The City of God and the City of Man, Augustine advises, are destined to live side-by-side, their citizens intermingled until Christ comes again. The Church, existing as a holy city in the midst of a world of unbelievers, directs its citizens to the ultimate human peace that comes with complete unity in Christ, possessed now by faith. Such complete fulfillment cannot be attained by those outside of her gates.
That earthly city, however, also aims at a kind of peace “which is not to be lightly esteemed…for as long as the two cities are commingled, we also enjoy the peace of Babylon.” This temporal peace aims at the management of human affairs—the things “we can enjoy in this life from health and safety and human fellowship.”
James Rogers has written a wonderful and much-needed critique of the National Conservative Statement of Principles from an “ecclesiocentric” perspective. His essay should prompt critical reconsideration of how we think of and value the two cities and their governance.
National Conservatism
The social and political institutions of this world, Rogers argues, are highly imperfect pictures of the perfect community found only in the Church. Our existence as social beings, therefore, is not fulfilled in earthly politics but in a higher form of political community.
If we find ourselves rather restless and aimless in this age of individualism, then, it is not a robust rejuvenation of national identity that we need—but a renewed sense that we belong to a greater city, where our fellow citizens are also our brothers and sisters. And that city, though unfinished, exists here and now! We ought to do a much better job of living in the reality that the Church is our family, our city, and our nation, not as just another “voluntary association” that exists within the overarching civil polity.
I think Rogers is entirely correct to observe that the National Conservative Statement, and the movement more generally, inclines toward an improper treatment of the Church as one important part of a national identity and a useful tool for encouraging people to be law-abiding, rather than as an independent source of authority, community, and peace rooted in a Gospel that cannot be captured by any political program.
In his defense of national conservatism, Bradford Littlejohn makes the reasonable observation that the Statement of Principles is a partisan document seeking a political coalition, not a statement of faith. As such, it is a compromise between people of different faiths, and ought not to be blamed for failing to capture the fullness of the Christian message.
But I think, to a certain extent, that’s precisely the point. Christianity as an earthly political label is, like every other political identifier, a compromise—a religion made palatable to the people being asked to subscribe to it. Its edges must be ground down so as not to offend potential allies. It must speak to the earthly needs of the civil order, and prudentially adjust to changing circumstances. It is a synthesis designed to unify citizens, appeal to voting blocs, or solidify political loyalties. The more the label “Christianity” is slapped onto such movements, the more it becomes earthly ideology competing for influence among others to promote this or that earthly program. Is this not what American civil religion has often been? At best, a bland and inoffensive invocation of a Deity expected to bless whatever those in power happen to be doing at the moment, and at worst, an affirming faith in America as a chosen people, God’s unique agent in the world.
Perhaps the National Conservative could argue that today’s Christian citizen, who always uses great care and discretion when engaging in politics, will have such a firm grasp on the distinction between earthly and spiritual goods, that he can pour his efforts into a partisan war to re-Christianize America, without ever immanentizing the eschaton or mixing up his earthly and heavenly citizenship. The idea of a Christian nation, Littlejohn says, actually “makes possible a limited state” so that we can “work vigorously for political reform without vesting all our hopes in it.”
I am skeptical. First, I have not heard many National Conservatives defend political religion because it limits the state. On the contrary, I quite often hear them say that postliberal politics means getting comfortable using state power to reward friends and punish enemies, or that the state must be empowered to guide man to his highest end. In his own speech at the National Conservatism Conference, Littlejohn certainly doesn’t emphasize a “limited state,” arguing that the “civil magistrate” has essentially an open-ended authorization to “use the full power of [his] office” to promote his enlightened understanding of human flourishing—including “spiritual goods.”
But aside from that, do the present conditions of contemporary American political and religious life suggest that a sophisticated understanding of this relationship between American politics and Christianity is likely to prevail when the language and symbolism of the latter are used for the former? We live in an age of mass democracy, in which heightening the stakes, inflaming the passions, abolishing nuance, reinforcing loyalty, and demeaning enemies are the keys to successful mobilization. American churches, meanwhile, are hardly doing a good job keeping the eyes of the faithful on their higher citizenship. A recent survey suggests that self-identified “evangelicals” have been wonderfully catechized on hot-button partisan issues, but are less certain about things like whether Jesus is the son of God, or whether all men are born sinful.
Are these the conditions in which we should expect careful discernment? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Mt. 6:21).
The Telos of the City?
When it comes to exactly what ecclesiocentrism means for civil, “secular” politics, I agree with Ben Peterson that Rogers’s approach needs more fleshing out, especially by clarifying what it means to say that the Church is the telos of the earthly city. One can read Rogers as putting the earthly city or nation in its place, recognizing that the claims it makes for itself (claims the National Conservatives seek to amplify and revivify) are promises it cannot keep. By reminding us that our “thick” community, our “body politic,” is found in the Church, one’s expectations for civil authority ought to be diminished.
