The fragmentation of society by difference

Paul takes up this theme in Gal.2:38:

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Such statements from Genesis and Galatians establish a human identity that supersedes difference and has become the basis of our justice system and the democratic tradition. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, it invites all people to the table and relativises individual difference. In this act the Church recognises that individuals are accepted and loved as children of God. To insist that difference trumps the unity of the human family is churlish. In the grace of God, difference is recognised and accepted. The Church, therefore, has no reason to enter the minefield of competing resentments and sectional interests based on gender, race and sexual orientation because the final, unifying and healing word has been spoken in the man Jesus.

The Church has a mandate to seek justice because it stands with the downtrodden, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked and brings good news to the poor. It does so in the power of the Holy Spirit that is quite different from the spirit of secular politics that so often relies on coercion. The Church cannot dictate but can only say "you may" in respect for the dignity and freedom of the individual. It can only proclaim the way of grace. Subsequently, there should be no such thing as a Christian political party, not because the gospel is a-political - the life of Jesus was immersed in politics - but because the Church does not have the authority to promulgate law. Law is promulgated and enforced by civil powers, traditionally under the auspices of grace. The work of the Church is to proclaim the gospel that goes into the world and does its own work in the Spirit. When the Church turns its hand to political coercion or enters the lists of the culture wars, it stands in the same danger that threatens all politics; the temptation to worship in the temple of political ideas and to be sure that it is acting for the good. This is not its home. Rather, the Church can only point to the Kingdom that is established on earth among the microi, the little ones, away from grand political theories and of power.

The culture wars have emerged in a secular society whose centre does not hold. It does not hold because it lacks an ontology of the human that insists on the whole, of human being existing in community. It also lacks the wisdom of the Church that recognises idolatry and self-righteousness and the evil that men have in their hearts. When we turn our backs on thousands of years of the science of the soul we become as children arguing in the playground throwing sand in each other's eyes. We become unwise in the nature of God and of humanity and the world is turned into a battleground of ideology.