Ghana is approaching elections again, and guaranteed the airwaves and all other forms of media will be filled with campaign activities, as well as propaganda everywhere in a bid to win the populace’s vote. Of course in Ghana the campaigning and politicking seemed to have started right from the end of the last election, and we seem to be in a perpetual campaigning mode. But just before we everything swings into full gear again, I’d like to share a few thoughts with fellow Ghanaian Christians who will be participating in this election. And my thoughts stem from a phrase I intentionally introduce in my last sentence – “Ghanaian Christians” – because that is the pivot of what I believe to be a problem.

Questions of Allegiance

And the problem is the placing of the word “Ghanaian” before the word “Christian”. If Jesus Christ is truly our king by virtue of being saved from the kingdom of darkness into his light (Act 26:20), then we owe our allegiance first to Jesus before we do to Ghana. I do hear many Christian friends of mine engage passionately in political debate and express such disappointment to the point of heartbreak when the politicians fail to live up to our ideals of them.

To some of us Christians, we take our political party affiliation to the point where these parties can do no wrong. Our standard of judgment is not by the standards of the one to whom we owe our primary allegiance to, which is Jesus Christ, but to our political party. Whatever our party leaders say is sacrosanct, and we must always defend them, whether we know what they say to be wrong or right.

Unfortunately matters are made worse when Christian leadership jumps into the fray and refuses to state the king of the world’s stance concerning these issues, but rather let their tribal, political lineages and sentimental attachments drive the witness of the Christian body in addressing topical issues.

Learning from World History

And yet this kind of posture – of letting “kingdom of the world” lead instead of the “kingdom of Jesus” – is not new. The German Christians (again putting nationality before faith to emphasize the point) did it in the Second World War, supporting Hitler in his quest to “clean out the misfits”, either by keeping quiet, or by actively supporting the political structure of the day in their quest. Of course we can all pretend that the 1 million Jews that died in the Holocaust subsequently were never arrested by the church and handed over to be persecuted, but when the hue and cry arose against the Jews, they never said a word. Alas how could they, when even some of the high ranking Nazi party members were also prominent church members and leaders? And they even gave up some of their own congregants who were Jews to show how “German” they were in their loyalty. Christian Germans (change in my emphasis) like Dietrich Bonheoffer stood no chance in drawing the attention of the church to the simple maxim of Jesus – love your neighbor as yourself, whether Jew or Gentile, Chinese or German. To this day Bonheoffer and those who followed him have become identified with peace churches, preferring to die for the Kingdom of Jesus, than to live to fulfill party or nationalistic desires.

And so we ask ourselves whether we are Christian Ghanaians, or Ghanaian Christians? As we have in the case of American Christians who see no wrong in anything their nation does in the name of policing the world, and who have no qualms when Israelis attack Palestinians but will shout on the rooftops how demonic the Palestinians are when they retaliate, how different are we when we value party loyalty more than loyalty to Jesus Christ? Do not a large number of our political leaders claim to be Christian? Ah, I forget. They must be NDC or NPP or CPP Christians.

I find the rhetoric about “peace” in this country quite boring, and the organization of abundant prayers “To avert impending disasters” as a lot of window dressing, to be charitable. Because if we took our king and his kingdom – which is in this world but not of this world – seriously, then with over 50% of the population laying claim to Christianity, this should be a no-brainer. There will be no need to foul our airwaves with all this attempts at preaching non-violence, because our King has demonstrated his non-violent stance in more ways than one. There will be no need to preach against hate speech, because we know that by calling a person “Raca” i.e. fool (Mt 5:22) we are already condemning ourselves.

Living out our Loyalty

So, refuse to be co-opted into the insults, acrimony, name-calling, herd mentality and the like. You are a Christian, before being a Ghanaian, Ga, Ewe, Dagomba or Akan. Judge the politicians by the standards of Jesus Christ, and not by the political ones of the day, whether they belong to a party you identify with or not. Remember, democracy is a good system, but only as good as man can make it. When we substitute the kingdom of God for democracy, it will become our new idol. And trust me; contrary to what your mother told you, the voice of the people is NOT the voice of God.

Oh and by the way, if the church were busier spending its money on its members than it was collecting it to build universities that most members will never be able to afford to send their children to; we will complain less about poverty and unemployment in our nation. The church will indeed have less and less a reliance on the governments of the day, if we took Jesus Christ’s maxims of caring for one another in community seriously, instead of giving to our churches to build inaccessible and unaccountable empires. This should be our pursuit if we are to make the future kingdom of Christ visible in the current age, whiles we wait for the final and full revelation of that glorious New Jerusalem coming down from above. The simple truth is that the more a people care about the kingdom of God being made manifest amongst men, the less they will care about political systems and who is at the helm of affairs. The last time I checked, Christians were supposed to live above the law (by the Spirit), not by the law (including the laws of the nation).

Indeed, we need to question our loyalties.