Would the American Church survive totalitarianism?

Both the left and the right have told us that a demanding, centralized government is possible in the United States. Would Christians here be able to withstand it?

A lot of Americans are convinced we’re on the brink of a totalitarian takeover.

If you’re a conservative, you’re breathing a sign of relief as, from your perspective, this country recently dodged a move towards a centralized globalism that would usher in the dawn of a Woke Regime.

If you’re a liberal, you’re stressing out about a sitting president’s ever-growing ego trip to centralize power in the Executive Branch in order to push through his own agenda without any accountability.

Either way, I was told by both conservatives and progressives back in November’s election that our “democracy was at stake” and that a hostile takeover of our country was about to happen if I didn’t side with them. That might not be the case. It also very much might be. It also might be something entirely different happening. Nevertheless, a threat of totalitarianism has made me think about if the church in America could survive such a change. If any kind of breach in our democracy is currently happening or will happening, could the American Church last through it?

When the Christians pull political levers

The “American Church” is extremely broad and includes everyone from the poor, inner city Catholic congregation to the Korean Presbyterians and the Evangelical Mega Churches, the Orthodox Church in America, the Reformed Church in America, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Baptists of all stripes. Not all of them interact with politics in the same way at all.

I want to take this thought exercise of “the American Church under totalitarian rule” through the Evangelical Church particularly. This is both broad and specific. It’s broad in the sense that there is no single “evangelical” denomination—rather, “Evangelicalism” is really a renewal movement that runs through all kinds of denominations and churches.

But, secondly, it’s specific in the sense that many of those who have undergone the renewal of evangelicalism have similar attributes: high view of Scripture, massive emphasis on evangelizing the lost, low-church liturgy, and a focus on relevance to the culture.

These kinds of “evangelicals” (of which I would include myself and many of the churches I have worked for) have enjoyed a kind of advantage in America that many have gotten used to being able to effect their own changes through legislative means.

Progressive evangelicals have effected big political changes around marriage, divorce, civil rights, and immigration while conservative evangelicals have effected their own set of legislative wins around abortion, free speech, and religious liberty. In all these aforementioned political moves, the “evangelicals” were essential. Their participation in and work on these policy changes were critical to the outcomes. Whether you agree with their moves or not, it’s easy to see that Christians of all kinds of politics have used political means to achieve political “wins.” In the aftermath of these political wins, they have communicated them as wins for the kingdom of God or for Christian purposes in general. In their view, a win in policy is a win “for the kingdom.”

But what if the ability to win was taken from them? What if there were no longer as many (or any) political levers to pull when action needed to be taken? What would the evangelicals who are so used to using politics do if using politics stopped becoming an option? That’s the totalitarian thought experiment.

It might be time to look at the historic church and the global church for some ideas.

The early church’s reaction to their political circumstances

The New Testament is full of massive claims. The writers—all of whom were early followers of Jesus Christ—seem to have no problem believing for remarkable outcomes like their own physical resurrection (Philippians 3:10-11, 1 Peter 1:3), the annihilation of Satan and demonic powers (Colossians 2:13-15, Romans 16:19-20), and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (Acts 1:10-11, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11). This is simply to say that those who claimed to be Christians were not afraid to say wild things. They believed them to be true and their faith is now passed to us. Christians hold to weird and wild claims.

And so it seems strange that these first Christians would have so little to say about their current, earthly circumstances. People who believed Jesus to be leading an insurrection (Luke 23:5), but he seemed extremely disinterested in doing so (Matthew 26:52, John 18:36). At nearly every instance where political upheaval or even change could have occurred, Jesus almost seemed to dismiss every one.

When one considers the Roman way of governing, this seems like an odd choice. Wouldn’t the benevolent, kind, and wise Jesus of Nazareth make a great Emperor? Rome wasn’t even a totalitarian state—even better to think about Jesus running such a republic. I mean, imagine the ways in which he could have governed. The entire history would be different and the legacy of Rome rewritten. But, instead of taking Rome, Rome took him. He was crucified “under Pontius Pilate,” after all. Jesus did not use the mechanisms of the state for his purposes; the state killed him.

