CITIZEN

 

Faithful Discipleship

in a Partisan World

 

 

By C. Andrew Doyle

 

 

 

 

 

 

A SAINT JULIAN PRESS BOOK REVIEW

 

Written by Publisher/CEO/Executive Editor – Ron Starbuck

In our national discourse, Americans are being struck dumb and blind by the terrible dichotomies and falsehoods raging inside our politics. Computer algorithms and the terrible language (political rhetoric) we often use reinforce misperceptions of one another.  One path seduces people with anxiety and enmity. The other path employs open, meaningful dialogue to create community and raise hope.  Faith-filled (faithful) language and wisdom (Sophia) matter greatly in creating hope and finding common solutions.

Creating fear and hostility, manipulating and governing, or ruling people by fear becomes a dark veil clouding our sight.  It causes immeasurable and recurrent harm to our social cohesion and unity. Ultimately, it prevents us from seeing one another as human beings and knowing one another as the children of God we all are. However, we might imagine God at work within the world and across our communities of faith.

In a Citizen: Faithful Discipleship in a Partisan World, the Ninth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, the Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle calls for communities of faith to engage with one another openly and warmly through the art of listening through convivial citizenship.  To do so, as the forward declares, “he tackles the complex challenge of distinguishing Christian faith from American civil religion.” In his writing, he implores us, as Christian citizens, to practice listening first before speaking.  To embrace an intimate interconnection across a wider whole, a gestalt that captures our imaginations and individual freedom and relationship to God and others. Where we imagine a fresh way of being and interacting to create narratives of reconciliation, drawing upon the diverse voices of Holy Scripture where Christianity’s story is told, he invites Christians “to imagine and to create a society of nonviolence and self-giving action.” Telling us: “Christians can and must engage in politics in a way that accepts and values pluralism.” 1

Bishop Doyle describes this as a Christian citizenship lived out in action, which requires “an active curiosity, a constant looking and watching to understand our context. He reminds Christians that faith cannot be practiced in church only; good citizenship must be lived out within the world, supported by the church.” He asks us to imagine a “Christian citizenship that takes a convivial approach to all people, destroying the invasive political notion that if you are not for us, then you are against us.” 2 

Rather than leaving these critical conversations to those who will intentionally exploit and create greater divisions.  Stressing that Jesus invites us to transcend the narratives we hear daily with new ones. 3  Beginning with the creation stories in Genesis, the reader is asked to visualize a “garden social imaginary” as a community God brings into being. And where humanity intentionally chooses to tap into God’s image and reign as a model of compassion and transformation.4

Narratives that raise us above passive submission and violence.5 And asks us to seek new ways of knowing and to engage the world’s malignant discord by embracing the lessons learned in Holy Scripture. Challenging and lovingly admonishing us in our social discourse to practice — turning the other cheek, giving away our attire, and walking the extra mile (Matt. 5:39-42) as meaningful metaphors in remembrance and spiritual practice of who we are as a people of God.5

 

Holy Eucharist Rite One 6

 

Hear what our Lord Jesus saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the Law and the Prophets. — Matthew 22:37-40

 

As a community that follows these two commandments and responds to God’s call to mend the world, we cannot escape our responsibility for our nation’s political life.  We must answer the call and hear the message whole and un-transfigured in this hour.  And then fulfill our honored vocation as Christian citizens in the communities where we live and worship.

Nor can we ignore our history and the story of America’s founding. Whose authors in the Age of Enlightenment and Reason valued a diversity of Christian denominations and other faiths, rejecting the impulse to create a nation based on Christianity alone. With the clear intention of welcoming many faithful spiritual traditions and protecting freedom of religion as a universal right.

Bishop Doyle reminds Americans of the democratic heritage we hold in trust by quoting President George Washington, who wrote these words. “The bosom of America” was to be “open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to participate in all our rights and privileges. They may be Muslims, Jews, or Christians of any sect or atheists.”7

As Christians, we must consider ourselves dual citizens and honor our role as such,8 living within the reign of God and an American story, which claims us both and captures the imagination. We must imagine something more, taking part as Christian citizens for the good of the whole, without political dominance or narrow partisanship that harms the whole.  We must be ever mindful of embracing and encouraging true servant-leadership in our political life, putting on the mind of Christ who emptied himself to become a servant to all.

