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POLITICS – PHOOEY!

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I concur wholeheartedly with Ted Williams III’s lament about political polarization within Christianity, and I applaud his personal commitment to openness. But I think that for true reconciliation, we are going to need more than just acknowledgment of the problem and the will to overcome it. That’s because the cause of the problem lies in what we all are as a culture, in how we all operate as modern Americans. We might, however, at least achieve more clarity by considering the ingrained ways we react to controversy and interact with each other as controversy plays out, in contrast to the habits of the more-peaceful early propagators of Christianity.

The Call of the Hour: A True Christian Approach to Politics

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This week I found myself involved in a spirited Facebook debate on the impact of the Obama presidency. This debate, held among members of my church community, was filled with such acrimony that it became obvious why many churches avoid politics like the plague. There were well-defined camps of both liberals and conservatives, and neither seemed willing to acquiesce an inch to the other side. I forgot for a moment I was witnessing a debate among people with the same Lord and faith. What became evident through this debate was that the Christian community desperately needs biblical direction and healthy platforms for conversation and engagement around the intersection of faith and politics.

Evangelicals & the Arena of Public Discourse

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Because I have written frequently – and, very often, passionately – about volatile topics like the Religious Right, the First Amendment and evangelicals in the political arena, some people (willfully or not) have misconstrued me to say that evangelicals should stay out of politics. That is emphatically not the case. I believe that people of faith – any and all faiths – have every right to allow their religious convictions to inform their political views. I also happen to believe that political discourse would be impoverished without those voices of faith.

The Grounds for Christian (and Evangelical) Civility in Politics

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When we, as evangelical Christians, engage in political life, we may do well to employ particular principles, and we may benefit from the use of certain interpretative frameworks of understanding embodied in ideological perspectives. Ideological perspectives simplify complex social and political phenomena, enabling adherents to make “sense of the political world” and providing adherents important interpretive frameworks for analysis and assessment.

Will They Know Us By our Love? Evangelicals, Politics, and Christian Witness

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Evangelicalism, at its heart, is about sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with a broken and hurting world. Unfortunately, many evangelical political movements have lost sight of this goal, trading kingdom values for worldly ones.
The problem is not political engagement in and of itself; the problem is that many Christians fail to demonstrate Christ-like character as they engage in politics. As I will attempt to outline in this essay, evangelicals should participate in politics as an act of Christian love, but they should do so in a manner that demonstrates the fruit of the Spirit and with awareness of the limits of politics.

Context, Context, Context…

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My initial response is that, if we think about citizenship in terms of allegiance, it would be virtually impossible for “one’s role as citizen and as Christian” not to come into conflict. Allegiances are tricky things, as Jesus’ ultimatum about either loving God or Mammon suggests (Matthew 6:24). It is all too easy to forfeit our loyalty to God in pursuit of national identity and personal security.

But this warning about allegiance does not yet answer the question of whether or how Christians should be involved politically. Because competing allegiances draw such a fine line for walking in this world, it doesn’t surprise me that the New Testament authors provide different responses depending on their social and political locations. This suggests that we too should look long and hard at our own social locations as we think about political engagement.

The Renewal of the Political? The Holy Spirit and the Public Square

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The legacy of what historians now call “Christendom” certainly casts a long shadow in the ongoing discussion of Christianity and its relationship to the public square (by which I mean the all-inclusive spaces of the political, economic, social, civic, and international). Some commentators have certainly been, especially recently, very critical of the “Christendom” posture, and for good reason. When Christians have wielded political power, -going back to Christianitybecoming the religion of the state in the post-Constantinian West, they became enmeshed in the politicking mechanisms of statecraft which focus mainly on worldly matters with little capacity to appreciate, much less account for, the spiritually important aspects of human life.

Evangelicals and A Call to Civil Society

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I take it from Peter that during our exile here we are to be good citizens as long as that is possible. Through contributing to the common good, cultivating the virtues of the resurrected life, and investing in people in our communities, we demonstrate neighbor love and the fear of God. Might there be reasons for a prophetic witness? Of course. And God calls some to be prophets like Martin Luther King, Jr., to preach national repentance. But on any given day, evangelicals should be (and very often are) found serving their local communities by honoring others and planting, watering and cultivating those seed beds of virtue. In this way, we contribute to human flourishing as we build the collateral to speak into public spaces as fellow citizens, not as outsiders. We do so, not to instrumentalize others, but because it’s just the right thing to do.

And Liberty and Justice for All

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An introductory comment: A reader responding to a recent post asked if I (and other writers in this series) saw any future in evangelicalism at all because he read the posts as attacking evangelical positions. I’ve been pondering that over the past few weeks and realize that I could be clearer on my intent. I’m raising concerns about some aspects of evangelical culture in an attempt to call out the latent consequences those pieces may have — especially in terms of the broader culture hearing the heart of evangelicalism as it shares the love of Christ in prophetic ways to the broader society. After the critique, I’ll try to do a better job of speaking to the positive future.

It was the fall of 1981 and I was teaching my very first Introduction to Sociology class. I’d been a TA for the course in grad school but now I was responsible for the lectures myself. When I got to the broad institutional areas (of which Politics is one), I contrasted different views of governance: town hall democracy, Jeffersonian government by elites, oligarchy, and special interests. As I finished giving the lecture, I suggested that many in the church had adopted special interest tactics and that I was worried that the Body of Christ would be seen as simply another advocacy group.

It is Time to Cool Down the Rhetoric

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For those readers who have been following this conversation on American Evangelicalism, there can no doubt that some strongly held points of view and robust disagreements have been presented with deep conviction, especially on the fourth topic of conversation that was just completed (Evangelicalism and Morality).

There appears to be mixed opinion, however, as to how “respectful” the conversation has been. One recent commentator has suggested that “sadly, the moderators of this ‘conversation’ [that would be me] continue to see fit to post reactions which traffic in … disrespectful vituperation …” I regret that this participant feels this way. I have no idea as to whether this is an isolated point of view or a general consensus.