When Politics Becomes Heresy: The Idol of Power and the Gospel of Christ
In When Politics Becomes Heresy: The Idol of Power and the Gospel of Christ, Tim Perry, lead pastor at a Lutheran church in Canada, applies a knowledge of church heresy to the Christian church today, arguing that Christians need to examine themselves in light of ancient heresies. Although not a direct case for the study of rhetoric or media criticism, Perry demonstrates a solid grasp of rhetoric in making arguments relevant to the polarization in churches and society. He also interrogates the rhetoric of contemporary politics. Like C. S. Lewis or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the ethos Perry engages is welcoming, serious, humble, and Bible-centered, He says the book is not meant to be an argument, but rather a “lament,” a “plea,” a “call,” a “panarion” (a catalogue of heresies and how to treat them), and “my last love letter” to evangelicalism (1–2).
Perry describes five ancient heresies visible in churches today, three of which apply significantly to rhetoric and media and will be examined in more depth. Perry begins with language meanings. Heresy happens when people who claim to be Christians deny some essential belief, such as the Incarnation. He adds that heresy is “the obstinate assertion of self-will over against the mind of the church universal, while insisting that one nevertheless remains a Christian” (22). Heresy is a serious word.
Perry starts with an explanation and history of simony. Simony is named after Simon Magus, a sorcerer who in Acts 8:9–25 was spreading the Gospel successfully until he thought he could pay the apostles to give him the Holy Spirit. “When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, ‘Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay hands may receive the Holy Spirit.’ Peter answered, ‘May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money’” (8:18–20). In the Middle Ages, simony came to mean the buying and selling of church offices or “divine objects.” A church member could, for example, receive time out of Purgatory by buying indulgences. Perry maintains that modern simony swaps the positions of church and state. Christians exchange God’s promises for political issues and power, reversing “the dynamic of kings and emperors approaching bishops and popes” (51). Perry declaims, “When the Bible is misused to make difficult and complex issues seem easy, it is being used to browbeat faithful people into coming to a solution prematurely. It is deploying the language of faith to secure a position in politics. It is Simony” (49). Perry adds, “When a political position guards the doors to the church rather than the gospel, that gospel is being treated as a means to a political end. And that is Simony” (51). He further notes, “When the gospel is sublimated to politics, when the Holy Spirit is offered for sale to a worldly purpose, what belongs to God is rendered unto Caesar—that is Simony” (52–53). As with each heresy, the author recommends repentance. He adds here prudence as a response. Perry recommends “the use of proper caution; deliberation in decision-making, using reason in both self- and community governance” (53). Here is where rhetoric and media criticism have a place.
“Outside Scripture, Simon is also remembered as the founder of Gnosticism. Whether or not that is the case, it’s certainly true that Gnosticism finds its way into the pages of the New Testament,” explains Perry (65). St. Paul wrote letters to the new churches suffering from heresies, and Gnosticism may have been a major entanglement. There were Gnostic versions of other religions, too, but all involved “secret knowledge,” as the word means in Greek. Most alarming, the Gnostics thought Christ might not have been God and man. The major error is that of denying the incarnation and death and resurrection of Christ as key to salvation. Instead, Christ’s teachings were the sources of the “secret knowledge” Christ withheld from the Twelve but was then understood by the elite Gnostics. They could figure it out themselves. Gnostics thought “the world needed no conversion. Christian faith was entirely compatible with the world as it was” (75). The church needed adjusting to the culture. In contemporary terms, Gnosticism is seen in the urge of evangelicals to be “relevant” rather than true, to offer self-esteem rather than repentance. Perry maintains that “Like them [the Gnostics] we sought to bring Jesus to a culture by closing the gap between the two as much as possible. Like them, we ended up adopting the culture, losing Jesus, and scorning our own piety” (82). He continues, “The contemporary evangelical Jesus, whether on the right or the left, bears little resemblance to the Jesus of the Bible” (82).
