Advice to Rev. Karen Clark Ristine: Just because you have a Microphone doesn't mean you should speak into it

The United Methodist Church has a long history of being involved in Social Justice. Wesley and the early Methodists expressed their opposition to societal ills such as slavery, smuggling, inhuman prison conditions, alcohol abuse and child labor. Our Social Principles are the church's prayerful and thoughtful attempt to speak to contemporary issues through a biblical and theological lens, seeking to "apply the Christian vision of righteousness to social, economic, and political issues." (Book of Discipline 2012, p. 53)

Rev. Karen Clark Ristine

Recently, a Methodist Church in Claremont, California "caged" the Nativity. They separated the holy family so that they could "make a statement" about the injustice of separating families at the southwest border. This year however, Rev. Karen Clark Ristine, stated she was "stirred to tears" by the depiction, says that the church uses its annual nativity scene to tackle a societal issue, such as the homeless population of Southern California.

Yet there is a time and a place to embrace our involvement in social justice. There is no doubt that detainment at the border is harsh; that in some ways it's inhumane, but it's also inhumane to leave home, and risk coming to a country illegally where you will be separated from your children. Even though the post does make mention that holy family fled to Egypt, they did so because they were under the threat of certain death. So real was the threat that the Magi, didn't return to the palace of Herod. So real was the threat that God himself sent an angel to tell Joseph to leave and flee to Egypt and after King Herod died, the Holy Family returned to Israel. 

Nativity Scene at Claremont UMC in California

However, the church's place is not to use the story of our coming Messiah to make societal statements. Matter of fact, on every Facebook post I have read, there are comments asking about the separation of Church and State. Yet very few, including our own Pastors really know what this means or even how it should be enforced.

No where in our constitution does it promise separation of church and state, matter of fact, the phrase "Separation of church and state was initially coined by Baptist striving for religious toleration in Virginia, who official state religion was then Anglican (Episcopalian) Baptist thought government limitations against religion illegitimate. Even non-Christian founders thought religion essential. None would have wished to upend the very basis for education, law or culture. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 states: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

What is difficult to write here is the fact that even though we should keep government out of the church, we can’t keep the church from making political statements. Yet, if the Council of Bishops in the UMC continue the church to make political statements then we are never going to stand united again. Frequently, in our arrogance, we assume that we can make political statements and nothing will be said. However, the church must remember, pastor’s especially should remember 

1. There is a time when we must speak.

The Scriptures are full of admonitions for God’s people to rebuke evil, sometimes with stinging specificity. Read through the prophets, and you hear God calling out injustices of all kinds—toward children, toward women, toward the outcast, the poor, the voiceless. The prophets trumpet a call for God’s justice, and justice always carries a political element. Men like William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King, Jr. frequently quoted from prophetic books like Amos to inspire our society to turn to justice.

In the New Testament, John the Baptist preached a “baptism of repentance,” complete with specific accusations about the ways that God’s people—and the local rulers—were disobedient to God’s Law. He called out injustices carried out by soldiers and rebuked Herod for sleeping with his brother’s wife. That latter decision eventually led to John’s death. If John were around today, I imagine that a lot of Christians would have told him to keep quiet. Stick to the church stuff, John. Stop commenting on public sexuality. What was Jesus’ assessment of John’s ministry? He called him the greatest prophet that ever lived.

The church has often failed to speak as directly and specifically as we should in the political realm. Dietrich Bonhoeffer learned this in Germany in the 1930s. The church there was content to simply say, “Discrimination is wrong,” a statement that the Nazi Party would allow. But Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church knew that obedience required them to take another step, getting their hands dirty by saying, “We must oppose the Nazis.” Like John the Baptist, he paid for it with his life.

In the 1850s, many Christian churches were reluctant to say anything specifically about slavery, even though they opposed the practice. Again in the 1960s, far too many churches stayed silent when they should have offered their hand—and their voice—to the Civil Rights movement. Both of those instances are embarrassments to the church today.

