James K. A. Smith’s March 23 article’s discussion of foundational matters regarding what “politics” is and how Christians might consider involvement in politics contains much wisdom, especially in Smith’s discussion of Augustine. In that we have significant agreement.

But I will admit to being concerned by Smith’s concluding paragraph’s declaration that his “political commitments” are “socialist,” a position he considers compatible with “political projects that are focused on the future in the mode of hope.” My goal here is not to dispute with Smith, who does not here define socialism or specifically explain what he considers its advantages, but rather to use his concluding assertions as a point of departure to discuss my own belief that Christian involvement in the larger polis is better done in the absence of far-reaching government rule and programs, socialist or otherwise.

In recent years, I have been increasingly struck by Paul’s urging “that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:1b-2). First, the call to pray for all people, including government leaders, is humbling. I am generally guilty of complaining about government officials more than I pray for them, yet such prayer is a kind of civic involvement to which Scripture calls all Christians.

Second, I believe Paul’s command implies that we ought to pray for government leaders to allow Christian practice and behavior to flourish without government interference. The record of statist governments’ treatment of Christian churches and Christian practice is generally one of gross interference, often because the proclamation and exercise of the full counsel of the word of God amounts to a definite threat to any government that explicitly or implicitly views the state itself as supreme. Moreover, any government system or edict that curtails the freedom of private property — a freedom that safeguards a church from government intrusion — or curtails the freedom of religion, speech, the press and assembly works against the Church and individual Christians’ being able to fully carry out the multifaceted mission of the Christian gospel.  

And the Bill of Rights notwithstanding, we may also recognize that even in the US, religious liberty is a fragile thing. Significantly, the First Amendment of the US Constitution specifies the “free exercise” of religion, not merely the freedom of worship within one’s church building or home. And in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson assured his correspondents that the “free exercise” clause “thus buil[ds] a wall of separation between Church & State.” This oft-mentioned “wall of separation” is primarily one that protects the church from the state’s machinations.

But free exercise of religion in the US is threatened, for example, by continued state lawsuits against the Little Sisters of the Poor for their refusal, in keeping with their conscientious adherence to Catholic teachings, to follow contraception mandates stipulated by the Affordable Care Act.  

Similarly, leading up to the 2024 presidential election, then-Vice President Kamala Harris clearly stated that, if elected president, she would oppose any religious exemptions to proposed federal laws mandating abortion access as a fundamental part of health care. In both these examples, far-reaching pieces of health care legislation catalyze such threats to the free exercise of religion. Significantly, socialist health care that provides taxpayer-funded abortion threatens the free exercise of religion even more broadly. 

Unsurprisingly, many Christians — including me in my younger days — have been and are attracted to socialism because, ideally, it seems to imitate the early Christian church’s practice of having “all things common” (Acts 4:32, KJV). But such common possessions within the early church were the result of voluntary giving by individual Christians themselves, not the product of a government mandate. And such voluntary giving allowed goods to be distributed according to the moral standards of the church as opposed to that of the state.  

It bears mentioning that Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), the great Reformed scholar and prime minister of the Netherlands, distrusted socialism and believed the Christian church was specially called to relieve the poor. He even argued in The Problem of Poverty (1891) that “state relief for the poor” was a “blot on” Christ’s “honor.” Along these lines, Kuyper taught the concept of “sphere sovereignty,” in which each sphere of life, such as the state, church, family, labor and education, is directly accountable to God and distinct from other spheres, none of which should wield inappropriate authority over the others. In keeping with this conceptual framework, Kuyper, wary of the corruption inherent in our fallen human natures, feared the expanding influence of the state and the ever-present threat of its idolatrous encroachment upon the church. 

For it is endemic within our fallen human natures to desire inappropriate power over our fellows, a condition that makes extensive checks and balances within and about any government system necessary for religious liberty. This truth was recognized by C. S. Lewis who, in asserting his preference for democracy over monarchy or statism, wrote in his essay “Equality,” “I am a Democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man.” Lewis adds, “Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows.”  

This need for checks and balances among fallen humans is also articulated in Federalist 51 by James Madison, who, arguing for the separation of powers, recognized that because of “human nature,” men are not “angels;” consequently, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” This understanding of fallen human nature runs counter to that of socialist thinkers such as Karl Marx, who argued that human nature was not inherently fallen but rather corrupted by social structures and capitalistic institutions. Thus, statist socialism puts undue faith in the supposedly curative socialist system even as its needs must repress or alter those institutions — including Christian churches — that would oppose or check that system.

In contrast to governments that would regulate Christian practice, good government, in keeping with the above passage in 1 Timothy, ideally should protect Christians (and all people) from violence and fraud. This is what Paul hopes for when he appeals to Caesar to avoid the unjust trial and attempts on his life that awaited him in Jerusalem (Acts 25).  

In keeping with my hopes for a flourishing church and a flourishing polis, my encouragement to Chimes readers is to pursue righteousness and justice, not by promoting sweeping government programs, but by investing in what Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk called “little platoons” — families, churches, community groups and the like.  

Calvin students should not underestimate the significance of virtuous commitments to churches, teams and campus organizations — and to the people in those groups. Ideally, these “little platoons” should provide encouragement and promote genuine Christian virtue, reach out to the lonely, and foster the kind of community that glorifies God and advances his kingdom as it saves lives, changes lives and changes the world — something like the Acts 4 church that we rightly long for.  

Such little platoons are not dependent on government, but they can provide a check against governments that would overstep boundaries.  And our participation in government should promote policies that allow such little platoons to flourish without inappropriate interference.

And when malicious interference comes in the form of unjust laws or edicts, we may recall Martin Luther King’s defense of civil disobedience in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail:” quoting Augustine’s On the Free Choice of the Will, King affirmed, “an unjust law is no law at all.” As King points out, civil disobedience was practiced by Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the face of Nebuchadnezzar’s idolatrous edict (Daniel 3) as well as early Christians who insisted that they “must obey God rather than man” (Acts 5:29).  

Of course, throughout much of the world and human history, malicious interference — by governments and by bad actors whom governments have not restrained — has been and remains sadly normative. Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary professor of global Christianity and mission Todd D. Johnson asserts that there have been more than 70 million Christian martyrs in the past 2000 years, with more than half of them being killed in the twentieth century, largely at the hands of tyrannical governments. Roughly two million more have been killed in our present century.

Paul reminds us that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). So let us walk alongside the persecuted even as we pray and work against persecution. And let us remember that those “beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God” will be made judges in God’s kingdom (Revelation 20:4). Moreover, the “good and faithful servant” in Jesus’ parable of the ten minas is given “authority over ten cities” (Luke 19:17). We may rightly say that faithful Christian civic engagement, properly understood, will beget glorious civil engagement in the new heavens and new earth.