How can Christians faithfully engage public policy? We speak with Miranda Zapor Cruz, professor of historical theology at Indiana Wesleyan University and author of Faithful Politics: 10 Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters. She shares with us how Christians can engage public policy in faithful, yet nonpartisan ways.
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Leading Ideas Talks is also brought to you by Serious Answers to Hard Questions. In this thought-provoking video-based study, leading theologians address 10 issues that are obstacles to faith for many both in and outside of the church. Topics include the existence of evil, the relationship between science and religion, the sins of the church, and more. Serious Answers to Hard Questions is an outstanding introductory-level study that appeals to a very wide audience. Learn more and watch sample video clips now at churchleadership.com/studies.
How can Christians faithfully engage public policy? In this episode we speak with Miranda Zapor Cruz, professor of historical theology at Indiana Wesleyan University and author of Faithful Politics: 10 Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters. She shares with us how Christians can engage public policy in faithful, yet nonpartisan ways.
Jessica Anschutz: Welcome to Leading Ideas Talks, a podcast featuring thought leaders and innovative practitioners. I’m Jessica Anschutz, the Associate Director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership, and I am your host for this Leading Ideas Talk. Joining me is Miranda Zapor Cruz, a professor of historical theology at Indiana Wesleyan University and author of Faithful Politics: 10 Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters.
Our focus today is how Christians can faithfully engage public policy. Miranda, to help our listeners get to know you a little bit, and get to know your book, I want to invite you to share a little bit about the context for your book and how you came to write it.
Miranda Cruz: Sure. So, my academic interest in the intersection of faith and politics goes back to undergrad and studying theology, studying church history, but really developed as I became interested in the church under communism, and studying Eastern Europe and what it meant to be faithful in that context. Which led me to the bigger question of just, what does it actually mean to follow Christ faithfully in any context, especially any political context?
And so, for the last several election cycles, I have been a professor at Indiana Wesleyan, primarily teaching undergraduate students who are planning to go into ministry. And so, these students are really earnestly wrestling with this question of, “What does it mean to faithfully follow Christ, and doing that in this very politically fraught context that has characterized their entire adolescence and their early adulthood?”
And so, the questions that they’ve been asking me for the last 10 years, you know, what’s the relationship between the church and the state? What does it mean to follow Christ while being an American? What does it look like to be politically involved or not? All of those questions are the things that really fueled my desire to write this book, and those are the specific students, and the specific questions, that I had in mind as I was writing.
Jessica Anschutz: I think it’s wonderful how your work has come out of your experience with your students in the classroom. As I think about our audience of church leaders, what do you hope they will glean from your work?
Miranda Cruz: The thing I really want church leaders to get out of this is some useful tools that they can bring into their own leadership in their congregations that would especially help them to think through political engagement with more nuance, and to help their congregations think through their own political engagement as well. To go beyond the common Christian modes that I see of either completely separating faith and politics, so that faith is just private and has no role in public at all, or becoming so overwhelmed by politics that you just back off of it and don’t want to be engaged or even informed about what’s going on. Or the opposite extreme of bringing faith and politics together in a way that becomes nationalistic. I think those are the three I see most commonly. And so, my book is really trying to provide people with a framework for actually complicating that political engagement, but in a way that hopefully is helpful, that can aid our civil discourse, that can help people—help Christians in particular—to respect people who share the same beliefs, but still come to different political conclusions.
Jessica Anschutz: I really appreciate your approach, and I think it’s a great approach given the polarization that we’re in currently in this country. So, say a little bit more about what it means for church leaders to follow Christ as they engage public policy. What does that look like?
Miranda Cruz: I think church leaders need to be very clear about the faith motive for any particular policy position or political advocacy. I think there’s a place for public advocacy for the common good. I think that’s part of our role as clergy. If we’re so isolated from what’s going on in the world, then are we really loving our neighbor? Are we really ministering to the communities where God’s placed us? But the language that we use, the rhetoric that we employ when advocating for what we believe the Bible calls us to advocate for, can sometimes cross over into just adopting politically partisan talking points. And what happens sometimes is we’ll take issues that are really sacred to us as Christians, that are part of our vision for human flourishing and for what God calls us to, and we make those issues very, very small so that they can fit into a simple policy position.
