One of the things that fuels culture war is the notion of “Christian principles”. This might unsettled many of us. And I’m sympathetic. Many of us take the notion of Christian principles to be so central to our understanding of faith that we fail to imagine how they could ever mislead us.
It might sound trite, but there is a profound difference to the Christian between a principle and the person of Jesus. The theological projects of Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Ellul are all attempts to wrestle with this distinction.
Principles are dangerous in our hands because they can become barriers we errect against the living God. Maybe another way of putting it: Christian principles are theological ideology. Why rely on God when we have our principles?
Take this quote from theologian Karl Barth. We might bristle at his comparison. But Barth is no communist. What he’s highlighting for his audience at the time was how McCarthyism and the Red Scare in the West was just as destructive, just as blinding to Western sensibilities and Christian responsibility in particular.
“I regard anticommunism, as a matter of principle, an evil even greater than communism itself.”
Karl Barth, 1960
Maybe this becomes more instructive by swapping “anti-communist” with “anti-wokeness”. Raising the topic of racism today, speaking to how the construction of race impacts lived difference and disparity, will get shut down by cries of “woke!”.
The evangelical adoption of “anti-wokeness” is a great example of how supposed “Christian principles” are used to shut down valid theological ethical critique. Ideology promises us certainty. But in the hands of Christians, it crucifies our living Lord. We use principled stands to defend ourselves against the living God who confronts us with his command.
One other consequence of “Christian principles” as an idea is how we use them to define and defend tribes, to name friends and enemies. Here again, Barth is helpful:
This “absolute enemy” relationship…is a typical invention of (and a heritage from) our defunct dictators—and that only the “Hitler in us” can be an anticommunist on principle.
Karl Barth, 1960
I find Barth’s commentary here really helpful. Of course, Hitler analogies are as incidiary as proliferate in our moment. But if I know one thing about culture war: it encourages and ultimately manifests the Cold War commitment to mutually assured destruction.
In the Twitterverse, we’ve got people calling for church discipline on the vote. In our broader moment, we seem to be neatly sorted into perceiving the other by our own constructed knowledge of absolute good & evil. In my own research, this absolute notion of good & evil is one characteristic of conspiracy theories.
But in Christ, we surrender our sinful grasping for the knowledge of good & evil. This disrupts our culture war discourse, yes? Not only that, but in the positive we come to rehearse the victory he won in the wilderness.
When Jesus said “man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from God” he rejected Satan’s offer to define good & evil on his own terms, in a way that would have helped him—he was hungry after all.
In the end, I’m more suspect of my own use of “Christian principles” than ever before as I’m engaging with these theologies. And I find in them a helpful antidote to our culture war insanity. If you’d like to read more of Barth, you’ll find that article in the January 20, 1960 edition of The Christian Century.