Kingdom Civics
T. M. Moore, Columnist

To them he presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3).

A warning from our recent past
During the Reagan years we began to hear word of a new fear that was appearing in certain sectors of the country. People simply didn’t know their history, weren’t familiar with the foundational documents of the nation, and couldn’t identify significant people or events or place them in the correct time periods.

As it turned out, we discovered America’s schools had been neglecting to teach history and civics as previously, with the result many of America’s young people had just about lost any sense of continuity with the nation’s past. That, coupled with what James Schlesinger identified as the “disintegration” of the American ideal – the emergence of many ethnic populations more concerned about their ethnic heritage and culture than that of their new home land – raised an alarm in many people who questioned whether the public weal could long be sustained under such circumstances.

Now a similar hue and cry is rising again – Americans don’t know their foundations! The nation is becoming something other than what the Fathers bequeathed us! – but the problem today focuses not on the people in general but on our leaders. Increasingly America’s elected officials seem to be out of touch or even at cross purposes with the Constitution, the Founders, and the American character and heritage.

When, for example, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner explained the “constitutional basis” for a policy he wanted to enact as lodged in Congress’ ability to make whatever laws it wishes, or when a President buffers himself with advisors and “czars” for which there is no Constitutional provision, but only specious precedent, we have good reason to wonder whether those who are the helm of the nation are steering the same course as those who sacrificed their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to bring this nation into being in the first place.

An even greater crisis
But this meditation is not about America and the loss of civic-mindedness we find everywhere on the rise. As bad as that is, it is not nearly as alarming as the widespread ignorance, indifference, and neglect which Christian pastors and lay people routinely practice with respect to the provenance, character, vision, and mission of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Since before the Founding, American Christians have been working their way down a watershed, away from the heights of Gospel fullness and integrity toward an acculturated version of the faith which is increasingly compromised, complacent, and comfortable in its descent into complete irrelevance.

In short, the neglect of what I shall call “Kingdom Civics” has brought the Church in America to its present crisis of marginalization, meaninglessness, and, in the eyes of many, buffoonery. Nothing short of a recovery of the Gospel of the Kingdom, and the Kingdom Civics which flow from that, will enable the American Church to claw its way back up the watershed and onto her proper path.

Kingdom Civics
What do I mean by “Kingdom Civics”?

Just like the civics course you took in high school, in which you learned the history of America’s Founding, read the foundational documents of the land, were introduced to the key players and events in that Founding, and learned how to discover your place and make your way productively within the American polity and economy, so Kingdom Civics intends to orient and equip the followers of Jesus Christ for life in the Kingdom of God.

Jesus Himself was the first instructor in Kingdom Civics, as our text indicates. Evidently Jesus felt as though His disciples needed a forty-day crash course on the history, nature, vision, protocols, and operations of the Kingdom of God – and that in spite of the fact that they had already spent three years with Him listening to Him teach incessantly about the same!

The disciples had finished seminary; now they needed a refresher course, a Kingdom propaedeutic, to ready them for the work of building the Church and advancing the rule of Christ unto righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

The proper curriculum of Kingdom Civics includes a wide range of topics, each of which can be found in the teaching of Jesus and the rest of His Word. These include the History of the Kingdom, the Founders and Builders of the Kingdom, Kingdom Law, Kingdom Character and Customs, the Heritage of the Kingdom, Advancing the Kingdom, Kingdom Institutions, the Evidence of the Kingdom, and the End of the Kingdom. In more than thirty years of ministry in a variety of forms and places, I have consistently found pastors, in spite of their seminary degrees, to be largely ignorant of the Kingdom of God and Kingdom Civics.

Hollow men
T. S. Eliot introduced the alarming notion of “hollow men,” “men without chests,” as C. S. Lewis rephrased it, men, the very essence of whose being – the image of God – had been excavated, a gap that nothing else can fill left in its place. Without a conscious connection to God, men cannot fulfill their purpose nor realize their highest ideals. We want people to be good, decent, happy, and productive, but they keep turning out to be mendacious, angry, fearful, slothful, and greedy. “We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful,” as Lewis so aptly put it.

This is where Christian men are today, only they have not been deprived of the image of God, but of their sense of the Kingdom of God and its meaning for their lives. A hollow place – a lagoon or lacuna – exists in the souls of Christian men, and the presence of that spiritual sinkhole is depriving them of the fullness of life, power for witness, boldness to lead, and grace that leads to holiness which are among the most telling characteristics of those in whom the Kingdom of God is flourishing. Without an understanding of the Kingdom of God and a commitment to the practice of Kingdom Civics, Christian men – and women – cannot fulfill their reason for being, their calling as the redeemed of the Lord. Until that lacuna is admitted and Christian men again take up the course and practice of Kingdom Civics, the Church will continue down the watershed into irrelevance.

It shall be the burden of this column, deo volente, to pour Kingdom substance into that lacuna so that church leaders may know the fullness and power of the Gospel of the Kingdom and equip church members for the same.
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T. M. Moore is Dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and Principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition (www.myparuchia.com).