Ethics and Religion Talk: How do politics in other countries affect your faith?

Some faiths tend to maintain ties to countries outside the U.S. Even some Christian communities have a majority of first-generation immigrants. I'm curious if the clergy on the panel ever have to navigate the waters of political division in other countries. How does that play out? Could we learn something about how we might do the same when it comes to American politics?

Father Kevin Niehoff, O.P., a Dominican priest who serves as Judicial Vicar, Diocese of Grand Rapids, responds:

As a member of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), I hear the suffering of my brothers in Ukraine, the Middle East and other areas of strife. My eyes are on the Kingdom of Heaven. I choose not to get entangled in civil politics.

Sometimes, political discussions are unavoidable. When embroiled in a political argument, I might ask, how will politics get me to heaven?

Every Christian has a moral obligation to fulfill any civic duties. My religious values model my fulfillment of these duties. Christians are not bound to tell anyone the choices made.

Americans have the mistaken notion that they have a right to ALL information, including politics. Respecting the right of its citizens to make informed decisions in private is a service American politics may provide.

Rev. Ray Lanning, a retired minister of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, responds:

American Christians support missions in many lands which are officially and culturally hostile to our faith. The Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America has close ties with sister churches and fellow Christians in many other parts of the world. So yes, now and then we are confronted with the realities and dangers of geo-politics. What we say and do here in the exercise of our civil liberties may have serious consequences for Christians elsewhere. Over time, our leadership has come to understand what it means to be “a city that is set on a hill” (Matthew 5:14). That does not mean, as some think, that we Americans have been singled out for God’s special favor as a nation. 

Rather, it means, among other things, that to the extent our words and actions are seen and heard in the world at large, they may and often do have serious consequences for Christians in other lands. Some time ago, I was a delegate to a synod of the Christian Reformed Church when the topic for discussion was the sinfulness of the government policy of apartheid in South Africa. Little thought was given to our own sin of tacitly accepting a similar policy in the United States for many decades. Seated behind me were delegates from our sister churches in South Africa. I was shocked by their visible distress and concern for how our debates in Grand Rapids would play out in South Africa. Today’s world is much smaller socially than it was forty years ago. What we say or do in our public deliberations and official acts may be reported around the world before we are done with our coffee break.

Fred Stella, the Pracharak (Outreach Minister) for the West Michigan Hindu Temple, responds:

This is quite relevant in the Hindu community, which is made up of a majority of first-generation Indian-Americans, as well as those who are still Indian nationals. As you know, there is a great deal of tension between Hindu majority-but-secular India and their Islamist theocratic neighbor Pakistan. I’m quite pleased to say that for the most part, this strained relationship does not spill over into the dynamics within the Indo-Pak community very often. Naturally, there are often disagreements on South Asian politics, but for the most part they are kept out of conversations. I do know of a couple of women, one Indian Hindu and one Pakistani Muslim, who had a deep and abiding friendship for decades that ended due to strong differences on matters a world away.

My response:

According to the Bible, Jews are indigenous to the Middle East. They settled in Canaan, a land that came to be known as Israel, 3,500 years ago. For about 1,200 years, Jews ruled themselves either outright or semi-autonomously under the Persians, Greeks or Romans, with a brief period in which they were exiled from the land by the Babylonian Empire. Jews continued to maintain a presence in the land from the first century onward, although at that point it was ruled by others.

The modern Zionist movement worked with the British government, who “inherited” the land formerly known as Israel from the Ottoman Empire following World War I, and the United Nations to carve out a piece of Palestine to form the modern country of Israel. Israel was intended to be a place where Jews could find refuge and rebuild a state infused with fundamental Jewish values. By any measure, Israel has been a phenomenal success. It has welcomed immigration of individual Jews and Jewish families and entire Jewish communities from around the world and it has prospered. It has reached out in times of crisis to countries around the world with assistance. It has signed agreements of peace and economic cooperation with a growing number of its neighbor countries in the Middle East.

Had there been no Israel in 1948, who would have taken in the almost 300,000 European Jews, refugees from the Nazi attempt to wipe Jews off the face of Europe, who sought refuge there? The United States took in 150,000 in the ten years following the Shoah. Israel took in twice that many in just five years. Had there been no establishment of Israel, who would protect Jewish communities of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco and Ethiopia, and elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa, in this era of rising antisemitism? Many of these communities chose to relocate to Israel in the years following its establishment because of antisemitism. 

Judaism maintains a close connection to the land and the state of Israel. Individual Jews do not always support the current government of Israel in the same way as Americans do not always support the current president. However, the vast majority of Jews support the existence of the state of Israel.