I Came across this quote from C.S. Lewis this morning in his book, The Screwtape Letters. The letters are written from the perspective of a senior demon to his protege, as he is working on his human subjects, his “patients”, attempting to get them to ignore or discredit God.
Insert “liberal” and “conservative” for “pacifist” and “patriot” (or vice-versa...the order doesn't matter) and I think he has a finger on the problem in America.
There is a reason we don’t talk politics at Restore. Our response in the political arena is primarily as a “matter of obedience” to what Jesus says, so we do our best to figure out what that is. There are a lot of areas where Christianity could be leveraged to make a case on either side of an issue. The question is, who are we trying to obey. We may not always get it right, but our allegiance is to Christ first, and everyone else is a very-distant second.
I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes except extreme devotion to the Enemy are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period. Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the “Cause” is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy’s own purposes, this remains true. We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-righteousness of a secret society or a clique. The Church herself is, or course, heavily defended, and we have never yet quite succeeded in giving her all the characteristics of a faction; but subordinate factions within her have often produced admirable results, from the parties of Paul and of Apollos at Corinth down to the High and Low parties in the Church of England…
Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of a partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “Cause,” in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favor of the British war effort or of pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours–and the more “religious” (on those terms), the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.
Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape