The second stage of active citizenship is organizing. Just as we pray for the well being of society, so also we work for it. This is a more important step than one might think because Christians too often simply assume that the visible, institutional church is the organization through which they relate to the broader society or through which they ought achieve certain social or political goals. That assumption is mistaken. Jesus Christ, the Lord of the church, did not establish his church as a vehicle for social action.

This claim might surprise many but it is true. First the negative evidence. There is simply no evidence in the New Testament that Christ and his apostles thought of the visible church as a political organization or that the church was given a political mandate. The absence of any such evidence should mean a great deal to those of us who make a Reformed confession since we understand that the church is governed by the Word of God and not by human opinion. When someone says, “I think the church should do x” a Reformed Christian responds by asking, “Where does the Word of God teach or command that either explicitly or by good and necessary consequence”? The honest answer to that question is nowhere.

This is not a radical Anabaptist position. It was the position of the Westminster Assembly. In Confession 31.4 they confessed,

Synods and councils are to handle, or conclude nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or, by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.

This view came to be known as the spirituality of the church.

The Assembly, like Calvin before them, recognized the movement of redemptive history and the unique mission of the visible church in the world. Blessedly, we no longer live under the types and shadows, under which, particularly beginning with Moses and continuing through the Kings, until the exile, God had a national people and a state-church, which was commissioned to execute a holy war against the surrounding nations and to occupy geographic territory.

Those administrations of the kingdom and the covenant were intentionally temporary and intentionally illustrative of heavenly and future realities, which we have in Christ, in the New Covenant (1 Pet 1:10–12) and which we will realize in the New Heavens and the New Earth. We Christians have no holy land except heaven. God’s Word says, “our citizenship (πολίτευμα) is in heaven” (Phil 3:20).¹ Hebrews reminds us that Abraham was looking for the city that has foundations, whose maker and builder is God” (Heb 11:10). Mind you, Hebrews presents him as a Christian, and the pattern for New Covenant believers. He and the other believers mentioned in Hebrews 11 were “seeking a homeland” but not a piece of real estate. Had they been thinking of Canaan, they could have returned but they did not (Heb 11:14–15).

Now, in the New Covenant, every Christian has a dual citizenship in what Calvin called a “twofold government” (duplex regimen).². One aspect of this twofold kingdom is “spiritual.” The second is “political” and “temporal.”³ The visible church is the organizational or institutional representation of the spiritual sphere of the kingdom. Calvin also distinguished between the “earthly things” (rerum terrenarum) and heavenly things (Res coelestes).⁴ The earthly things pertain to secular government, “household management, all mechanical skills, and the liberal arts.”⁵ Secular life is, Calvin argued, determined from nature. The church, however, is neither secular nor natural. It is a supernatural institution with supernatural ends. The preaching of the holy gospel (Rom 10:14–21), the administration of the holy sacraments (Matt 16:18–20), and the use of church discipline (Matt 18:15–20), is a supernatural ministry. Paving roads and public safety, as important as they be, are not supernatural.

All this means to address secular political and cultural issues, Christians must organize. In some cases this means forming cultural and political organizations or joining existing organizations. Some of those may be explicitly religious in orientation and others may be secular. Christians share concerns in common with non-Christians, even if we interpret the significance of the world differently from them, we can cooperate with them toward temporal questions.

Why organize? The individual is a powerful force in America. Think of all the amazing business successes that have been created by individual visionaries and leaders but even those leaders must convince others of the value of their goals. By their nature, cultural and political endeavors are group activities. Votes matter. When one person appears before a school board that is a minor thing. When 100 people appear before the city council to say the same thing, that is a major thing.

There are a variety of organizations which Christians might join. In America, political parties are the way citizens cooperate to achieve political ends. This means learning how political parties work, how they are organized, what their principles and goals are, and how they get elected. E.g., Within parties there are elected positions and central committees, which guide the party. There are local elections (e.g., school board, county board, or city council), state elections (e.g., state legislature), and federal. Typically, a political career begins at the local level and proceeds from there.

Politics is a hard business. It involves persuading others to see things your way, listening to others, compromise, and patience. The American political process is adversarial, i.e., a system in which parties and candidates compete for votes from the public and other legislators. That means that the process is intentionally slow. It means that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and you hope that, over the course of time, that your principles, the better principles are adopted more often than they are rejected. Politics takes time and it requires the ability to talk to other people and even to persuade them to support a campaign financially. In our system, depending on the office, it can a take good bit of money to get a candidate elected.

There are other, non-political ways to organize and campaign. E.g., there are several organizations working to extend protection to unborn children. There are organizations campaigning to recover the distinction between the two sexes and to protect women’s sports from biologically male competitors. The number, breadth, and diversity of social organizations is truly remarkable. Perhaps there is a need for a new organization but perhaps there is already an organization that shares your goals.

What goals should you have for public, cultural, or political life? Here the distinction between natural and supernatural is essential. The work in this sphere is temporal or natural and even secular (i.e., pertaining to this world). The goals should be appropriate to that sphere. The goal of social, cultural, or political organization is not to advance the kingdom of God but to improve the kingdom of man, to use Augustine’s language. Of course, in every thing a Christian does, the goal is to glorify God and love one’s neighbor. The guide is the natural (moral) law of God and especially the second table of the moral law.

Virtually every goal of every virtuous social organization relates to honoring authorities, preventing murder (or addressing its consequences), preserving the family, addressing theft (of whatever sort), or recovering and telling the truth. I do not know whether such an organization exists but an organization devoted to raising awareness of the sin of covetousness and the evils it brings would be valuable. There are whole social and political movements in the modern period whose whole motive and message is nothing but envy and resentment. “They have too much money and you should elect me to take it from them and give it to you.” An organization devoted to recovering the eighth commandment for civil life could also do much good. Those organizations opposing human trafficking (e.g., The Tim Tebow Foundation) are good examples of applying the sixth commandment to public life. It will likely take 50 years to recover natural, creational marriage and to overturn Obergefell. Christians would do well to start now if no has started such an advocacy group yet.

The fourth commandment is technically part of the first table of the law (Heidelberg Catechism 93), i.e., that part of the law that speaks to our duties to God but it would do a real social good to teach American Christians and others about the value of the Christian Sabbath in specific and of a rest day in general. There is a strong case from nature for a rest day and abandoning the 24/7, 365 lifestyle.

There are other social goods and goals for which Christians might campaign. The list seems endless. The good news for Christians is that our God is infinite. He is also merciful and mercy is a particularly important virtue in civil life. By his mercy, God does not bring upon us all the consequences of sin. By his mercy he restrains sin and evil so that things are not as they might be. In that sphere we are praying and working to see God’s mercy manifested in the temporal world. Under this heading Reformed theologians going back to William Perkins have spoken of God’s “common grace,” God’s general favor to all humans. The idea itself is present in Calvin’s work and has been widely taught by orthodox Christian writers.

Next time: persuasion.

Notes

1. All translations are the author’s unless otherwise indicated.
2. John Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis, vol. 2 (Berolini: Gustavum Eichler, 1834), 3.19.15; 4.20.1.
3. Calvin, Institutes 3.19.15.
4. Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.13.
5. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 2.2.13.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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