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.

politics religion

Conservative/Liberal are not Theological Categories

We wanted to repost something by Jonathan Martin today that struck a chord with us about the theological emptiness of political boxes. It’s brief and beautifully written and we hope you’ll read the entire article here.

For those of you who are weary of the political tug-of-war for your soul, here’s some hope:

And so finally, the people of God are restless. They are intuitively suspect of liberal ideals that have no soul, and conservative ideals that have no cross. They are disenchanted, disillusioned, and disoriented with the options they have been given. And this is great grace. Where the words of the commentators fall flat, the world becomes hungry for the voice of prophets once again. In the cracks, space is developing for the voice that is altogether Other–the voice that will not be co-opted for the sake of the needs of any particular nation-state.

Where right and left are committed to the welfare of the people of a nation, perhaps the time has come again for people who pledge their allegiance to another kingdom. Over against the voices that are committed to build a better America, there are yet people who crave the peculiar treason of cross-shaped love. In being unlike the world, the Church may yet become a people truly for the world, once again.

Grace may yet make us traitors, to nearly everyone but God.

Photo credit: Vaguely Artistic via VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Related Reading

Responding to the Negative Fallout of Trump’s Election

Yesterday I suggested that we refrain from judging the motivations of brothers and sisters who voted for Donald Trump (see post). As the young lady I spoke with illustrates, a person could genuinely grieve over the negative implications Trump’s Presidency might have for certain people groups but nevertheless believe that there are considerations that outweigh these negative implications…

Join the Revolution!

We are living at a very important, and very exciting, juncture of history. The old religion of Christendom that has been identified with “Christianity” the last 1600 years is dying, and out of its ruins is arising a new tribe of kingdom revolutionaries. All around the globe people are getting the revelation that the kingdom…

The Political Ambiguity of the Abortion Issue

José Manuel Ríos Valiente via Compfight. As an illustration of the ambiguity of the abortion question when approaching it from a political point of view, here’s an article portraying Obama as a hero of the pro-life movement. Our purpose for posting this isn’t to suggest that all of us should vote for Obama in light of…

In your Anabaptist view, should Christians get involved in politics at all? Do you think they should even vote?

Ultimately, each person must follow their conscience when it comes to whether or not they vote, how they vote if they decide to vote, and the extent to which they should involve themselves in the political system. But we must always remain aware of the dangers involved in participating in the political system, for it…

The Testimony of Life and Death

David Kuo was a friend of ours. He was a passionate voice calling the church away from political division and calling us towards compassionate engagement. He succumbed to brain cancer this last week after a ten year struggle with the disease. Andrew Sullivan attended David’s funeral and reflected on David’s influence in his life. He…

On Our Limits and Our Hope

Martin Gommel via Compfight Are you worn out by the craziness of this last week? Micah J. Murray posted yesterday on the limits of what we can hold when the freight train of tragedies carried on the boxcars of social media bears down on us. There’s only so much we can process, and our emotions…