The telos language, however, introduces some uncertainty and perhaps gestures toward a different reading (for instance, in his seeing the Church as “the referent for understanding polis and ethnos in this age” and in his discussion of potential implications for an “ecclesiocentric state”).
My concerns are precisely the opposite of those voiced by D.C. Schindler in his reply, for I wonder if Rogers’s presentation might be taken to suggest too great of a similitude between the tasks and aims of the Church and the earthly city; that their rulers ought to be aiming at a Church-like unity and purpose; that they might be expected gradually to conform to the model of the Church, or become its agents, thereby finding their perfection. Much depends on how broadly one reads Rogers’s mutatis mutandis qualification, and the specific characteristics dependent on the “now/not yet” character of the Church.
Both the Church and the earthly polis are communities, one a true unified body (if not yet fully), the other a metaphorical one; both are ordinances of God; the governance of both is concerned with maintaining a certain kind of peace and concord among the members. But the earthly city’s horizons are radically limited, since the Church’s pure unity, its unique civil community, is made possible only through “transfiguration in Christ,” as Rogers points out, an act of grace toward those in the Church alone. Accordingly, the two cities aim at fundamentally different kinds of peace, and their governance must accordingly be entirely different.
The human city, as a government “administered by men over men,” to use James Madison’s terms, works not to purify its citizens or lead them to a final perfection, but to mitigate the effects of sin, so that we might travel through our fallen world as tranquilly as is possible (1 Timothy 2:2; Romans 12:18). It must, therefore, (at its best) operate on the basis of law—the “moral code” that Rogers rightly identifies as insufficient to any understanding of Christianity—and accommodate itself to the fallen condition of men. Even a perfectly constructed polity, with laws and customs firmly grounded on the natural law is not distinctively Christian and does not advance man toward his highest end, which can come only with the Church’s forgiveness of sins and the reunion of man with God. The governance of the civil state is therefore not in the hands of Christians alone, and the Church is to hold itself to much higher standard than the rest of the world (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Corinthians 5:12-13). Only one of these cities can be tasked with unifying and directing men toward their highest good.
Rogers’s mutatis mutandis qualification, therefore, turns out to be so consequential as to raise doubt about how much the Church can teach us about the polis in the world.
Any attempt to overcome this tension by “ecclesiasticizing” or “Christianizing” the world, as Lutheran theologian Hermann Sasse warned, winds up “secularizing” the Church instead, because it overlooks the massive gulf that separates a society of sinners governed by law, and one of saints governed by grace. It displays an implicit “faith in man” that focuses the Church’s attention on a world that is passing away rather than the city that will endure (1 John 2:17). The state, in turn, abjures civil peace and order in favor of a crusade for earthly salvation.
I do not doubt part of Schindler’s contention, namely, that the cities of the earth regularly, or even inevitably, claim to be constructed around ordering principles that point man to his highest good, and such claims contribute to a heavy cloud covering the imaginations of men, often distorting their understanding of grace and of Christian unity in the Church. But to attempt to order the worldly city to the heavenly—and especially to say that it must be so ordered for the Church to do its work— suggests, first, that we can be led to the cross by law, habit, custom, and the wisdom of the world (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; 2:7-10) and, second, that the Church cannot, with Word and Sacrament faithfully preserve itself in the mind of Christ, without the accommodation of the world (cf. Mt. 10:18; Romans 8:1-8; Colossians 2:8-10; 1 Corinthians 2:16).
All that said, in the present age, the Peace of Babylon “is not to be lightly esteemed.” It is good for the Church and for the unbeliever alike that we can live a “quiet and peaceable life” (1 Timothy 2:2; Jeremiah 29:7). It allows the Church to walk in “all godliness and honesty,” building itself up as the earthly outpost of the heavenly city. For those outside the Church, it secures those human goods that the created order offers to all (Matthew 5:45) and facilitates the spread of the Gospel.
Accordingly, the Christian, as a citizen of the earthly city, need not be politically passive or blindly accept the status quo. At present, our earthly city is not doing a particularly good job of securing to us that “quiet and peaceable life.” And “liberal” America has not been a long, failed experiment in limited, procedural government, as many postliberals suggest. Rather, it long ago usurped the Church’s identity as a “City upon a Hill,” creating for itself a salvific role and acting accordingly. The Christian citizen—or ruler—ought ceaselessly to condemn such pretentions of earthly power and call civil government back to its proper and limited task, a significant political challenge that poses many legal, structural, and prudential questions.
In short, I endorse Rogers’s creed: The Church is my family; the Church is my nation; the Church is my city. But rather than thinking in terms of telos, I prefer his later formulation, that Christ “explodes the…worldly institution and redraws it around himself.”
John Grove is the Managing Editor at Law & Liberty.
