Should Church Leaders Run for Political Office

Should church leaders run for political office?

There is nothing inherently wrong with a church leader running for office. He is within his rights as a citizen if he wishes to serve in a political capacity.

There is concern, however, that his behavior as a political figure might compromise the church to which he belongs. A church leader in office is inevitably also viewed as a religious figure, a mouthpiece for the values and morals of his faith community. If and when he falters, the whole church stands subject to criticism. In contrast, a member of the laity who is professionally a politician may fail or commit a scandalous mistake in office, but this may not necessarily implicate the church. She is likely to be seen as having made decisions solely in her capacity as a political figure.

The Bible is silent on the topic of church leaders running for political office.

In the Old Testament, however, we get a picture of how the three major kinds of leadership – the offices of prophet, priest, and king — are related and could serve as a cautionary note.

These three offices were usually occupied by different people, and often were in conflict or in tension with one another. The prophet and priest may at times be one and the same. But the priest and king are distinct, with clear boundaries. The priest has certain functions that cannot be arrogated by the king, as Saul learns when he usurps the task of offering ritual sacrifices from the prophet Samuel.

Likewise, the offices of prophet and king are quite distinct, and often in conflict. The tension between  prophet and king derives from the former’s role as a critiquing element, as with the prophets Isaiah and Elijah. A prophetic office requires distance from the king. The economist Henry George, in a letter to Pope Leo XIII, asserted the mutual exclusivity of the two: “Your Holiness is not a servant of the state, but a servant of God, a guardian of morals.”

Of course, all three offices—priest, prophet, and king—have been integrated in the person of Jesus. These offices were also given to the church. There are parts of the body of Christ who are called to be priests, prophets, and kings. Each has its own area of competence. The prophet brings the Word of God to the world, the priest intercedes on behalf of the world, and the king governs as a steward under God.

These functions become muddled when a church leader swings between being a pastor and a politician. There is a confusion of calling. Because of the potential complications for the church, church leaders ought first to clarify to themselves what it is really they are called to do. From biblical data, it seems that those who are called to be politicians should be politicians. Those who are called to be pastors should be pastors. It is good to bear in mind the observation that Jesus was at the height of his power, not when he was elected, but when he was executed.

This article was written by Dr. Melba Padilla Maggay and Sharon Kim of ISACC.

Unto Caesar What is Caesar’s

The situation is delicate and tortuous.

The Pharisees, — who tend to be rabid nationalists, –  and the Herodians, who support Roman imperial power, –  have joined,  like today’s parties of convenience, in an unholy alliance against Jesus.

Laying a trap, they pose the tricky question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” If Jesus answers no, he could incite a revolt and be crushed by the Roman colonial authorities. If yes, he is liable to rouse the anger of nationalistic Jews, who bitterly resent having to pay tribute to the occupying power. He borrows a denarius and asks, holding up the coin: “Whose image and inscription is this?” His opponents reply, “Caesar’s.” Jesus then says to them, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

This saying has long been interpreted as the basis for what is known as the ‘separation of church and state.’ This principle grew out of the state’s struggle with the church for dominance since medieval times. It holds that the church and the state have equal power as sovereign institutions, and should not encroach on each other’s sphere of influence. Since the Reformation and the increasing secularization of society, this principle has steadily gained ground in reaction to the church’s undue uses of worldly power, as with our experience of the Iglesia Ni Cristo as a power bloc and of other churches whose spiritual authority have been rendered ambiguous by dalliance with partisan politics.

But, was Jesus actually saying that the church should have nothing to do with politics, as pietistic or quiescent elements in the churches would suggest? Did he mean that the church has no say whatsoever in the affairs of the state?

Jesus’ own practice would belie this.

It is true that he dissociated himself from the combustible crowds who wanted to make him king, constantly invoking the theme, “My kingdom is not of this world” when both Jews and Romans framed his Messiahship as a purely political one. Yet he and his disciples also behaved in such a way that they were always subject to charges of subversion, and indeed were crucified or fed to the lions for precisely such charges. Why was Jesus, and the church after him, vulnerable to suspicions of destabilizing political powers?

