In his book God and Government, Charles Colson further discussed aspects of Ellul's concept of "the political illusion" --
[Christians should believe] more in the power of prayer than in the power of politics;...that the message "repent, be converted, and trust in Jesus" [can] topple even an authoritarian leader...
Such [a] belief runs counter to the myth that all human problems are political and solvable by all-powerful human institutions. An extreme example was the prominent conservative Christian leader who declared in 1985, after Congress failed to pass his legislative agenda, "The only way to have a genuine spiritual revival is to have legislative reform...I think we have been legislated out of the possibility of spiritual revival." Evidently, the work of the Kingdom of God has been defeated by a majority vote in the kingdoms of man...
The late Jacques Ellul could well have been describing this leader when he wrote that politics has become "the supreme religion of the age."
The political illusion springs from a diminishing belief in God and the growth of big government. What people once expected from the Almighty, they now expect from the almighty bureaucracy. That's a bad trade for anyone; but for the Chrisitian, it's rank idolatry...
This unwavering focus heightens both the promise and expectation of what government can do. Political rhetoric, therefore, must offer panaceas to all human ills...
With government policy so dependent on public reaction, it's little wonder that the celebrity syndrome has become such a major force in Western politics. [In order to gain more widespread media attention -- any media attention, for that matter -- on the debate over a congressional farm bill in the mid-1980s, the committee chairman called three actresses -- Jane Fonda, Sissy Spacek, and Jessica Lange -- to testify on the bill.] What were the qualifications of these stars?...They had all played farm women in recent films. Celebrities, as Time film critic Richard Schickle has observed, have become "the chief agents of moral change in America...
"Unfortunately, [he's] right. The "farm wives" have been followed, in recent years, by Julia Roberts testifying about Rett Syndrome, Richard Gere about China's treatment of Tibet, and George Clooney about the tragedy of Darfur...As media expert Eric Denzenhall explains, "We're living in an age of optics. Expertise does not photograph well. Julia Robers does"...
[Part of the political illusion's effect is that] whether a policy is good or bad, a success or a failure, is of no account; all that matters is the emotion its instant image induces...
Images pile on images, day after day; anesthetizing the public so they feel individually impotent believing that all power resides in images they see on their television screens. This eventually erodes their own sense of political responsibility and makes them easy prey to the appetite of an authoritarian state. Ellul believes that that consequence is irresistible. Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt would agree, writing that the chief characteristic of tyranny is isolation of the individual, denying him access to the public realm "where he would should himself, see and be seen, hear and be heard"...
The only thing that stands between the multitudes and totalitarianism, says Ellul, are the mediating structures of society: family, small groups of citizens, churches, voluntary associations that are independent of and resistant to the collective state...
Tocqueville made the same point that if the American experiment were to succeed, it would require the continued help of voluntary associations.
Of these independent institutions, the church should be the one best able to expose the political illusion. For the message of a transcendent reality is a resounding warning against the futility of seeking immortality from teh instruments and institutions of this life. Mastery of nature through technology has given modern man the illusion that he has mastered life itself. Attempts to create alternatives to His rule are futile...
Hannah Arendt [has written that], "the fall of the Roman Empire plainly demonstrated that no work of mortal hands can be immortal, and it was accompanied by the rise of the Christian gospel of an everlasting individual life to its position as the exclusive religion of Western mankind. Both together made any striving for an earthly immortality futile and unnecessary"...
Ideology, which in so many parts of the world has replaced true religion, is powerless as well. As Ellul points out, the promised utopias of the twentieth century, either Marxist or Fascist, are doomed because they accept the essential premises of current civilization and move with its lines of internal development: "Thus, utilizing what this world itself offers them, they become its slaves, although they thing they are transforming it." Even massive weapons of destruction fail to assure anything for today's mightiest governments. Wars reach no permanet solutions; there is no such thing as a lasting peace or, as Americans once so believed, "a war to end all wars." Terrorists stalk the globe, and governments can do little to stop them.
Wars proliferate; political solutions fail; frustrations rise. Yet we (evangelical Christians included) continue to look to governments to resolve problems beyond their capability. The illusion persits.