 

Philippians 2:5-1 (RSV-Revised Standard Version) 9

 

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name, which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

 

When partisan politics and ideologies, falsehoods, vain nationalism, autocracy, and distrust in our institutions of democracy and electoral process assault our social cohesion and become idols and idolatry, there are questions people of faith must ask themselves.  We cannot remain silent.  We cannot refuse to engage with one another in meaningful dialogues.  We must seek out one another.  And wrestle as Jacob did with God at “Peniel,” seeking a greater reconciliation and blessing.

In doing so, Bishop Doyle cautions that we must remind ourselves not to confuse our Christian devotion with American civil religion.10  Instead, we should place trust and faith in the Christian Gospels.  An American civil religion, which over time has come to define American citizenship, can be inconsistent with what the Christian Gospels teach and does not serve us well as Christians.

We must work within our church communities and leadership to embrace a greater faith in God through Jesus Christ, counseled by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Even as we learn to let go of a cherished but inauthentic infatuation with a civil religion10 and political system, which cannot fully reveal the mystery of God or the enduring power of the Gospel's message.

Bishop Doyle creates a model of Christian engagement in politics, first grounded in spreading and sharing God’s love and justice within the world. And a model where he reminds us that Jesus invites us as citizens to reject politics as usual. Rejecting tribalism and understanding that our tribalism and ideologies can become like idols, preventing us from placing God and country before politics — and cautioning us, as did our nation's founders, that demagogues will only thrive when and where we allow them to control the national discourse and conversations.

This is a calling to embrace one another, our fellow citizens, as God's beloved people. It suggests instead that if we break away from our tribalism and engage one another through close relationships within and across our sacred communities. We can create a more lucid expression of Christian citizenship, leading us to healthier and wholesome engagement in our public discourse.  And in turn, perhaps a more perfect Union.

Bishop Doyle has authored this book from a Christian perspective as an influential Bishop within the Episcopal Church. He reminds the people and Episcopal congregations he serves of their Christian responsibility as citizens to work in God’s garden socially as Christian citizens.  Reminding us there is hope — “there is compassion and faithfulness to be enacted. To listen: to hear, see, go, do, follow the way, and like a weed, it will grow.” 11

What he offers within these pages is a reminder that a greater mystery dwelling in, and with, and through creation — interconnects humankind.  His call to citizenship is to Christians everywhere and people of all faiths as part of an even greater whole, an ecumenical and interfaith dialogue across humanity.  Certainly to people who are churched and unchurched, to believers and nonbelievers, in something beyond us that remains invisible and unseen, which we cannot always name or describe: a greater consciousness and brilliant mystery and spiritual or quantum entanglement held within creation calling us into relationships with one another across the whole human family.

 

Ron Starbuck
Publisher/ CEO/Excutive Editor
Saint Julian Press, Inc. © 2022
Footnotes
 
  1. Forward by Cynthia Briggs Kittredge: (p. 19). Kindle Edition.
  2. Introduction: Engaging an Apathetic Christian Citizen (p. 19). Kindle Edition.
  3. Chapter One: A Birth Narrative (p. 21). Kindle Edition.
  4. Chapter Four: A Garden Social Imaginary (p. 61-62) Kindle Edition.
  5. Chapter Sixteen: A Tabling Christian Citizenship (p. 224). Kindle Edition.
  6. The Book of Common Prayer – The Holy Eucharist: Rite One (p. 324). Church Publishing Incorporated, New York.
  7. Chapter Two: Our Beloved Civil Religion (p. 48). Kindle Edition.
  8. Chapter Eleven: A Decolonized Citizenship (p. 161-162). Kindle Edition.
  9. Philippians 2:5-1 (RSV–Revised Standard Version). National Council of the Churches of Christ © 1971.
  10. Chapter Two: Our Beloved Civil Religion (p. 38). Kindle Edition.
  11. Conclusion: No Pleasant Valley Sunday (p. 243). Kindle Edition.
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Church Publishing (February 17, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1640652019
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1640652019
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