The answer, perhaps, lies in the intrinsic ambiguity of what it really means to ‘give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’ The untidy truth Jesus left unsaid was that what belongs to Caesar also belongs to God. Civic loyalty to Caesar happens to overlap with our loyalty to God.

There is an intrinsic tension between the cry of the Jewish mob, “We have no king but Caesar,” and the disciples’ claim that “Jesus is Lord.” Jesus is a higher, alternative power; allegiance to him is always a threat to forces and powers that demand total, uncritical obedience.

Those who take seriously Jesus’ lordship over all of life will often run against the grain of those who like to domesticate religion and make it conform to business as usual. Seen this way, Jesus’ followers are potentially and ultimately subversive, even when they try to render unto Caesar as much as he deserves.

Church as Power Broker
The church’s track record vis-à-vis the state has not been without blemish or lapses. Throughout the centuries, the church in its relationship with the world has swung from domination to capitulation, from separation to solidarity.

Domination was characteristic of periods when the church was in a majority situation, as in the time of Constantine up to the close of the Middle Ages, when the gilded throne of the papacy ruled with both the cross and the sword. Capitulation characterized periods when the church was weak and in a minority situation, with survival as its main agenda. Separation has been resorted to in times of internal rot and corruption, as with the monastic movement which saw isolation as a form of purification. Solidarity occupied the church in periods when repression caused it to be a voice to the voiceless, as with recent experiences in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

Churches in the Philippines exhibit these tendencies in varying degrees and permutations. The Roman Catholic Church, being in the majority, wields much influence in affairs of the state, while Protestant churches, as a minority, display more insular tendencies. Charismatic churches emphasize inwardness and the use of spectacular spiritual gifts that have yet to result in the practical out-working of justice on a national scale. The Iglesia Ni Cristo, on the other hand, directly uses worldly power to advance its own ends and pet political causes.

What do we make of these various church responses to the problem of political power? First, God’s Word has social dimensions that cannot be ignored. Social justice is a general concern of the church. The poor and the weak, as the newly-installed Pope Francis I [/the first/] reminds us, ought to be at the center of the church’s mission.

But secondly, the way to go about this is not to turn the church as an institution into a political power or a social welfare agency. The local church—or what Sir John Stott calls the ‘church gathered’—cannot major in making political pronouncements, or even in economic development, for its primary calling is evangelism and discipleship. It is the ‘church scattered’—that is, the people of God spread across social structures like business, media or government—who have the responsibility to see to it that the institutions in which they serve are consistent with God’s purposes for society. Current corporate action by Christians seeking to impact governance and the theory and practice of their professions is an example of the visibility of the church expressing itself in secular structures.

The Word of God certainly has something to say to errant powers. But there is a difference between being prophetic and mere politicking. The pulpit cannot be turned into a platform for passing judgment on sociopolitical issues.  A church turned lobbyist is, in a sense, no more than just another vested interest, to be fought and resisted in much the same way that other vested interests need to be resisted when they begin to skew and subvert democratic processes.

The church has no need to play politics in order to wield influence. Simply by being itself, by being true to the power of its divine mandates and the purity of its purpose, it has power. It need not descend to the level of a power bloc by the acquisition of political clout.

The Pope on Church and Politics

For some time now, churches—whether Roman Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant—have been under pressure to recover lost ground from secularism and demonstrate their relevance in that most public of arenas—politics.

There was a time when the church and the state (and the struggle between the two) dominated public space. Then came the idea of a ‘secular society,’ and the church as an institution got swept more and more to the sidelines, mumbling in corners about the meaning of its own symbols.

Today, past the age of modernity and the increasing trouble of secular societies that have lost their moral and spiritual moorings, there is a longing to go back to the certainties and pristine simplicity of the old faith.

This longing is seen in the resurgence of interest in religions, and in the renewed respect for the oldest institution of Christendom—the Holy See or the Papacy. This early, the newly-installed Pope Francis has given indication of where the largest Christian communion—the Roman Catholic Church—might be heading in its relation to society.

