My friend Todd Wiebe is a former evangelical pastor in the Vancouver area. He has a blog called Evangelically Departed, and I thought his latest post was worth reposting here:
“I have written before, in this newsletter, about the concept of taking stances and how stances are not to be confused with Christian spirituality. When religious faith becomes marked by taking stances on issues, faith itself becomes secondary. Within this frame, your faith becomes something that is manipulated by those who argue for the stances of a particular worldview or politics.
There is a curious, if troubling, example of this in the midst of this current wave of the COVID pandemic. Many health professionals have referred to this wave as the “pandemic of the unvaccinated”. While there are a small percentage of people who have been vaccinated who are becoming sick with COVID, well over 90% of those who are being infected and requiring medical care are people who have not been vaccinated.
I have seen enough reports on who is choosing to not get the vaccine to at least ask the question, “Are people taking stances on the vaccination due to credible scientific evidence or due to political worldview?” It would seem to me that there is a significant percentage of the population whose views on the vaccine are determined by their political affiliation. This way of thinking works like this:
you find out what the stance of your particular “tribe” is
you then look for evidence (hello, internet) to bolster that stance
you adopt the talking points of your particular tribe
We can see how this becomes a huge and costly problem in society. Many people have died because they have listened to political pundits who they trusted over health professionals. Recently an American talk radio host, Phil Valentine, (who mocked people who argued for mandated vaccinations) died from COVID. He was 61 years old.
It is sad that Valentine died, perhaps sadder still that many others died because they listened to him about vaccination and about a horse de-worming medication being an effective treatment of COVID (it is not).
When I consider that a significant number of those opposed to vaccinations in the United States and around the world are right-wing evangelical Christians, I see it as an outcome of a political and religious tribalism.
Karl Barth, before the decimations of the second world war, argued against nationalism, patriotism and political worldview being aligned in any way with Christian faith. Barth’s words:
“As a battle for power, all politics is … fundamentally dirty. Flamethrowers, mine detectors, gas masks, bombers and submarines are simply not the equipment of the kingdom of heaven.”
Barth said that political views and events can become deified. Your adherence to a conservative or liberal or libertarian worldview supplants the place of true faith. Your faith then becomes manipulated by the leaders and voices of that political worldview. We are seeing this all around in these COVID days, particularly in this wave that is being kept alive by those who remain unvaccinated.
We must not deify our political views.
Here in Canada we are in the midst of a federal election campaign. Mercifully, this campaign is 36 days long, not like the unending American election cycle. When I pastored an evangelical church, around election time I used to remind the congregation that I hoped our church was made up of people who voted Liberal and people who voted Conservative and people who voted NDP and people who voted Green. There were often reasons of Christian conviction to support each of these political parties. If a church became a political monolith this was likely not a sign of faith but, instead, a sign of political deification. If you think that those who hold political views opposed to yours are stupid, then your politics have likely become deified as well.
For Barth, there is no such thing as Christian patriotism. He said that there ought to be no religious justification and glorification of a political view. Barth stated that even church and mission and strong convictions, even morality and pacifism and social democracy do not represent the kingdom of God, but the kingdom of humanity.
If we deify even good and helpful political ideas, this will be detrimental to faith and to seeing one another with compassion.”