I swear, my last politics-related post of the ... umm, day. but David Gushee has a good read up, reflecting on the recent Compassion Forum with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I caught only parts of the forum while trying to take care of a number of other side projects, but my own sense was that it was a pretty encouraging format to see political candidates engaging in - at least on par with the Sojourner's Forum earlier in the cycle.

One point by Gushee bears highlighting if nothing else:

The actual event involved an interesting and not totally satisfying blend of questions from CNN's Campbell Brown and Newsweek's Jon Meacham together with those of some of the faith leaders on the board. We were truly grateful for CNN's involvement and thrilled that the event was televised not just nationally but internationally by that leading network. But I personally believe that the policy oriented questions that most of us asked from the floor were more germane than most of the more personal/theological questions asked by Brown and Meacham. It seems to me more important that we know how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will address global poverty, AIDS, and torture than how they explain the existence of evil in the world or what to make of Genesis 1.

One last take here, this time focusing a bit on Shane Claiborne's side of the discussion. Having read both "The Irresistible Revolution" and his more recent "Jesus for President," my short analysis of Claiborne is that he does a wonderful job of stating what the alternative to a political-centric view of Christian involvement in the world, but that his own political views tend to be a mere counterweight to someone like Colson - where Colson veers right on politics, Claiborne veers left. And whether there's a heartfelt, Christ-driven reason for holding that political view sometimes gets lost.

If nothing else, though, Shane keeps his point simple most of the time and certainly seems to live his life with the integrity that he calls us all toward. His opening statement offers a glimpse of that:

It's not in question whether or not Christians should engage the world that we're living in. I mean, our allegiance to the God of heaven has to affect the way that we live on earth. But Jesus had plenty of political options, you know, to flee society and go into the hills to, you know, fight with the zealots and He was very peculiar in how He was political. And I think that's part of what we are in danger of losing in all of the hunger and drives to be culturally relevant. And, you know, one of the examples that we give is the Amish, who are peculiar, you know? I mean, they're different. They've created a different culture in this world. And I think like the way that they reacted to this act of terror in their school when their kids were shot, you know, it fascinated the world. So we got a section of our book called "The Amish for Homeland Security." (Laughter). Sort of going, you know, I mean, that looks good, you know?

So I think what a beautiful thing it would be if we do have that sense that we're not to conform to the patterns of this world, but we're to have a renewing of our mind, a fresh imagination, that that's part of the call that I see throughout church history. This is nothing new, but over and over, our Christianity gets infected by the world we're living in and so people go to the margins, they go to the deserts, they go to the abandoned places of the empire that they're living in, they rethink what it means to be Christian, not just to be a believer, but to actually be a disciple of Jesus that is transformed and converted in the way we live.

Still, the guy is always entertaining to read, listen to, or watch in action. Here's an additional video snippet of him talking about "Jesus for President." Unfortunately, there's no Houston stop yet on his book tour.

ADD-ON: Oh, and David Swanson has his third part of his review of the book up over at Out of Ur.

One more riff on the Boyd/Colson/Claiborne-fest, This time to underscore some of the difference that seems to bubble up in the different viewpoints expressed here.

Mr. Colson: Well, I'm listening to Shane and agreeing with everything he just said, particularly, because he recognizes, unlike the Mennonites, that most mainstream Christians believe they have to be engaged in the moral issues of the day. You know, what drove me into the prisons was the massive sense of injustice, the way we were treating a lot of people in prison. And I ended up addressing state legislatures across the country. Had I followed Greg's advice, I would have just tended to the Kingdom and felt good about my relationship with Jesus, but I couldn't. I took the issue of justice into the courts from a Christian perspective and argued it expressly as a Christian.

The very words that came out of Greg's mouth -- I don't mean to take harsh issue with you -- about just tend to the Kingdom and let politics take care of itself is exactly what the slave owners said during the Civil War. Their whole argument was they were very good Christians and they were living as pious Christians, and the fact that they owned slaves had nothing to do with their Christianity. It had everything to do with their Christianity. Christians have fought slavery from the beginning. If you look at great transcendent moral issues, Bonhoeffer, a hero of yours and a hero of mine, Bonhoeffer stood against, in the confessing church, against Hitler. Thank God, he did. Wilberforce stood up in the floor of the Parliament in England and stood against the slave trade. You can't ignore moral evil. We're called to it as Christians. If it doesn't strike our conscience, there's something wrong with us. And we see things are wrong.