The City of God and the City of Man, Augustine advises, are destined to live side-by-side, their citizens intermingled until Christ comes again. The Church, existing as a holy city in the midst of a world of unbelievers, directs its citizens to the ultimate human peace that comes with complete unity in Christ, possessed now by faith. Such complete fulfillment cannot be attained by those outside of her gates.
That earthly city, however, also aims at a kind of peace “which is not to be lightly esteemed…for as long as the two cities are commingled, we also enjoy the peace of Babylon.” This temporal peace aims at the management of human affairs—the things “we can enjoy in this life from health and safety and human fellowship.”
James Rogers has written a wonderful and much-needed critique of the National Conservative Statement of Principles from an “ecclesiocentric” perspective. His essay should prompt critical reconsideration of how we think of and value the two cities and their governance.
National Conservatism
The social and political institutions of this world, Rogers argues, are highly imperfect pictures of the perfect community found only in the Church. Our existence as social beings, therefore, is not fulfilled in earthly politics but in a higher form of political community.
If we find ourselves rather restless and aimless in this age of individualism, then, it is not a robust rejuvenation of national identity that we need—but a renewed sense that we belong to a greater city, where our fellow citizens are also our brothers and sisters. And that city, though unfinished, exists here and now! We ought to do a much better job of living in the reality that the Church is our family, our city, and our nation, not as just another “voluntary association” that exists within the overarching civil polity.
I think Rogers is entirely correct to observe that the National Conservative Statement, and the movement more generally, inclines toward an improper treatment of the Church as one important part of a national identity and a useful tool for encouraging people to be law-abiding, rather than as an independent source of authority, community, and peace rooted in a Gospel that cannot be captured by any political program.
In his defense of national conservatism, Bradford Littlejohn makes the reasonable observation that the Statement of Principles is a partisan document seeking a political coalition, not a statement of faith. As such, it is a compromise between people of different faiths, and ought not to be blamed for failing to capture the fullness of the Christian message.
But I think, to a certain extent, that’s precisely the point. Christianity as an earthly political label is, like every other political identifier, a compromise—a religion made palatable to the people being asked to subscribe to it. Its edges must be ground down so as not to offend potential allies. It must speak to the earthly needs of the civil order, and prudentially adjust to changing circumstances. It is a synthesis designed to unify citizens, appeal to voting blocs, or solidify political loyalties. The more the label “Christianity” is slapped onto such movements, the more it becomes earthly ideology competing for influence among others to promote this or that earthly program. Is this not what American civil religion has often been? At best, a bland and inoffensive invocation of a Deity expected to bless whatever those in power happen to be doing at the moment, and at worst, an affirming faith in America as a chosen people, God’s unique agent in the world.
Perhaps the National Conservative could argue that today’s Christian citizen, who always uses great care and discretion when engaging in politics, will have such a firm grasp on the distinction between earthly and spiritual goods, that he can pour his efforts into a partisan war to re-Christianize America, without ever immanentizing the eschaton or mixing up his earthly and heavenly citizenship. The idea of a Christian nation, Littlejohn says, actually “makes possible a limited state” so that we can “work vigorously for political reform without vesting all our hopes in it.”
I am skeptical. First, I have not heard many National Conservatives defend political religion because it limits the state. On the contrary, I quite often hear them say that postliberal politics means getting comfortable using state power to reward friends and punish enemies, or that the state must be empowered to guide man to his highest end. In his own speech at the National Conservatism Conference, Littlejohn certainly doesn’t emphasize a “limited state,” arguing that the “civil magistrate” has essentially an open-ended authorization to “use the full power of [his] office” to promote his enlightened understanding of human flourishing—including “spiritual goods.”
But aside from that, do the present conditions of contemporary American political and religious life suggest that a sophisticated understanding of this relationship between American politics and Christianity is likely to prevail when the language and symbolism of the latter are used for the former? We live in an age of mass democracy, in which heightening the stakes, inflaming the passions, abolishing nuance, reinforcing loyalty, and demeaning enemies are the keys to successful mobilization. American churches, meanwhile, are hardly doing a good job keeping the eyes of the faithful on their higher citizenship. A recent survey suggests that self-identified “evangelicals” have been wonderfully catechized on hot-button partisan issues, but are less certain about things like whether Jesus is the son of God, or whether all men are born sinful.
Are these the conditions in which we should expect careful discernment? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Mt. 6:21).
The Telos of the City?
When it comes to exactly what ecclesiocentrism means for civil, “secular” politics, I agree with Ben Peterson that Rogers’s approach needs more fleshing out, especially by clarifying what it means to say that the Church is the telos of the earthly city. One can read Rogers as putting the earthly city or nation in its place, recognizing that the claims it makes for itself (claims the National Conservatives seek to amplify and revivify) are promises it cannot keep. By reminding us that our “thick” community, our “body politic,” is found in the Church, one’s expectations for civil authority ought to be diminished.