After Jesus death, resurrection, and ascension, his followers do not seem to pull any of the political levers either. Even as centurions and other Roman officials and high status citizens are converted, we don’t have any record of the church utilizing political connections to gain political power. The closest we have (I think) is Paul’s own appeal to his Roman citizenship in his trials before various officials in the back half of Acts of the Apostles. Even then, Paul is not leveraging any political status to achieve political gains. He only is trying to save his life so he can continue to preach the gospel. It’s all he wants to do and it is what we read he ends up doing as he stays in a house awaiting a final trial:

For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance!

-Acts 28:30-31

These are the final two verses of Acts. Paul just wants to proclaim the kingdom of God. He doesn’t seem to need the kingdom of man to do it. Paul did not desire freedom from prison so he could move up the rungs of Roman power. He took the way of Jesus, not the way of the pagans, and he gave his life in service as he rejected governmental lordship (Mark 10:35-45). For all the trouble he found himself in—for every death threat, riot, and imprisonment (to name a few)—there is not one time where Paul seems to pull the levers of political power to gain such power either for himself or even for the purposes of gospel advancement.

The church seemed to care deeply about what the politicians were doing, but they still seem not the slightest bit interested in changing it. Earlier in the book of Acts, there is another moment that may illuminate why he did this. It seems to be the way the church worked.

The first real persecution of the Apostles is in Acts 4, when a healing of a man places Peter and John before the Sanhedrin. This isn’t even Roman persecution yet, but this is the judicial arm of the Jewish movement that first questions the Christian’s activities. The Apostles are arrested and questioned. The Sanhedrin “were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They seized Peter and John and, because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day” (Acts 4:1-2).

They’re livid, but they can’t do much other than threaten Peter and John. The young Christians deliver their famous line in this scene, saying, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20).

Persecution and threats? Ok, we will keep speaking. The Apostles see their ability to speak the word of God as a separate activity from any political activity. They can do it in favorable socio-political times and unfavorable.

When the Apostles return back to the church in Jerusalem, the people gather and pray, and their prayer is kind of remarkable: “Sovereign Lord,” they begin, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them” (Acts 4:24). Then they pray Psalm 2 (an amazing rabbit hole I cannot go down right now), they name the issue of persecution and then remember (and name!) the political leaders that killed the Lord they follow:

27 Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28 They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.

-Acts 4:27-28

And then they pray this in light of the troubles they’re experiencing:

29 Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. 30 Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

-Acts 4:29-30

Look carefully at this: they name the political situation (persecution) but do not ask for a political solution. In fact, they don’t even ask for a change in their political situation at all. No, they pray, instead, for “great boldness” in the face of these socio-political circumstances. All they say about the threats is asking the Lord to “consider their threats” along with the ask to “enable your servants to speak.” It’s quite remarkable.

For many Americans, any political situation of discomfort is met with calls of prayer for those political situations to change. If we feel like we are losing religious liberty, we are told to pray for favor with the courts to establish political change. If we feel like the kingdom ethics of Christianity are not represented in the laws of the land, we are told to pray for changes in the laws of the land.

What is so often missing from Christian political witness is this brand of boldness. We see brazen, chest-puffing acts of political grandstanding by the most well groomed progressives and conservatives alike. It’s gross. We see a nauseating amount of calls for us to “stand up for [you fill in the blank].” All of these, however, are calls for Christians to join other Christians in political lever-pulling: use the ways of the state to change the state and then God’s will is done—as if God’s will is waiting for senators to do something.

The global church’s reaction to their political circumstances

What challenges me about the ancient church is the same thing that challenges me about the global persecuted church today. In the same way that I believe the ancient church desired their political situation to change, but did not rely on politics to change it, I see the global church similarly. I think illegal house churches desire legal recognition—and they should! I join them in this desire for political change. I also think the ancient church did not wish for persecution to continue. But the way they went about living in the persecution was and is (strangely!) not to change it politically, but to endure it faithfully. The difference is enormous and surprising.

Missing from our modern Christian prayers for political witness is a prayer for God’s Spirit to help us endure any suffering while he emboldens us to continue to preach.

