Camp argues that there is no Christian utopian state there will always be injustice and evil forces at play, and thus our engagement needs to be ad hoc.Ĭonsidering Camp's central claim that Christianity is neither "left nor right nor religious," it would have been helpful to have these terms defined more explicitly, though he does qualify the ways in which Christianity is religious (8). The result is not a withdrawn, sectarian, "countercultural" Christianity, which is an idea he sees as logically fallacious, but rather "percipient cultural discernment and production" (160). The Church's task is to "bear witness to … what the world was intended to be, and what it shall be when the consummation of history comes" (141). While affirming that "the politics of the world matter immensely," he is emphatic that they must not become the object of the Church's primary allegiance or create hostility with those who "practice the politics of Jesus" (102).Īfter evaluating the politics of medieval Christendom and Martin Luther, Camp affirms a largely Anabaptist approach to the contemporary Church's approach to external politics. Helpfully explaining the political theory of liberalism that governs the Western world, Camp exposes the ludicrousness of identifying either "conservative liberalism" (the Republican Party) or "liberal liberalism" (the Democratic Party) with the kingdom of God (44). Camp sharply critiques Christians putting their hope in any other political enterprise, such as the United States government, and is adamant that the Church must not act as chaplain to the "imperial exploits of the American empire" (46) or sell itself as a prostitute to the State in pursuit of special privileges. Speaking to his fellow American "would-be Christians" (8, 114) with a prophetic tone-even using "woe" language reminiscent of the Old Testament prophets (21)-he argues that history matters and that the Church should live "proleptically" in light of the eschatological hope offered by Christ's resurrection (25). Having laid out these foundational claims, Camp offers a "syllabus" and "manifesto" of fifteen propositions that he believes can reconfigure a Christian witness that is "neither left nor right nor religious" (5). Since the Christian message makes assertions about history and "grapples with all the questions the classical art of politics has always asked" regarding the ordering of human communities, Camp argues that Christianity should be understood as a public corporate politic and not a private individualistic religion (4). He believes that American Christianity's scandalous (and not scandalized) witness can be ignited when it operates as an "alternative politic" (123). Camp attributes this crisis to the nearly ubiquitous misclassification of Christianity as a private religion. Lee Camp, professor of theology and ethics at Church of Christ–affiliated Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, believes that "large portions of the Christian church" in the United States have "destroyed their own witness," rendering Christianity "scandalised" and a "public joke" (2–3).
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