I was raised to believe that faith and politics should never mix. Yet as the public witness of Christianity in America has become increasingly defined by partisanship, I can no longer separate the two so neatly. <\/span>Losing Our Religion,<\/span><\/i> written by Russell Moore, exposes how the church\u2019s pursuit of power has often displaced its pursuit of truth (\u201cthe church doesn\u2019t believe its own moral teachings\u201d) (1), while <\/span>Jesus and the Powers<\/span><\/i>, by N.T. Wright and Michael Bird, reminds us that the gospel is not an ideology but an invitation to share in Christ\u2019s reign\u2014a partnership, not a project we control. (2)<\/span><\/p>\n Politics and government are necessary in a fallen world, but they are poor substitutes for God\u2019s Kingdom. The Christian call is to reflect the life of the world to come. My own journey from apolitical upbringing to engaged but wary participation mirrors this tension: how to live as a citizen of heaven while standing, faithfully, on earthly ground.<\/span><\/p>\n I grew up in northern New Jersey, in a comfortable suburb of New York City, surrounded by church, family, and music. Faith was woven into daily life\u2014saying grace at meals, attending church every Sunday, watching my father write the weekly check for the offering. My parents modeled a quiet, generous discipleship marked by radical hospitality: from the time I was eight until I left for college, our home welcomed more than two dozen foster infants and several exchange students.<\/span><\/p>\n Politics, however, were absent from the conversation. My parents quietly canceled out each other\u2019s votes, and our Presbyterian church focused on fellowship rather than activism. The word <\/span>evangelical<\/span><\/i> barely entered my vocabulary until the scandals of the televangelists in the 1970s and \u201980s made it sound suspect. Later, when the Moral Majority began merging religion and political identity, I sensed something was wrong. Faith, I believed, was about relationship\u2014with God, others, and creation\u2014not about power or partisanship. That conviction would be tested as I grew older and watched the meaning of \u201cChristian\u201d itself begin to shift.<\/span><\/p>\n As I began paying closer attention to national politics, I watched the line between Christian conviction and partisan loyalty blur beyond recognition. I was deeply uneasy with George W. Bush\u2019s presidency\u2014his faith-infused rhetoric seemed sincere, yet his policies often favored corporations over communities, leaving many rural and working-class Americans behind. <\/span><\/p>\n Barack Obama\u2019s election briefly rekindled hope for moral leadership and civic repair, but Congressional obstruction prevented much of what he wanted to accomplish. Obstructionism hardened into a permanent strategy, beginning with Newt Gingrich\u2019s combative Congress and intensifying under Mitch McConnell\u2019s refusal to negotiate or collaborate. By the time Donald Trump entered the scene, polarization had become a way of life\u2014and, for many evangelicals, a test of faith itself.<\/span><\/p>\n As <\/span>Losing Our Religion<\/span><\/i> notes, people are leaving churches not because they reject Christ but because they no longer believe the church practices what it preaches. (3) When Christian symbols are used to secure national or ethnic power (4), faith becomes an idol masquerading as orthodoxy. The result is what Kierkegaard warned against\u2014a paganism that thinks it is Christian (5). Authentic discipleship looks like Jesus: humble, truthful, and willing to serve rather than dominate. Anything less is ideology dressed in religious language.<\/span><\/p>\n If Christian nationalism tempts believers on the right, progressive movements pose subtler temptations on the left. Many who leave conservative churches\u2014understandably wounded by hypocrisy or exclusion\u2014seek justice and belonging elsewhere, yet often re-create the same dynamics of moral certainty and shame they fled. Disillusioned \u201cexvangelicals\u201d frequently replace church with online communities that reward outrage more than repentance. In these spaces, the language of \u201cinclusion\u201d and \u201cprogress\u201d can become its own orthodoxy, where cultural sympathies replace communion with Christ.<\/span><\/p>\n Jesus and the Powers<\/span><\/i> reminds us that the kingdom cannot be built by ideology, whether conservative or progressive (6). Political causes may echo gospel concerns, but without continual conversion of the heart, even good intentions become cemented as self-righteousness. Faithful public witness must keep turning toward God for renewal, so we don\u2019t mirror the very power structures we critique. The way of Jesus remains distinct\u2014rooted in humility, compassion, and truth.