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The ( hurch and Liberal Democracy
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sume (his presents no problem, as the inherent justice of our secular and
democratic polity provides the appropriate means for the expression of Chris
tian social concerns. Most recent Christian social ethics in America has thus
derived from the largely unexamined axiom that Christians should engage in
politics to secure a more nearly just society. Following the lead of the social
gospel, social ethics presumes that the task of Christians is to transform5 our
basic social and economic structures in order to aid individuals in need. Thus
political involvement is seen to be the best mechanism to deal with, and
perhaps even transform, structures of injustice.
While Christians have sometimes naively overestimated the extent of
such transformations, they have also developed extremely sophisticated and
influential portrayals of the moral possibilities and limits of our polity. Reinhold
Niebuhr took the enthusiasm of the social gospel and made it all the more
powerful by suggesting the limits of what love could accomplish through the
politics characteristic of our society. Niebuhr saw clearly that love without
power is ineffective, but that power must at the same time limit the pos
sibilities of the realization of love. Yet those limits do not lessen the Christian
duty to use power to secure the forms of justice possible in our social and
political system.6 To do anything less is to be unfaithful to the Christian’s
understanding of history and our involvement in it.
Moreover, from this perspective attempts by Christians to avoid political
involvement because of the “dirty” nature of politics are rightly condemned
as irresponsible, if not unfaithful. Rather it is the task of Christians to be poli
tically involved exactly because we recognize that our politics inherently
involves compromise and accommodation. To withdraw from the political
in order to remain pure is an irresponsible act of despair. Even more, such
withdrawal is self-deceptive as it creates the condition by which the political
realm may claim unwarranted significance.
It is my contention, however, that Christian enthusiasm for the political
involvement offered by our secular polity has made us forget the church’s
more profound political task. In the interest of securing more equitable forms
of justice possible in our society, Christians have failed to challenge the moral
presuppositions of our polity and society. Nowhere is the effect of this seen
more powerfully than in the Christian acquiescence to the liberal assumption
that a just polity is possible without the people being just.7 We simply ac
cepted the assumption that politics is about the distribution of desires, irres
pective of the content of those desires, and any consideration of the develop
ment of virtuous people as a political issue seems an inexcusable intrusion into
our personal liberty.
The more destructive result is that the church has increasingly imitated
in its own social life the politics of liberalism. We have almost forgotten that