Christians and Public Theology

Religious Right notables from 30 years ago have passed from the scene, and the Religious Left largely has failed to command a wide audience. So, many American Christians find themselves without guidance to address social issues and public policy matters, the director of a Washington, D.C.-based Christian think-tank told a Baylor University audience.

“We are left with a situation where many Christians have no clear direction in terms of a helpful social and political witness for their faith,” Mark Tooley said. “Some, especially at this time in America, are very much tempted toward withdrawal, despair or cynicism about politics, about the culture and about the nation.”

As hot-button issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion rights divide the nation—and many churches—some Christians find it difficult to develop a public theology, said Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, in a lecture sponsored by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion.

The church should focus its energy on themes more central to the Bible than politics, he said.

“I think that historically, the institutional church teaches a broad principle politically. But its primary vocation is, of course, to proclaim the gospel, to evangelize and to disciple,” he said.

Churches support, encourage and guide believers, but Christians have a responsibility to form their own political ideologies, he asserted. “The more specific vocations for the details of politics are primarily left up to the Christian lay people,” Tooley said. “Sometimes, we confuse those vocations, but I think it is an important distinction.”