In our increasingly politicized and polarized society, it’s become fashionable for Christians to prove to others that they are essentially good people by expressing political opinions that they believe are moderate and morally upright while dehumanizing “the other” side. This practice is otherwise known as virtue signaling and is especially common on social media, where many conservative and liberal Christians attempt to prove their worthiness at the expense of someone else’s dignity: “I’m not a socialist, but I could never vote for Trump,” or, “I’m not a racist, but I voted for Trump because he’s the lesser evil.”
We can see from this virtue signaling that people want to be seen as moderate and level-headed, finding the perfect balance between the views of the right and the left. Yet political moderation is an ideology in itself. Its entire legitimacy requires an “other” to define itself against –– those on the “extreme” left or the right. Ironically, even those on the extreme left or right oftentimes view themselves as moderate because they compare themselves to the extremists within their own tribe.
But even “moderates” tend to artificially create demarcations within the political or religious spectrum. As a result, people cannot fellowship with anyone on a different part of the political spectrum because friendship implies compromise, compromise implies moral deficiency, and moral deficiency implies illegitimacy.
But if political moderation is in itself antithetical to the gospel, how can Christians navigate politics in a Christ-centered way?
A Left/Right Problem
The tribalistic spirit of secular political ideologies is taking hold of an increasing population of Christians. This fundamentalism can apply to both the religious and the non-religious: whereas conservative fundamentalists might say, “I can’t be friends with you because you’re morally/theologically compromised,” liberal fundamentalists might say, “I can’t be friends with you because you’re not tolerant enough.”
That’s because tribalism inherently confuses what is moderate versus extreme. Adherents of a tribe’s ideology falsely believe they are moderates because they cast aside members who are too left or too right as extremists without regard to the broader context of their society. Hence, even if one’s tribal ideology is truly far-left or far-right, left-leaning and right-leaning detractors within the tribe will always give the impression that the most loyal adherents are the true moderates. In these tribes, anyone outside of the loyal bubble is labeled an extremist. In other words, the moderates in this group are self-isolating rather than bridging conflicts.
So what then is the solution? The surest way to break free from this illusion of moderation is to befriend “the other” across the full spectrum of society.
The Political Moderate As An Objective Impossibility
So if political tribalism is wreaking havoc on the church, then political moderation isn’t necessarily the solution. But let me be clear: certain theological convictions must maintain their ultimacy and never compromise to the ebb and flow of cultural trends. Still, there remain areas of theological disagreement that I believe can be parsed into two categories: incorrect doctrine and false doctrine, the former providing sufficient grounds for friendship and the latter necessitating separation. But insofar as political convictions don’t encroach upon the foundational truths of the gospel, areas of political disagreement are analogous to “incorrect doctrine” as opposed to “false doctrine.”
As Christians, this freedom to politically disagree not only allows us to pursue friendships with our political opponents but ultimately demands it. Unfortunately, this ethical requirement to humanize our political opponents is usually supplanted by a stronger desire to be right, resulting in a pursuit for political moderation at the cost of pursuing friendships across the entirety of the political spectrum.
But if we recognize that the idea of a political moderate is a moving target, always shifting left and right from generation to generation, then we can move past the moderate’s restrictive categorizations. We must remember that the moral vision of the political moderate is a sociopolitical impossibility strived for by the sanctimonious and the naive. Everyone wants to believe we’re moderates because that’s the only socially acceptable way to justify the moral superiority of our political convictions against those we disagree with.
In fact, the belief we’ve arrived in political moderation affirms the reality we were never there. Any self-identification as a moderate finds its ultimate reference in ourselves and in opposition against others. We must remember that if our political ideology perfectly aligns with the Bible, then we are more likely in danger of misinterpreting Scripture to fit our own lives rather than the other way around. Hence, the path to a Christian political theology requires us to traverse beyond that of political moderation and to follow another path, one that transcends time and space and one that centers our heart, mind, soul, and strength on Christ and the pursuit of the common good and to love “the other.”
Asian American Political Theology As A Starting Point
As Asian Americans, we find ourselves living in a perpetual balancing act. We’re a hyphenated people, always living in the tension between black and white, the old and the new, the east and the west, and the collective and the individual.
Perhaps recognizing the Asian American struggle is a helpful starting point for a Kingdom-minded political theology – the tension between a thesis and an antithesis, a Hegelian dialectic of sorts. As Herman Bavinck argues in Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, “While conservatism closes its eyes to changes in society, and radicalism fails to have a solid standpoint in the streams of events, a reformation that proceeds from a Christian principle combines both” (143).
Just as Jesus was too anti-revolutionary for the Zealots and too revolutionary for the Romans and the Pharisees, our political theology should be too conservative for liberals and too liberal for conservatives. This isn’t necessarily a hybrid or “purple” alternative but a third option, a transcendental alternative that doesn’t fit neatly into some ideological box. Just as Jesus told Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), our political theology should also seek to be other-worldly and not just a moderate version of either conservative or liberal political ideology. To put it another way, the more our politics lines up with the Bible, the more vigilant we should be against confirmation bias.
Will we always get it right? By no means. Yet, this is why we need one another from across the spectrum. Just as Protestantism’s den
ominationalism isn’t a weakness but a strength and a reflection of God’s unity in diversity and diversity in unity, a Kingdom-minded political theology helps us to critically appreciate other tribes in order to identify our blind spots and to reorient priorities for “the other.”
Kingdom-mindedness isn’t just a Christian trope to cop out of real, practical, and political solutions, but it’s also more than ideologically bound policies that justify the moral superiority of certain political parties. It’s not another “third” moderate alternative to policy-making. Rather, Kingdom-mindedness provides for us a gospel-shaped imperative to humanize the sociopolitical “other” and to let go of any pretense of moral superiority at the expense of demonizing others.
This approach ultimately places the emphasis on the humanity of our ideological opponents more so than any external demonstration of moral uprightness. Thus, any politicizing first takes into account the humanity of our political rivals, resulting in an open-mindedness to learn and appreciate any semblance of good that they might advocate. In short, this approach simply seeks to prioritize the fulfillment of the first and second greatest commandments (Matt 22:38-40) in our pursuit of the common good.