{"id":11169,"date":"2025-05-09T13:17:47","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T11:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/?p=11169"},"modified":"2025-11-30T16:14:38","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T15:14:38","slug":"kristen-tro-er-en-politisk-ideologi-i-dypeste-forstand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/en\/kristen-tro-er-en-politisk-ideologi-i-dypeste-forstand\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian faith is a political ideology in the deepest sense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent post in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dagen.no\/meninger\/et-kristent-oppgjor-med-ytterste-hoyre\/1420896\"><em>Dagen<\/em> <\/a>Espen Ottosen writes that being a Christian does not mean adhering to a political ideology. He argues that Christians should be guided by a Christian view of humanity, but that this does not necessarily provide clear guidelines for politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I largely agree with Ottosen: Christian faith cannot be reduced to party politics. Nevertheless, I believe there is a need to nuance the presentation. Because the Christian view of life is not ideologically neutral. It provides a holistic understanding of reality \u2013 about human beings, society, truth and law \u2013 which also provides implicit guidelines for how society should be shaped. In that sense, Christian faith is a political ideology in a deeper sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This insight became even clearer to me when I recently read <em>The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man<\/em> by Professor J. Budziszewski. In the book he shows how modern ideologies may indeed contain fragments of truth, but in their basic structure are based on notions about human beings, freedom and community that violate Christian faith. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Liberalism understands freedom as the individual&#039;s right to determine what is good and true, independent of God and objective norms \u2013 in contrast to Christian faith, which understands freedom as the ability to live in truth and community.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Social democracy makes the state primarily responsible for care and justice \u2013 and thus weakens individual responsibility and natural communities such as family, church and local community.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Conservatism often preserves traditions without necessarily evaluating them against the truth and the objective good, and can end in blind worship of tradition.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Budziszewski claims \u2013 rightly \u2013 that it is the Christian understanding of reality that provides the most holistic and true vision for building society. Christian faith is not party-political, but it is political at its core. Faith obliges us to build society in accordance with the true and good \u2013 what Budziszewski, Augustine and Aquinas refer to as <em>order of love<\/em>, the right order of love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This order simply means that love has an order. We are not only called to love, but to love rightly: God first, then our loved ones, and then others, based on the responsibility we actually have. This applies not only to personal life, but also says something about how society should be built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Based on this, faith gives us some clear guidelines for how different parts of society should be organized. Let me give some examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Family policy: <\/strong>The family is the first and most fundamental community in the order of love. Therefore, it must be protected and strengthened, not undermined by ideological individualism or state overreach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Education: <\/strong>Education should be shaped by love of truth, goodness, and beauty\u2014not just by utility and efficiency. The goal is to form the whole person, not just prepare for the workplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tax policy:<\/strong> Taxes should support the weak and the community, but not be so high that they weaken responsibility and initiative in the family, church and local community. When the state takes over too much, natural communities lose their role \u2013 and we lose something of the right order of love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Immigration<\/strong>: We have the greatest responsibility for those closest to us \u2013 family, community and nation \u2013 but we are also called to show justice towards the stranger. Helping people in need is important, but our first and foremost responsibility is to contribute where they already live, where the help can be most effective and sustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Legislation:<\/strong> The law should be based on objective right and wrong, rooted in truth and human dignity \u2013 not just in the will of the majority. But the state should not prohibit everything that is sinful. The law should promote justice and protect the common good, not attempt to impose all moral virtue by force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christian faith therefore does not simply provide values that can be added to various political ideologies. It provides a comprehensive framework for how a just society should be shaped \u2013 in accordance with human nature and God\u2019s order of creation. Therefore, it is insufficient to claim that Christian faith can only be \u00abcombined\u00bb with various ideologies. Rather, it must serve as a benchmark to <em>judge<\/em> and <em>correct<\/em> them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christian faith obliges. Not only morally, but politically. We must dare to stand for that \u2013 also in the face of modern ideologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Marianne Brattgjerd<br>Academic Director, Health and Research, Kristent Ressurssenter<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I et nylig innlegg i Dagen skriver Espen Ottosen at det \u00e5 v\u00e6re kristen ikke betyr \u00e5 slutte seg til en politisk ideologi. Han fremholder at kristne b\u00f8r la seg lede av et kristent menneskesyn, men at dette ikke n\u00f8dvendigvis gir entydige f\u00f8ringer for politikken. Jeg er i hovedsak enig med Ottosen: Kristen tro kan [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11185,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_breakdance_hide_in_design_set":false,"_breakdance_tags":"","wds_primary_category":66,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aktuelt","category-bibelen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kressurs.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}