...

Mr. Boyd: I don't think it's an either/or and here's, I think, the main -- I just read Chuck's book [God and Government] last week and I agreed to about 90 percent of it. ... I was surprised actually how much I agreed with it. But, see, it's not an issue of whether or not we should engage moral evil. The question is, is it our primary job -- and you even deny this -- it's not the main job of the church to be running the government or to think that we're supposed to affect the government. That's not the main job. The main job is to live off the Kingdom, living it. Christians in America differ very, very little from the broader American culture. It's almost indistinguishable. Here we are a broken church -- profoundly broken church, trying to fix the world. I say we should first take the log out of our own eye before we start taking the speck out of others' eye. Now that doesn't mean we suspend all solidarity with prisoners. I mean, I love what you're doing with prisoners or with African-Americans in the Civil War or with the oppressed. Enter into solidarity with them. You say, 'Ouch,' but that's different than saying we can resolve the complex issues of abortion or whether or not the U.S. should go to war in Iraq or, you know, all the difficult ones.

There's a lot here where I both agree and disagree with both Colson and Boyd. But it's worth pointing out a preceding point from the discussion - that all three participants believe the course that the Religious Right political movement has lost it's way. Each arrives at that point from their own perspective, but it says something that this isn't much of a point of disagreement between the three. I raise that point because when Colson suggests that his own example regarding prison reform. it isn't entirely removed from the way that many politically-inclined Christians might suggest reforming whatever set of issues they seek to reform.

And yet, later on, Colson makes his point that we shouldn't fall into the trap of believing that politics can solve all of our problems. I think there are a number of approaches anyone could point out that might impact prison reform - and I don't offer that to suggest Colson's was either the rightest or the wrongest.

Meanwhile, Boyd does a great job of pointing out his "life under > life over" philosophy. But where it comes down to the how Christians are called to engage politically (as we're called to engage in all parts of the culture), the lack of specifics tends to hurt his point, I think. I think it's a recoverable lacking to the extent that Boyd has explored the issue, and it may or may not resolve by the time his book based on his "Beautiful Life" sermon series comes out ... eventually.

For now, the discussion seems to resolve on an amicable enough note, but I don't think either side really fleshes out their case as thoroughly as I might like to see. My own bias, of course, is that I believe Boyd's thesis at least has room to close in on an intellectual consistent point, whereas Colson's argument has been around for a number of decades now, and as Colson seems to state it, it just never seems to arrive at that point (see Boyd's review of God & Government for a pretty decent encapsulation of that point).

OK, one step back to my whole faith & politics meme. Krista Tippett has a great radio show touching on a lot of tangents about faith (not just Christian faith, at that). Her latest podcast (mp3) is from a conversation with Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne. This is from a conference that Boyd referenced in his blogging here, here and here.

I'm literally just in the opening minutes of this, but given my affinity for Boyd & Claiborne in particular, I feel secure in suggesting this as a must-listen.

One more news item on author David Gushee. This time, as part of a larger group conversation on Evangelical Centrists. I'm increasingly tempted to check the book out one more time. Maybe I'll cave, maybe I won't.

Also, a great read by Philip Yancey, regarding church and state separation as seen in the US and Europe. Though a bit brief, it at least addresses one of the still-nagging incomplete questions left from Greg Boyd's thesis.

Greg Boyd reviews Chuck Colson's "God and Government." Long, but rewarding read. Several of the same questions that Boyd notes, I had with Joel Hunter's "A Different Kind of Conservative." That aside, all I can think to add is "What Greg Boyd said."

