The Theocratic Party
Year Delivered or Published: None
Author: Jerry Rodgers
Author's Faith: Christianity
Date Submitted to Inspiration and Issues: December 6, 2006
Topic: Religion and Politics
Citation: Gospel of Matthew 6:9-10
The odds against a third party succeeding in American politics are pretty high. The odds against a theocratic third party succeeding in American politics are even higher, and after the recent election probably should be laid to rest at least for the immediate future. They are not impossible odds, however (Scripture tells us that “with God all things are possible," Matt. 19:26). And if we can believe very recent voices on the political left, we were in fact facing the imminent danger of just such a catastrophe. (Ref.: "American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion" by Kevin Phillips; "The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege" by Damon Linker; etc.)
We are indeed living in perilous times -- times that try men’s souls, as Thomas Paine described the revolutionary crisis of his time. Souls are being tried today as then before a Court higher than the Supreme Court sitting in Washington D.C. Perilous times are praying times. When his disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, the first thing he taught them to pray for was the coming of the kingdom of God “on Earth as it is in Heaven” (Matt. 6:9-10). He taught them, in other words, to pray for a theocracy. And not just any theocracy, but the theocracy of “our Father in Heaven,” the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Most if not all of us in America today regard religious wars as abhorrent. But the fact is that today we are engaged in a religious war -- a clash not only of civilizations, but of religions. It is a war being fought not only between men, but between gods. Men can defeat other men in battle, but only a god can defeat another god. The Muslim suicide bombers are fighting in the army of their god, Allah. The reason many of us are saying, “This war is unwinnable,” is because we don’t know how to fight a religious war -- a jihad. We understand fighting other men -- but fighting a god?! We just don’t understand how this is possible. We have never seen a god, and for many if not most Americans today, “seeing is believing.”
There was a time, not too long ago, when Americans understood that they needed God to fight their battles -- that He is not only a God of love, but a God of war, a God of judgment (Luke 18:1-8; Rev. 19:11-16; Battle Hymn of the Republic). The words of most if not all of our founding Fathers reveal this understanding. They may not all have been "fundamentalist" Christians but they understood, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, that “God rules in the affairs of men.” The greatest expression of this understanding from an American politician can be heard in Lincoln’s wartime speeches and writings, summed up most beautifully in his Second Inaugural address.
Lincoln was the most successful “third party” candidate in American history. He bet “against the odds” of American politics and won a spectacular victory, not only in politics and war, but most impressively in the unseen world of spiritual warfare and the kingdom of God. We need to recover Lincoln’s secret of spiritual warfare today. Lincoln was elected as a candidate of the Republican party, which then as now was not an avowed “theocratic” party. It was however, then as now, an avowedly Christian party. Lincoln avowed his fealty to biblical Christian morality, which mandated his unswerving opposition to the institution of human slavery. His presidency was the efficient cause of the abolition of slavery on American soil.
The length and ferocity of the American Civil War, and the mountains of casualties it exacted on both sides, can only be explained by the religious commitment of both -- ironically to the same God. Today we are engaged in another religious war. This one, however, is between the adherents of different gods -- on one side Allah, the unforgiving god of Muhammad and the suicide bomber, and on the other side a strange melange of gods and anti-gods, who can never seem to agree on who or what they are fighting, or even if they are fighting for anything worthwhile.
To succeed in a religious war -- a war between gods, or between men and God -- we need to assess the power of the forces we are fighting both for and against. In the long history of Islamic jihads, Allah has proved himself a power to be reckoned with. For long centuries, up to and including our own, he contested the power of the Christian God, as well as other gods, with significant victories. During recent centuries of Christian (and anti-Christian) dominance and rivalry, he fell on hard times; but he is once again making a serious challenge to the faith (and un-faith) of rival gods and men. It would be a serious mistake on our part to misjudge the power of this challenge.
Lincoln succeeded in his struggle against the God of human slavery by his reliance on the true God whose “truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32) Lincoln was not a theocrat politically, but he was a theocrat religiously. He believed with Benjamin Franklin that “God rules in the affairs of men.” We would do well to follow his example.