One is a renewed emphasis on the spiritual nature of the church and a re-centering of its self-identity and witness on Christ: “We can walk when we want to, we can build many things,” he told the elector-cardinals assembled for the Mass Pro Ecclesia in the Sistine Chapel, “but if we do not witness to Jesus Christ then it doesn’t matter. We might become a philanthropic NGO but we wouldn’t be the Church, the Bride of the Lord.”

Another is a deeper concern for the poor and care for creation, as signalled by his choice of name and his call for church leaders to guard against ‘spiritual worldliness’ and embrace suffering: He said, “when we walk without the Cross, when we build without the Cross, when we profess a Christ without the Cross…We are worldly. We are bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but not disciples of the Lord.”

In this initial homily, we sense a reaction to the hierarchy’s ceremonial pomp and the drift towards a de-spiritualized understanding of the church’s work of transformation. Seen from within the Pope’s context in Latin America, home of liberation theology and marxist-inspired social thinking, there is a definite distancing from those who tend to reduce the church’s mission to merely political engagement.

At the same time, there is a humble note of compassion and servanthood, particularly for those who are poor and weak, and a sensitive hand of friendship extended to unbelievers. This Pope is clearly not working within the medieval idea of ‘Christendom,’ when the church thought it had the right and authority to rule the world and competed with the state for political hegemony.

Historically, the church has unhappily alternated between being servants and masters of the world. This is partly owing to misconceptions surrounding the nature of the church as a temporal institution and its precise relationship to secular powers or to the state.

It is a good sign that, within the context of the Roman Catholic church, the new Pope seems to be clear on what the church is about in the world: a corporate entity born of the Spirit, primarily witnessing to the redemptive suffering and compassion of Christ.

This article was written by Dr. Melba Padilla Maggay of ISACC.

On the Road to Emmaus
Much of our life is spent transitioning—moving out of what we once were but not yet becoming what we wish to be. We wait, suspended between things.
We wonder what it must have been like for Jesus those three days — with the crisis of Golgotha past, but the resurrection still in the future.
The two disciples on the road to Emmaus were also in a kind of limbo or state of disillusionment. Scripture records that on the way, they were discussing the event of the cross with sadness and disappointment.  “We had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel,” they said.
The Jews had great expectations about Jesus. They thought of him as a political messiah, someone who would restore the decayed dynasty of David and liberate Israel from under the bootheels of colonial Rome. Instead, just a week after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus was arrested, summarily tried and executed like a common criminal. The disciples were scattered, and, like the two men on the Emmaus road, were making their way back to their own homes.
Yet, without their knowing it, Jesus himself walked alongside the two men on their way to Emmaus. The two did not recognize him. Arriving home as the shadows gathered, they invited Jesus to stay. Jesus surprised them, behaving not as a guest, but as host. He broke the bread, blessed it and gave thanks. In the familiar gestures of eating together, the disciples recognized him. And as soon as they did, Jesus disappeared from their sight.
The disciples realized that indeed, it could only have been Jesus who opened the Scriptures to them, explaining that he must die as prophesied and rise again. “Did not our hearts burn within us?” they asked. His presence gave them conviction, burning into the depths of their being.
In our own lives and communities, there are moments when we suffer what sociologists call ‘disabling perplexities.’ We come face to face with questions that have no answers, problems that defy solutions and situations that try our faith. We get weary of waiting, but when finally we decide to move on, we lose ourselves in the transition.
Yet, the account on the Emmaus road reveals that in the Christian’s journey from certainty through confusion, from great expectations through disillusionment, the risen Jesus is there to accompany us. Though we may not recognize him, those who believe in Jesus receive guidance in their journeys and will ultimately find their hope renewed because truly, he has risen.

This article was written by Dr. Melba Padilla Maggay of ISACC.

Evil in Art

Nowadays, it is considered chic and sophisticated to expose ourselves to so much clever filth as a way of educating ourselves in the ways of the world. We feel there is a world out there worth exploring, a whole lot of aesthetic experience from which we are being shut out by the safe and narrow boundaries hemming us in.

Certainly, we can not hide our heads in the sand and be snug and warm and narrow in our unknowing. But we can not be too knowing either, too worldly-wise. Evil is like fire, we can not get too near it and not get burned.