A not-nearly-next-to-last word on the recent splurge of faith & politics postings here. But I had to force myself to stroll through ye olde Barnes & Noble the other night. I left completely empty-handed and completely satisfied for doing so. There's just something similar to depriving a more normal person of oxygen when you bleed a bookworm of time to explore new lit. And with all due respect to the many online book retailers who have accepted a substantial chunk of my income, there's a much-needed place for the physical shopping experience that can't be beat.

Something that was new to me was a book by David Gushee - "The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center." I swore I wouldn't force 100 such books onto my reading list. In all honesty, it feels like 2 or 3 would have done, but that didn't stop me from going through 5 or 6. What made this more than a curiosity for me was that it explores the concept of what an "evangelical center" might be comprised of. Anyone with an ear to news over the last twenty years might know about the religious right. And there's a recent resurgence of interest in defining a religious left. By definition, it would seem there has to be a center ... somewhere.

From the skimming I managed to accomplish, Gushee does what seems to be a good job of defining it theologically instead of politically. What qualified as the most pleasant surprise of the book was the author's section on the music that exemplifies his definition of the evangelical center. Something like two or three pages devoted to Derek Webb were securely tucked into the conversation. That almost compelled me to head to the register and plunk down the university press-inflated sticker price for the book.

Gushee's book is mentioned in a lengthy list of similar books on the topic in USA Today. I'm increasingly confident that I'll wrap up my reading on the topic with Shane Claiborne's "Jesus for President" and leave it at that. But I'll confess that Domke's "The God Strategy" is tempting like few books could.

The somewhat short synopsis of what I might summarize the overall reading project would be is that I've found myself increasingly embracing Greg Boyd's thesis from "Myth of a Christian Nation." From a couple of posts back, I've just more fullness in his view where I've previously questioned it as seemingly incomplete.

» Greg Boyd: A Discussion With Chuck Colson and Shane Claiborne

One more item to add before the weekend. My apologies for the dearth of additional thoughts on it to share. If it matters any, it's hard to add to Greg Boyd. His analysis here on faith & politics is one that I'm in pretty strong agreement with - particularly in contrast to the views of Charles Colson (who has an article in Christianity Today that's worth a contrasting read).

(pg. 114)

... as we search for the whole truth about someone, we will be able to see more clearly how God would have us vote.

This might seem a minor point to finally locate an issue I take with Hunter's view. But I believe there's something that underscores this point. Namely, that it's remarkably difficult and often impossible to arrive at an understanding of "the whole truth" about an issue or a person. Similarly, I'm thoroughly convinced that if we do so (or, more accurate to my understanding, as we begin to approach that point), I'm even less sure that clarity is what we get.

"The whole truth" is something that I argue isn't in our realm to understand. It's in God's. That leaves us struggling to decipher the clues we're given. And no matter how many you have, it's not enough to claim the whole truth ... regardless of what the bailiff made you swear to on a Bible in a courtroom.

Making my way a tad slower in the second half of the book, but I'm hoping to put it to rest this weekend. This exception aside, it's a remarkably great read and certainly very thought-provoking whatever your political views. I'll probably feel compelled to wrap up with some litany of things I disagree with about Hunter's thesis, so for now, let the plaudits be duly noted. Even in disagreement, Hunter is a model of civility, understanding, and compassion. That's evident in his sermons and public appearances ... so no great surprise to see it on full display in his writing, as well.

Making my way through Joel Hunter's "A New Kind of Conservative" this week. It's a great read for my taste and I offer that as one who agrees with Hunter about as often as I disagree with him. I went into this book thinking it might illuminate a bit more of Hunter's worldview for me, but I'm finding myself with even more questions. In particular, I'm finding it next to impossible to square this book with his overt support for Mike Huckabee in the Presidential race.

Not that I begrudge anyone for supporting whomever they want or agree with or has the best hair ... but the following snippet would seem to stand in stark contrast to Huckabee's call to amend the US Constitution to "God's Standard." That seems to be a bit too reminiscent of what the Pharisees attempted. And like Pastor Boyd, I'm curious what that'd mean for the Second Amendment. Hunter's writing (at least through the first half of the book) is very much of the same thinking that Boyd wrote about in "Myth of a Christian Nation." Maybe I'm in store for an interesting twist in the second half, but there's more than just Hunter's support for one Presidential candidate that has me wondering still about how he fits his worldview into the case he's made thus far.