<\/span><\/p>\n In such a divided landscape, Christian leaders face the task of shepherding communities shaped more by cable news and algorithms than by Scripture. <\/span>Jesus and the Powers<\/span><\/i> portrays Christ\u2019s rule not as domination but as self-giving partnership (7); leaders therefore embody resistance to coercive power by practicing cruciform love.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Family-systems theory adds that anxious systems breed reactivity\u2014leaders who mirror that anxiety only deepen the spiral. The call is to become what Edwin Friedman calls a \u201cnon-anxious presence\u201d(8): calm, differentiated, and, I would add, deeply rooted in Christ. Moral authority cannot be reclaimed through louder certainty but through integrity, humility, and truth-telling. <\/span><\/p>\n Faithful leaders teach their people to discern the difference between gospel conviction and ideological reactivity. Such leadership\u2014undefended, courageous, and compassionate\u2014invites the church to recover its vocation as a community of grace rather than a campaign for power.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.\u201d<\/span> What, exactly, is this happiness we are all pursuing? The human longing for happiness, so deeply woven into the American story, points toward something truer and more enduring: the longing for holiness. According to research from the Harvard Human Flourishing Project, happiness and life satisfaction are only one dimension of genuine well-being. The Light University <\/span>Human Flourishing<\/span><\/i> course explains that \u201cthe missing link on the pathway to flourishing is holiness.\u2026 If the purpose of life is communion with God, then the true end is not bare happiness or even health, but a life set apart to God in thought, word, and deed.\u201d(9)<\/span><\/p>\n If we truly desire to flourish, we must seek friendship with God through holiness\u2014loving God and neighbor as Jesus commanded. \u201cSeek first the kingdom of God,\u201d he said, \u201cand all these other things will be given to you.\u201d When people and churches forget this, we begin to worship power rather than God. We become <\/span>functional atheists<\/span><\/i>\u2014acting as if everything depends on us rather than on God. Our nation\u2019s polarization is, at its root, a holiness problem: we chase the illusion of self-made happiness instead of participating in the transforming love that alone makes life whole.<\/span><\/p>\n I once believed that faith and politics should stay separate. Now I believe that while politics cannot save us, faith must shape how we live within it, as it shapes us everywhere we show up. The Kingdom of God is not an ideology to advance but a reality to embody\u2014one that exposes both right- and left-handed idolatries. <\/span>Jesus and the Powers<\/span><\/i> reminds me that we do not work for the Kingdom as though it depended on us; we participate with Christ as he renews all things. In a culture addicted to winning and being top dog, I am learning that the most radical political act is to love my neighbor <\/span>and<\/span><\/i> tell the truth. As Peter writes in 1 Peter 5:6-10,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Humble yourselves, therefore, under God\u2019s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.<\/span><\/p>\n And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.<\/span><\/p>\n We are called to both humility and steadfast resistance against evil, just like Jesus. By the grace of God, we will grow more and more like Him.<\/span><\/p>\n I. Introduction I was raised to believe that faith and politics should never mix. Yet as the public witness of Christianity in America has become increasingly defined by partisanship, I can no longer separate the two so neatly. Losing Our Religion, written by Russell Moore, exposes how the church\u2019s pursuit of power has often displaced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3210,2967,1817],"class_list":["post-42357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-wright","tag-dlgp03","tag-moore","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42357"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42359,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42357\/revisions\/42359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}II. Formation and Early Faith<\/b><\/h3>\n
III. Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity<\/b><\/h3>\n
IV. Progressive Captivity and Post-Church Ideologies<\/b><\/h3>\n
V. Leadership in an Age of Polarization and Idolatry<\/b><\/h3>\n
VI. Holiness, Happiness, and True Flourishing<\/b><\/h3>\n
\n<\/span> \u2014 <\/span>The Declaration of Independence<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nVII. What I Believe Now and Why<\/b><\/h3>\n
\n\n