And so, I think we need to understand that policy, advocacy—those can be part of the way that we help people see God’s vision for the world and our place in it—but our job isn’t done when we have advocated, or attended a march, or gotten a law passed, or whatever kind of policy bullet point that might be. And so, I think that when clergy—when pastors—are preaching or leading, there’s a difference between talking about that biblical narrative, those positions and values that God calls us to, versus saying, “This is the party, this is the person, this is the law that you have to support,” and thereby excluding those who might say, “I agree with you that God calls us to this, but I don’t actually agree that this is the way that should be implemented,” for example.
Jessica Anschutz: In the book, you talk a lot about “Christian citizenship.” And your answer, I think, was alluding to that a little bit, but I want to be sure that you have the opportunity to sort of define and explain “Christian citizenship” for our listeners before we get into some more of the book.
Miranda Cruz: Sure. I argue that Christian citizenship must have a discernible “Christian-ness” to it. That for a Christian who is a citizen, in this case of the United States—the context I’m writing in—that our citizenship shouldn’t be carried out or look exactly the same as people who aren’t Christian or people who are part of other faith traditions. And so, separate from policy positions or party alignments, our Christian citizenship needs to be “salty.” It needs to be bringing salt and light. We’re adding something that’s missing. I think our public discourse should be such that people miss the Christian voice if it’s not there, and I don’t think that’s generally the case right now.
It should be social. What I mean by that is it’s concerned about real social situations. It’s not a “Pie in the sky, by and by, someday when we all get to heaven, it’ll be fine, so we don’t need to do anything now.” So, it is focused on the real social circumstances that people live in. It’s pluralist, meaning we recognize that we live in a pluralist society. It’s diverse. Different Christians will approach pluralism differently and think differently about other religions and interreligious dialogue and things like that, but the truth of the matter is: We live in a country that is not entirely made up of Christian people, and even within Christianity, there is a pretty wide range of positions, and the way people approach Christianity. And so, we can embrace that pluralism and say, “What is it that we uniquely are bringing to our context? And how is what we bring actually, maybe inspiring people to want to know Christ, to hear the way, see the way that we engage in the public sphere,” and say, “There’s something different about the Christians and the way that they do this, and the way that I experienced love, even in the midst of these very fraught, tense conversations.”
Those are just a few things. I would say there, ultimately, it comes down to: We should look different. Our Christianity should form us and show, so deeply transform us, that there is just something different about the way that we are engaging our citizenship.
Jessica Anschutz: I want to invite you to say just a little bit more about how Christians can engage in non-partisan ways. Right? You talk in the book about how often people’s politics, when their faith aligns with a particular political party, but looking more deeply at faith, so that they’re engaging in a more faithful way. What might that look like?
Miranda Cruz: Yeah. I think that Christian leaders, pastors—I include myself in this category as a theology professor—I think that we have a unique responsibility for representing Christ first, and foremost, and only. And I think that’s a different responsibility than Christian lay people necessarily have; I think it looks a little different. And so, from a Christian leadership perspective, I think that it’s really important that our positions cannot be strongly aligned with a party or a particular candidate because, as we are uniquely called to be representatives of Christ and to be leading out front in the mission of making disciples, if there’s any confusion about being a disciple of Jesus Christ, requiring alignment with a specific position, or voting for a particular person, then we’re leading people in the direction of idolatry, ultimately.
And so, I think of particular issues. There are many social issues, political issues, that clergy Christian leaders can and should care about. And there’s a difference between forming people in their understanding of what it means to care for widows and orphans, or to value the sanctity of human life, or to care for immigrants and refugees. Those are all things that come directly from scripture. And we can form people’s vision for what God calls us to without taking that next step and saying, “Therefore, you need to register to vote for this party.” Or “Therefore, if you’re a Christian, you have to think this way about a specific law.” If we’re failing to talk about things that have political significance, we’re not preaching the whole council of scripture, because it’s all over scripture; but we can lead people to understand what it is that God calls us to in the world, while stopping short of aligning that with a particular party or person.
Serious Answers to Hard Questions
Leading Ideas Talks is also brought to you by Serious Answers to Hard Questions. In this thought-provoking video-based study, leading theologians address 10 issues that are obstacles to faith for many both in and outside of the church. Topics include the existence of evil, the relationship between science and religion, the sins of the church, and more. Serious Answers to Hard Questions is an outstanding introductory-level study that appeals to a very wide audience. Learn more and watch sample video clips now at churchleadership.com/studies.
