507 - Christian Perspectives on Politics

Christian Perspectives on Politics

By Philip Wogaman

Philadelphia, Fortress, 1988. 309 Pp. $18.95.

J. Philip Wogaman is a new John C. Bennett for the late twentieth century. This may seem premature, for John Bennett is still active and has written words of high praise for the present book. But let me explain.

Imagine a scholar of Christian ethics, in the full sense of all three words, a person evangelical in spirit and liberal in mind, who explores the basic issues of social morality with broad and courteous consideration of all points of view, reaching through and beyond them to his own sensitive reasoned conclusion. This describes John Bennett through a long career going back to the Oxford conference on church, community, and state in 1937. It describes Philip Wogaman in a series of writings, of which this book is the latest.

"Perspectives" on politics is too modest a title. This is a synthetic book, in the best sense of the word, a textbook for the field. Despite the avalanche of writings on theology and politics, there has not been one like it

508 - Christian Perspectives on Politics

since Bennett's Christians and the State thirty years ago. Wogaman begins with basic definitions of terms like politics, state, and sovereignty. He then analyzes four types of Christian political ethics: pacifist-anarchist, liberationist, neo-conservative, and mainstream liberal, to the last of which he himself belongs. This is followed by the theological bases for political ethics, ecclesiology in politics, and the Christian bases for and critical support of political democracy. All this is careful moderate analysis. There is dialogue with persons as diverse as Leo Tolstoy and Thomas Hobbes, John Howard Yoder and Michael Novak, Stanley Hauerwas and Robert Bellah, among many others. It leads then to a concluding and more controversial section on what the author calls "perennial issues" in politics: the relation of church and state, the economic role of government, legislating social morality, criminal justice, and global politics. In each of these areas, too, competing perspectives are examined and the author states his own.

Here is a structure for the field of Christian political ethics. One may find fault with it. Despite some references, it is not historical. The biblical foundation is not strong enough. There is more diversity and controversy within the Christian mainstream than the author brings out. One misses reference to the recent "political theology" in Germany (Moltmann, Metz, and Sölle). The problem of war is so briefly dealt with as to be inaccurate at points. But these are all questions of selection and emphasis. The book as it stands is brief enough and clear enough to introduce any intelligent pastor, church member, theological student, or professional colleague to the subject. It provides an orientation to the field of politics in Christian perspective, raises the basic issues, reports on and contributes to the dialogue about them. This is its incomparable value.

Charles C. West, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.