Introduction
The Victorian Liberal Party, like state Labor before it, is facing a crisis of its own making. As with many political scandals, the details are tortuous and byzantine. But allegations concerning an array of unethical – even illegal – behaviour have been aired, including branch-stacking, improper use of electoral staff (and taxpayer funds) for party recruitment purposes, and political skulduggery. It’s said that much of the rot can be traced to former Liberal powerbroker, Marcus Baastian, who recently resigned in the face of explosive media reports regarding the Liberals’ internal woes. His departure has brought little comfort to the party, which has commenced a review to purge itself of corrupting influences.
Caught up in the controversy is Karina Okotel, a former vice-president of the Liberal Party, erstwhile ally of Baastian, and devout evangelical Christian. She was suspended in late-August, pending the outcome of the review, particularly as it focuses on what, if any, role she played in a plot to jettison seven upper-house members of parliament deemed far too moderate (as evidenced by their voting record on Victoria’s euthanasia bill). Okotel has also been heavily criticised for a memo she wrote in relation to those MPs, which has been described as ‘scurrilous’. All this follows revelations that she composed an email to Baastian in 2015, outlining an aggressive recruitment strategy that targeted people from religious – and especially Christian – communities in an effort to transform the party into a far more conservative beast. Although Okotel has not been directly implicated in the branch-stacking scandal, reports suggest that her agenda became the driving force and framework for actions that are now harming the party of Menzies.
A salutary lesson for Christian politicians
There are many hard and painful lessons to be learned, I’m sure. But Karina Okotel’s role within the Liberal Party’s ongoing saga also functions as a cautionary tale for Christians seeking to enter the political realm.
One of the more obvious aspects of Okotel’s reported actions is the way in which they mirrored the kind of unsavoury tactics political operatives employ from time to time as they seek to accumulate power. Arguing for a recruitment drive that verges on branch-stacking is something that most politicians would deplore, regardless of their convictions. Okotel seems to have entered public life driven by idealism. But in this case idealism became entangled with hard-nosed power politics – a suspicion strengthened by the realization that the highly conservative Okotel is now factionally allied with moderate Liberal members, having fallen out with other right-leaning figures in the party.
Of course, it’s almost impossible for a Christian in public life not to be shaped to some degree by their political milieu, while the lure of temporal power inevitably vies for the faithful believer’s allegiance. Moreover, believers living modern democratic societies face unique moral hazards when it comes to politics, enjoying as they do relatively open access to the levers of government.
But all the caveats in the world cannot obscure the fact that Okotel’s reported actions offer a poor example of how to conduct oneself Christianly in the public arena. They reveal the troubling marginalisation of Christian character, seemingly for the sake of political gain. Where both Scripture and Christian tradition extol personal humility as a key, distinguishing quality of the believer (Matt 18:1-4; Phil 2:3-4), Okotel regrettably drifted towards its opposite. Pauline admonitions against overweening ambition and towards self-relinquishment have, it seems, been muted by the tantalizing invitation of secular authority. And while the prudent exercise of influence in public life may be seen as a mark of biblically-sanctioned wisdom, Okotel’s foray into the swamp of factional politics lacked both moral restraint and strategic foresight.
Political power and the Christian: in search of an adequate model
Karina Okotel’s predicament illustrates the ongoing tension that exists between faithfulness to Christ and worldly political success. In so assiduously pressing for influence, she apparently lost sight of the very different – and, from a secular perspective, antithetical – way in which believers in public life are called to pursue and wield power. However, this extends beyond the question of individual character. The problem, as I see it, is the absence of a adequate theological model for Christian participation in public life. It has left an aspiring believing politician susceptible to the corrupting forces of secular politics, all while sullying her public witness and contributing to institutional disorder.
An authentically Christian vision of politics should be composed of several fundamental principles, taking their cues from the sweep of the biblical narrative. These run deeper than an individual’s position on any one issue, instead furnishing a basic platform upon which Christian political engagement may be built.
