We don’t live in a monastery

In a question and answer with college students in 1949, Carl F. H. Henry, the theologian, lecturer, and founding editor of Christianity Today, was asked, “I don’t think the Christian ought to have anything at all to do with politics, do you?” To which Henry quipped, “Why not found a monastery? I know a chap who wants to sell some real estate out near the desert.”

Henry’s point, delivered in the shadow of World War II, is that a faithful Christian in the world cannot escape politics. He would emphasize this message in books, lectures, and on the pages of Christianity Today for the next half century. His bestselling manifesto, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, was published two years earlier. He feared that fundamentalists, who had rightly rejected the liberal social gospel that split the mainline Protestant denominations, were in danger of overcorrecting by refusing to apply the truth of Scripture to pressing cultural issues. He is rightly credited with being one of the central founders of evangelicalism.

Henry’s thesis was that the gospel of the kingdom demands that we both proclaim the good news of the gospel message and that we embody the kingdom by speaking to and helping solve the world’s great social ills. This demanded cultural engagement at all levels, including the political process:

The times cry out for spiritual renewal alive to the high claims of divine truth and universal morality, for ethical dedication to neighborly good will, to human rights, and duties under God. ... The illusion that all the world’s problems can be solved merely by political change is disastrous. But to neglect political imperatives can likewise be naturally devastating.

Henry urged pastors not to be silent but to address cultural issues, but to do it with Scriptural clarity. “The clergy,” he argued, “are ordained to preach the Word of God and should ‘stick to their last,’ that of clarifying the truth of revelation, including the Judeo-Christian principles of personal and social ethics, and of exhorting church members to exemplify and apply those principles as conscientiously and consistently as possible in public affairs.” Yet Henry also repeatedly cautioned that pastors should be very careful about getting too deep into the weeds on specific legislative proposals or political endorsements.

Henry, whose son Paul was a Republican congressman for many years, was not allergic to Christians practicing politics and urged believers both to oppose unrighteous ideologies and to promote righteous ideas.

Today, pastors operate in a world far different than the one Henry addressed in 1949, but the calling to speak truth to a world in crisis has not changed. Unlike the common media narrative, the average evangelical church resists the pull of partisanship on Sundays.

What should church members expect from their pastor when it comes to politics? Pastors should not hesitate to apply the Word of God to issues of grave moral concern. They should do this with courage and conviction. We should not be silent where Scripture is not silent, and we should urge the people of God to steward their citizenship in a distinct way that honors the Lord.

Yet church members should not expect on Sunday what they get throughout the rest of the week on their social media feeds, in their podcasts, and on cable news. Pastors are not pundits. They have a mandate to “feed the flock of God” (1 Peter 5:2-4) and to do it “in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2). It is the word of God alone that is “living and active” in the hearts of men and women (Hebrews 4:12).

In any age, Christianity has something to offer the world—both a message of salvation by faith in the risen Christ, and a worldview superior to the ideologies and narratives that capture the hearts of men.