Arthur Blessitt is walking for president. He is the evangelist who carried a cross from California to Washington a few years ago, and then fasted for forty days under a tree near the White House. Not only has he walked across this continent, but also across Africa and Europe -- some 12,000 miles in all. Blessitt believes we need a “committed, born again, spirit-filled, witnessing, open disciple of Jesus Christ in the White House -- a president who ... will seek to lead his life and the nation on the principles of the Bible.”
Since he is on the ballot in New Hampshire and Florida, the sponsors of Religion and the’ Presidency (RAP 76) felt compelled to invite Blessitt, along with all the other announced presidential candidates, to Washington in January to be questioned individually by representatives from America’s religious communities.
At the conference’s opening Martin Marty commented that in his view, the New Testament gives no social or political ethic for the whole society; it only provides glimpses--like the Good Samaritan--for pointing us there. That Niebuhrian perspective seemed to be the consensus shared by both liberals and evangelicals present there.
When Blessitt talked about needing an open disciple of Jesus Christ in the White House, it made everyone a little nervous. Thomas Gumbleton, the Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit, said Blessitt frightened him--that his religious beliefs were creating sectarian politics which could oppress those who differed. Don Tinder of Christianity Today asked whether Blessitt would require the same spiritual commitment of everyone whom he, as president, would appoint; when Blessitt said no, several accused him of contradicting himself. Even Arnold Olson of the Evangelical Free Church said he was troubled by Blessitt’s statement that if one president could take two weeks off and ski, another could take two weeks and witness at evangelistic crusades.
Most at the conference couldn’t get beyond Blessitt’s evangelical fervor to analyze concretely his program, which was surprisingly marked with populist and radical ideas when contrasted to the current political horizon. Blessitt said the president today is like a “mini-dictator” and should rather adopt a humble style, including quiet visits for days to Indian reservations and ghettos.
He advocated a comprehensive tax reform, a form of guaranteed national income, the breaking up of conglomerates, and total amnesty, while in foreign policy he would withdraw all forces from NATO, end alliances, and keep us out of “political” wars by requiring the president and Congress to spend one week out of the month at the front lines in any combat that went beyond 30 days.
But the heart of his message was that unless America repents, God judgment will fall upon the nation, and democracy will be destroyed. But there can be hope, Blessitt declared, because “blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”
Those assembled at RAP 76--a disappointing turnout of less than 100 although 400-500 were expected--had agreed on the need for moral and spiritual transparency in those seeking the presidency. But they seemed befuddled because Blessitt was too transparent and even too religious--for most.
It was too bad, many felt, that naive Reverend Blessitt didn’t understand the distinction between personal faith and the necessities of political decision making in a pluralistic society.
Interestingly enough, the first question asked Blessitt dealt not with theology or politics, but attempted to dismiss Blessitt as not being a serious candidate. The participants at Religion and the Presidency were more intent upon probing the well known contending presidential candidates with their questions. They were intrigued to hear Gene McCarthy philosophize about ethics and politics, to listen to Sargent Shriver talk comfortably about the transcendent aspect of life, to respond to Mo Udall’s eloquent and well-informed views on current issues, and to evaluate the presentations of Milton Shapp and Lloyd Bentsen. All the other candidates declined RAP’s invitation to come, preferring to work the campaign trail.
It is said that there is no political ethic in the New Testament that can be directly appropriated. But that is because applying the words of our Lord to the realities of power and politics in America today appears so outlandish. They just don’t fit. It seems totally unrealistic to take at face value the counsel of our Lord that power consists of acts of sacrificial service, that success should be defined as faithfulness rather than efficacy, that evil is overcome only with the power of suffering love, that the response required by God’s justice to the poverty of others is the relinquishment of what the rich possess. We do not want to hear that our corporate structures, idols, and gods-including secularism, materialism, capitalism, and Americanism, as well as the institutions which are based upon them--fall under God’s judgment because of their allegiance to the fallenness of the world.
None of that plays well in Peoria. It is an offense, in fact, to the political thinking of our time--the offense of the cross.
It is far more palatable to take the position, whether either for hermeneutical or pragmatic reasons, that we cannot make a simple and rather direct transition between the straightforward words of Christ and the Christian’s stance toward political reality in America today. We want to believe that ours is the task of formulating the priorities, major substance, direction, and style of political involvement. Then we can become relevantly engaged in politics on its own terms; we can attempt to have realistic Christian insight mold governmental policies; we can develop a “responsible” theology of power; and then we can talk intelligently, urbanely, and acceptably to presidential candidates.
But will we still be true to the gospel?
