Please, let's keep God out of politics! (04.03.2025)

Please, let’s keep God out of politics!

I don’t know about you, but I was fascinated by a recent theological scrap on X. I was also deeply concerned. The ‘wall of separation between Church and State’ (Jefferson) seems to be weakening in the US. 

If you missed the fracas, this is what happened.

J.D. Vance (US Vice President) wrote on X that there is a Christian order of love which begins at home and moves out towards the wider world. ‘As an American leader… your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens… and then after that you can focus and prioritise the rest of the world.’

Rory Stewart (former MP, writer and podcaster), considered this ‘a bizarre take on John 15:12-13 - less Christian and more pagan / tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us which order to love…’

Who is right?

Neither really, but my sympathy is with Rory Stewart and I’ll explain why.

Let’s start with Vance. His position comes from St. Augustine’s book, ‘The City of God’ where he talks about the ordo amoris or the proper ordering of one’s love. You won’t find Vance’s hierarchy of concern within its pages, but we can accept that his response to Rory is reasonable. ‘Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?’

To this, most of us would answer ‘no’. But here is the question, is Christian love about what is reasonable?  Probably not, or otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have allowed himself to be executed. In fact, many of his parables are highly unreasonable.

Still, Christian belief exists in a social and political context, and philosophers have debated long and hard about how to apply it.

Aquinas can help us here (especially as Vance is Roman Catholic).

He was heavily influenced by Aristotle who argued that love (philia) is connected to friendship and exists in a reciprocal relationship. We can’t be friends with the whole world because love is also about intimacy. To love the whole world is not only impractical, it’s also illogical. This is called ‘partialism’.

Now partialism creates issues for Aquinas; it puts him in conflict with the universalism of agape (unconditional love, equated with God). He resolves it by saying we should remain   charitable to all while favouring those we are related to. 

In my mind, this loses the radical insight of Jesus’ teaching. Worse, it encourages people such as Vance to treat love as if were a limited commodity like cake. Pope Francis writes: ‘Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.’

Rather, it is like a fire. Fire, as Graham Tomlin (theologian and former Bishop) points out, isn’t diminished by being shared. The more candles you light, the more fire you have. Augustine agrees; once this fire-love has grasped you, love becomes something you are rather than something you do. It is limitless.

This has philosophical echoes in the works of Kant and Kierkegaard who argued that the basis for impartial love is the abstract notion of ‘humanity’. We are called to treat all people the same because we share a common ontology.

But – and this is important – how do we enact this practically?  This returns us to Vance.

True, I can’t love intimately those I do not know. I will continue to treat myself to a coffee now and then rather than give the money to the starving in Sudan.

Moreover, I find myself located in space and time and, and – religiously – God has called me to love in a practical sense those who I meet.

But that doesn’t mean this is the proper ‘ordering of love’. Love is not a series of concentric circles. Rather, I am called to love in the same limitless way as God, but unlike God I am limited, and there is only so much I can do.

This fact is not – and should not – be used to defend political decisions on immigration and for that reason, I agree with Rory Stewart; ‘We should start worrying when politicians become theologians…’