We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

473047670_9128a398c9

God and Our Political Platforms

Rachel Held Evans posted a blog today on the stir created when Democrats booed the passing of “an amendment to the party platform reinstating language that identified Jerusalem as the rightful capital of Israel and that referred to people’s “God-given potential” in its preamble.” Of course this fed into the belief that if you’re a democrat, you must hate God. Hmmmmm. How far have we come when the validity of your faith is so closely tied to your political affiliation? Rachel hit the nail on the head when she said:

There seems to be a misconception among many American Christians that fighting the good fight of faith means keeping God’s name on our money, in our speeches, in our pledge, and on our bumper stickers. But this is the danger of civic religion: it convinces us that God’s name is the same as God’s presence; it convinces us that we’ve “won” when we hear the right words, regardless of whether we’ve seen the  right fruit. 

But God’s name is not enough, and America has a troubled history of slavery, ethnic cleansing, and the destruction of creation to show that invoking God’s name is not the same as earning God’s favor.  As Susan B. Anthony so wisely put it, “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”

Ironically, we render God’s name more meaningless each time we use it carelessly to advance our own agendas.

We hope you’ll read the entire article. And remember: Jesus is not affiliated with any political party. He transcends all of our categories and agendas. Let’s keep the Kingdom holy.

Image by takomabibelot. Used in accordance with Creative Commons. Sourced via Flickr.

Related Reading

Part 4: An Alternative Cross-Centered Approach

Image by Karl Pang via Flickr As I mentioned in Part II of this review, I am deeply appreciative of the fact that Flood grasps the centrality of enemy-loving non-violence in Jesus’ revelation of God. And while many, if not most, of the depictions of Yahweh in the Old Testament are consistent with this revelation, I…

Jesus and His Father

Greg addresses a question from a reader about the nature of the Godhead. If Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, what does this mean about the Trinity, if there are indeed three distinct persons?

Topics:

Eye for Eye: That Time Jesus Refuted An Old Testament Teaching

One of the most surprising aspects of Jesus’ teaching is that, while he clearly shared his contemporaries’ view of the Old Testament as inspired by God, he was nevertheless not afraid of repudiating it when he felt led by his Father to do so (Jn. 8:28; 12:49-50; 14:31). For example, while the OT commands people…

On the Other Side of the Cross

Image by -Reji via Flickr Bless you all this Easter. He is risen!

Not the God You Were Expecting

Thomas Hawk via Compfight Micah J. Murray posted a reflection today titled The God Who Bleeds. In contrast to Mark Driscoll’s “Pride Fighter,” this God allowed himself to get beat up and killed while all his closest friends ran and hid and denied they even knew him. What kind of a God does this? The kind…

How We Are Defined

 Burstein! via Compfight Zack Hunt wrote a piece called Abortion, Gay Marriage, Immigration, Gun Control, and the Church over at A Deeper Story. He points out that we have a big problem on our hands when it comes to the ways we have come to be defined by these issues. Christians are primarily defined in…