Our Agenda, Mr. President

Whoever has won the election—and we are writing this before the voting—our duty as Christians remains unchanged. We are commanded to pray that our President will be a force for good, both in the world and at home. How can he do so?

In The World

The more than half-century struggle against totalitarianism has finally and favorably ended—a cause for rejoicing. But new global challenges are arising, and major responsibility for meeting them continues to fall to the United States, and thus to the President. He may well be called upon to seek order and stability in the volatile post-communist world. The President should not shy away from prudent American involvement, but he should also realize that order and stability are not the only important goals of a sound foreign policy.

Our nation was built on principles universal in character and therefore applicable everywhere. These principles are consistent with what Christian faith teaches, namely, that every person is worthy of respect and equal treatment. By emphasizing that governments are instituted to protect the rights of individuals, which Christians know are God-given, the new President can help consolidate and expand freedom’s victory over totalitarianism.

At Home

The new President must deal with a full agenda of domestic problems. Recovering from the recession, dealing with the deficit, reforming our health-care system are all priorities the new President and the new Congress cannot ignore.

But noneconomic matters are also of vital interest to our nation. We must hope and pray that in an age of moral relativism and confusion the new President will use his office to contend for what is right and good and just. Ours is an immigrant nation founded not on race, creed, or a specific religion but on those universal principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Given humanity’s sinful nature, no one should expect an end to racial and religious bigotry; but as Christians, we know we should strive against it. In the policies the President proposes on matters affecting civil rights, as well as in his rhetoric, he can and should seek to unite us as a people by bidding us to live up to our best ideals.

Americans are divided on whether the law should protect a woman’s right to an abortion. But cannot both sides agree it is a tragedy that so many unborn children—1.6 million annually—are aborted? Our new President should work to reduce this number through policies that seek to protect human life.

As Christians we must pray that our new President will pursue social policies that will counter (or at least not reinforce) negative cultural trends—such as welfare dependency, single-parent families, debt-accumulating lifestyles, unbridled individualism. And we must pray he will recognize the important historical role of religion in nurturing the best in us as a people.

Politics contains both possibilities and limits. It is cynical not to admit the possibilities and utopian not to recognize the limits. Thus, a final hope and prayer for our new President is that he has the wisdom to know which tasks, and in which order, he should pursue, and which tasks he should steadfastly refuse to take on.

Guest editorial by Terry Eastland, resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and the author of Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency, just published by the Free Press.

PC: Almost Correct?

Controversy over “political correctness” (PC) has entered the mainstream of North American culture with surprising speed. Cover stories on major newsmagazines have profiled the issue, best-selling books and television talk shows have presented impassioned advocacy of one side or the other.

Political correctness is typically invoked on behalf of the oppressed and marginalized, but it also describes the attempt to constrain the expression of ideas that allegedly do not support these groups’ full humanity. Christians, for example, have often been labelled politically incorrect because of our exclusivity (we claim Jesus is the only way to salvation) and because of some regrettable chapters in our history.

What’s Good About It

PC attacks on Christianity have not made the movement popular with believers, but there are at least two respects in which PC is correct.

First, many of the causes PC embraces are good ones from a Christian point of view. Not all are, and Christians must exercise keen, biblical discernment regarding each case. But who can seriously maintain that women, visible minorities, the handicapped, and the poor are equally and fairly treated? No, Christians today ought to champion the welfare of all members of our society as equally valuable to our loving God, as many Christians have in the past.

Second, at the level of public speech, as well as at the levels of policies and programs, it can be good to be compelled to “watch our language” regarding those different from ourselves. When I attended the University of Chicago fresh out of Wheaton College Graduate School, I quickly intuited that I had better drop some of my favorite jokes and switch to more inclusive language. I second-guessed my words every time I raised a question in class, conversed over lunch, or wrote a paper.

And it was completely worthwhile. I learned not to offend people for no reason. I learned to stretch my own concepts out of a privileged, white, male North American mindset to include lots of other people—to take account of other points of view more naturally than before. In addressing pluralized groups, I learned to switch terms to include as many as possible, and thereby concentrate their minds on my message, rather than distract or alienate them by some unconscious faux pas.

We ought to use considerate speech as Christians, “so far as it depends on [us],” living “peaceably with all” (Rom. 12:18NRSV). We must be sensitive to language—every bit as much as foreign missionaries are to their crosscultural contexts. How do we hope to win the attention and appreciation of others if we offend them on secondary issues?

Beyond our concern for others, however, it is good for us to become more aware of other points of view. Our own thinking about and acting in the world will broaden and deepen as we adopt other perspectives. Likewise, such habits of sensitivity are good, even necessary, for our rapidly pluralizing society. Christians, of all people, ought to be in the vanguard of promoting corporate well-being.

The Down Side Of PC

So the causes often are good, and sensitivity to the thoughts and language of people unlike ourselves is good for us. But the customary third cheer I cannot raise. Unfortunately, PC is often not deeply concerned for righteousness for all, but only for advantage for some; for vengeance, rather than justice. PC often destroys the very things that make emancipation possible: free speech, civil conversation, respect for differences, and mutual submission to principles of logic and fairness. And when it does, Christians must once again obey the Lord’s command to work for shalom, to resist injustice and to promote well-being—and this will mean resisting some forms of PC.

Christian students in university classrooms and professors in academic societies should not be afraid to speak up simply because they hold an alternative point of view, yet many are. Too often the anti-Christian animus of professors and students stems from disappointment with a Christianity that failed them in times of intellectual or personal crisis. Their bitterness is rooted in crushed hope and betrayal.

On the other hand, some reactions from non-Christians are justified. When a student mouths a shallow, platitudinous, closed-minded Christianity, what sort of reaction do we expect? Self-confident ignorance deserves a hearing, but it also deserves criticism. It is not “anti-Christian” to critique such opinions.

Of course, there is no excuse for a professor or other authority to punish someone for expressing contrary views. I have spoken up frequently, and only once as a Christian student or professor have I received a disrespectful response. On that occasion, I followed it up with the professor involved, and he publicly apologized for his breach of academic manners. Christians ought to hold their academic colleagues to the values of the university itself without apology.

The same is true at the larger level of the public square. If politicians, school board members, social workers, and others will engage in the conversations of our time with intelligence and integrity, we will need to cry, “Prejudice and persecution!” less often.

Finally, evangelicals had better be careful about throwing stones at PC as if we know nothing of the problem in our own glass houses. How well do our families promote appropriately independent thought and expression? And how well do they promote consideration of the “other,” those who are different or marginalized? How well do our churches and schools and missions and leaders promote the same things? Evangelicals need to consider how much we ourselves restrain these kinds of thoughts according to a kind of “Christian correctness.”

If Christians believe the church and society at large need to improve, and if Christians believe fresh, wide-angled thinking is necessary to accomplish that, then we ought to cultivate our own intellectual resources and lead the way in causes that promote shalom.

By John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

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