This was the bitter lesson that the first man and woman learned from the beginning of creation. It was the subtle conceit of Eve that she could handle evil, know it deeply and intimately, and, like God, still remain innocent. She was not content with a warning, with a merely intellectual knowledge of what the forbidden fruit could do: “in the day that you eat of it, you shall die,” said God. Still, in her judgment, the fruit appeared to be desirable and pleasing to the eye. She wanted to try and experience the eating of this one fruit which, according to the snake’s propaganda, would make her wise, just like God.

This hunger for illegitimate experience, for empirical proof, has been with us ever since, as with a child who puts out her hands to touch a scalding pot to see if it will really burn as she has been told.

This is not to say that we can not ever countenance seeing a film or reading a novel that is all despair and not exactly up to our more reverent taste.

There is a blackness that leads to truth. It has been said that a man eats of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and falls; but if he takes another bite, he may well be on his way to redemption.

It is certainly dangerous to expose ourselves to so much rot and violence. We are told to refrain from seeing things that cause us to sin. Better to go limping up to heaven with an eye plucked out or a hand maimed, says Jesus.

A healthy dose of despair and grim realism is sometimes needed, however, to shake us out of our warm little corners and drag us by the collar to see again with a raw anguish the utter desolation of a world without God.

Nowadays, no one likes to look at the pain of the world with any degree of seriousness. It is too dark and dim and spoils our fun. Fashionable society has made a fine art of its determination to maintain inner equilibrium by focusing on the trivial. Anything ‘heavy’ is dismissed offhand as rather socially inept. Nothing is allowed to disturb the surface bonhomie and superficial smartness of high-society talk.

The nihilist prophets of much contemporary art may appear completely and defiantly godless, but it may be that God is speaking through them. After all, he once spoke through Balaam’s ass.

This article was written by Dr. Melba Padilla Maggay of ISACC.

‘Good Bad Art’ and ‘Bad Good Art’

Artistic expression, by its nature, usually involves ambiguity. In a previous commentary, we mentioned two extremes of this phenomenon—‘Good bad art’ and ‘Bad good art.’

‘Good bad art’ may be morally good, but in its poverty of execution, dishonors the God of Creation. It is of course conceivable that a bad hymn with fine lyrics could save a man, or that a saccharine melodrama could lend a sweeter disposition, however, momentary, to the people who file out of the theater. There is a sense in which the Message, if it is sound, may offset the weakness of the medium.

But ‘Good bad art’ poorly reflects the Creator and the manner of his making in all its thoughtfulness and profundity, which in his stubborn grace, he enables men and women to imitate. Our own constant exposure to the mediocre takes its toll, eroding our sense of what is fine and genuinely beautiful. Much of today’s so-called ‘Christian art’ is actually maudlin, embarrasingly sentimental, and even erodes our sense of what is genuinely spiritual. It is not an accident that vulgarity is often associated with meanness. We were made in such a way that ugliness somehow blunts our capacity for spiritual things.

This is the reason why we are told to immerse ourselves in that which is true and good around us: “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things,” says the Apostle Paul. (Philippians 4:8) Beauty is to be our constant environment, the air we breathe.

Art, says C.S. Lewis, is really ‘spilt religion’, and the trouble with ‘Good bad art’ is that it is not compelling enough to keep us licking and lapping the wine until we come to the Cup from which it flows.

Now, if our quarrel with ‘good bad art’ is that it is not beautiful enough, our quarrel with ‘bad good art’ is that it is not true enough. For all of its grit and flaming brilliance, it is still, as some suspect, ‘a beautiful lie.’

The world is not one deep void in which you call out into the darkness and find no one there to answer. Life is not “a hopeless confrontation between human questioning and the silence of the universe,” as the existentialist Albert Camus would have us believe. There is someone home, someone in the universe who listens.

We are told that in many and various ways, God spoke darkly to our forefathers. In these last days, he has spoken to us clearly by the Son. God has broken the silence, has in fact come down to meet us in our need. If the human tragedy seems unrelieved, it is only because many refuse to be subject to the meaning of this God who has come to us to die and rise again from the crisis in Golgotha.

‘Bad good art’ can be seductively charming and deadly. Quite subliminally, it eventually distorts our values and erodes our moral sense. Like ‘good bad art,’ constant exposure to it ultimately corrupts our souls.

