This is the first essay in a series I am publishing on Sabbath as an eschatological-political vision for the church. I will be publishing new essays every Tuesday as I lay out a foundational framework for a vision of the church’s presence in the world in these tumultuous days. These essays will explore Genesis 1-4 as the foundational political treatise of the Scriptures, and how Sabbath can shape the church to be a non-conformed presence in the world.
Our Moment
The American church is conformed to the pattern of the age. This reality is most evident in our political life. Instead of offering a vision of the Kingdom of God that is not of this world, we have been assimilated by worldly kingdoms, divided along the very same lines that mark the politics of the age.
For too long, the church has pursued its political mission according to the ideologies provided by the kingdoms of this world. We have viewed these kingdoms as vehicles of our mission, and so our debate has been centered on whether our discipleship should be lived out on the left, on the right, or in the middle of the ideological spectrum provided by earthly kingdoms.
The result of this is a church whose foundational identity is formed, not by her citizenship in the Holy Nation of God, but by her earthly citizenship in the fleeting nations that are here today and gone tomorrow.
It is abundantly clear that renewal won’t happen if we continue along the same patterns of our conformed political thought. If we simply yell louder and argue harder and share more memes in support of our earthly-kingdom political team, we will continue to be zealous contributors to the fracturing of our age.
In our moment, we don’t need better political strategies. Too much political theology today is misguided because it takes the pattern of the age as given, and then makes its subject matter how to live out Christianity within the assumptions provided by that pattern. Because of this, our conformed political theologies are themselves primary drivers of our conformity to the age.
To break out of this ideological capture and be freed from the pattern of the age, the church must be renewed through a formative grounding in her unique identity as the community that belongs to the eschatological rule of God. To become un-conformed, we must commit to a patient, deep, and thorough renewal of our theo-political vision. We must trust that the Spirit can renew the church’s political vision.
But where can we go to find this renewed political vision? Where can we find a new political framework that resists conformity? Ironically, to do this, we can take our cue from the original thinkers whose political philosophies gave rise to the political order that has so thoroughly conformed us today.
Sabbath: A Vision for the Mission of the Church
400 years ago, the world was crumbling. The institutions and beliefs that shaped the medieval age were falling into disrepair, as many no longer accepted the dominant vision of a hierarchical world, a world with kings and priests serving as divinely ordained rulers over the masses.
In that time, a new generation of political philosophers, led principally by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, envisioned a society that would liberate humans from false hierarchies and arbitrary rule. Western liberalism began when these political philosophers set themselves the task of building a new social order. According to political philosopher Patrick Deneen, Western Liberalism was built on “a wager that political society could be grounded on a different footing.” These thinkers believed that politics needed a new foundation, based not on divine revelation or divine right, but on a new vision of humanity and society.
To build this new foundation, these philosophers engaged in a thought experiment. They envisioned humanity in “the state of nature,” imagining, according to David Runciman, “what it is to be human in a pre-social setting.” The thought experiment sought to go back behind the political structures, back behind history, to imagine life prior to the formation of society and the structures that arise when humans gather together. The philosophers believed that, if they could discern the true condition of human nature, they could build a new social order based on this condition.
Their vision coalesced around an anthropology that defines humans as self-interested, rights-bearing individuals who are fundamentally oriented toward the self, and fundamentally driven to protect his self, goods, and property. From this new vision of humanity, a new world was built, the world of Western liberalism. It is the world we have inherited, the world we have inhabited, and the world that has constructed the pattern of the age that has so conformed the church in our time.
To be freed from our conformity to this pattern, to be healed of our division and fracture, the church today must engage in a similar thought experiment. Our moment demands that we not take as given the political pattern provided to us by the world. It demands that we do the hard work of delving deeply into the thought patterns that have formed, and conformed, us to the pattern of the age. It demands that we question the anthropological vision at the heart of Western liberalism, a vision that we have thoroughly adopted, and that is a chief means of our capture by the pattern of the age.
We must commit to a thorough analysis of our theo-political vision, and make the wager that we, by the power of the Spirit, can construct a new vision of the church’s presence in the world on another foundation.
Like the political philosophers who formed the foundation of Western liberalism, we need to go behind the political visions that have shaped our epoch. In their experiment, the philosophers of early liberalism went back to humanity in “the state of nature.” In my experiment, we will go back to an altogether different beginning, all the way back, to the original political vision contained in the early chapters of Genesis.
I am convinced that a thought experiment focused on the “state of creation” can provide the church with resources for renewing our political vision, enabling us to build that vision on a different foundation—one that is proper to the church—and, in doing so, free us from our conformity to the political pattern of the age.
Over the next few weeks, I will engage a in thought experiment on the state of creation that is focused on the theme of “Sabbath.” My claim is that, when the early chapters of Genesis are read as a political treatise, Sabbath emerges as the foundational political vision of the Scriptures.
Sabbath is a declaration of God’s intended purpose for ordering of the universe, and so is a deeply political concept. Humanity, however, rejected this Sabbath rule, choosing instead to take rulership over the world and ourselves, leading to devastating consequences—the shaping of a political order East of Eden. This order arises out of human rebellion and is rooted in the project of humanity: the turn to the self and the ordering of the world according to our own self-referential visions and capacities.
Sabbath Church
The church, however, does not belong to politics East of Eden; we belong to God’s Sabbath rule. Our thought experiment will allow us to recapture our political vision by situating ourselves, not as competitors for worldly political power, but as the eschatological community of God in whom the Sabbath political rule of God is witnessed.
Living in this political reality can free the church from conformity to the politics of the age and enable us to live our proper political vocation as ambassadors of Sabbath, people of rest in a manic world striving for control.
Good stuff, Joel. I’m eager to see how this project develops.