Finally, Perry asks, “What would Jesus do? Depends on the Jesus. He is entirely captive to the political needs of social conservation or social progress” (83). Gnosticism can be seen in the conspiracy theories (secret knowledge) of the right, the QAnon movement, and the lust for power, noticeable in the Moral Majority of the 1980s. Gnosticism can be seen in the arrogant elitism on the left, political correctness run amok, belief in the “power of the state to silence any evangelical dissent to the LGBTQ+ agenda” (83), and the lust for power. As Perry says, the universal need for the suffering and risen Christ has lost its truth. For too many in the Protestant church today, “The culture doesn’t need to be converted; other Christians do” (83).
The appropriate response to Gnosticism, as with Simony, is of course repentance. Perry also advocates for realism, a realism that sees the world for what it is—fallen. “We’re not simply finite and therefore ignorant. We’re also sinners who willfully embrace blindness,” he observes (86). Especially biblical realism is needed, that of the Old Testament prophets as well as the New Testament Apostles. Perry explains further, “But the Bible is not a handbook, and its purpose is not to produce a happy, well-adjusted life. Its purpose is to absorb the world, to tell the truth about it, and to call it and us to repentance” (87). The world is a horror because of humanity; that is the reality.
In chapter 4, Perry takes on Arianism: “The tradition is clear, Arius is the bad guy for denying the full divinity of the Son,” leading on to the Nicene controversy (96). One form that the Arian heresy takes in today’s culture is that Christ is reduced to a good man who offers self-help advice. Perry adds, “If the gospel is subservient to a political message, then salvation is no longer about something God has done. It is about something we must do. . . . If we are Simoniacs and gnostics, in other words, we are invariably also Arians” (95). If Christ, true God and true man, is not the center of the Gospel, works become the alternative to salvation. Christians have always been subject to the appeal of a works-based theology. The Reformation was proclaimed over this very issue.
Indeed, Perry recommends focus on the Incarnation, particularly in worship. He suggests all evangelicals confess the Nicene Creed in church services. He states, “a creed is the intellectual expression of faith. It is an act of worship” (116). A creed is not a substitute for the Bible—it captures the essentials of the Good News. For those many churches still confessing the creeds, study of the history of the creeds may reawaken appreciation of the Incarnation. Perry further notes, “Athanasius could see what Arius could not; if the Son was a creature . . . then he was not the Savior” (121). God become human while remaining God—it is the greatest mystery.
In chapters 5 and 6, Perry takes on the heresies of Pelagianism and Donatism. Pelagianism conveys rejection of original sin, the idea that all people and the world itself are fallen. Pelagius emphasized freedom and responsibility, ignoring the real state of nature and human nature. Says Perry, “For Pelagius grace accompanies all people, helping them do what is in their natural power to do: seek forgiveness for past sins, avoid sin, pursue virtue in the present, and attain the holiness without which no one shall see God in the future” (130–31). Applying this to the contemporary moment, Perry announces that in the place of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the God-man, “we have been fed a thin gruel of moral training from the right and social justice from the left” (125). Thus, politics can become a means of salvation.
