COMMENTARY: No matter who occupies the Oval Office, God’s on his throne

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(at)compuserve.com.) UNDATED _ Our national obsession with competitiveness manifests […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(at)compuserve.com.)

UNDATED _ Our national obsession with competitiveness manifests itself in many ways, from lambasting Little League referees to rigging bids for the higher cause of beating a business competitor.


Accordingly, when our side loses, the loss often takes on cosmic proportions, as we are currently seeing in post-election moping by some traditionalists who should know better.

Such despair not only betrays conservative ideals, but compromises the singular message of transcendent hope that traditionalists bring to public life. It is also painfully loud. In some corners the wailing is so loud one might think Beelzebub had won re-election.

While I have deep differences with this president, especially on what are dismissively called social issues, the fact is that Bill Clinton has followed a traditional path to power, one that pays homage to the centrist nature of American politics. Just as Republican candidates move from the right to the center after they are nominated, Democrats move from the left toward the middle ground. Those who characterize Bill Clinton’s policies as differing little from a moderate Republican’s are on-target.

What’s off-target is the worldview that justifies throwing a tantrum when the other side wins. It is an attitude clearly based on the belief that government stands at the center of life, so when the other side is on the throne all is lost. Besides being somewhat childish, it is at odds with the heart of our religious and political heritage. Traditionalists who allow themselves to be overcome by post-election gloom have in effect admitted disbelief in their own traditions.

Most of the people who founded this nation shared two characteristics: strong religious faith and a pronounced wariness of government, with faith meant to stand independent of state power and to temper it. This worldview was not only prevalent among the majority Christians; Deists such as Thomas Jefferson stated plainly in the Declaration of Independence that our rights did not come from the government, but from a divine Creator. Government, like fire, was recognized as a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Our founders were not fire worshipers, but builders of firewalls.

This is not to deny that some Americans have sought to make government the embodiment of transcendence.”The cause of America is the cause of Christ,”the Presbyterian minister Robert Smith proclaimed during the Revolutionary era. Not surprisingly, Jefferson’s victory over John Adams in the presidential race of 1800 unleashed waves of woe from some religious leaders.”Nothing short of fatal experience will open the Eyes of the deluded Multitudes,”opined one Presbyterian, no doubt in thunderous tones.

Similarly, early Christian patriots mistook Whig values for the Gospel itself.

This conflation of faith and power led New England pastor Samuel Sherwood to declare that”God Almighty, with all the powers of heaven, is on our side.”For those who missed the point, he warned that God’s wrath would be visited on all who did not make common cause with the”darlings of Providence”and”the Lord’s anointed”in the Revolutionary cause.


This sort of alliance may win a few battles but loses the larger war. How? Because it severely compromises religious witness, robbing it of its independence and reducing it to a mere matter of partisanship. With saints converted to ward bosses, the message of the ages takes on the nature of yet another plea from one more special interest group.

This is exactly what we don’t need today. We need instead to be reminded of the central tenet of our belief _ that God is on his throne and will stay there no matter who temporarily occupies the Oval Office.

It is true that traditionalists aren’t always welcome in the public sphere. A recent New Republic story suggests that what our nation needs is more atheism, when in truth religion has been pushed so far to the fringe of public life that it can only be observed through the Hubble Telescope. Our nation is not in trouble because of too much traditional morality, but because of our supersonic dash away from it.

We have, in fact, come to the point where traditionalists must soberly question whether our government has begun to cross the line into illegitimacy, whether in its support of that form of infanticide known as partial birth abortion or in the usurpation of the democratic process by the courts. In similar fashion, religious”outsiders”challenged temporal power to advance the transcendent truths at the heart of the anti-slavery and civil rights movements.

Speaking truth to power requires that those speaking the truth are independent from those holding the power. Having survived the manipulation of countless princes and a frontal assault by atheistic totalitarianism, our transcendent heritage will no doubt weather the results of the latest presidential election.

MJP END COLSON

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