Two principles in particular strike me as germane in the case of Karina Okotel: what we might call the Christian’s dual citizenship; and the paradoxical conception of power in service. Unfurling them requires a degree of biblical exploration, so bear with me.
Believers are confronted, firstly, by the bedrock truth that they possess twin, albeit unequal, loyalties: citizens of whatever political community of which they’re a part, while at the same time bearing ‘heavenly’ membership. While the former may make (legitimate) claims on the believer’s attention and moral energy, the latter remains decisive and paramount. In other words, one’s allegiance to God outweighs and relativises all other commitments within the secular sphere – including, of course, those that attach themselves to the political realm. As Peter Weiner has written, ‘our interest in the temporal should never overshadow our longing for the eternal’, for it is the everlasting that constitutes our true telos.
Understanding the place of believers in the world as one of residency in two ‘cities’ has a long and distinguished pedigree; Augustine’s distinction between the City of Man – destined always to decadence and decay – and the City of God is only the most celebrated rendition of that idea. But the seeds of this principle lie in Scripture itself. Writing to the church in Philippi, Paul declared that a Christian’s final citizenship lies in heaven, God’s realm (Phil 3:20). The Apostle deployed the Greek term politeuma, which can variously mean ‘citizenship’ or ‘civic body’, and cast the little Christian community to which he wrote his epistle as an outpost – a facsimile, of sorts – of the divine kingdom that had come and was now coming.
Significantly, the Philippian church existed in what was then a colony of Rome, which had been founded as an imperial outpost by ex-soldiers in the previous century. With colonial status under the aegis of the Eternal City came all the rights and privileges of being a Roman citizen. It’s no accident, then, that Paul should have described the Philippians in similar fashion; by doing so, he implicitly contrasted the fledgling Christian community with the city in which it had been planted. Like Philippi itself, the church there was a ‘colony’ – a franchise of the kingdom it represented. It was an extension of a greater realm, a ‘heavenly’ realm, one that remained sovereign over every manifestation and instance of temporal power, transcending all earthly enterprises. And while the believers of Philippi were residents of a secular polity, they bore the higher, more enduring citizenship of the Creator’s kingdom.
Paul’s Philippian epistle provides an entrée into the rudiments of Christian political thinking. Understanding oneself as a member of two realms – with the claims of one realm being heavily circumscribed – ought to be part of the basis of the believer’s public witness. Certainly, all Christians, regardless of status or station, are warned to be alert, lest earthly concerns succeed in seducing them. But two reasons mean that this admonition is especially relevant to believers drawn to public life. First, the highly political matrix within which Philippians was written suggests that from a Christian perspective, there exists an important fault-line between the divine kingdom and the earthly power of the state, especially as the latter realm so often purports to be the bearer of an often-rival form of salvation. Second, since a Christian politician’s career places her so close to the levers of earthly power, the temptation to eagerly sup from Caesar’s table – thereby allowing temporal concerns to obscure a vision of the eternal – is, I think, particularly strong.
In any case, however important or worthy the vocation of politics may seem, it, like all other secular pursuits, is thoroughly subordinate to the pre-eminent demands of the covenant community. And although wielding earthly authority is a necessary condition for the establishment of a just order (cf. Rom 13:1-7), a Christian politician’s quest for public influence can never be elevated above the requirement to faithfully discharge one’s obligations as a citizen of heaven. Anything else smacks of idolatry.
The second principle flows from the first. One of the key distinguishing characteristics of the ‘heavenly’ community is the paradoxical nature and exercise of authority — paradoxical, precisely because it locates true power in what is often deemed a mark of relative weakness. A return to Philippians illustrates the matter well. Exhorting the church in Philippi to cultivate the same humble attitude that characterised Christ (Phil 2:5-9), Paul waxed lyrical about Jesus’ radical self-abnegation in service of others: though bearing the status as the only God, and enjoying ‘equality with’ him (v.6), Christ did not attempt to manipulate or exploit that favoured position. Instead, he relinquished it entirely, adopting the ‘very nature of a slave’ (v.7); he divested himself of every claim to (earthly) power or prestige, swapping it for a life spent in service of others.
