The Good News of Church Politics (Ross Kane) - Review
THE GOOD NEWS OF CHURCH POLITICS. By Ross Kane. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2024. Xi + 126 pages.
Over the years, while serving
congregations as their pastor, I've heard congregants say they didn’t want to
hear about politics from the pulpit. In their mind, the church is a spiritual
place so politics is too worldly. At the same time, during my years as a
pastor, I’ve experienced plenty of church politics. It might not be partisan,
and it may have little to do with what happens outside the congregation, but it’s
still politics. That is, it’s a question of who has power so the ones with
power can influence the life of the church. That might not be what we think of
as politics, but that’s what it is. Now, even if the church stays clear of
partisanship if it seeks to influence life outside the congregation, such as pursuing
justice, it engages in politics. The question for the church concerns how we
stay faithful to our calling to love God and neighbor without succumbing to
partisanship. As anyone who has been involved in justice ministries, that’s not
an easy task. I’ve tried to find a balanced approach to community engagement
during my years of ministry. I even wrote a book titled Faith in the
Public Square: Living Faithfully in 21st Century America, which contains
among other things many of the weekly columns I wrote for a local paper that
touched on political issues from a faith perspective. The fact is, I'm a rather
political person, even a partisan one, so keeping things in balance so that I
don’t become a tool of a particular political movement is a challenge.
With this introduction to the
question of politics in the church, I turn to Ross Kane’s book The Good News of Church Politics. It addresses the challenges facing the church as it
navigates various political worlds, whether it’s a matter of internal
congregational politics, denominational politics, local politics, or national
politics. The book, though brief, offers us thoughtful guidance that helps us
deal with our political worlds.
In Part 2, Kane explores "The
Spirituality of Politics." He does so with chapters on "Prayer and
Politics," “Loving Enemies,” “Forgiveness as Political,” and “Tangles of
Forgiving.” As you can see from the chapter titles the fact he devotes two
chapters to forgiveness that for politics to be good news it must include
forgiveness. When we consider the role of forgiveness along with the importance
of loving our neighbors, we begin to recognize the challenges inherent in
political life. Perhaps that's why he starts with prayer. Kane points out that
while they may seem different, prayer and politics share a lot in common, for
"They require persistence, patience, and attention to mundane experience,
and commitment to communal life. They are some of the most poignant avenues the
Spirit uses to transform lives" (p. 31).
Part 3 focuses on "Renewing
Leadership through Good Politics." Here he offers chapters on the
"Habits of Faithful Politics," "Love as Political Power,"
and a chapter exploring how the church can model good politics by facing their
sins, making restitution, and seeking healing. Here "repentance becomes a
political practice vital to a church's self-identity" (p. 63). There are
two other chapters in this section titled: "Finitude and Sin" and
"Authority and Leadership." In the final chapter of the section, Kane
notes that even the most egalitarian communities have structures of authority.
What he offers as an appropriate form of power is one that involves persuasion
as the foundation of leadership. That includes the authority of pastors. This
persuasion “is grounded in a love that recognizes our interdependence, for it
refuses to force its own way and recognizes our connection with one another”
(p. 80).
Having laid out his vision of
politics as it is rooted in the church, a politics that is expressive of Jesus'
vision of community, Kane devotes the remaining six chapters of The Good News of Church Politics to "The First Fruits of Public Life." In
this section, Kane moves from the politics of the church to the wider world. He
begins with a chapter on "The Congregation in the Wider Community."
He writes "As a church loves its neighbors, it should find itself engaged
in local politics in ways that change both the neighborhood and the
church" (p. 85). From this foundation, which assumes that a church that
loves its neighbors will engage with the larger community, we move forward to
discussions of the "Limits of Hyperlocal Politics." When he speaks of
hyperlocal politics, he means focusing only on the immediate neighborhood and
not recognizing that the neighborhood is part of a larger whole. In his chapter
"Seeking the Welfare of the City" Kane draws on Jeremiah's important
word to fellow Jews living as exiles in Babylon, encouraging them to put down
roots and work for the welfare of the city. In this chapter, Kane he speaks of
living between two cities, the earthly and the heavenly. From there we move to
living as “Christians amid the Nations" and the "First Fruits of
Public Life." The final chapter is titled "The Wisdom of
Neighbors." Here Kane draws our attention to the wisdom to be gained from
interfaith partners. This is an important chapter, especially for Christians
who live in communities like the one I live in, which is highly pluralistic. I
count among my closest friends, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus. I have learned much
from them and value their wisdom.
In his conclusion to The Good News of Church Politics, which is titled "The Body of Christ and the
New Jerusalem,” Kane reminds us that as members of the Body of Christ, we are
connected to a great cloud of witnesses. Therefore, our citizenship is in a
realm greater than any community or nation. As part of that body of Christ, our
politics should be rooted in the church. It's not a matter of combining church
and state (theocracy) or engaging in religious nationalism, it is, rather
recognizing that our politics/our allegiances start in the church, where we
hear Jesus’ call to love our neighbors.
Ross Kane’s The Good News of Church Politics is not a lengthy book, but it covers a lot of territory. In
an age when many church members are trying to figure out how their faith
relates to their political lives, having a book like this should prove helpful.
The question isn’t whether there is politics in the church but what form that
politics takes in a congregation and in the lives of the people who make up the
congregation. This is especially important when we watch the increasing
presence of Christian nationalism in which national politics overwhelms the
teaching of Jesus. Polls are revealing that many conservative Christians find Jesus
too liberal. If that is true of us, we have lost our way. With this in mind,
Ross Kane offers us an accessible book designed to encourage congregational
conversation, as each of the four sections ends with a series of discussion
questions and further readings. Thus, here is a four-week study on faith and
politics. The Good News of Church Politics is a timely book that is
worth considering since, whether we like it or not, politics is part of life
and the church is by nature a political institution. The question is whether
the politics of the church is one of loving interdependence that seeks to bring
heaven to earth. I close this review with this statement from the book’s
conclusion: “When the world sees a church that embodies divine love and the
world feels itself drawn to that love, the heavenly city joins earth. The
Spirit empowers us to be agents of heaven joining earth” (p. 118). I think that’s
what Jeremiah had in mind when telling the exiles to put down roots.
Comments