Spiritual Formation and Political Engagement

My Q&A with Michael Wear on his new book

Today’s edition of Some Assembly Required is an interview with my friend Michael Wear. Michael is the founder of the Center for Christianity and Public Life. His latest book is The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life.

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John Inazu: Your new book is directed at Christians who are looking for guidance about how to engage in politics and public life. But it turns out to focus a great deal on personal formation as well. What is the connection you see between the two?

Michael Wear: We can consider this from two directions. First, politics has to do with the social aspects of our life, as well as our thoughts, feelings and other aspects of who we are as people. If we are not thinking about the kind of people we are when it comes to politics, if the ways in which our lives intersect with politics are not included in that which we want to see shaped into the likeness of Christ, then whole-life formation becomes impossible.

From the other direction, our democracy simply cannot get around the kind of people we are. The state of our politics is, in the end, a reflection of the state of our souls. The kind of people we are has much to do with the kind of politics and public life we will have. The major structural problems we face, the social ills we decry and the injustices we oppose, are not separate from, but deeply related to, formation and the kinds of incentives and disincentives we the people provide for our politics.

JI: If you’re right about the connection between personal formation and public engagement, then I’m not sure we’ll see any meaningful shifts before the next presidential election. As I recently wrote, “The disfunction of modern evangelicalism is a matter of formation—it has unfolded over decades, and it will take decades to undo.” Do you share my admittedly bleak assessment, or are you more optimistic? Why or why not?

MW: If we focus formation on outcomes we will miss the point. We are not aiming for behavior modification or presentation; those are not our chief objectives. We are seeking to become the kind of people who want the good of our neighbors in and through our politics. We are seeking to put all we do, including our political activity, under the jurisdiction of love.

We can make significant progress in this area in 2024 and it may not lead to a different immediate, short-term political outcome. I worry that so much of the conversation about Christians and politics, even among Christians, is dictated by opinions about Donald Trump. The Spirit of Our Politics mentions Trump sparingly. We must move the center of gravity in Christian conversations about politics, particularly in the context of the local church, to that of the orientation of our hearts. We will get to healthier political outcomes starting from the gospel as our center, holding tightly to the gospel and, therefore, holding much more loosely to our prudential political opinions and judgments.

JI: Your book relies heavily on the late Dallas Willard. How would you describe his work and its influence on your life?

MW: Dallas Willard changed my life. I read The Divine Conspiracy when I was a young White House staffer, and it was like a second spiritual awakening in my life. Willard was a philosopher who taught at the University of Southern California for decades. He also served as a pastor and wrote powerful books about life with Jesus. Willard saw Christianity as offering knowledge about reality that we can trust. We can base not only our hopes for what happens after we die in the gospel, but our hopes for what might happen today.

This book is very much my application of Willard’s ideas to politics—which is different than an attempt to depict what Willard himself thought about politics, though I share some insights there as well—and I hope the book provides a new kind of language, a new register, for Christians to think about politics, its place in relation to God’s world and the kind of people they are becoming in and through our politics.

JI: At one point in the book, you assert that “in a democracy, what wins constitutes its own kind of reality.” What do you mean by this claim, and what challenges or opportunities does it present for Christians?

MW: I understand this to be one of Dallas Willard’s principal concerns about politics, and that is its capacity to create its own reality. This is true in a very practical and material sense (if a bill is passed to criminalize something, the nature of that act is in some way changed by that very fact; if the government incentivizes something through a tax credit, the nature of our choice regarding that thing is different by that fact). However, more to Willard’s point, I think, is the philosophical and imaginary power of politics. You do not have to be right in order to win in politics. Politics does not arbitrate truth, but will. Well, what happens when voters’ will is oriented in a way that is harmful, or even just not ideal? 

This really gets to the heart of my claim that the kind of people we are has much to do with the kind of politics we have. While our political systems and structures do not perfectly reflect and interpret the will of the people, in a fundamental sense, a democratic politics will legitimize and reinforce that which the people approve and allow. This creates a kind of reality—a sense of what is possible, a sense of what is acceptable—that we then have to live in and navigate. This can be for good or for ill.