In an ancient milieu obsessed with honour, Paul declared that the true king – the one in whom all authority rightfully resides – ‘made himself nothing’ and ‘humbled’ himself to the point of bearing the ignominy of unjust execution (v.8). Here was power transcendent, surrendering all rights, all prerogatives, for the sake of others. Moreover, it was at the apogee of such surrender that true power – in this case, salvific power – was revealed. Where emperors relentlessly sought the prize of apotheosis (a cynical political tactic, to be sure), the trajectory of Christ’s transformation was precisely the opposite. And where Roman culture esteemed status and hierarchy, the values embodied by Jesus’ life could not have been more different. That the Apostle’s call for emulation could be directed to Christians living in a Roman colony – itself pre-occupied with prestige and social rank – simply underscored its subversive nature.
Even a cursory glance at the rest of the New Testament shows that Paul’s claim can be multiplied several-fold. Consider Mark 10:45. In response to a presumptuous request posed by two of his disciples, Jesus declares that in contrast to earthly rulers and potentates, ‘[he] came, not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’. Christ’s vocation and the manner in which he executed it represented a sharp rebuke to temporal expressions of power. Furthermore, while Mark clearly articulates an atonement theology, it is housed within a definite political theology – one that overturns prevailing hierarchies and pithily distills a counter-vision of power-as-service.
Luke, too, makes much of this theme, drawing it to a climax in Christ’s declaration at the last supper that his disciples dedicate themselves to the exercise of authority through humble service (Luke 22:24-27). Jesus, of course, provided the model in excelsis, wholly submitting himself to the cross as the clearest demonstration of his kingly, messianic work (cf. John 13:2-5, 12-15). Jesus chose to express his sovereignty, not by way of self-advancement or dominance (like so many temporal rulers), but by way of selfless sacrifice. The upshot is that he triggered the emergence of a radically new and contrary ethos, thereby crystallising the true pattern of leadership for all those occupying positions of power (cf. Rom 13:1-4).
Karina Okotel and the pitfalls of Christian political engagement
Let’s circle back. What does all this mean for Karina Okotel and the controversy in which she has become embroiled? Measured against the principles I have laid out she has, it seems, fallen short. This isn’t to say that Okotel has deliberately flouted them, or behaved with self-conscious Machiavellian flair. It seems clear, however, that she inadvertently veered away from ideals that ought to underwrite a Christian’s engagement in public life. Her actions, taken together, provide adequate testimony. By trying to expel moderate Liberals from the party, only to ally herself with their faction (having sabotaged her relationship with fellow conservatives), she evinced a willingness to prioritise political manoeuvring above principled service – negating both Scripture’s subordination of Caesar’s domain and the subversive conception of power that Christ epitomised.
Similarly, Okotel’s efforts to aggressively recruit new members from religious communities – while understandable in an age where party membership has collapsed – represented a desperate ploy that threatened to subordinate the sacred realm to the demands of temporal power. Her sedulous attempts to prove her value to the party had the effect of instrumentalising the value of religious faith and the churches that nurture it. This is in sharp conflict with the Pauline vision of a ‘heavenly’ citizenship that lies beyond, and eventually outweighs, secular concerns. Or, to put it another way, such actions depreciate the significance of membership within the redeemed community, reducing what is meant to be an end (albeit a penultimate one) to a mere means.
Again, the political realm – highly visible and capable of driving consequential change – contains special dangers for any Christian who seeks to wield influence for virtuous ends. Theologian Alastair Roberts has rightly observed that the egocentric accumulation of power (often at the expense of other people) is a ‘fundamental theme’ in our politics, to which even the most idealistic remain susceptible. This is just as true for progressive Christians as it is for those who are more conservative in temperament; no one is entirely immune. A robust theology of political engagement is the best prophylactic against the intrusion of moral compromise into the life of a believing politician. Earnest though she undoubtedly is, Karina Okotel’s recent experiences show us just what happens when that theology is lacking.
A Bagful of insights 