Donatism was a more local schism from the North African church in which church members maintained that the clergy had to be without sin. Perry says, “According to the Donatists . . . the church’s holiness is entirely the holiness of its members. . . . If anyone lapses in their pursuit of perfection, they are by that action put outside the church” (160). Thus, single issues or single sins could get one excommunicated. Perry discerns that these issues or sins are often ones on which the Bible has nothing to say, at least directly:
The Bible is quite clear on chastity before marriage and fidelity after, but it does not speak with the same clarity on how to respond to gender dysphoria. Similarly, while the Bible places human beings as the center of God’s creation, created in God’s image . . . it says nothing whatever about . . . fossil fuels. Does the Bible speak to these? Certainly. But discerning just what the Bible says is a matter of prudential judgment. (166)
Contemporary Christians have a hard time deciding what is essential Christian teaching, not a new problem. Martin Luther talks about the paradox of the sinner and the saint. We all remain sinners and must repent daily, but we Christians are also saints, washed in the blood of the Lamb. Christians should be able to disagree on many matters because we are all just human, imperfect. The Bible still requires interpretation. Some can and should dissent (Luther being a prime example), but we do not all have to believe exactly the same things; nor should we condemn those who do not agree. Perry states:
So Donatism follows hard on the heels of Pelagianism, theologically if not chronologically. If we come to believe so fiercely that we [not Jesus] are building the kingdom that we will not countenance any criticism of our program, it’s all too easy to see our opponents not simply as mistaken, but as evil. And evil must be eradicated. If God’s on our side, we’ll start the next war. (171)
Perry has written a short book that packs a punch. He does a good job of giving the historical setting for the five heresies he examines. Although the ideas and their connection to our times are not always easy to understand, one does not need a PhD to do so. Most important is the ethos Perry communicates. He is not out to censure one side in the polarization the church faces today, and claims, like Paul, in the last chapter, that he himself is the greatest sinner. The ethos here is inviting and humble, a model for readers. Perry declares the following:
I do believe the indictment includes all of us. Further, I have deliberately cast that indictment as heresy to indicate that it is a spiritual problem first. We will not straighten out our political issues until we’re clear that we have gone astray spiritually. The solution is not to switch sides, and still less to carve out a political third way. The solution is to repent, in the sense of the New Testament word metanoia. Aided by grace and fueled by godly sorrow for sin, we need to change our minds and actions. To forsake the broad way that leads to destruction, and search again for the narrow way that leads to life. To cultivate prudence and patience, faithfulness in witness, and a political civility that recognizes the important but secondary place of politics in our lives. (176–77)
Perry ends the book with Psalm 119:94—“O Lord, I am yours, save me!”
In conclusion, how do three very different books by unique Christian writers, written over a period of fifteen years, connect to one another and the American Christian church now? Perry in When Politics Become Heresy examines “the language of the world in which late modern evangelicalism finds itself entangled . . . in short, the language of politics” (20). Language, whether in print or Tik Tok; constitutes the context of our culture. Woods and Patton in Prophetically Incorrect conclude that “a prophetic communication model can help Christians to defect faithfully from the culture’s dominant narrative while providing a message of hope in a hopeless time” (18). Beitler in Seasoned Speech declares, “I believe the people of God stand to benefit greatly from sustained and theologically responsible engagement with the Western rhetorical tradition” (11). Of course, Bible study is central, but exploring how we communicate, how we persuade and are persuaded, is worthy work for all in the church. In his conclusion to the history of rhetoric, Toye states the following:
At many times and in many places, rhetoric has been seen as a complete system of education . . .—it has also been highly controversial, seen by some as a technique by which the unscrupulous can deceive the masses. It has links to literature, science, commerce, and private conversation. . . . This is why the investigation of rhetoric—and the ways it is contested—is a good starting point for understanding social and political questions more generally. [1]
Rhetoric can also reveal to us much about the church and its issues.
It is all too easy for us all to behave like the Pharisee who thought himself better than that other poor guy praying in the temple. The Pharisees, devoted to religion, thought they could perfect themselves. Perhaps they were afraid and thought they needed to save the religion and culture. Perhaps the Pharisees got lost in their own words and rules. Christ tried to tell them he was speaking of another kind of kingdom, but they stuck to the politics of the time and belief in their own good works. Language, in particular, rhetoric, the art of persuasion in whatever medium, can help win converts or lose the church respect, can enable Christians to communicate civilly with one another or tear communities apart, can point to Christ’s salvation or reinforce the national narrative that things and power are what we should seek. A study of rhetoric can reveal modern heresies that plague us now. These three books all point Christians to the importance of minding our rhetoric.
[1]. Toye, Rhetoric, 31.
