Jeremiah Again?

In their appeals to the 8th century prophets Christian activists become complicit our national delusion.

Ever since I was a youth, social activist Christians have made the 8th century prophets their go-to option when it comes to condemning American injustice, or indeed any injustice. But I wonder if this perpetuates an American Christian self-image that can itself become a source of injustice.

Let’s consider the context of the 8th century. Back then Israel was a nation formed by a covenant between the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and God at Sinai. As a nation it was struggling to understand why its God, about whom it made exorbitant claims of universality, was allowing it to pass through a series of internal divisions and external assaults on its integrity and freedom.

The answer of the 8th century prophets was, in essence, that it had failed to keep its side of the covenant with God. It had failed the essential demand of God to do justice and maintain righteousness.

At first glance this seems directly relevant to our own national situation when we fail to do justice and maintain righteousness. But there is a the problem. Our nation, the United States, has no covenant with God. It wasn’t formed on the promise that God would be faithful if the people would be righteous.

The basis of the United States is an agreement between humans to form a political unity on the basis of shared goals, shared laws, and shared methods of political organization. And all of those goals, laws, and political methods were made by humans for humans. God wasn't invited to the Continental Congress as even a delegate, much less an organizer. While some of the humans engaged in those negotiations no doubt fervently hoped for God’s favor, they did not, in their final document (our constitution) invoke God’s will.

There was a reason for this. They had come from the experience in which evoking God‘s will and God‘s justice had been almost uniformly a source of oppression and injustice. It had been a manipulative power-play designed to either maintain the status quo or justify bloody insurrections. The founding fathers had seen hundreds of years of warfare in Europe and England. All of it justified by appeals to God and God‘s righteousness.

If they had looked ahead to the future they could have seen an American Civil War equally justified, on both sides, by appeals to God‘s righteousness. Perhaps they could even see a self-satisfied United Methodist Church placing the Battle Hymn of the Republic in it’s hymnal so that it could gloat of victory and slaughter in Christ’s name.

It is the kind of thing that represents a combination of nationalism and self righteousness that Jeremiah would probably abhore but which flows naturally from an anachronistic reading of the 8th century prophets as watchmen for national justice and righteousness.

Facing the truth that prophetic calls for justice and righteousness in God’s name can easily, and indeed almost certainly lead to violence Christians face a quandary. Where do we place God’s call for righteousness in our national political life? Given the acute danger of a government that justifies its actions by appeal to the Almighty how do we put the call of the Almighty on the political agenda?
First that we recognize that the national prophets of our own day are not preachers thundering in public with quotes from Jeremiah and Micah. They are citizens voting their conscience in the voting booth, which should be their pray closet and the place of their most meaningful contribution to God’s reign.

Second we recognize that we Christians should read the prophets, like the entirety of scripture, to inform and deepen our understanding of God’s will in the company of our fellow Christians. Not as a polemical tool against our political enemies. In the setting of the Christian congregation they can and do bend us toward justice and righteousness which we then realize in our public actions. It is in the setting of the church that they have real meaning and positive impact.

Outside the community of faith scripture, with its remnant sense of authorizing moral action, scripture is inherently dangerous. Set loose from the church guided by God’s spirit the prophetic words will inevitably be manipulated to justify any political cause, just or unjust, that appropriates them to its purposes. They become a form of magic incantation; powerful and subject to abuse because it is incomprehensible. They not only accomplish nothing, they may well do positive harm.

We need for the eighth century prophets to rest in peace. Or our Jesus will always come not with peace but a sword.