The True Politics

Just as the decisive issue that faced the early Church was the battle between Christ and Caesar, with the emperor as the embodiment and representative of the ideal of the State espoused by classical antiquity,—i.e. the ancient Antichrist,—so too the decisive issue facing the modern Church in the West is the battle between Christ and the apostate secular State, the modern Antichrist. Until the Church recognises this conflict and begins to act in terms of it she will continue to decline and the State will continue to exercise dominion over her. If she is to conquer her enemies and fulfil her Great Commission once more she must proclaim that Christ is Lord (i.e. Ruler), not the State. Victory will not come instantly, and it will not come at all without a great deal of sacrifice and tribulation. But this is the mission to which we are called. We must pick up our cross and follow Christ.

The time is ripe for a change of politics in Western culture. The question is simply this: is the Church, the body of Christ on earth, prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to challenge the politics of man and replace it with the politics of God? God does not grant religious neutrality to the State. The State must kiss the Son or perish by the way. Christianity is the true politics. The Church must start living out this truth with every breath that she takes. Only when she does will the world be delivered from the tyranny and idolatry of the politics of man.

The Church

“The name, pretence, and presumed power and authority of the church or churches, have been made and used as the greatest engine for the promoting and satisfying the avarice, sensuality, ambition, and cruelty of men that ever was in the world . . . To this very day, ‘the church’ here and there, as it is esteemed, is the greatest means of keeping Christian religion in its power and purity out of the world, and a temptation to multitudes of men to prefer the church before religion, and to be obstinate in their oppositions unto it . . . The secular, worldly interest of multitudes lying in this presumptive church and the state of it, they preferred and exalted it above all that is called God, and made the greatest idol of it that ever was in the world; for it was the faith and profession of it, that its authority over the souls and consciences of men is above the authority of the Scriptures . . .”

 —John Owen, An Enquiry into the Original, Nature, Institution, Powers, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches in Works (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust [Goold Edition, 1850–53], 1965), Vol. XV, p. 224f.