Clergy Partisanship: A Fad That's [Thankfully] Dying

A small item in the latest issue of Leadership caught my eye: "Clergy Less Politically Active." The headline is based on a recent study, published in a new book by Corwin Smidt, a professor at Calvin College. Smidt declares that there has been a steady decrease in approval of clergy involvement in partisan politics among those in evangelical Protestantism and a similar shift in attitudes among the clergy themselves.

I welcome this shift. While clergy should be granted the right to have their own political opinions, something the parish I serve has granted to me, I don't feel that any clergy should ever hold up one political agenda as preferred by God.

Among non-mainline Protestants, there was a faddish engagement in partisan politics (especially conservative partisan politics) that began in the 80s and is beginning to die out. In that sense, I rather think this political engagement was like any other fad that periodically sweeps through the ranks of the church---like everything from bus ministries to Alpha, from being "seeker sensitive" to open-collared Hawaiian shirts.

In earlier decades, I remember there being a similar political fad among mainline Protestants, that of the more liberal variety. That too has dissipated. Today it's virtually absent.

Many of these fads reflect the impatience that we Christians can feel with the way the Holy Spirit usually works in people's lives---slowly, methodically, through the patient witness of people who follow Jesus. Like generations of Christians before us, we're tempted to try to impose God's Kingdom (or our versions of it) on others through government regulations and law or social convention rather than through the gentle wooing of people who seek to follow Jesus each day.

This is one fad I'm very glad to see dying.

[Leadership is an excellent magazine. Check out its web site here.]