Politics for Evangelicals

Paul Henry is associate professor of political science at CalvinCollege in Grand Rapids, Michigan and is one of the main organizers of the Conference on Christianity and Politics that has been held at Calvin the last two springs. Politics For Evangelicals is his contribution to the ongoing discussion of social concern and political action by biblically committed Christians.

The discussion begins by considering some of the reasons for the general failure of evangelicals in the ethical area. His discussion in this area implicitly shows a number of ways the American cultural worldview has effectively penetrated the Christian community.

A chief source of ethical failure is the American heresy of individualism that Henry traces back to the political influence of John Locke. His discussion of the conflicts between a “natural law” view of politics and the biblical perspective is excellent, but the American church experience has its own distinctive tradition of individualism, going all the way back to the Puritan experience in New England, and coming down to the present day through the heritage of revivalism.

A second source of ethical failure in the evangelical tradition in the twentieth century has to do with the negative view of the state that is a part of evangelical culture. Henry sees it rooted in the American historical tradition and in the view of human nature that is derived from Augustine.