It’s the battle of the theological politicians. Rory Stewart, former Conservative MP, and now co-host of The Rest is Politics podcast, versus JD Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy and now the Vice-President of the United States. Stewart kicked it all off when he posted on X: “A bizarre take on John 15:12-13 – less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love.”
This was in response to a quote picked up from a Fox News interview with JD Vance: “There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”
Heather Tomlinson has given us an accurate summary. But what intrigues me is how this whole spat is being interpreted by Christian leaders. After all, if politicians are talking theology, surely those of us whose business is theology should have something to say to the politicians? And I am not talking about the political theologians … those whose theology is just used to serve their political views. They are far worse than the theological politicians.
I know that in today’s politicised, polarised world it seems impossible to answer the question without immediately being accused of being ‘right wing’ or ‘left wing’, but let’s have a go: what does the Bible actually say amid all the claims and counter-claims?
The well-known British Christian politician, Tim Farron, had no doubts: “Christians may support Trump/Vance, but they absolutely must call out this false teaching. In the Good Samaritan, Jesus clearly tells us that our neighbour is *everyone* – including the ‘alien’ – and that you must love them, and that love is costly. Jesus trumps your politics.”
But is what Vance says false teaching? Was he denying that we should care for everyone? Or was he setting political priorities for his own administration? Was Mordecai wrong for prioritising in this way? ” Mordecai the Jew was second in rank to King Xerxes, preeminent among the Jews, and held in high esteem by his many fellow Jews, because he worked for the good of his people and spoke up for the welfare of all the Jews” (Esther 10:13). Would a Christian politician be unchristian if he prioritized the needs of his constituents over the needs of constituents hundreds of miles away?
In response to Stewart, Vance tweeted, “Just Google ‘ordo amoris’. Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?”
The idea of ordo amoris is a traditional Christian (Catholic) concept taught by Augustine and Aquinas. I suspect Tim Farron would be a little more cautious about accusing them of false teaching!
It is a simple idea: you care for yourself, your family, your community and your nation before you then go on to care for others. There is nobody who does not live like this. If my daughter phoned me up and said ‘Dad, I really need $1,000,’ she would get it. If someone I did not know did the same thing, I would be very unlikely to give them anything. And if I only had $1,000 would any one think I was unchristian for giving it to my daughter?
If my wife says she really needs to see me and a work acquaintance wants to catch up, where does my priority lie? The problem is not in having the ‘ordo amoris’; the problem is when we use that to say that we have no responsibility at all for the stranger, the unknown and those we do not have direct responsibility for. And that is not what Vance was saying. Indeed, it is profoundly unloving, and unchristian, to accuse him of something he did not say – and attributing the worst possible motives to him.
Turn to the passage Stewart cited, John 15:12-13 “My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.” The irony is that even these verses taken out of context prove Vance’s point – you lay down your life for your ‘friends’, not just every stranger. In context it is even more striking. Jesus is not speaking about or to everyone. He is addressing the disciples, whom he has chosen and whom he calls friends. He does not call everyone ‘friends’. And he is telling them that the world will hate them and persecute them. This is not some kind of general call to ‘love’ all mankind in an impersonal and meaningless way.
But Stewart’s misquotation of the Bible gets even worse. He cites Galatians 3:28 in his defence: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Note the qualifier: it is those who are ‘in Christ Jesus’. Again, this is not a universal brotherhood of man text which can be used to attack someone who is arguing for the ordo amoris.
Stewart lacks not only theological and biblical knowledge, he also lacks self-awareness. When he warned us not to trust politicians who become theologians, and speaking in the name of Jesus – he did so as a politician who was pronouncing himself as a theologian and telling us what Jesus really meant!
When The Telegraph and the Spectator pointed out the errors in Stewart’s theology and misunderstanding of the Bible, Stewart just doubled down: “Good to see the Telegraph and Spectator taking JD Vance’s side in our debate. Who knew the election of Trump would make our right-wing media embrace the fringe idea that Christian love is about putting yourself and your own people first?”
But this is not a ‘fringe idea’, it is Christianity 101. We are to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. We are to provide for our relatives, and especially the members of our own household or we deny the faith and are worse than unbelievers (1 Timothy 5:8). We are to do good to all people but especially those who belong to the household of faith (Galatians 6:10). We put them first – but they are not last. We are also to care for the outsider, the weak and the poor.
None of this is fringe. Nor is it, as Stewart and the Novara media ‘expert’ Aaron Bastani declared, ‘a pagan idea’!
However, there is another aspect to this that Tim Farron rightly pointed out. There is something missing, and that is love for God. Given that Vance was in a political interview he could be forgiven for not specifically mentioning that – after all, other Christian politicians who believe that their values are Christian have often argued for them without citing biblical chapter and verse.
Nonetheless that is significant. For the Christian love for God comes before everything – even family. We are to be prepared to be forsaken by our nearest and dearest just because we follow Christ. Our political colleagues may despise us, our country lock us up and friends turn from us, but for the Christian the first order in the order of love is to love God. And this love of God does not reduce our capacity to love others – as though we only had so much love to give. The reality is that in loving God, his love is poured out into our hearts and gives us a great capacity to love others – including those beyond our immediate circles.
Furthermore, I think Vance missed a trick when he did not point out that one of the reasons for wanting America to prosper is so that others benefit from that. After the Second World War, the US sacrificially set up the Marshall Plan for Europe. It did not retreat into an ‘America first’ isolationist policy – although it could just as easily be argued that supporting Europe to rebuild was also in America’s interests. It is true that every politician will put their own country before others, but that does not mean that they should do so at the expense of others. A Christian politician especially should seek justice and peace.
None of the above is intended to justify or decry President Trump’s policies on tariffs, immigration or other matters. But it is to warn us about using the Bible for cheap political shots at those we disagree with, and above all neither theologians nor politicians should misuse the Bible for their own ends.
One mistake that many Christian commentators make is to act as if there are two equal and opposite sides on this within the Christian Church. So they argue that on the one hand there are ‘conservatives’ who use the Bible to speak about individual responsibility and a limited State; and on the other ‘progressives’ who are into loving everyone and a universal appeal to basic humanity. Scripture doesn’t fit neatly into these dual paradigms.
For example, we should not use the parable of the Good Samaritan as a morality tale about giving foreign aid to other countries, or the need to cultivate personal wealth so that you can afford to help others! It is a story to tell us the high standard required of those who are to inherit eternal life – and the importance of showing mercy to those we come across. To use it for any other political purpose is a misuse of Scripture.
In this instance Vance was entirely correct in his theology (whatever we may say about his politics), and Stewart was way out of his depth. However, is it not fascinating to see Tom Holland’s observation that “many arguments over political values are sublimated theology”. If that is the case, then let’s at least make sure that our theology is biblical theology – faithful to the God of the Bible.
David Robertson is the minister of Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales. He blogs at The Wee Flea.
