Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.2007, Page 38

movement. The community organization movement was replaced by anti-Viet
Nam War protests and radical student agitation in the universities and streets
of America. Many of these agitations used violent means to gain their ends.
The churches that followed such radicalization tendencies were soon iso-
lated. The vast majority backed off and began to ask questions about how
the churches should be related to the political process. Direct involvement in
these radical efforts seemed neither prudential nor Christian.
As for me, I began to ponder how I as a Lutheran professor should teach
about the church’s involvement in politics. I certainly believed there was a role
for the church in the great issues of the day, but I suspected that the Lutheran
tradition had a perspective on this involvement that might constitute a very
helpful critique of the direct, activist strain of American Christianity. The
question for me as a Lutheran theological ethicist was not whether but rather
how Christianity should be involved.
The answer to that question had to arise from typically Lutheran theologi-
cal themes if, as I believed, the Lutheran tradition had something specifically
to contribute to the broader American discussion of the church’s role in poli-
tics. This paper is an attempt to identify the Lutheran theological themes that
provide a framework for the church’s involvement in public life.
What Kind ofReligion?
In America, Christianity will continue to be the most dominant religious tra-
dition. Over 85% of Americans consider themselves to be Christian. Chris-
tianity simply has no serious religious rivals. More specifically, Reformed
Protestantism and Roman Catholicism will provide the main themes for re-
ligious involvement in American public life. Mark Noll, the distinguished
evangelical historian of American religion now at Notre Dame, has argued
that the “dominant pattern of political involvement in America has always
been one of direct, aggressive action modeled on Reformed theories of life in
the world.”1 Americans, he says, “have moved in a straight line from personal
belief to social reform, from private experience to political activity.”2 This
1 ”The Lutheran DiflFerence,” First Thitigs. A Motithly Joumal ofReligion and Public Life, February, 1992, pp. 31-40.
2 Ibid. p. 37.
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