This article was written by Dr. Melba Padilla Maggay of ISACC.

Art and Morals

Even as conscious, counter-cultural believers, we must admit we like the things of this world. A vital part of us is drawn to the excitement and the fine things the world produces for its amusement. There is nothing wrong with this. We are all creatures, made to inhabit the world of the senses and find much of our enjoyment from  it.

It is true an entirely new nature is being made out of the believer, a ‘new creation,’ the Apostle Paul calls it. We acquire new tastes, new passions, appetites that are more sharply attuned to things other than the earth. Yet, still, we are only people, just as much moved by the stuff of common human experience. The world, still, is home to us. After all, we shall inherit it.

There is much about the world which is good—good like good bread, sunshine, or the thick and rich smell of fine leather shoes. In these we can take strong and unreserved pleasure. But there are other things which take on a moral color depending on the nature of the people who make them.

It does not matter very much if the baker who bakes your bread approves of pre-marital sex or is an atheist. If he is a good, professional baker you will still have good bread. His beliefs and ultimate commitments will normally not show themselves very much in the quality of his work.

But take an artist, a good one, who thinks that human sex is an act of mere nature, of the same order as animals mating, or that the universe came into being by sheer random chance. What you will have is a work that is rather mixed in its effects, as when we laugh, in spite of ourselves, at some clever joke that is not exactly chaste.

No matter how brilliant, the artist will reflect in his work, in a most moving way, the anarchy of his morals or the desolation of a world emptied of all meaning. His art will come to us fraught with ambiguities. In some measure, his work will display the innate goodness of the image of the Creator, from whom we receive all capacity to create. But also, his creation will have the marks of  our fallen nature and the anguished brokenness of a world without God.

This quality of ambiguity is especially seen in at least two kinds of art: what has been called ‘good bad art’ and ‘bad good art.’

‘Good bad art’ has the angels on its side; it usually warms the heart and highlights the goodness of the world we live in. It has a staunch simplicity, an unabashed directness that makes it such a “graceful monument to the obvious,”  as the playwright George Orwell once put it. Usually, though, this sort of work is crude in its sentimentality, feebly executed, and lacking in depth of vision. It is kitschy.

‘Bad good art,’ on the other hand, is often brilliant and bracing. Its insight can be cutting, its honesty cruel, and shows us life at its most sordid and ultimately damning to the soul.

These two kinds of art pose the most problems to many of us. What are we to make of an art that is full of stout emotions but is a bundle of unrealized intentions? Are we to reject art that denies the possibility of hope yet so achingly wraps for us a beauty we thought had been altogether lost?

We shall try to answer this question in the next part of this series.
This article was written by Dr. Melba Padilla Maggay of the ISACC.

Who Are You on Facebook?

With Facebook now part of millions of people’s daily routine, there have emerged two dominant kinds of Facebook users. The first is the Exhibitionist, the second the Voyeur.

First, let’s take a look  at the Facebook Exhibitionist. The Exhibitionist must think everything about herself important—at least important enough to be shared online. She puts on display her wealth, intelligence, piety, career success, romantic life or family, or all of the above.
She is not embarrassed to regularly post solo photos. Often, the Exhibitionist took the photo herself. In the extreme, the photo is of herself in skimpy clothes. Or, the Exhibitionist may eagerly post status updates or photos detailing her latest acquisition, be it car, gadget, or Louis Vuitton bag. Together with material possessions, the Exhibitionist may go on to reveal she has the means to enjoy certain luxuries in life—travel, stays at exclusive resorts, lavish buffet meals, access to expensive shows or exclusive events. The Exhibitionist may also choose to reveal the inner recesses of her emotional life, posting romantic messages that are best declared in private.

Now, while the Exhibitionist reveals everything about herself, the Voyeur enjoys knowing them. The word voyeur is a French word which means “one who sees.” Let’s observe some common practices of an online voyeur.

