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Christians have often avoided political power, thinking faith and politics don’t mix. Yet Scripture commends leaders like Joseph, Daniel, Esther and Paul for upholding righteousness in the civic sphere and pointing pagan empires back to God.

Political power and Christianity don’t mix, we’ve been told. It is always and everywhere bad for Christians to wield civic authority.

Offered as perennial proof of this claim are the crusades and the Inquisition — which, admittedly, were not Christianity’s finest hour.

But what if those events, which happened hundreds and even a thousand years ago, were the exception that highlights the rule?

The church has been discipled by a secular (and increasingly Marxist) culture to believe that power is inherently a bad thing — something always to be challenged, even torn down.

This belief has caused Christians to retreat into their private lives and give up all ambition for worldly power.

In the intervening decades, guess who’s been very happy to fill the positions of power that Christians have vacated? Yes, the same secularists that told us that power is a bad thing.

It’s a clever play — and it’s time we stopped falling for it.

Beware ‘Loser Theology’

At least partly to blame for the church’s aversion to bold civic engagement is what Dr Michael Clary calls ‘loser theology’.

Dr Clary is the Lead Pastor at Christ the King Church in Cincinnati, Ohio in the United States, and has spent several years dissecting this phenomenon. He explains:

At its core, loser theology convinces believers that asserting agency for Christ is inherently wrong. It frames passivity, weakness, and vague trust in God as the hallmarks of true faithfulness, while strength, conviction, and action are branded as dangerous forms of legalism and pride.

Clary adds that loser theology “offers a spiritualised excuse for being ineffective, weak, and lazy”.

It’s important to point out that loser theology isn’t explicitly taught in our churches. To quote the classic Australian film The Castle, it’s “the vibe of the thing”. Loser theology is more or less unspoken and absorbed passively, like the air we breathe.

Also, loser theology isn’t unique to theologically compromised churches. It’s very possible to hold fast to many solid biblical values and still cling to loser theology.

Here’s an example of how it works: Abortion is bad, but if Christians try to outlaw abortion, it would require us to seek political power. And since political power isn’t “the way of Jesus”, it’s better that we just pray and trust God instead.

Do you see it?

“Loser theology is attractive because it replaces biblical virtues with pseudo-virtues,” Dr Clary goes on to explain. “Powerlessness, poverty, weakness [and] insecurity are elevated as true marks of holiness.”

He adds that loser theology locks us “in a state of permanent ineffectiveness while cloaking that failure in a false sense of moral superiority”.

The result is that Christians are rendered “impotent for doing anything beyond the realm of their private devotional lives”.

Forgotten Biblical Precedents

The Bible verse most often used to justify loser theology is when Jesus Christ told Pilate, “my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

Yes, God’s kingdom is not of this world — but that doesn’t mean God doesn’t want His kingdom to influence this world for the better.

The Bible is full of examples of godly people being raised up to serve in positions of political power to glorify God and bring about His purposes — whether Moses, Joseph, Daniel, Esther, Mordecai, Nehemiah, John the Baptist, Cornelius, or countless others.

Old Testament kings were commanded to keep their own copy of God’s law and live by it. Gentile rulers were commanded to bow the knee to Yahweh — like the king of Nineveh, who led his whole city to repent; or Nebuchadnezzar, who humbled himself and acknowledged that the Most High rules over the kingdoms of men; or Cyrus, who freed the Jewish exiles and sent them back to rebuild Jerusalem.

Even in the New Testament, we see Paul traversing Europe with a fire in his heart to preach the gospel to local rulers and even Caesar himself.

Scripture overflows with accounts of God’s people stepping boldly into roles of civic authority, or calling the rulers of this age to govern with righteousness.

In short, as Christians, we must overcome our addiction to “loser theology”.

No, we should not want power for power’s sake, or seek to build our own kingdoms, or conflate God’s kingdom with the kingdoms of this world, or fear that God’s purposes will somehow fail without our help.

But yes, we should long, pray and vote to see godly believers occupy positions of worldly authority.

Because it is good for Christians to wield political power.

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Image courtesy of Freepik.