I have just read the introductory chapter to Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory,1 and I am blown away by it. His prose is a pleasure to read, his reading is unimaginably wide, and he has an amazing capacity to recall what he has read and to organise authors’ differently expressed ideas into a single stream of thought. The first of his “study questions” At the end of the introduction is “Quickly write down your top three takeaways from this chapter.” I give just one here, and it is a personal response, not a summary of Watkin’s writing. Indeed, thus far, this is not a book to be summarised. The summaries/notes/synopses in this blog were all written to help me get a better grasp of an author’s thinking and overall argument. The only way I could accomplish that with the chapter I have just read would be to re-read it.
My takeaway is that a Christian critique of contemporary Western culture (or any culture, for that matter) must outnarrate the culture. That is, Christianity must provide the narrative framework with which to examine and evaluate the culture in which we live. As C. S. Lewis famously wrote, “I believe in Christianity, as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
Before each of the last two Australian general elections I used an app provided by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s website to find out how my views corresponded with those of Australia’s major political parties. The choice, essentially, was between the Labor Party and the conservative Liberal/National coalition, with the Greens offering at alternative somewhat to the left of Labor’s mainstream. The app asked a number of policy related multiple-choice questions (if I remember rightly). My results didn’t entirely surprise me. On both occasions they had me agreeing with about half of Labor’s policies and half of the coalition’s. On the second occasion, I also agreed with some of the Greens’.
Did it imply that some of my policy preferences were mutually inconsistent? I don’t think so. One might say that the parties’ own policies lack logical consistency, because they are motivated partly by ideology but partly too by the desire to keep the favour of particular sections of the voting population.
Although I had never thought of it this way before, I hope my responses to the app’s questions were based on a Christian outnarration. I try to evaluate each party’s policies in the framework of Christian values, and neither side of politics represents them anywhere near fully. Tritely and traditionally, the coalition represents the family (or did–I am not sure this is still entirely true) and Labor has greater concern for the poorer, more needy, and disabled members of society. You may disagree with these evaluations, but that’s not the point. The point is that if Christians apply their values in a way that is biblically sound, they will not be able to throw in their lot totally with one side of politics or the other, because Christianity is not a cultural add-on. It is a God-given, scripturally expressed way of seeing the world, and Christians are called to see the culture of their society through the eyes God gives them, and politics is a dimension of that culture. This, as I understand it, is a small part of what Watkin calls “outnarration”.
Voting in Australia is compulsory. That means I have to choose between parties’ policy packages, or spoil my ballot. I could just not vote, and pay the fine. Perhaps I could get myself removed from the electoral roll. But each of these options would be a cop-out, and the Christian narrative is very clear about the fact that I have a responsibility towards society. So I am faced with a quandary at every election. But I delight in this quandary, because it is the product of following Jesus and of the perspective he provides.
- Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s unfolding story makes sense of modern life and culture. Zondervan, Grand Rapids MI, 2022. ↩