To desire an apolitical Christianity is to ask for a will o’the wisp. Christianity is heavily political: by becoming Christians we are declaring that the kingdoms of this world are not Ultimate and cannot be the focus of worship despite the ravenous hunger of statist politicians since the days of Babel. When we declare that Jesus of Nazareth, the Man now in the glory, is the True King and that one day he will return and the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of the Lord’s Messiah, we are making a deeply political affirmation. Yes, and when that happens, politics will never be the same again. The members of the Confessing Church, blessings be upon the memory of those brethren, knew this so well when they stated as much in the Barmen Declaration: “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.”
What we as Baptists reject is the confusion of church and state as in the days following Constantine. But make no mistake about it: to say Jesus is Lord is to make a political statement. The martyrs of the Confessing Church who died under Hitler cannot be understood without recognizing this truth.