by Noel Smith
As a Christian citizen of the United States I not only have privileges, I have obligations. I have the obligation to take as active and intelligent and practical a part in government as any other citizen. I have the obligation, constitutional and moral, to get “mixed up” in politics. I have the obligation to get out where there is cursing and drinking and gambling and do my duty as a citizen. Seventy-five percent of the corruption in this country today is due to the practical indifference of lazy, cowardly, flabby, “built-up” saints who don’t want to risk soiling their soft white hands by getting into politics and taking a practical stand for what is decent and right. Half of them don’t even vote. They say they are waiting for the Lord to come and “clean up the mess.” They conveniently forget that the Lord taught that they should be busy while He was away, and when He came. And if we shouldn’t be busy about our citizenship, upon which depends the very foundation of civilization and the future of our children and grandchildren, what should we be busy about?
… And on this basic and decisive issue, if Christian citizens do not exercise in every practical way their privileges and obligations of citizenship, then they should be decent enough to keep their mouths shut about the religious, moral, and political depravity and degeneracy that surrounds them.
Christian citizens should be both thinkers and doers. This country was founded and constitutionally established by men who were both thinkers and doers. To think without doing is worthless, and to act without first thinking is to make the condition worse.
… at the same time, Christians have the obligation to be intelligent participants. They have the obligation to be versed in the philosophy of civil government. They have the obligation to understand and appreciate the distinction between civil government and Christianity.
But again, such knowledge and intelligence is completely worthless unless the Christian citizen gets into the main stream of the life of his country and plays a practical part in government. This means, again, that the Christian citizen has got to get out in the mud and dirt, in an atmosphere of cursing and gambling and drunkenness, and do battle with the forces that are destroying the very foundations of the institution of civil government. I don’t mind smelling like the Devil’s crowd if I get the smell by fighting them. I had rather have that smell on me than the smell of a theological beauty shop.
An excerpted from a sermon preached by Tribune founding editor Noel Smith at the 1966 Fundamental Baptist Congress of North America. The sermon is published in The Biblical Faith of Baptists: Book II, Regular Baptist Press, 1966. To read the entire sermon, click here.