Politics as Shalom Making (an excerpt from a new book)

”Politics is building community with strangers.”

Chris Woodhull, a respected community leader in his early forties, is running for a seat on the Knoxville City Council. When he’s not campaigning, Chris is the executive director of TRIBE ONE, a faith-based nonprofit organization that works with teenagers affiliated with gangs. I’m interested in listening to Chris’s views on the church’s role in politics because I know he shares my ambivalence toward much of what has passed for church-based political action.

Just prior to our conversation, I pulled a book off the shelf, and a letter form a conservative Christian political group falls out. The letter is written in red, white and blue ink with whole paragraphs set in boldface type. It features lines such as “the stakes are incredibly high” and “we must fight.” The boldface words are underlined just to make sure I don’t miss them. The letter ends with an appeal for a “victory gift” to support voter guides that will tell the faithful who the approved Christian candidates are. None of the “approved” candidates is a Democrat, by the way. How did the gospel become connected with the Republican Party?

The posturing of the political left is just as annoying. The great sucking sound that so many church watchers heard in the last quarter of the past century was the sound of millions of spiritually famished Christians exiting their churches because they didn’t hear another sermon on global warming or nuclear disarmament.

At least liberals and conservatives have tried to relate their faith to their politics. Other Christians have opted out of the political process, retreating to Christian ghettos while they await the setting of the moral sun. That strikes me as gutless.

So what am I left with? I don’t want to be liberal, conservative, or gutless. I’ve been reading a book that calls for a “third way” that arises “out of a deepening hunger among many to find a…’spiritual politics’ beyond the old polarized options of Left and Right, liberal and conservative.” I share this hunger for a third way. I sense Chris does too.

“What has the campaign been like?” I ask Chris.

“Frightening,” he answers. “Running for office is a spectacle. But it is a gift, too.”

“A gift?”

“It has opened up rooms inside of me that have been locked. When we go through things like this, we see what’s inside us.” The grueling political campaign has become a means of spiritual formation for Chris – a crucible that refines him. I had never before thought of the refining process as a reason for the church to enter the public square, but it’s a good one: We grow spiritually when we bring faith to bear on issues that are crucial to the well-being of society.

Chris and I talk about his calling into politics. He recalls a father who loved JFK, a year spent in Washington working for a think tank, an African American friend named Danny, now deceased, who ran for office as an act of worship. Chris senses that I am hoping for something a little more dramatic, but he doesn’t go there.

“Modern Christianity is too utopian,” he says. “The Christian life is really about the ordinary, not the ideal. Place is important. The land is important. Politics is putting morality into practice. It’s a pragmatic dealing with life in a particular place, a community, our community.”

“What is a community?”

“A community is a place that supports our growth and wholeness. A community holds us, helps us feel alive.”

“And the goal of Christian politics, then, is…?”

“To build a place that works for everybody, a real place, a community with social equity, a community where everyone has economic access, a community that is economically sound and livable.”

The Hebrew prophets, when they dreamed of healthy communities, described their vision with the ancient word shalom. Shalom means “harmony, wholeness, completion, things as they should be.” Sometimes our bibles translate shalom as “peace,” but it is a much fuller word than that. In fact, a vast project to restore shalom to the world unfolds across the pages of scripture. God creates the world. Initially it enjoys shalom. Then sin destroys shalom and introduces alienation. The Old Testament is the story of God’s attempt to restore the shalom of Eden. The angels at Christ’s birth sing that he has come to bring shalom. The apostle Paul tells us that Christ’s death recovered shalom. John’s Apocalypse foresees the restoration of shalom on all the earth as the goal of history.

Shalom is a real place that works for everybody. “Seek the peace and prosperity (shalom) of the city,” the prophet Jeremiah said. This is the purpose of politics. This is why Chris is running for a seat on the city council. This is why the church must be involved in politics. Politics is a tool for shalom making.

I find myself puzzling over the ramifications of what Chris has said. I hope he wins the election, partly because I can’t wait to see how reporters handle him and partly because I think we need people like him in office. I tell him this before we part.

Our conversation ends with glimpses of insight and invitations to hope, but no coherent theory of Christian political involvement. I am both moved and mildly frustrated. Perhaps politicians who are poets are uniquely qualified to serve as guides along the political road less traveled.

An hour later my phone rings. Chris wants to say one more thing. Perhaps now I’ll get a real sound bite to wrap this essay around.

“I’ve been reading a speech Vaclav Havel gave on politics at New York University. Listen to this,” he begins. Quoting the Czech poet and president, Chris continues: “Politics should be principally the domain of people with a heightened sense of responsibility and a heightened sense of the mysterious complexity of being.”

I write frantically on my notepad.

“Isn’t that beautiful?” he asks.

Yes, I tell him. It is.

- an excerpt from "God On Earth: the Church - a hard look at the real life of faith" by Doug Banister, 2005.