(pg. 35)

The basic assumption among many evangelicals is that a strong reason that the Jews do not accept Jesus as the Messiah is because He did not bring political change. These are the same evangelicals who, after they have called the Jews ignorant, want Christ to reign politically!

To Hunter's credit, I think he begins to fill in some of the blanks I had from Boyd's book. And as a slight tangent, his sermon this past weekend (like most others) is well worth a listen.

ADD-ON: Here's Joel Hunter on the 2008 elections via PBS' Religion & Ethics program ...

As is my preference, I'd love to excerpt at great length some portion of this book that summarizes one or more elements that capture what I liked about this book. But for a variety of reasons, I'm not finding that possible. For starters, Dionne weaves in numerous news stories that capture his own series of questions, hypothesis, and narratives alongside his own analysis. Which makes for great reading and I generally love his analysis. But I didn't particularly go into this book for a rehash of recent events that surround the intersection of faith & politics.

More importantly, though, I found myself enjoying this book more than anticipated. Mostly, that's due to the fact that the areas I wasn't sure I'd like, I found imminently useful. Dionne devotes the bulk of the final third of the book to his own Catholic vantagepoint, which I initially saw as a section to endure. But the parallels are remarkably similar enough that they added much more to my own internal discussion than I would have ever guessed.

The one singular issue I still leave with the book is Dionne's insistence that faith and politics are naturally intertwined:

The notion that religion should be disconnected from politics always seemed odd to me simply because I couldn't understand how you could separate the two. If religion mattered, and if the content of your faith was true, it had to affect all you did. And if politics also mattered, the obligation of the believer was to sort out how politics and faith related to each other.

(pg 16)

It's this point that I'm probably most questioning of and also an area that I still find somewhat incompletely answered by Boyd's thesis. In several instances, Boyd reminds us that we're to "offer our opinion" ... which doesn't wholly summarize what anyone who sees public service or political work as a vocation should see rightfully as Kingdom-building.

I do feel that Dionne highlights, however briefly, the point that we aren't to confuse our political views as Christian views, but I'm not convinced he argues that point to the logical extreme. But perhaps the bigger problem I take from Dionne's argument is that it still accepts a liberal/conservative political divide within Christianity and Judaism. Certainly, they exist in the real world and perhaps should just be openly discussed in that manner. Dionne is, after all, a political writer and not a theological writer. But it still strikes me as an incomplete narrative on what it is that Christ calls us to do.

Mind you, that doesn't make it a bad book in my mind. Obviously I'm on a reading binge of sorts in order to take in a lot of different views and see what I take from each. Next up, for instance, is Joel Hunter's "A Different Kind of Conservative." As much as I love listening to Hunter's sermons, I'm already finding his book just as problematic on many of the same levels I am with Dionne. It can be maddening if you let it. But I think we all grasp this point somewhat incompletely ... so why should it surprise us to see others do likewise? It's enough to sometimes lead me to only one true conclusion - that this Over the Rhine tune probably gets more right than anyone else writing today.

» NYT: The Faith to Outlast Politics (David Kuo, John J. DiIulio Jr.)

A good read here if you happen to follow the faith-based initiative that was started under the Bush administration. The authors were essentially present at the creation - Dilulio, in particular, is a former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

I suppose it's one thing to look over the track record of this endeavor and find reason for concern or not. But ultimately, I love the way Joel Hunter once put it: the church should be doing things of this nature so well that states should be beating down their doors to find out how we're doing it.

Darn good bloggin' over at Out of Ur. While I was hoping I was at my limit for books on politics and faith, it seems this post adds one more for me to read. And while I hate to give away endings, this one is just too good to NOT pass along:

Politicians can't take all the credit for the effectiveness of the God strategy. Ministers encourage their congregations to view politicians as priests when they imply that having the right president or the right party in control of Congress will result in legislation that will deliver our nation from its sin. Preachers fuse God and country by confusing gospel liberty with political liberty and by conflating the American narrative with the biblical one. Worship committees mingle sacred and secular symbols by hanging the American flag behind the baptistery and introducing psalms to the state among praises to Jesus. And all of us are guilty of welcoming "morality politics" when we reduce the gospel to dos and don'ts. In short, church leaders work the soil in which the God strategy eventually bears fruit.

