politics on Religions

A major stumbling block for many earnest seekers is the compelling evidence throughout history that terrible things have been done in the name of religion. This applies to virtually all faiths at some...

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.

There is no social evil, no form of injustice whether of the feudal or the capitalist order which has not been sanctified in some way or other by religious sentiment and thereby rendered more impervio...

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.

The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.

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...

We can’t separate what we believe in the political arena from who we are in Christ and what obedience to God demands...That said, not every tenet of Christianity should become the law of the state. We...

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 ...

With a certain oversimplification we can trace easily enough the three options open to Jews in Jesus’ day. … First, the quietist and ultimately dualist option, taken by the writers of the Dead Sea Scr...

While I don’t agree with late professor and scholar Marcus Borg on significant theological positions, I appreciate how he described the context surrounding Jesus’ new paradigm of kingdom living: In hi...

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...

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...

When the church, in the name of political power, allies and aligns too much with the current secular left or right, it is sapped of both spiritual power and credibility with nonbelievers. Theologicall...

Since Jesus isn’t attached to the same things we are, he can take the God-view, which is about more than redeeming our individual lives. God means to redeem the world, which is going to require some m...

Religion has always been woven into American politics. John Quincy Adams liked to read the Bible in the mornings and would plunge naked into the Potomac for a swim before attending his weekly Sunday c...

I grew up near Washington D.C. surrounded by politics…I helped with the campaign of a friend’s father as he ran for state office, watched our friendly county supervisor become a US congressman, and le...

Christian politics concerns how we integrate our confession that Jesus is Lord with our call to love our neighbors.

Followers of Jesus should not be in bed with any of the political parties. Even if one affiliates with a particular party, may we maintain a posture to collaborate, listen, hold accountable, and engag...

O God of the ages, you have created each of us uniquely. We each have so much that makes us interesting and unique! Yet at times, even against our own wishes, we find ourselves falling prey to the -is...

In 410 AD, Rome fell to the barbarian Germanic tribe known as the Visigoths, led by King Alaric. The idea of a “Christian” city (and empire) falling was a terrible defeat, not just militarily, but als...

A Notoriously Difficult Passage This passage includes one of the most iconic and quotable of Jesus’s interactions with his contemporary opponents. Jesus deftly steps out of a trap set for him by the ...

Many people have misinterpreted the separation of church and state to mean that religious views shouldn’t play a role in public discussions and lawmaking. Someone might say, “We shouldn’t restrict abo...

In 2014, researchers at Northwestern University, Boston College, and the University of Melbourne published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , a prestigious academ...

Will Christians turn once again toward an approach that imposes its will on the rest of society? By doing so we would betray our founder, who resisted a temptation to authority over “all the kingdoms ...

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 ...

O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the midst of our struggles for justice and truth, to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual...

Preaching Commentary A Notoriously Difficult Passage This passage includes one of the most iconic and quotable of Jesus’s interactions with his contemporary opponents. Jesus deftly steps out of a t...

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

You may have heard about confirmation bias, which is the tendency to embrace information that supports our viewpoints. The antidote to confirmation bias is to intentionally expose ourselves to other v...

Though American Christians do have genuine opponents in the public square and in elite institutions, they have often been their own worst enemies, making disastrous political compromises and looking t...