Right now, Iran is under attack from Israel and Iran has returned violent action to Israel. Another war is breaking out. How is the church in Iran enduring this? How are they praying? They sound more like Acts 4 than like any American Christians I know, including myself. Here’s Samuel, a pseudonym of a leader in the church in Iran, speaking yesterday:

“[This war is] an opportunity for the church to be prepared to really be faithful under pressure in all of these spaces in Israel and Iran and maybe if it expands into other areas as well…Pray that ministries would deepen roots in Scripture and prayer together and community, and [help] believers not only to endure trials, but [also] truly witness powerfully through them…Hope must not be framed in geopolitical outcomes, but in the unshakable reign of Christ.”

When have you heard an American Church leader ask for prayer like that? And yet, this leader so close to bombs and violence, is asking for us to pray for the church in Iran like that.

A few years ago, the great Chinese church pastor, Wang Yi, wrote this in his remarkable book, Faithful Disobedience, in the midst of his own persecution:

"We will not give up the power of the 'keys to the kingdom of heaven' or offer it to any temporary political or economic power or in complicity with any political power confuse God's things with Caesar's things. Otherwise, the church not only offends and betrays our Lord, but she has also sold out the souls of humanity and any hope left in Chinese society."

Wang Yi has been in prison since 2018. There is no sign of his release.

Pastor Wang Yi, leading worship at his church before his arrest in China.

Our brothers in Iran and China right now sound a lot like the Apostles in Acts back then. The hope for our human societies is only the society of Jesus Christ and his kingdom. That is the “unshakeable” kingdom to which we have keys. The only way through which God gets his will done is through those who fully switch their citizenship and allegiance from (to employ the Augustinian terms) the City of Man to the City of God. But that allegiance change comes with a cross. We now bear the sufferings of the world in participation with Christ. When we become citizens of the kingdom, we start to operate under different structures, laws, norms, and cultural behavior. And we start using different mechanisms to effect change.

We become different people who hope in different things and pull different levers to transformation. The Lord’s Supper, worship, and serving the poor become our daily practices and small obedience we believe welcome Christ’s Kingdom. We commit to prayer and fasting, generosity and sabbath, worship and justice and almsgiving when the world is clamoring to diminish us to a voting bloc. We don’t act with the same anxiety as the citizens of the state do. We receive the rough news and we pray for boldness to continue declare and demonstrate the gospel. We see the trouble brewing in the political world and we organize our financial life to care for the poor amongst us. We care for our neighbors, love enemies, and pray for those who persecute us and we believe (against all odds) that these seemingly insignificant acts will welcome a kingdom that will far out perform any earthly kingdom. We’ve read the book of Daniel, after all.

We desperately want the political circumstances to change, but this change must come through the way of the cross. As another church leader, Jim Tianming, wrote about in China:

“The house church will need to have its legal identity affirmed eventually, but the key is that we can only accomplish this through the way of the cross...the true church is not afraid of being homeless; the true church is afraid of being spineless. Christ was hung on the cross 'in the air.' This demonstrates that the world has no place for Christ. However, Jesus conquered the world and drew the world to God.”

It’s almost impossible for most Americans to understand any of this. We live in the constant delusion that the state can (and should!) get us out of this, that politics can grant redemption. We now sit in well over a decade of some of the most outlandish political promises ever given to our country. Little of it has come to pass. When will we understand that none of it ever will?

We do not know the future. It is quite likely that both the right and the left have massively overestimated the importance of “this moment.” It’s also quite likely that other threats of climate change and AI are far more important to consider.

Nevertheless, if we move to a centralized, subservience-demanding state, I’m not sure many American Christians have the theological resources to endure it. And maybe that’s how it goes. As Germany became a totalitarian state, most of the German churches simply followed suit and became the subservient mouthpieces Hitler wanted them to be. Yes, the Confessing Church had Bonhoeffer and many others, but the vast majority didn’t have the spiritual depth to withstand the state. It’s hard to imagine America being any different. Both conservative and progressive Christians alike have married their theological hopes with geopolitical outcomes that they won’t just unravel in a day.

And yet, through prayer, worship, and service to our neighbor, I think we can begin to disentangle it. Such obedience wouldn’t hurt and it just might be the way we exit the kingdom of man and receive the kingdom of God. And if we ever find ourselves struck down and confused by actions of the state, perhaps we can join the Apostles and pray like this:

“Sovereign Lord…look upon the threats…and grant your servants boldness.”

Amen.