Politics: A game that is played in full and vigilant awareness of its relativity

If you appreciate my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Seriously, do it!

Politics: A game that is played in full and vigilant awareness of its relativity

This may be an odd time in history, but it’s not unique.

In 1932, Karl Barth began holding an underground course called “Exercises in Sermon Preparation” at the University of Bonn. Barth was from Switzerland and had signed an oath to refrain from political organizing as a condition of employment in Germany, but Barth felt called to give these future communicators an alternative to the toxic and partisan rhetoric that had infected every aspect of German life. In shaping these lectures on preaching, Karl Barth returned to his thoughts in the second edition of his commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. In his exegesis of Romans 12 and 13, the question of the ethics of revolution came to the fore as Barth reflected upon the relationship between the Church and the State.

To would-be activists and revolutionaries, especially Christians (rightly) dissatisfied with the status quo a popular election had created, Barth’s counsel bears resisting for our own fractured time.

Barth believed Paul’s epistle provides no justification either for reactionary, nationalistic conservatism or violent left-wing revolution. According to his reading of Romans, Karl Barth argued that Christians should resist the absolute claims of the State, ideological leaders, and political parties by depriving them of their pathos.

Christians should resist the absolute claims of the State, ideological leaders, and political parties by depriving them of their pathos.

Barth writes:

It is evident that there can be no more devastating undermining of the existing order than the recognition of it which is here recommended, a recognition rid of all illusion and devoid of all the joy of triumph. State, Church, Society, Positive Right, Family, Organized Research, and so forth live off of the credulity of those who have been nurtured upon vigorous sermons-delivered-on-the-field-of-battle and other suchlike solemn humbug. Deprive them of their PATHOS, and they will be starved out; but stir up revolution against them, and their PATHOS is provided fresh fodder. (Romans)

By “pathos” Barth points back to his treatment of the word in Romans 7:5 where Paul uses the word to speak of “the sinful passions” to which we are all prone to fall captive.

The lesson is that we should not give to our politics the passion they seek; that is, we should not invest politics with eternal importance.

Once given the ultimate pathos it seeks, political ideology has the power to extract from us all sorts of self-justifications that lead us in directions contrary to the good. That this is a word of caution needed by Democrats and Republicans seems self-evident.

Rather than imbue politics with religious zeal, Barth writes that those who seek the common good should:

“…do their best to prevent the intrusion of religion into that world. They will lift up their voices to warn those careless ones, who, for aesthetic or historical or political or romantic reasons, dig through the dam and open up a channel through which the flood of religion may burst into the cottages and palaces of men.”

Barth’s recommendation extends beyond ideology and politics to those who participate in them. Deprive them of their pathos; don’t give them the endorphin rush of their righteous indignation. Don’t buy into activists’ insistence that ______ issue means we must, as Barth put it, “storm the heavens.”

With good cheer— the love of neighbor— refuse to grant the premise of their rhetoric; that is, refuse to accept that this election or that political issue is an end of such ultimate, consequential stakes that any means of success are thereby justified.

Political activity is important and necessary, but should be engaged as “a game that is played in full and vigilant awareness of its relativity.”

In other words, to deprive them of their pathos is in fact an exhortation to extend grace, ignoring a perceived transgression and reckoning in its place a goodness that may not be present.

Yet another of “the most important election in our lifetime” is in the rearview mirror. And, yes, elections have consequences. But to novice communicators of the gospel, in the thick of real fascist demagoguery and authoritarian evil, Barth cautioned against exactly the sort of rhetoric that presently chokes our national discourse. Barth himself only mentioned “the little man in Berlin” once in a sermon. It deprives no one of their pathos, Barth might teach us, to call those in one party deplorable nor to identify your own side as “the coalition of the decent.”

To deprive them of their pathos is in fact an exhortation to extend grace, ignoring a perceived transgression and reckoning in its place a goodness that may not be present.

Barth’s thinking in Romans is a word we all need to hear. If Barth could write this in the time of Hitler (he eventually lost his post and was exiled to Switzerland), then our own circumstances do not exempt us from his wisdom. Barth was hardly a disengaged quietist, yet he worried that the measured reflection and back-and-forth negotiation required by democratic politics had been replaced by “the convulsions of revolution.” Any healthy politics must be grace in practice, for it requires a humility which is only made possible by the recognition that all participants involved are not only finite but inescapably sinful creatures.

Or, as Barth puts it, politics is only sustainable when “it is seen to be essentially a game; that is to say, when we are unable to speak of absolute political right.”

Pathos — investing politics with all-encompassing meaning and identity — results, Barth teaches, “in an escalating exchange of the political propaganda. Because their respective political views are held with deadly eternal seriousness, neither critical distance nor reasoned dialogue about politics is possible any longer.”

When politics becomes impossible, Barth proclaims, we may turn to prayer. In prayer, the Church is given the freedom to ask God “what are we to do? How should we go on?”

Just so—

A prayer by Karl Barth:

We praise you and thank you for all of your gracious election and calling, that you are also the God of the rejected and the uncalled, and that you never cease to deal with each one of us in a fatherly and righteous manner. Let us never tire of recognizing you and praying to you in all of these mysteries, that we may in faith lay hold of your Word, through which you magnify your honor and give us, with eternal blessing, peace and joy, even in this life. We pray for your church here and in all nations, for the sleeping church, that it may awaken; for the persecuted church, that it may continually rejoice and be assured of what it has in you; and for the confessing church, that it may live not for its own sake, but for your glory.

We pray for the rulers and the authorities all over the world: for the good ones, that you may preserve them; and for the bad ones, that you may either turn their hearts or put an end to their power, all according to your will; and for everyone, that you may advise them that they are and must remain your servants.

We pray that all tyranny and disorder may be fended off, and that all oppressed nations and people may be granted justice.

We pray for the poor, the sick, the prisoners, the helpless, and the troubled, for all who suffer – perhaps from something only you know – that you yourself may comfort them with the hope of your kingdom. Amen.

*The Christian Voter’s Guide comes from my friend Brian Zahnd.

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Get more from Jason Micheli in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app