In a previous post, I made observations about the connected nature of religion and politics. In this post, I want to elaborate on the distinction between the three terms I used to describe the Religious Nature of Politics.

Religion: All persons are inherently religious – even if they do not adhere to any particular religious system or dogma. Everyone has faith convictions. By this I mean every person holds to presuppositions about the world beyond the senses they believe to be true. We could not logically function in society without these assumptions. You may believe a divine creator made all things and all things hold together by His will and purpose. You may think the universe is governed by certain scientific principles that have coalesced over time into the world in which you live. Neither assertion can be proved or disproved with absolute certainty. They are faith convictions. Faith convictions are either theological (divinely transcendent) or Ideological (humanly immanent) in nature.

Worldview: A worldview operates downstream from religion (AKA faith convictions). A worldview is the outworking of your faith convictions. Every day you interpret events, circumstances, and interactions in the visible world of the senses by the light of your faith convictions of the invisible world beyond the senses to understand the reality around you.

Again, all people have a worldview because all people have faith convictions.

Politics: Politics operate downstream from worldview. Political ideology and the governing principles born from it are derived from a worldview believed to be a true interpretation of reality.

In summary, in its purest form, political views are founded on worldview, which is derived from certain faith convictions held to be absolutely true.

Politics are downstream from worldview and worldview is downstream from religion – the fount of all human belief.

The Christian religion gives birth to a Christian worldview that reflects the moral and ethical values of God’s Ten Commandments, Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, and the apostles’ teaching, for example. The framework of the United States Constitution is the political manifestation (in large part) of a Christian worldview.

Humanism – the idea of a system of morals and ethics not derived from a transcendent source, but from an immanent origin can lead to a Marxist worldview, for instance, where absolute equity is erected as the pinnacle of cultural achievement. The political ramifications of such a worldview lead to socialism or Communism.

Your religion influences your politics via your worldview. If you claim the Christian faith but adhere to a political scheme that is contrary to a Christian ethic, you need to do some serious soul-searching. Your true religion is not Christianity but something else entirely.