“My Kingdom is Not of This World”

I mean, I get it. I do. There is certainly a case to be made that being Christian and conservative are not synonymous. Indeed, in this hour, there is a strong case to be made that they are opposites. But I deeply resist the idea that the purpose of Christianity is to provide a justification for being Progressive–and for the same reason I oppose it as the justification for being Conservative. Jesus does not serve political ends at all. All human ideologies are merely heresies carved out of a gospel that is larger than both. Making Jesus the servant of Progressivism is just as deadly as making him the servant of conservatism or nationalism. He is Lord, not a political mascot.

About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything — even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that ‘only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilizations’. You see the little rift? ‘Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.’ That’s the game. – Uncle Screwtape

I hold, in the present hour, many ideas that ideological heretics both conservative and progressive label “progressive”. I also hold some ideas that both forms of heresy label “conservative”. But that is a mere accident of culture and history in early third millennial America. What I really hold, to the best of my ability, are the teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in other ages and times I would be given other labels having nothing to do with our current ridiculous red/blue politics. Jesus is Lord, whatever the political climate of a culture with the memory and visual horizons of a fruit fly may think.