A voyeur spends most of his time on Facebook browsing through all the photos of his friends… even photos of his friends’ friends, people he doesn’t really know. He scrutinizes every detail, taking note of the personal qualities the photos reveal. He devours the places his friends visited, what food they ate, what kinds of appliances, furniture and gadgets they possess. On one hand, the voyeurism gives him the pleasure to vicariously possess things and experience events normally out of his reach. On the other, gaining knowledge of all this information gives the voyeur a sense of power to judge the person. “I’ve seen how his house looks like. It’s not much better than mine!”a Voyeur could say. Or he could think, “If she only went to church more often, she wouldn’t have this problem.”

Are you a Facebook Exhibitionist or a Facebook Voyeur?

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook aims to connect people. That may be true. But a higher percentage of these connections than we dare admit have to do with the desire to impress others and make ourselves look good. While posting a status, comment or photo, have we not at some time thought, “I want others to see how good I look in this photo”, or “My comment is the wittiest”, or “I’ll share the title of the book I’m reading so my friends will think I’m very intelligent”?

On Facebook, we daily face the perils of thinking too highly of ourselves, exposing ourselves to temptation and covetousness, or undervaluing our individual uniqueness.

This editorial was written by Joanna Nicolas-Na, ISACC writer and editor at the OMF Literature Inc.

Luna and Hidalgo: Art as Social Comment

Have you ever gone to the National Museum to see the mural Spoliarium  by Juan Luna? Or the Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho by Felix Resureccion Hidalgo, now at the Central Bank’s Metropolitan Museum? Why are these paintings of 1884 and their winning of medals so important?

Since the martyrdom of Fathers Gomez, Burgos and Zamora in 1872, patriotism united both indios and  ilustrados,  along with some criollos, mestizos and a few elements in the military. As nationalism burned, Spain’s oppressive control of the country worsened.

Ilustrados studying in Spain fought for reforms in the colonial government. The issues were—equality of Filipinos and Spaniards before the law, Philippine representation in the Spanish Cortes, “Filipinization” of Catholic parishes, and granting of individual liberties to Filipinos such as freedom of speech, press, assembly, and to petition for grievances. The Propaganda Movement led by Graciano Lopez Jaena, Marcelo H. del Pilar and Jose Rizal published the newspaper La Solidaridad to gain support in pressing for reforms.

In 1884, Luna won the Gold Medal for Spoliarium and Hidalgo won Silver for Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho at the Exposicion General de Bellas Artes in honor of King Alfonso XII in Madrid. This showed the world that indios or the brown race whom the Spanish colonizers oppressed and kept ignorant, were capable of great artistic and intellectual achievement.

The subject of both paintings were taken from antiquities of imperial Rome, used by the artists as allegory for the seething social and political condition of the Philippines.

The Spoliarium is a scene at the Roman Colosseum where, at the end of a gladiatorial combat which was then public entertainment, bloody carcasses of prisoners-of-war and slave gladiators were dragged away to be despoiled of their last earthly belongings. Relatives could claim the bodies and those abandoned were either burned or fed to the lions.

Leon Ma. Guerrero in The First Filipino (2007) cited Rizal as saying that Spoliarium embodied the essence of our social, moral and political life: humanity in severe ordeal, humanity unredeemed, reason and idealism in open struggle with prejudice, fanaticism and injustice. Guerrero also implied that Luna’s scene of “the tumult of the crowd, the shouts of slaves, the metallic clatter of dead men’s armor, the sobs of orphans, the murmured prayers…” inspired Rizal to carve a mark of his own by writing his own  Spoliarium— ‘Noli Me Tangere.’

Hidalgo’s “Christian Virgins Presented to the Populace” portrays two half-nude female slaves stripped of their garments as they are ridiculed by male Romans who are probably officials,  among them a learned man as his laurel crown suggests. One woman leans haplessly against a wall as her hands are tied behind; another has her ankles bound as she crouches and hides her face in humiliation. Like Spoliarium,  this painting is an allegory of the country Filipinas, this time through the metaphor of  disgraced women.

Rizal enjoined his compatriots to revere Luna and Hidalgo not only for winning individual artistic honors, but also for inspiring  future generations to achieve  artistic excellence as a form of social comment.

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This article was written by Imelda Cajipe Endaya, an artist and ‘Fellow for the Arts’ of ISACC.