Jessica Anschutz: Thank you for lifting that up for our listeners. As we’re thinking about engaging in public policy, I know that there are some church leaders, pastors, and laity, who are already in the trenches, hard at work doing this work. And there are some that are still sitting on the sidelines, thinking about how to engage. For those who haven’t yet engaged in this public policy work, how might they seek to engage?
Miranda Cruz: Sure. I think it has to start with becoming well informed. I think, for a lot of people who aren’t engaged or who don’t have, you know, issues that they really care about and are advocating around, it can be simply that they don’t feel like they know enough to know what to do, and sometimes that can be paralyzing. We’re so surrounded by information, but also by disinformation and misinformation that it can really be overwhelming to the point of saying, “Well, I don’t want to say or do anything because I don’t think I understand enough, and I might be wrong about something,” (and we’re all afraid of being wrong). On the flip side, we can be overconfident and say, “I am so certain that I’m right about this that I’m not even willing to entertain the possibility that there could be another perspective.”
So, for pastors who are thinking, “I think this is an important issue for me to be involved in my community,” I think it starts with finding good sources of information. Building relationships with your local elected officials. Start local with your city council, with your mayor—the people involved depend on where you’re located and how big your town is—and that kind of thing. But become engaged in those ways that are very accessible. Your local government wants to talk to you. They want you to show up at city council meetings, (and if they don’t, then that’s another issue to be concerned about), and to start building those relationships that would allow you the opportunity to become a trusted voice in particular conversations. That looks different around different issues, in different locations, but I think that’s really the place to start. See, what is going on in my community that I care about as a Christian. And what voice, what perspective do I bring that doesn’t come across simply as “Well I’m a Christian, and therefore I align with this party and this person,” but come across as a Christian, “I love my neighbor as myself, and I believe that part of that love of neighbor is engaging with this particular issue or issues.”
Jessica Anschutz: So then, once folks are engaged, right, from this “love of neighbor” perspective, and they have become informed, they’re doing the work, how might they seek to engage others in the work? How can those leaders get the people in the pews involved?
Miranda Cruz: I think one of the really valuable ways of doing that would be through things like small groups, or, you know, Sunday evening discussions. Different church cultures manage the details of that differently. In general, I don’t think preaching is necessarily the most helpful way to get people involved around particular issues because there’s, as all of us who have preached know, there is a high degree of people who think they heard what we said but didn’t hear what we actually said, and that can be misinterpreted. And so not to say you don’t ever address political issues from the pulpit, but getting people activated and engaged in, around a particular policy issue or something that’s going on locally; maybe that’s something you introduce on Sunday morning and say, “We’re going to have this opportunity to talk about that more.” People can kind of self-select into that then.
But then, I think pastors, Christian leaders, need to model the kind of dialogue that we hope our congregations are having. And so, that says a lot about the kind of tone that we bring. It says a lot for the way that we talk about the people we disagree with and the assumptions we make about people who are in the room. Because congregations have become so self-sorted along political lines, we can sometimes assume that everyone in the room agrees with us, and take it for granted that, “Of course, we should take this action. Of course, we all support this policy. Of course, we all voted this way.” And sometimes that’s true, but often it’s not. Often, people actually have a slightly different take on something, or they’re more liberal or conservative than you anticipated. And so, I think talking about an issue in a way that doesn’t assume that everybody there is on board, or has the same idea, or even that doesn’t assume that the position I might take as a Christian leader is the only right Christian position. Again, that depends so much on what the specific issue is and what we feel called to advocate for.
Jessica Anschutz: And I appreciate you lifting up the importance of sitting in that tension and seeking to understand the nuance, rather than, you know, sweeping it under the rug or avoiding the conversation because you anticipate that there will be conflict. How might leaders, sort of, prepare or equip themselves to do this work of faithfully sitting in the tension?
Miranda Cruz: I think we have to be prepared for the reality that not everyone wants to sit in that tension with us, and we need to be firm and settled in our commitment to that nuance and tension. I think we actually have to be more committed to the nuance than we have to be committed to a specific position, even. Committed to pushing congregants who may see things in a very black and white way and may read nuance as waffling or not taking a strong enough position on an issue. People leave churches over that kind of thing; people certainly email their pastors, call out their churches on social media, all of those kinds of things. And they can get very ugly. That’s the reality, and anyone who’s been a pastor or in that kind of position is aware of that. And so, I think we need to be prepared for that. We can’t delude ourselves into thinking, “If I just express it in the right way, my congregation is going to come along.”
