Francis Collins is a remarkable man. He’s remarkable for many reasons. He was the lead scientist in the Human Genome Project, he paved the way for several medical breakthroughs by identifying specific genes associated with certain diseases. Until recently, he was head of the U.S. National Institute of Health. Remarkably, he has transcended the world of medicine and science and has become a well-known public figure. He even appears in videos on the Alpha Course.
Recently (29 April 2025), Francis appeared as one of the keynote speakers at an event organised by The Atlantic called ‘On the Future’. At this event, he said the following:
“When you mix politics and science, you just get politics.”
The point Francis Collins was making with this statement was that during the COVID pandemic, too often political considerations trumped medical facts, so that what was presented as medical advice was really just political expediency.
Is this also true of Christianity, the Church, and politics? If you mix Christianity, the Church, and politics, do you just get politics?
This is the question we are going to explore on Sunday.
An Age-Old Question.
It is an age-old question. Indeed, theologically, it pre-dates the birth of the Church. In the Old Testament, the prophets wrestle with what it means to faithfully be God’s holy and chosen people amid empire. The books the prophets write are theo-political texts!
Frustratingly for us, they do not give a nice, clear, simple answer!
Walter Brueggemann in his great wee book, Out of Babylon, notes this complexity, while also stating that we can see a movement from Ezekiel’s affirmation of empire to Jeremiah’s affirmation that turns to critique, and finally Isaiah’s complete dismissal of Isaiah.
The New Testament also does not give a nice, clear, simple answer. This has led to a diversity of views and standpoints regarding the relationship of the church to political powers over the 2,000-year-plus history of Christianity. In their magisterial book, From Irenaeus to Grotius, bringing together various primary texts of Christian political thought from the first 1,500 years of Christian thought, Joan Lockwood O’Donovan and her husband Oliver O’Donovan comment on the “continuities and discontinuities, internal diversities and lines of influence, historical interactions and divergences, and the relation of the theopolitical tradition to changing historical settings” which frame both past and present discussions around Christianity and politics.
What To Do?
It strikes me as I reflect on the history of Church & State and Church & Politics relations, and as I think about our contemporary context and where Church & State and Church & Politics intersect, that the Church is at its best when Jesus is central to its worship, life, thought, mission and practice. However, keeping Jesus and his teaching central when we start to think about politics is not always easy.
Martin Luther, famous for his 95 Theses (1517) which set alight the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century, wrote in 1522 a treatise called On Temporal Authority: To What Extent Should it be Obeyed. Luther and this document have played an outsized role in shaping Christian Political thought in a European context. In this document, he writes, “If anyone attempted to rule the world by the gospel and to abolish all temporal law and sword (i.e. political governance) …what would he be doing? He would be loosing the ropes and chains of the savage wild beasts and letting them bite and mangle everyone”. So much for keeping Jesus central!
Yet …
For us, a Church and individual Christians, there is no other faithful way to live but to keep Jesus and his teachings central to our identity, values, habits and practices. As followers of Jesus, the primary political call on us is to live out the politics of Jesus.
On Sunday, we’ll look to unpack this a bit more.
See you then.
Brodie