The telos language, however, introduces some uncertainty and perhaps gestures toward a different reading (for instance, in his seeing the Church as “the referent for understanding polis and ethnos in this age” and in his discussion of potential implications for an “ecclesiocentric state”).
My concerns are precisely the opposite of those voiced by D.C. Schindler in his reply, for I wonder if Rogers’s presentation might be taken to suggest too great of a similitude between the tasks and aims of the Church and the earthly city; that their rulers ought to be aiming at a Church-like unity and purpose; that they might be expected gradually to conform to the model of the Church, or become its agents, thereby finding their perfection. Much depends on how broadly one reads Rogers’s mutatis mutandis qualification, and the specific characteristics dependent on the “now/not yet” character of the Church.
Both the Church and the earthly polis are communities, one a true unified body (if not yet fully), the other a metaphorical one; both are ordinances of God; the governance of both is concerned with maintaining a certain kind of peace and concord among the members. But the earthly city’s horizons are radically limited, since the Church’s pure unity, its unique civil community, is made possible only through “transfiguration in Christ,” as Rogers points out, an act of grace toward those in the Church alone. Accordingly, the two cities aim at fundamentally different kinds of peace, and their governance must accordingly be entirely different.
The human city, as a government “administered by men over men,” to use James Madison’s terms, works not to purify its citizens or lead them to a final perfection, but to mitigate the effects of sin, so that we might travel through our fallen world as tranquilly as is possible (1 Timothy 2:2; Romans 12:18). It must, therefore, (at its best) operate on the basis of law—the “moral code” that Rogers rightly identifies as insufficient to any understanding of Christianity—and accommodate itself to the fallen condition of men. Even a perfectly constructed polity, with laws and customs firmly grounded on the natural law is not distinctively Christian and does not advance man toward his highest end, which can come only with the Church’s forgiveness of sins and the reunion of man with God. The governance of the civil state is therefore not in the hands of Christians alone, and the Church is to hold itself to much higher standard than the rest of the world (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Corinthians 5:12-13). Only one of these cities can be tasked with unifying and directing men toward their highest good.
Rogers’s mutatis mutandis qualification, therefore, turns out to be so consequential as to raise doubt about how much the Church can teach us about the polis in the world.
Any attempt to overcome this tension by “ecclesiasticizing” or “Christianizing” the world, as Lutheran theologian Hermann Sasse warned, winds up “secularizing” the Church instead, because it overlooks the massive gulf that separates a society of sinners governed by law, and one of saints governed by grace. It displays an implicit “faith in man” that focuses the Church’s attention on a world that is passing away rather than the city that will endure (1 John 2:17). The state, in turn, abjures civil peace and order in favor of a crusade for earthly salvation.
I do not doubt part of Schindler’s contention, namely, that the cities of the earth regularly, or even inevitably, claim to be constructed around ordering principles that point man to his highest good, and such claims contribute to a heavy cloud covering the imaginations of men, often distorting their understanding of grace and of Christian unity in the Church. But to attempt to order the worldly city to the heavenly—and especially to say that it must be so ordered for the Church to do its work— suggests, first, that we can be led to the cross by law, habit, custom, and the wisdom of the world (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; 2:7-10) and, second, that the Church cannot, with Word and Sacrament faithfully preserve itself in the mind of Christ, without the accommodation of the world (cf. Mt. 10:18; Romans 8:1-8; Colossians 2:8-10; 1 Corinthians 2:16).
All that said, in the present age, the Peace of Babylon “is not to be lightly esteemed.” It is good for the Church and for the unbeliever alike that we can live a “quiet and peaceable life” (1 Timothy 2:2; Jeremiah 29:7). It allows the Church to walk in “all godliness and honesty,” building itself up as the earthly outpost of the heavenly city. For those outside the Church, it secures those human goods that the created order offers to all (Matthew 5:45) and facilitates the spread of the Gospel.
Accordingly, the Christian, as a citizen of the earthly city, need not be politically passive or blindly accept the status quo. At present, our earthly city is not doing a particularly good job of securing to us that “quiet and peaceable life.” And “liberal” America has not been a long, failed experiment in limited, procedural government, as many postliberals suggest. Rather, it long ago usurped the Church’s identity as a “City upon a Hill,” creating for itself a salvific role and acting accordingly. The Christian citizen—or ruler—ought ceaselessly to condemn such pretentions of earthly power and call civil government back to its proper and limited task, a significant political challenge that poses many legal, structural, and prudential questions.
In short, I endorse Rogers’s creed: The Church is my family; the Church is my nation; the Church is my city. But rather than thinking in terms of telos, I prefer his later formulation, that Christ “explodes the…worldly institution and redraws it around himself.”
John Grove is the Managing Editor at Law & Liberty.
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