Sermon quotes on politics
Aristotle
It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.
Emily Badger and Niraj Chokshi
In 1960, just 5 percent of Republicans and 4 percent of Democrats said they would be unhappy if a son or daughter married someone from the other party. In a YouGov survey from 2008 . . . 27 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats said they’d be “somewhat” or “very upset” by that prospect. By 2010, that share had jumped to half of Republicans and a third of Democrats.
“How We Became Bitter Political Enemies,” New York Times, June 15, 2017.
Bill Bishop
As people seek out the social settings they prefer—as they choose the group that makes them feel the most comfortable—the nation grows more politically segregated—and the benefit that ought to come with having a variety of opinions is lost to the righteousness that is the special entitlement of homogeneous groups.
The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
Bill Bishop
Like-minded, homogeneous groups squelch dissent, grow more extreme in their thinking, and ignore evidence that their positions are wrong. As a result, we now live in a giant feedback loop, hearing our own thoughts about what’s right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear, and the neighborhoods we live in.
The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
Eugene Cho
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.
Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk: A Christian’s Guide to Engaging Politics, David C Cook.
Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman, and Donald Guthrie
All of life is political-incorporating the themes of power, interests, negotiation, and ethics.
Taken from The Politics of Ministry by Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman, and Donald Guthrie Copyright (c) 2019, p.17 by Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman, and Donald Guthrie. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman, and Donald Guthrie
Every ministry context-whether in the family, a church, or another organization-has a complicated structure of relationships. The capacity to act and to influence others is largely a result of the history, strength, and health of these social webs.
Taken from The Politics of Ministry by Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman, and Donald Guthrie Copyright (c) 2019, p.38 by Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman, and Donald Guthrie. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman, and Donald Guthrie
Most people entering ministry- are idealistic about their own and others’ capacities to act and to influence others. Our wishful thinking compels us to expect all the adults involved in our ministries to act with the same power for the same mission with the same compassion. That is, we hope to be playing on a level field and in a loving manner. Unfortunately, this often is not the case. Power is rarely equal between people, and power is easily used for selfishness and evil.
Taken from The Politics of Ministry by Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman, and Donald Guthrie Copyright (c) 2019, p.47 by Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman, and Donald Guthrie. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
George Burns
Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
Quoted in Life, Dec. 1979
G.K. Chesterton
I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
G.K. Chesterton
Half a truth is better than no politics.
G.K. Chesterton
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
Winston Churchill
Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.
Winston Churchill
A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.
Desiderius Erasmus
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Thomas Fuller
A conservative believes nothing should be done for the first time.
Jonathan Haidt
People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds”
Timothy Keller
If we get our very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is not really about, it is about us. Through our cause we are getting a self, our worth. That means we MUST despise and demonize the opposition. If we get our identity from our ethnicity or socioeconomic status, then we HAVE to feel superior to those of other classes and races. If you are profoundly proud of being an open-minded, tolerant soul, you will be extremely indignant toward people you think are bigots. If you are a very moral person, you will feel superior to people you think are licentious. And so on.
The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Penguin Books, 2009.
Martin Luther King Jr
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches, HarperOne, 2003.
C.S. Lewis
He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.
The Weight of Glory, HarperOne.
Abraham Lincoln
My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.
Abraham Lincoln
When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.
George Macdonald
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.
Groucho Marx
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Pericles
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr Revisited: Engagements with an American Original Ed. Daniel Rice, Eerdmans.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.
Ronald Reagan
Status quo, you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in’.
Ronald Reagan
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
Theodore Roosevelt
When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘Present’ or ‘Not Guilty’.
George Bernard Shaw
Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it….
Ron Sider
Think of the impact if the first thing radical feminists thought of when the conversation turned to evangelical men was that they had the best reputation for keeping their marriage vows and serving their wives in the costly fashion of Jesus as the cross. Think of the impact if the first thing the homosexual community thought of when someone mentioned evangelicals was that they were the people who lovingly ran the AIDS shelters and tenderly cared for them down to the last gasp. A little consistent wholesome modeling and costly servanthood are worth millions of true words spoken harshly.
Jonathan Swift
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
Mark Twain
Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.
Mark Twain
Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.
John Wesley
I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them, 1. To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy. 2. To speak no evil of the person they voted against: and, 3. To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.
Philip Yancey
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 simply means that as we do so we must not let the rules of power displace the command to love.
Philip Yancey
In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square.
Christians and Politics: Uneasy Partners, Creative Trust International.
Philip Yancey
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 of the world,” and who died a martyr at the hands of a powerful state. In the words of Miroslav Volf, “Imposition stands starkly at odds with the basic character of the Christian faith, which is at its heart about self-giving—God’s self-giving and human self-giving—and not about self-imposing.” Even”
Christians and Politics: Uneasy Partners, Creative Trust International.
Kenneth Feld
The biggest resentment I have is when they say Washington is run like a circus. If only it was so disciplined and organized.
Os Guinness
Machiavelli, for example, rooted political restlessness in the fact that human appetites are by nature “insatiable” because human beings are “able to desire everything” but unable “to secure everything.” As a result, “their desire is always greater than the power of acquisition.
Taken from A Free People’s Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future by Os Guinness Copyright (c) 2013 by Os Guinness. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Philip Yancey
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 politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.
Christians and Politics: Uneasy Partners, Creative Trust International.
Eugene Cho
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 become distorted, and our hopes misplaced.
Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk: A Christian’s Guide to Engaging Politics, David C Cook.
Michael Nelson
[The] animating premise of Democratic liberalism, that the federal government has the ability to solve virtually any problem it chooses to take on, domestic or foreign.
“How Vietnam Broke the Democratic Party,” New York Times, March 28, 2018.
Michael Wear
Politics is causing great spiritual harm and a big reason for that is people are going to politics to have their inner needs met. Politics does a poor job of meeting inner needs, but politicians will suggest they can do it if it will get them votes. The state of our politics is a reflection of the state of our souls.
Eugene Cho
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.
Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk: A Christian’s Guide to Engaging Politics, David C Cook.
Michael Wear
We do not love our neighbor for affirmation, but because we have been loved first. Now is not the time to withdraw, but to refine our intentions and pursue public faithfulness.
Michael Wear
Christians: The crisis is not that you are politically homeless. The crisis is that we ever thought we could make a home in politics at all.
Twitter Post, March 28, 2017.
Timothy Keller
To not be political is to be political.
“How Do Christians Fit into the Two-Party System? They Don’t,” New York Times, September 29, 2018.
Rich Villodas
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 of God’s life.
Jake Meador
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. Theologically, both political poles are suspect, because one makes an idol out of individual freedom, and the other makes an idol out of race and nation, blood and soil.
Taken from: In Search of the Common Good: Christian Fidelity in a Fractured World by Jake Meador Copyright (c) 2019 by Jake Meador. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Conan O’Brien
In America we get to choose who is going to ruin our country.
John Wesley
The highest offices of the state and church resemble a pyramid whose top is accessible to only two sorts of animals-eagles and reptiles.
Luke Bretherton
When I meet someone with whom I disagree, whom I dislike, or whom I find threatening, I can do one of four things. I can kill them, I can create a structure of coercion so I can control them, or I can make life so difficult that they run away. Or I can do politics. That is to say, I can form, norm, and sustain some kind of common life amid asymmetries of power, competing visions of the good, and my own feelings of aversion or fear without killing, coercing, or causing them to flee.
Article: “Recovering Democratic Politics” in Breaking Ground, May 7, 2021.
Mark Twain
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
Following the Equator (1897)
Fulton J. Sheen
Civilization is always in danger when those who have never learned to obey are given the right to command.
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