Christianity and Politics: Three Current Perspectives in Light of Jesus, the Early Church and Rome- Greg Boyd

I have been facinated with Greg Boyd ever since he spoke at my church a couple years ago. He's a megachurch pastor who is a former atheist and a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and Yale Divinity School, yet he takes a very literal approach in his belief in Satan, angels and demons. I admit that I struggle with believing in a literal devil or demons and angels, so for an Ivy League trained intellectual and scholar to embrace these things is encouraging to me. I'll comment more on Boyd's political ideas in upcoming posts.
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But a third perspective remains. This perspective is one that, I believe, most accurately reflects the activity of Jesus and the early church in their political element. It is a perspective that views politics through a theological lens, and one that relies much more on faith, than on the political process.

In 2004, Dr. Greg Boyd, a pastor at a mega church in Minnesota was being pressured by various Christian, conservative groups to take a political stand in his pulpit. Under the increasing pressure, Boyd finally decided to address his reluctance to enter the political fray with a series of sermons he called, “The Cross and the Sword.” To his surprise there was an incredibly negative reaction by some of his congregation resulting in 20 percent (roughly 1,000 people) of them leaving. This exodus from Boyd's church made national headlines. A year later he penned a book version of his series entitled, The Myth of a Christian Nation.

In this book, Boyd takes a much different view of America and a Christian’s role in her politics than the religious Right and Left. Rather than portraying America as good or bad, Boyd makes a theological distinction between kingdoms of the world, and the kingdom of God. For Boyd, America, like every nation that has ever existed, with the exception of maybe ancient Israel, is a kingdom of the world; and all kingdoms of the world are run by Satan. Boyd (2005) supports this argument with the story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness:

“For example, in Luke 4 the Devil tempted Jesus by showing him “all the kingdoms of the world” while saying, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours” (Luke 4:5-7, emphasis added). Jesus, of course, would not worship the Devil to acquire these kingdoms. But note: he doesn't dispute the Devil's claim to own them (p. 21).”

A little later, Boyd quotes 1 John 5:19 which says “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one,” and points out that Jesus calls Satan “the ruler of the world” three different times (Boyd 2005). But, while Boyd (2005) believes America belongs to Satan, he does make note that God uses governments for his purposes saying:

“God uses governments as he finds them, in all their ungodly rebellious ways, to serve his own providential purposes. As Paul describes in Romans 13, this general purpose is to preserve as much law and order as is possible. Insofar as governments do this, they are properly exercising the authority God grants them and are, to that extent, good (p. 20).”

So Boyd’s view of America is neither that it is good nor bad, but instead, it is just another kingdom of this world and that the Christian's focus should be on the kingdom of God.