2. There is a time when speaking diverts us from our mission and dilutes our witness.

There is a ditch on the other side of this path, too. In our attempts to apply Scripture to our political situation, we run the risk of getting mired in areas outside our God-given scope.

The ministry of Jesus provides us with a helpful example. In Luke 12:13-14, when asked a specific social justice question (My brother stole money from me!), Jesus refuses to adjudicate: “Who made me a judge over you?” It’s not because he didn’t care about justice, or because he wouldn’t have been able to offer wise counsel. Rather, he didn’t want his kingdom to be too identified or tangled up in world affairs. So he avoided giving an opinion on this particular case, and instead preached a sermon on greed (Luke 12:15–21). Elsewhere we see Jesus, at the peak of his popularity, retreating when people wanted to make him a political king on the platform of solving world hunger (John 6:1-15).

The same pattern runs through the lives of the apostles. Paul, for instance, spent very little time arbitrating the various social ills plaguing the Roman Empire (of which there were many), focusing instead on spreading the gospel and planting churches.

There is time when we have to connect virtue with policy. But far too often, the temptation for the institutional church is to speak too specifically into areas outside the scope of our mission. Policy choices always seem so clear in the moment, but often the benefit of a little distance makes us wish we had not tied the church’s authority to specific policy prescriptions.

I believe that Rev. Ristine has forgotten to consider that the church, as the church, is neither capable nor called to address every important issue in the public square. This is not a cop-out. This is common sense. I’ve seen denominational committees call the church to specific positions regarding the farm bill, Sudanese refugees, the Iraq War, socially screened retirement funds, immigration policy, minimum-wage increases, America’s embargo of Cuba, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, global economics, greenhouse gas emissions, social welfare, and taxation policies. While the church may rightly make broad statements about caring for the poor and the oppressed, and may even denounce specific cultural sins, the church should not be in the business of specifying which types of rifles Christians may and may not use (a real example) or which type of judicial philosophy Christians should want in a Supreme Court justice (another real example).

Again, Machen’s approach is instructive. He insisted that no one “has a greater horror of the evils of drunkenness than I” and that it was “clearly the duty of the church to combat this evil.” And yet, as to the “exact form” of legislation (if any), he allowed for difference of opinion. Some men, he maintained, believed that the Volstead Act was not a wise method of dealing with the problem of drunkenness, and that enforced Prohibition would cause more harm than good. Without stating his own opinion, Machen argued that “those who hold the view that I have just mentioned have a perfect right to their opinion, so far as the law of our church is concerned, and should not be coerced in any way by ecclesiastical authority. The church has a right to exercise discipline where authority for condemnation of an act can be found in Scripture, but it has no such right in other cases” (394-95).

Maybe instead of grabbing every societal statement that can be made in a Nativity story, Rev. Ristine should have be prepared to fire when necessary, but keep her powder dry. There are times when the national crisis is so all-consuming or the political issue so obviously wicked (or righteous) that the minister will feel compelled to say something. Think 9/11. Or riots in your city. Or the declaration of war. But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Our news media, not to mention social media, make us feel like every day is a global meltdown and every hour is a moment of existential crisis. Don’t believe the hype. There is no exact formula for when you interrupt your sermon series, when you drop a blogging bomb, or when you add current events into your pastoral prayer. These things call for wisdom, not one-size-fits-all solutions. But let me suggest that when it comes to politics and public policy, parenting is a good analogy: yelling works only when it is done sparingly.

My advice would be for Rev. Ristine and other pastors—Put down the phone. Close the web browser. Stop trying to change the world one tweet at a time. Let’s make sure we know our Bibles and know our people a thousand times better than we know the ins and outs of the Trump administration. And let’s not be afraid to be social media silent—not always, but often—in a world clamoring for political noise. Just because the internet gives us a microphone, doesn’t mean we have to speak into it.