After he was released from prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up, Charles Colson became one of the leading evangelical thinkers in America. Colson calls the Church to engage with the culture, bringing the truths of God’s Word into the public arena. In this excerpt from his book How Now Shall We Live?, Colson encourages Christian leaders never to lower their prophetic voices. After all, when the Church holds out the words of the Bible, she does not speak for one mere sector of the electorate; ultimately, she speaks for God.

[T]he church must act as the conscience of society, as a restraint against the misuse of governing authority. Corporately, the church must zealously guard its independence, keep its prophetic voice sharp, and resist the allure of worldly power. It should hold government morally accountable to live up to its delegated authority from God . . .

In addressing the state, we must not do so on the basis of power, as special interests do, but on the basis of principle. This is a crucial distinction, yet it is one that secular politicians and journalists frequently miss. For example, in early 1998 James Dobson of Focus on the Family met with Republican congressional leaders in Washington to confront them for failing to promote the social issues they had promised to support. For Dobson, this was a matter of principle—and a valid one. Yet journalists interpreted Dobson’s action as a power play, warning in apocalyptic tones that religious conservatives were “marching on Washington” and demanding their due. Newspaper articles described Christians as a powerful voting bloc that had delivered 45 percent of the vote in the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress and warned that they were now demanding “their place at the table.” Christians were depicted in the same terms as those applied to a labor union or any other special-interest group.

Of course, we do have a right to a place at the table, just as any other citizens do. And yes, we do have political clout, but only because millions of Americans share our moral concerns. Yet these facts are not the basis of our political stance. We contend for certain truths in the political arena because they are crucial to liberty and public justice—and we would do so whether we had 45 percent of the vote or 5 percent.

So our message is not, We put you in office, now pay up. Rather, we are saying, This should be done because it is right, because it is a principle that undergirds any well-ordered civil society, and because it is a proper duty of the state as ordained by God.1

Footnotes:
1
Charles Colson, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1999), 417-418.

article adapted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located in Perryville, MD, one and a half miles east of Rt. 222.