FROM THE EDITOR
Terry C. Muck
July 1, 1983
In 1974 I prepared to attend a seminar taught by the noted British historian, Herbert Butterfield. He inaugurated the seminar at Northwestern University with a public lecture on the subject "The Christian and Politics."
In 1974 Jerry Falwell had just started to sensitize the nation to the relationship between religion and politics. My classmates and I wondered whether they mixed like oil and water or cream cheese and bagels. So my heart beat a little faster as the evening of the lecture approached.
I sat in the front row of Leverone Hall at eight o'clock. Dr. Butterfield, who I later came to admire greatly as he shepherded ten of us graduate students through a quarter-long examination of the role of the Christian historian, shuffled his eighty-year-old frame to the lectern. He cleared his throat, paused a moment, and then said, "I don't think I can really speak to this subject to your satisfaction. You see, I don't believe the Christian really participates in the political process as a Christian politician. He participates as a Democrat or a Republican or an independent. A Christian, as a Christian, is apolitical."
I was stunned. And the sound of creaking chairs around me told me I wasn't alone in my disappointment. We had come to hear some answers to our questions about how a Christian does politics. We wanted to know how we could make our views known on the burning issues of abortion, war, and integrity in government. And our potential answer man was telling us there was no single Christian way to do it.
This was my first exposure to what Harry Blamires calls "the Christian mind." As we put together plans for this issue of LEADERSHIP on the subject of church politics, I recalled that lesson vividly. In so many of the church ...
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