I tend to be a very optimistic person. I tend to think if people just understood “this,” they would see how valuable this is, or they would understand a biblical position on this issue. Human nature isn’t actually that simple, and so, I think we have to be prepared for that. Depending on your church structure, conversations with boards or elders, other church leaders; very practical things like, do you have people in your congregation, in your denominational hierarchy, where that’s applicable, who have your back if people in your congregation have a serious problem. If you lose funding, if you lose financial support, we don’t always like to talk about that financial cost, but it’s a real thing. And so, we need to be aware of what that cost could be. And it’s one thing to say, “Oh, well, I know that I’m doing the right thing, and so come what may.” But in some cases, people will need to be emotionally, relationally, even financially prepared to potentially lose their jobs, or to have to take a pay cut, or to have other kinds of repercussions for their political stance. And because that cost can be so high, I think that makes it all the more important that we know, if that kind of cost is what comes of it, I’ve paid that cost because of faithfulness to Christ, not because I’m so committed to being a Democrat or a Republican, or because I’ve lined myself with a particular candidate or political leader.
Jessica Anschutz: In the book, you talk about how kingdom citizens should be conflicted about our policy opinions and our partisan leanings. And we’ve touched on this a little bit, but I want to give you the opportunity to share sort of—what does this look like if we are conflicted? Because I think so often folks get stuck in their positions. How can we really live into those conflicted places and spaces?
Miranda Cruz: Sure. I think we start with the understanding that no political party is the Christian political party. We’re not bringing about the kingdom of God on earth by getting particular peoples or parties in power. And so, because of that, the ways that we bring about justice (that’s the hope of law), is that it’s making the world more just: those actions are always going to be incomplete. We will not experience complete justice until the eternal kingdom of God, and we don’t bring that about by getting the right policies passed.
And so, in a fallen world in which there is brokenness and complication in every aspect of society, we’re conflicted because we recognize that, “In my support of this policy, (whatever that policy is), some people are going to be helped and some people are going to be harmed.” That—I cannot think of an example where that’s not true. Now, we can think of examples where the harm that’s done is small in comparison to the help, and things like that. But we can’t be so naïve as to think that if we just get this law passed, everything will be good, or everything about the way that policy is implemented will be utopian, right? And so, whatever our positions are on a particular issue, we can be conflicted in saying, “This is what I believe is right. This is my position on this policy. I can advocate for that. I can hold firmly to it.” But there ought to be this nagging sense that even as I’m advocating for that, I need to understand, as much as I can, what the unintended consequences will be. Who might be harmed? How can I mitigate that harm, even as I’m advocating around this particular position. And how do I prevent myself from becoming willfully blind to the potential harms and negative ramifications down the road just because I believe that I’m right about a particular policy.
Jessica Anschutz: I want to remind our listeners that your book is 10 Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters. I hope that they will check it out. I was inspired as I was reading it and think it’s a very useful tool, particularly in the midst of this election season and all of the polarization. I wish that I could sit here and talk with you for the rest of the day. But unfortunately, our time is drawing to a close, so I want to invite you to reflect on: what is your hope for kingdom citizens as they engage in public policy?
Miranda Cruz: My hope is that we will be thinking really carefully about what it means to follow Christ. That we would have a deeper understanding of what discipleship really requires of us, and the fact that that discipleship does have political implications. We can’t isolate following Christ from the rest of our day to day lives. And so, I’m hoping that Christians will come away with a more nuanced understanding of how following Christ faithfully can translate to their political engagement and also a more charitable understanding of Christians who come to different conclusions, so that we can have more meaningful, salty civic engagement. And I believe that if we can do that, then that will do a lot to advance the mission and witness of the church in the world.
Jessica Anschutz: Thank you so much for being an important voice as we seek to do this work and for your time today.
Miranda Cruz: Thank you for having me.
Announcer:Thank you for joining us for Leading Ideas Talks.
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Faithful Politics by Miranda Zapor Cruz. Copyright (c) 2024. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, USA. The book is available at IV Press, Cokesbury, and Amazon.
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