Christians must have a vision that derives from outside of politics. Christians’ sense of what is real must not be determined by what is politically possible. Even as we operate in politics with an awareness of what is politically possible and wise—we cannot confuse our political judgments with ultimate judgments, we cannot equate a political order with the kingdom of God. This is both the challenge and the opportunity: our politics desperately needs people whose imaginations are not dominated by the political, but that kind of imagination is becoming increasingly difficult to cultivate and maintain.

JI: You argue against calling the United States “post-Christian.” I recall having similar discussions with Tim Keller about this description (and we avoided using the term in Uncommon Ground). Can you summarize why you find the label unhelpful and inaccurate?

MW: Yes, I’m glad you asked this question. I understand what the term is meant to refer to as clearly much has changed regarding the relationship of Christianity and American institutions and culture, but as I write in the book, I find it less helpful than not. I won’t repeat the full argument here, but essentially I find the term to be unhelpful in reference to our past, our present and our future. Regarding our past, “post-Christian” implies that there was a time in which society was so thoroughly Christian that it could be declared Christian. When was that? At what point did it change? Are we trying to get back to that point and what would that mean?

Regarding the present, it is dour and oppositional, and it overlooks—and promotes overlooking—all of the ways in which our culture, politics, communities and lives are influenced by Christian contributions and resources.

Regarding the future, it suggests a foreclosing of options, a darker future, when I have great hope for the future.

I find Charles Taylor’s work immensely helpful, and often refer to our living in a contested or cross-pressured time and culture. Taylor’s A Secular Age was not, in my reading, arguing that we live in a time when the “secular” always dominates, but rather in a moment when everything is up for grabs and there’s a fragility and uncertainty in and around many perspectives and claims.

JI: One of your key themes is the importance of keeping politics in its proper place. The obvious application for Christians and people of other faiths is to prioritize faith commitments over political ones. But what is the proper place for politics for someone who believes that this life is all we have? If you’re in this world and don’t believe you’re part of or waiting for something bigger, why shouldn’t politics—and winning—become the most important thing?

MW: I don’t believe Christian resources, generally speaking, are parochial resources. Christianity offers essential knowledge about reality. This is important to say not just for non-Christians, but for Christians themselves. We always want to be dealing with what is real about a question or set of circumstances.

I argue in the book that humility in politics can be motivated by just an honest assessment of politics itself, even without reference to God or a higher power. The history of politics is a history of misguided intentions and unintended consequences. People dedicate their lives to achieving what seemed to them to be an unimpeachably positive policy change only to find out that what they pursued didn’t work out the way they had planned, or that they had been aiming for the wrong kind of change. Regardless of one’s religious perspective, we should all be able to acknowledge the complicated, contingent, imperfect reality of politics, and carry a sense of humility about our deepest political convictions because of it.

JI: You express concern about “a church that fears the power of cultural and political circumstances more than it fears the power of God.” Can you unpack this a bit and perhaps suggest how to guard against it?

MW: Part of what I’m addressing here is the kind of spirit which is sometimes associated with the “post-Christian” conversation we discussed earlier. When we bolster our Christian identity through appeals to how isolated and embattled we are, when we are constantly bemoaning the current state of things and the “forces that align against us,” it can develop an unhealthy culture with unhealthy people who lack joyful confidence in the Lord.

I don’t say this to cut off honest discussion about the state of our culture and politics, I certainly think there are things to be concerned about, but the public should see Christians’ hands lifted up in prayer or reaching out to serve much more than they see us wringing our hands. And it is through prayer and service, among other things, that we will actually loosen the grip of this constant sense of embattlement and insecurity.

JI: You currently run the Center for Christianity and Public Life. What do you hope to see happen through the Center? And what have you seen so far that either encourages or challenges that vision?

MW: The Center for Christianity and Public Life exists to contend for the credibility of Christian resources in public life, for the public good. Our mission is advanced through the mutually reinforcing objectives of provoking a public reconsideration of the value of Christian contribution to our politics and the resourcing of Christian civic leaders who are convinced that spiritual formation is central to civic renewal. I’m tremendously encouraged by the early returns on our work, including the success of our Public Life Fellowship program, our first annual For the Good of the Public Summit, and the early responses to The Spirit of Our Politics, which provides a window into the kinds of ideas and convictions that ground our work.

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In June 2022, Michael and I participated in a public dialogue in St. Louis with our friends Andy Crouch and Tish Harrison Warren. You can read more about that dialogue in this post or watch the video of our conversation: