James Fishback is coming to Texas Tech on October 15, and his appearance has given me an opportunity to think about something I do not write about nearly as often as I used to: politics. I studied political science at Texas Tech, and my time in college fundamentally changed the way I understood the political world. I came into college with many of the ordinary assumptions that people develop simply by growing up in American political culture. By the time I graduated, I had a much broader understanding of the political traditions, philosophies, institutions, and competing visions that have shaped our country and the wider world.
I have never been particularly comfortable with the idea that a person must fit neatly into one of two political categories. I have told people for years that I am not simply liberal or conservative, and I am not simply left or right. Those labels can be useful when describing broad political coalitions, but they are not sufficient for understanding the intellectual traditions underneath them. Liberalism contains competing schools of thought. Conservatism contains competing schools of thought. Libertarianism, nationalism, socialism, Christian democracy, classical republicanism, populism, and many other traditions have influenced modern political life. Even within a single political party, people can have radically different ideas about human nature, economics, government, liberty, religion, justice, and the proper relationship between the individual and the state.
That education did not make me less interested in politics. It made me much more interested in understanding it. Instead of asking which political team I belonged to, I became more interested in understanding the broader political vision behind the arguments people were making. What assumptions about human nature are underneath a particular policy? What does a particular political philosophy believe government is for? What does it consider freedom to mean? What does it believe society owes the individual, and what does it believe the individual owes society? Those questions are far more interesting to me than simply determining whether something is sufficiently “right-wing” or “left-wing.”
Then Orthodoxy changed the equation.
My education taught me to look beyond political labels. Orthodoxy taught me to look beyond politics itself. That does not mean that I stopped caring about politics or that I stopped having political opinions. It means that politics ceased to be the framework through which I understood the entirety of the world.
Orthodoxy is not a political ideology. It is not conservative or liberal, right or left, Republican or Democrat. It does not fit neatly into the political spectrum because it was never created to fit within it. Orthodoxy is a way of life centered on Christ, and living that life requires a person to become increasingly conscious of his own actions. What I say matters. What I do matters. How I treat another person matters. What I allow to shape my mind matters. How I respond when I am angry matters. How I behave when nobody is watching matters. Christianity is not simply a collection of political positions that can be added onto an existing worldview. It is supposed to become the lens through which we see the world itself.
That has inevitably changed the way I look at political figures, including James Fishback.
Fishback is interesting to me not simply because of the individual positions he holds, but because he represents something happening within a changing American political landscape. He belongs to a younger generation of political figures who have come of age in a very different political environment from the one that shaped the Republican establishment of previous decades. His politics reflect the growth of populism, skepticism toward established institutions, concern about concentrated economic and technological power, renewed attention to national sovereignty, and frustration with parts of the political and economic status quo. His platform addresses issues ranging from abortion and education to immigration, property taxes, free speech, federalism, and government surveillance.
Whether someone agrees with Fishback’s answers is a separate question from whether the questions themselves deserve to be taken seriously. Political movements do not appear out of nowhere. They emerge because people are responding to something they see happening around them. Sometimes those responses are thoughtful, sometimes they are misguided, and often they contain elements of both. If we want to understand a political figure, we should therefore try to understand the political environment that produced him rather than simply reducing him to a label.
That is particularly important with a figure like Fishback because much of contemporary politics operates through personal identity. People do not merely support ideas; they increasingly identify themselves with political movements and the people who represent them. A politician can become a symbol for everything his supporters believe is right about the country and everything his opponents believe is wrong with it. Once that happens, evaluating the person objectively becomes much more difficult. We begin defending or attacking the person before we have even considered the substance of what he is saying.
An Orthodox Christian should be particularly careful about that temptation.
The Church has existed for nearly two thousand years. Political parties, modern nation-states, and contemporary ideological movements are comparatively young. Empires have risen and fallen, governments have changed, and political philosophies that once seemed permanent have eventually disappeared. The Church has lived through all of it. That historical perspective does not make political questions unimportant, but it does put them in their proper place.
Government matters because human beings matter. Laws matter because they affect human beings. Political decisions matter because they can protect human dignity or violate it. Questions about abortion, immigration, education, poverty, war, religious liberty, criminal justice, economic policy, and the limits of government are not irrelevant simply because Christians believe that the Kingdom of God is not an earthly political kingdom. If anything, Christians should take those questions seriously because we are commanded to love our neighbors, and political decisions inevitably affect our neighbors.
At the same time, Orthodoxy places a limit on what we can reasonably expect politics to accomplish. No political party can redeem humanity. No election can heal the human heart. No government can create the Kingdom of Heaven. A political movement may be able to change laws, institutions, economic conditions, or cultural norms, but it cannot accomplish the transformation of the human person that Christianity ultimately seeks.
That distinction has become increasingly important to me. I can take politics seriously without making politics my identity. I can believe that a particular policy is good without believing that the politician advocating it is somehow uniquely virtuous. I can recognize something valuable in a political movement without adopting every assumption that comes along with it. I can also criticize a politician or a political movement without believing that everyone associated with it is evil.
That is how I think an Orthodox Christian should approach James Fishback.
I do not need to decide beforehand that everything he says is right, and I do not need to decide beforehand that everything he says is wrong. I can listen to what he has to say, examine his arguments, consider the evidence, and think about the consequences of the policies he advocates. I can agree with him on one issue and disagree with him on another without having to construct an entire political identity around either conclusion. Political maturity requires that kind of independence, and Christianity requires an even greater degree of self-control.
There is another consideration that is even more important. Whatever I think of James Fishback’s political views, he is a human being made in the image and likeness of God. That is not a political statement. It is a Christian one. The same is true of the person who supports him, the person who opposes him, the person who protests his appearance, and the person who enthusiastically welcomes him to campus. Their political positions may be radically different, but their fundamental human dignity is not.
That does not mean that Christians should become intellectually passive or refuse to criticize political ideas. Quite the opposite. If an argument is false, we should be willing to say that it is false. If a policy is unjust, we should be willing to say that it is unjust. If a political leader makes a mistake, Christians do not have an obligation to pretend otherwise. But our criticism should exist within the larger discipline of Christian life. We are still responsible for our words, our motives, our behavior, and the way we treat the person with whom we disagree.
That is one of the ways Orthodoxy has changed me. I am much more conscious now that my actions are not isolated from my faith. It is easy to say that Christianity is important to me when I am sitting in church. It is considerably harder to live as though Christianity is important when I am angry at someone, arguing about politics, reading something online that makes me furious, or encountering someone whose worldview I genuinely dislike. If Orthodoxy is actually a way of life, then it has to affect those moments too.
That is why I find Fishback’s visit worth paying attention to. I want to hear what he has to say, not because I have decided that he represents the future of America and not because I think Christians are obligated to support him, but because political movements tell us something about the society in which we live. Fishback is one expression of a changing political environment, and understanding that environment is worthwhile whether we ultimately agree with his conclusions or not.
I also think there is something valuable about being able to attend a political event without entering the room already knowing what I am supposed to think. I can listen as someone who studied political science at Texas Tech, with an understanding of the political traditions and institutions involved, while also listening as an Orthodox Christian whose understanding of the human person has been fundamentally shaped by the Church. Those two perspectives do not have to compete with one another. My education helps me understand politics, while my faith tells me how I should understand myself and the people around me.
That distinction is probably the most important thing Orthodoxy has changed in my political thinking. I no longer want politics to tell me who I am. I do not need a political party to provide me with an identity, and I do not need a political leader to provide me with a sense of purpose. I can participate in political life while remaining aware that my ultimate allegiance lies somewhere else.
So when James Fishback comes to Texas Tech on October 15, I intend to listen. I will listen as someone who studied political science at this university and who remains deeply interested in political ideas and the direction of American public life. But I will also listen as an Orthodox Christian, which means that I cannot ultimately separate political questions from questions about truth, human dignity, morality, and the way I am called to treat another person.
I do not know what I will agree with, and I do not know what I will disagree with. That is part of the point. I do not have to know beforehand. I can listen, think, and judge the arguments on their merits. What I do know is that whatever political conclusions I reach, they cannot be allowed to replace the deeper obligations of Christian life.
Orthodoxy has not made me apolitical. It has made me understand that politics is not the whole of life. It has not given me a new place on the political spectrum. It has given me a different lens through which I see the spectrum itself.
That lens begins with Christ, and from there it changes how I see everything else.
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