have taken ownership of this home. Or so it seems. But Dumbledore casts a spell, and things begin to magically rearrange themselves, revealing surprises in every corner: the lamp is “unbroken”. The shards of glass impeding their steps snap together and become picture frames once again. The couch isn’t a couch at all, but reveals itself as an anxious man who’s transfigured himself to hide from his enemies. 

This, in a sense, is what Jesus’ kingship has accomplished: he doesn’t destroy the systems of this world. But he doesn’t cast them aside and begin a whole new house project. Rather Jesus rearranges them, placing them back in their proper order, with Himself as their rightful ruler.