worldview and perspective on Religion and Politics

When conflict and division are driving both politics and media (including social media), the contrast between the way of the world and the way of Jesus stands out more than ever. How can pastors, task...

Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.

I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with p...

Politics draws lines between people; in contrast, Jesus’ love cuts across those lines and dispenses grace. That does not mean, of course, that Christians should not involve themselves in politics. It ...

The crux of our dilemma is that for some Christians, we’ve allowed our politics to inform our theology rather than our theology and worship of the Christ informing our politics.

Many Christians are not only passionate about politics but are also involved in politics on some level. And yet, I would argue, at times, we are played by politics. At times, our identities and values...

It seems that every four years, the American people come through another exhausting political season. No matter who “wins,” there are feelings of frustration and disgust on all sides as we observe the...

The last 80 years of American politics have unfortunately seen a dramatic increase in political polarization. One reporter likened the relationship between Republicans and Democrats to the famous Shak...

Gracious God, you have placed us in a culture that seems more and more filled with politics. Forgive us for every time we respond to these politics with decisions that do not honor Christ. Pardon us f...

History shows that when the church uses the tools of the world's kingdom, it becomes as ineffectual, or as tyrannical, as any other power structure. And whenever the church has intermingled with t...

In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square.

The Church is not to be found at the ‘center’ of a left/right political world. The Church is to be a species of its own kind, confounding both left and right, and finding its identity from the center ...

It would be an understatement to say the term gospel is an important term in the Scriptures. Not only is it central in Scripture, but churches have adopted the term as their most beloved adjective. Yo...

There's a humorous, apocryphal story about a man standing by a river. On the opposite bank, a woman calls out, "How do I get to the other side of the river?" The man replies, "YOU A...

Every dictator uses religion as a prop to keep himself in power.

Even more germane to the concerns of this book, it is important to remember how the American concern for enumerating Christian work can look to non-Americans. Kanzo Uchimura (1861-1930) was a Japanese...

One Sunday morning a number of years ago my wife piled the children into the family car to come to Sunday school and worship. When she turned the switch to start, the engine wouldn't even grunt. T...

The British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was once engaged in a conversation with a man who believed children should never receive any kind of religious education or instruction, not until they were ol...

Freedom of religion is one of the greatest gifts of God to man, without distinction of race and color. He is the author and lord of conscience, and no power on earth has a right to stand between God a...

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount…Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

The United States is undergoing a marked change in its attitude toward religion, and Christians here face new challenges. When a blogger named Marc Yoder wrote about “10 Surprising Reasons Our Kids Le...

The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that ...

In his now famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail , Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. offers a scathing rebuke of his white clergy colleagues, whose inaction caused him much frustration: I have heard numero...

In one generation, the place of Christianity within culture dramatically shifted as we experienced what theologians and sociologists of religion call the “death of Christendom.” Christendom isn’t Chri...

Allow me to introduce you to Secular Sam. Secular Sam is very successful. He has a good job, a nice girlfriend, a beautiful apartment, a new car, and excellent health. He’s humorous, intelligent, and ...

From 1992 to 1995 the world witnessed one of the worst civil conflicts, the Bosnian War. Three factions, each tied to a religion (Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks), began attacking...

So it is that in most Western industrialized countries church and society have lost their identity, religion has become more and more a private affair, and morality has become secular. This process af...

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

Religion and science, then, in my analysis are the two great sister forces which have pulled, and are still pulling, mankind onward and upward.

In this fictionalized pastoral counseling session, the Episcopalian Priest Robert Farrar Capon shares some eternal truths related to the nature of religion—and in conclusion, how Christianity differs....