"Jesus is Lord" of Our Democracies
About the author: Ashwin Afrikanus Thyssen is a Junior Lecturer in the Department of Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology at Stellenbosch University, specializing in church history, church polity, and religion and law. His current research investigates the intersection of race, sexuality, and religion.
Political messages inundate people in various parts of the world as they speed through this calendar year. At least sixty-four nation-states are or have visited the polls in 2024.1 Each of these elections, of course, will inform the global community on how democracy is configured throughout the world’s various contexts, most especially those countries for whom democratic governance is a recent development. An important sentiment that has been attributed to Barth might be helpful for us as we continue through this year: theologians should live with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. As each of us heads to the polls during our specific election cycle, we would be wise to glean insight from Scripture in this moment. My contribution here attempts to take seriously the commitment to the kerygmatic role of the Christian faithful for the church to be truly prophetic today.
As almost half of the world’s population (49%) will head to the voting booth this year, various challenges are plaguing our global community, and we need only to page through our newspapers to learn about what is happening. Some decades ago, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) discerned the signs of the times and expressed its belief in the Accra Confession. This particular confession, of course, is not unique in its insights; we hear the same sentiment in the Lutheran World Federation’s Communion, Responsibility, Accountability: Responding as Lutheran Communion to Neoliberal Globalization (2004), and in more recent years, Pope Francis’ critical interventions in the encyclicals Laudato si’ (2015) and Fratelli tutti (2020). I draw on the Accra Confession here because it seems natural for readers of Barth, who was confessionally Reformed himself, to be interested in Reformed confessions and how they shape the life of the global Reformed churches in the present.
It may prove necessary to take a step back to consider how Barth treats confessions in the life of the church. In Church Dogmatics, Barth explores the role of confession in the community of faith. For Barth, confession must be linked to the Word of God: “Confession in the most general sense is the accounting and responding which in the Church we owe one another and have to receive from one another to the hearing and receiving of the Word of God.”2 Confession, then, has a relational character. It plays a constructive role in forming (and possibly facilitating the development of) the identity of the church. Confession is the work of the members of the church and thus constitutes the life of the church.
Confession is also dialogical in orientation. Through confession, Barth reminds us, “I declare that my faith cannot be kept to myself as though it were a private matter. I acknowledge the general and public character of my faith by laying it before the generality, the public of the Church.”3 This dialogical orientation advances a constructive engagement with the private and public demands of confessing particular beliefs.
Confession must also always arise out of absolute necessity. Barth helpfully notes, “The genuine Credo is born out of a need of the Church, out of a compulsion which in this need is imposed on the Church by the Word of God, out of the perception of faith which answers to this compulsion.”4 Because of this, Barth intimates that theologians are responsible for resisting the temptation to repeat and rehearse accepted formulas and creeds.5 Rather, he argues, theologians must take dogmatics seriously, by engaging confessional statements both critically and constructively.
Barth’s treatment of confessions raises the question: why consider the Accra Confession here? I contend that the Accra Confession presents the ecumenical church, especially those who are interpreters of Barth, with a critical intervention concerning neoliberalism. Meeting in Ghana for the General Council of WARC, member churches of this body asserted:
“We have heard that creation continues to groan, in bondage, waiting for its liberation (Rom 8:22). We are challenged by the cries of the people who suffer and by the woundedness of creation itself. We see a dramatic convergence between the suffering of the people and the damage done to the rest of creation… The signs of the times have become more alarming and must be interpreted. The root causes of massive threats to life are above all the product of an unjust economic system defended and protected by political and military might. Economic systems are a matter of life or death.”6
For the WARC, the degradation of our shared ecological environment is intertwined with perpetual economic expansion. In a sense, the Accra Confession offers a theological response to the unjust realities that globalization creates for the world. Unsurprisingly, for liberation theologian Vuyani Vellem, the Accra Confession is a cry for life. He writes, “The Accra Confession sees Empire as death dealing and life killing exactly because of this ethical analysis on life that has developed in years within the paradigm of liberation.”7 During this rather “global” election season, readers—indeed, interpreters and teachers of Barth’s theology—should take seriously Vellem’s critique of empire and of nation-state projects that justify the oppression of God’s creation.
In a post-truth world in which fake news is pervasive, and the creation of deep fakes is readily accessible, we may have to return to the resistance embodied by the "red pastor of Safenwil."8 As election campaigning exercises its muscle in the public sphere, theologians and pastors must offer the timely and important reminder that Jesus Christ—and not those elected to office—is Lord. To do this, we would have to recognize, following Jerry Pillay, that the empire often changes its face.9 At this time, it may take the guise of a shallow and vacuous, if not fascistic, conception of democracy. To proclaim Jesus as Lord, Barth reminds us, is more than a mere well-rehearsed truism; instead, it is to submit our democratic vision to Christ's reign. This kerygmatic proclamation, the Accra Confession reminds us, demands that we reform and deepen our conception of democracy.
Koh Ewe, “The Ultimate Election Year: All the Elections Around the World in 2024” (2023), https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024/
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2 § 20 (2009), 588.
Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2 § 20 (2009), 588.
Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2 § 20 (2009), 624.
Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2 § 20 (2009), 624.
Accra Confession, articles 5 and 6.
Vuyani Vellem, “Black Theology of Liberation: A Theology of Life in the Context of Empire,” in Verbum et Ecclesia (2015).
Christiane Tietz, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 61.
Jerry Pillay, “The Accra Confession as a response to empire,” in HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies (2018).