For months now the question about 700 Club host Marion G. "Pat" Robertson has been: "Will he run?" Now that Robertson's candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination is a near-certainty, politicians and church people alike are presented with a number of considerably more vexing questions.
Certainly Robertson's candidacy represents a potentially disruptive wild card for the Republican Party's hope to become the majority party in 1988. The Christian Right is no longer just another Republican constituency among others. With Robertson's candidacy the Far Right is now staking its claim to represent the future of the party and the country. But the Religious Right's social agenda has yet to excite anything like a majority among the American people.
For Robertson's colleagues in the Religious Right, his candidacy presents a crisis of loyalty between one of their own and the wishes of the president to whom they have sworn allegiance and hitched their star for the last six years. Already Jerry Falwell has announced his support for the Reagan-anointed George Bush.
For the rest of us in the Christian community, Robertson's candidacy presents a very different set of questions and challenges. One has to do with the very nature of "Christian politics." In every U.S. presidential election since 1976, religion and politics have become more closely intertwined. But Robertson's campaign is already pushing that question to a new level of intensity.
Robertson of course denies that he plans to run a sectarian campaign. But it is a fact that a fund-raising letter he sent after his early delegate-hunting success in Michigan contained the unqualified exclamation, "The Christians have won!" and proclaimed the effort "a breakthrough for the Kingdom." More recently Robertson further identified his political plans with the advance of biblical Christianity when, in responding to attacks by the liberal organization People for the American Way, he said, "If they can destroy me they can destroy evangelical faith."
PUBLIC DEBATE OVER religion and politics is often muddied by self-serving myopia on all sides. Whatever one thinks of the Christian Right's version of Christianity, the fact of Christians organizing to be heard on public issues is clearly well within the American political tradition. Yet some on the Left and even in the mass media often hypocritically raise the banner of church-state separation against Christian activists of the Right, or, worse, condemn the Christian Rightists simply for being religious. For instance, People for the American Way often seems to consider Robertson a dangerous Neanderthal because he happens to believe that God can heal diseases. This attitude among liberals is insulting not just to Robertson or religious Rightists but to millions of ordinary Christians of all political persuasions.
But if there is often a strong anti-religious bias in liberal church-state preachments, it is also true that since the 1980 election of President Reagan, the Christian Right has inched steadily toward, and across, the line between independent Christian witness and active collaboration with the institutions of power. Jerry Falwell has carried water for the administration in South Africa and the Philippines. Pat Robertson has done the same in Central America with his participation in "private" funding of the Nicaraguan contras. Christian Rightists have claimed influence over presidential appointments and begun moving into positions of power in the Republican Party machinery. Now one of their number seeks to exercise the power of the state, including the nuclear sword, in God's name.
While at this point the danger of a fundamentalist Christian coup d'etat is as remote as Pat Robertson's chances for the White House, there is a very real and present danger to the churches from this neo-Constantinian alliance--the infiltration of partisan loyalties and alien ideologies into the community of faith. Some on the Christian Right probably could use a civics lesson in the benefits of religious freedom. But perhaps more urgently needed is some serious theological reflection on the Christian community's relationship to power as it is defined in the world of nation-states.
WE ARE NOT OF the persuasion that Christians should automatically exclude themselves from the profession of electoral politics. Under the right circumstances, that can be a worthy occupation. The problem comes when Christians who exercise or seek political power claim there is something uniquely Christian about their rather ordinary ambitions and decisions. No political institution--be it the Nicaraguan revolution, the peace movement, the Reagan presidency, or the Robertson campaign--should be baptized as "Christian" or identified with the kingdom of God.
This is where Pat Robertson walks close to the line, and it is one place where he needs to be called to account by other Christians. When he becomes a candidate, Robertson should be viewed as a politician, not a minister. His capabilities and his record on public issues should stand on their own.
The fact is that a large number of Christians disagree sharply with Robertson's views on questions like Reaganomics, the contra war, and the nuclear arms race. Such political diversity among Christians raises another layer of questions related to the Robertson campaign. Even if we could find agreement on the nature of Christian political witness and its relationship to conventional political power, we would still have disputes over the specific historical content of that witness.
One answer to political diversity is to insist that matters of peace and justice are worldly distractions from the purely spiritual mission of the church. That view of course leads to an abstract, privatized faith that, by default, serves the political and economic status quo and, more important, bears little resemblance to the radically disruptive, incarnational faith unfolded in the Bible.
Biblical faith only takes on its full meaning when it is preached and acted out in relationship to the great historic questions of the time--whether imperialism, racism, slavery, the status of women, or nuclear war. Such questions have set the stage for Christian witness and, since the Jerusalem conference on "the Gentile question," Christians have disagreed strongly about such issues. It will be well within that honorable tradition for Christians to critically examine Pat Robertson's political positions in light of the gospel.
ROBERTSON'S POLITICAL VIEWS are by now well known. He is campaigning as the person best able to continue and extend the Reagan revolution. Robertson believes that the national government should be more involved in enforcing personal morality but even less involved than it now is in establishing economic justice and equal rights. He has said that he would eventually like to see public education phased out in favor of church and home instruction. He believes that the threat to use nuclear weapons is a good and necessary thing, and he is skeptical of negotiations with the Soviet Union or other adversaries because he believes there can be no peace until Christ returns. He considers the contras' terrorist war against Nicaragua a holy crusade for freedom. He favors the death penalty.
Within every church body, there are bound to be wide variations of opinion on specific public policy questions. But if faith is to have historical meaning, there should be some broad base-line consensus within which such disagreements can occur and to which all are accountable. One such standard for our time has been suggested by Catholic Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago in his call for a consistent pro-life stance, the "seamless garment" approach. Certainly Christians should be able to agree that each human life is sacred in the eyes of God and that the political activity of Christians should have as one of its aims the defense and promotion of the right to life. Pat Robertson is unequivocally pro-life on abortion. But his right-to-life stance doesn't extend to the innocent lives threatened by the U.S. war in Central America, to the lives stunted and foreshortened by economic injustice in our own country, or to the billions of lives threatened by nuclear war.
Today, like it or not, we are engaged in what amounts to a spiritual, intellectual, and, yes, political battle for the public definition of Christianity in America. The things we disagree about aren't just passing "political" issues; they go to the heart of what it means to be Christian.
For those of us who, because of our faith, are strongly opposed to the policies Robertson espouses, his prospective candidacy raises the difficult question of how we deal with conflict within the Christian community. Certainly those who profess to follow Jesus are commanded to love one another, to be reconciled, and even to present an example of unity to the world.
But Christian love is not mainly a matter of good feelings. As the New Testament uses the word, love means to sincerely desire the best for the other. That doesn't always mean being uncritical. But it does mean being honest. Claiming reconciliation while glossing over real conflicts can only breed even deeper alienation in the future. Such conflicts can and should be carried out in a way that keeps open the possibility and hope of eventual reconciliation.
In Sojourners' rather limited relationship with Pat Robertson and his organization, we have tried to maintain that kind of posture. And after a rocky beginning, Robertson has reciprocated. Our October 1985 investigative piece on Robertson's involvement with the contras was followed by a series of letters between Robertson and our editor, Jim Wallis. That exchange, remarkable in both tone and content, was characterized throughout by a combination of mutual respect and very vigorous political disagreement. We hope to maintain that stance in the future. With the 1988 campaign already under way, we should have plenty of chances.
Danny Duncan Collum is a Sojourners contributing editor.
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