[Christians should believe] more in the power of prayer than in the power of politics;...that the message "repent, be converted, and trust in Jesus" [can] topple even an authoritarian leader...
Such [a] belief runs counter to the myth that all human problems are political and solvable by all-powerful human institutions. An extreme example was the prominent conservative Christian leader who declared in 1985, after Congress failed to pass his legislative agenda, "The only way to have a genuine spiritual revival is to have legislative reform...I think we have been legislated out of the possibility of spiritual revival." Evidently, the work of the Kingdom of God has been defeated by a majority vote in the kingdoms of man...
The late Jacques Ellul could well have been describing this leader when he wrote that politics has become "the supreme religion of the age."
The political illusion springs from a diminishing belief in God and the growth of big government. What people once expected from the Almighty, they now expect from the almighty bureaucracy. That's a bad trade for anyone; but for the Chrisitian, it's rank idolatry...
This unwavering focus heightens both the promise and expectation of what government can do. Political rhetoric, therefore, must offer panaceas to all human ills...
With government policy so dependent on public reaction, it's little wonder that the celebrity syndrome has become such a major force in Western politics. [In order to gain more widespread media attention -- any media attention, for that matter -- on the debate over a congressional farm bill in the mid-1980s, the committee chairman called three actresses -- Jane Fonda, Sissy Spacek, and Jessica Lange -- to testify on the bill.] What were the qualifications of these stars?...They had all played farm women in recent films. Celebrities, as Time film critic Richard Schickle has observed, have become "the chief agents of moral change in America...
"Unfortunately, [he's] right. The "farm wives" have been followed, in recent years, by Julia Roberts testifying about Rett Syndrome, Richard Gere about China's treatment of Tibet, and George Clooney about the tragedy of Darfur...As media expert Eric Denzenhall explains, "We're living in an age of optics. Expertise does not photograph well. Julia Robers does"...
[Part of the political illusion's effect is that] whether a policy is good or bad, a success or a failure, is of no account; all that matters is the emotion its instant image induces...
Images pile on images, day after day; anesthetizing the public so they feel individually impotent believing that all power resides in images they see on their television screens. This eventually erodes their own sense of political responsibility and makes them easy prey to the appetite of an authoritarian state. Ellul believes that that consequence is irresistible. Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt would agree, writing that the chief characteristic of tyranny is isolation of the individual, denying him access to the public realm "where he would should himself, see and be seen, hear and be heard"...
The only thing that stands between the multitudes and totalitarianism, says Ellul, are the mediating structures of society: family, small groups of citizens, churches, voluntary associations that are independent of and resistant to the collective state...
Tocqueville made the same point that if the American experiment were to succeed, it would require the continued help of voluntary associations.
Of these independent institutions, the church should be the one best able to expose the political illusion. For the message of a transcendent reality is a resounding warning against the futility of seeking immortality from teh instruments and institutions of this life. Mastery of nature through technology has given modern man the illusion that he has mastered life itself. Attempts to create alternatives to His rule are futile...
Hannah Arendt [has written that], "the fall of the Roman Empire plainly demonstrated that no work of mortal hands can be immortal, and it was accompanied by the rise of the Christian gospel of an everlasting individual life to its position as the exclusive religion of Western mankind. Both together made any striving for an earthly immortality futile and unnecessary"...
Ideology, which in so many parts of the world has replaced true religion, is powerless as well. As Ellul points out, the promised utopias of the twentieth century, either Marxist or Fascist, are doomed because they accept the essential premises of current civilization and move with its lines of internal development: "Thus, utilizing what this world itself offers them, they become its slaves, although they thing they are transforming it." Even massive weapons of destruction fail to assure anything for today's mightiest governments. Wars reach no permanet solutions; there is no such thing as a lasting peace or, as Americans once so believed, "a war to end all wars." Terrorists stalk the globe, and governments can do little to stop them.
Wars proliferate; political solutions fail; frustrations rise. Yet we (evangelical Christians included) continue to look to governments to resolve problems beyond their capability. The illusion persits.
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