The reason why many doubt whether the New Testament contains much of a political ethic is that the ethic we do find there seems so totally foolhardy, weak, and irrelevant to the political realities of modern America. But should not, then, the focus of the discerning Christian be turned toward why society renders the biblical witness so seemingly irrelevant, rather than on how we can free ourselves from a wholehearted embrace of Christ’s good news in order to formulate a social ethic which can fall within the parameters of cultural acceptability?
In 1 John 2:6 we read, “whoever claims to be dwelling in him, binds oneself to live as Christ himself lived.” The shape of our involvement as believers in the political life of the nation is not exempt from the clear-cut biblical admonition to live as Christ lived.
In this year of presidential elections, our attention will again be focused by all the media on our national idolatry of the presidency. Liberal hopes for social change center in electing an occupant to the White House sympathetic to their agenda, while many evangelicals still believe that righteousness as a nation can be a function of the piety of its president. There is the persistent belief that change in either social structures or corporate values can best be wrought through electing the right demi-god to the White House.
To be sure, it makes a difference who is president. Ronald Reagan would respond far differently toward a new Panama Canal Treaty, aid to Chile, covert action of the CIA, and the priorities of the national budget than would Sargent Shriver. Yet in the final analysis, the similarities of the candidates who will win the nomination of their parties for president will be far more characteristic of them than their differences.
At this point in history, how Christians regard the presidency may be far more significant than who is president. Believers in the biblical message should demythologize the presidency. It is not the Chief Executive who determines the values of Americans; he or she could not single-handedly alter society’s materialistic ethic, or fundamentally challenge the foundations of its economic life.
The structures of American society rest on a complex web of social values, economic relationships, cultural assumptions, and historic beliefs. These forces define the boundaries of what change can be wrought through political structures--and specifically, by any president. Only an anomalous president could ever address prophetically these more foundational forces. Most assume them as being basically sound, which they must do if they are to be in harmony with the general consensus of society. But it is at this very point where the Christian’s witness to the present order should become most biblically resonant. The reality of a new order, initiated by Jesus Christ and pointing toward the kingdom of God, has broken into our midst. So often, it takes root precisely beyond those points where fallen society has set its boundaries and made pacts with the determining forces shaping its life.
Christ’s saving and redeeming power has set us free--and this is an inward and outward liberation from the prevailing powers of the culture which heretofore have been the matrix for structuring our lives.
American society’s obsession with the presidency manifests, in part, its corporate worship of power and the striving for success. Christians should not be so exclusively intent on the answers given by presidential aspirants to society’s questions, rather, we should ask if there is one who would seek such power not for self-aggrandizement; but for the liberation of others, not to rationalize our society’s corporate selfishness but to indict it, and not to protect the nation’s monopoly on the world’s wealth but to relinquish it.
That no one should have appeared in the snow-covered hamlets of New Hampshire with such a platform is not surprising, for that is all far beyond the boundaries of the conventional political consensus.
When Christians find their discipleship incompatible with certain dictates of political power, it is not that they symptomatically prefer withdrawing from all such “realities.” Rather, it is those structures of power that have withdrawn so deeply and irresponsibly from the guiding, informing model of the kingdom of God. The call of the Christian is to hold ever closer to that vision for the sake of the world’s salvation so that somewhere, through God’s grace, it might be kept alive. That is the task of the church.
Being faithful to that calling, then, will raise the question of whether we can simultaneously hold positions of power in various institutions of our day. As we struggle in our lives with these issues, through prayer and with the support of Christian community, we may also find wisdom for guiding our perspectives of the presidential election. Most certainly, the question will occur of whether a person can be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ and hold the powers and duties of the presidency. That should be where the Christian church begins its discussion. In asking that question we may also find guidance for living out the gospel amidst the forces that shape the contours of society and would seek to mold each of our lives.
When Arthur Blessitt was asked what he would do if as president, he was told that Soviet missiles were approaching the United States, he replied that as Commander-in-Chief, he would do what ever necessary to seek the defense of the nation. It is hard to envision a “spirit-filled, witnessing, open disciple of Jesus Christ” launching missiles of nuclear horror to destroy millions of people in another country under any circumstances. It is just as hard to envision any candidate for president who would state that those buttons would never be pushed.
Peter Maurin, who in 1933 co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement with Dorothy Day, wrote:
To foster society based on creed instead of greed, on systematic unselfishness instead of systematic selfishness, on gentle personalism instead of rugged individualism, is to create a new society within the shell of the old…
We who follow Christ should ask if any of those who seek political power would serve such a simple and clear calling. More importantly, we will know that the seeds of such a new society will not be sown in the primaries of New Hampshire and Florida, and will never descend down upon us after some inaugural ball heralding a new Camelot, Rather, they will grow up among us, in our lives, our communities, and with those we touch reaching out to the radical brokenness of the world, as we listen to our Lord and obey.
Wes Michaelson was on the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.
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