By Mark R. Amstutz
At their annual meetings last summer, mainline denominations endorsed a host of resolutions on U.S. foreign-policy issues. These resolutions called for, among other things, an and to military aid to El Salvador, economic sanctions against South Africa, and condemnation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
If history is any guide, this summer church assemblies will again adopt a number of public policy resolutions. Are such pronouncements useful? Do they guide decision makers and highlight the relevant biblical and moral principles that contribute to just foreign policy?
Based on the record of post resolutions, the answer is clearly no.
There are several reasons why these resolutions are ineffective.
First, church resolutions are simplistic, offering explicit pronouncements on complex foreignpolicy problems. But the important issues in international politics do not lend themselves to simple moral verdicts. In devising resolutions, mainline church leaders would do well to recall H.L. Mencken’s advice that “for every complex problem there is a simple solution-and it is always wrong.”
Second, resolutions are typically based on the political predilections of clergy and other church officials, rather than on careful moral analysis. Because these pronouncements are designed for political advocacy, the goal is to inspire and mobilize the public, not to inform or teach it. As a result, mainline denominations have issued few studies on important domestic or international problems. If churches want to expand their publicpolicy influence, they must earn it by preparing competent and morally authoritative teaching documents, such as the U.S. Catholic bishops’ pastoral letters on nuclear arms and on the economy.
Third, church resolutions seldom illuminate biblical perspectives on public policy problems. Mainline churches should offer a biblical approach to foreign policy problems, but they generally neglect moral and biblical analysis, the arena in which they are (or should be) most knowledgeable, and emphasize instead, public policy analysis, a domain in which they have limited competence.
Fourth, denominational resolutions tend to be moralistic–in part because public-policy making is regarded as a contest between justice and injustice, and good and evil. But policy making is not a simple battleground between right and wrong. Rather, it is a morally ambiguous process involving trade-offs among competing goals, means, and expected consequences. Given this ambiguity, churches should demonstrate great humility and tentativeness in their political pronouncements.
Fifth, resolutions seldom represent denominations’ constituencies. One reason for this is that the laity is politically more conservative than the clergy. There is nothing wrong with religious elites articulating political positions. But if churches don’t want to be treated as lobbies and interest groups, they will have to issue resolutions based on their moral authority, not on the ideological sentiments of their leaders.
Finally, church pronouncements are divisive. Politics is an arena of conflict, and when churches participate even indirectly-in governmental decision making, they can become involved in bitter disputes. Long ago Alexis de Tocqueville wisely observed that “the church cannot share the temporal power of the state without being the object of a portion of that animosity which the latter excites.”
Churches do have a role to play in public affairs. But their role surely is not to tell the Secretary of State how to do his job. The influence of churches will grow if they resist the simplistic resolutions, and instead, cultivate moral analysis of issues. Lobbies issue pronouncements, but only churches can offer redemptive leaven.
From BRF Witness
Vol. 25, No. 5
September/October 1990
The above article is copyrighted by CHRISTIANITY TODAY 1990,
and is used here by permission.