So where do we begin in 2008? How do we vote if the "God strategy" is simply that--a tactic to trick the undiscerning into electing a candidate they wouldn't otherwise support? How does a younger generation of evangelicals vote the issues when it appears no one is giving us the truth? What advice do we offer our congregations?

Personally, I wouldn't be disappointed if the presidential campaign of 2008 undermined our hope in the political system. I'm not promoting cynicism; rather, just a simple reminder that while some trust in chariots, we trust in the name of Jesus our Lord.

One more Boyd take, this one again having something to do with faith & politics. Great sermon to soak in if you're up for it, but here's a snippet otherwise:

In reading (slowly and gradually, I should note) Taylor Branch's "Parting the Waters," one of several aspects I'm looking at is how King made his way through the kingdom of this world while being a practitioner of the kingdom of God. It's a concept that, I think, is clearer with a reading of Greg Boyd's "Myth of a Christian Nation." As luck would have it, I also got my DVD set of the sermon series that led to that book. So I'm now reviewing that message for a third time (audio sermons, book, now video of the sermons).

One chapter in particular opens in a way that caught my interest. And it's important to realize that this is the author's telling of King's mission - by no means King in his own words. But it still hits me like a clanging cymbal to read this (emphasis mine) ...

p 206 - A Taste of the World

As the boycott dissolved in memory to a quaint story of tired feet and empty buses, King groped on a number of fronts to spread what he called the "Montgomery experience" across the South. Deluged with speaking invitations and cheered by enraptured audiences, he hoped that the power of his speech might fuel a mass conversion, like the Great Awakening of the 1740s. More realistically, he knew that oratory could aspire only to enlightenment, and that enlightenment was not enough. Power was required. Toward that end King devised a number of plans. While trying to build his own organization, he labored also to register several million new Negro voters, enlist the organs of mass communication, harness the influence of the organized clergy, gain the endorsement of the highest white leaders , and mobilize a "nonviolent army" of witnesses. When segregationist resistance threatened these efforts, King tinkered incessantly with strategy, trying many combinations of tactics. He consulted the few professed specialists in racial politics, who, since the prospects of overturning the everyday arrangements of the entrenched white majority were dim, tended to be eccentrics of assorted varieties - pietists, incendiaries, one-worlders, Communists, and other ideologues. King learned gradually to distinguish between kooks and quixotics of promise.

Now, contrast that sentiment with King in his own words:

That was from 1968 - late in King's life. Branch's telling of King's mission, for what it's worth, was from an earlier point - coming off the heels of the successful Montgomery Bus Boycotts over a decade prior. I don't point these contrasting items out in the belief that King necessarily sought out "power." But Branch's telling does seem to signify what a universal allure that is. There's something of an intellectually consistent conclusion that it follows from other forms of influence.

Boyd. for his sake, contrasts between "power over" and "power under." The latter being the methodology Jesus taught. The former being what is valued more in this world. Whenever the two are combined, we end up playing according to the rules of the kingdom of the world. What stands out from King's life is that he seems to have found a way to lead a seemingly political movement in a very Calvary-like manner. Hence my interest in looking more and more at the details. Do I expect to find perfection at every turn? Hardly. But it's still a great history to review and analyze against the understanding that Boyd highlights.

And for whatever more it might be worth, I'll throw in a quote from C.S. Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" that Boyd introduces his third sermon with. It's as concise a summary of what I believe I see as a misplaced correlation of faith and politics:

Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the "cause", in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours--and the more "religious" (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.

UPDATE: Pastor Boyd opines a bit on the kingdom message that MLK brought to the fore:

From a Kingdom perspective, the thing that stands out most about King is not that he rallied black folks to push back on unjust laws. This was of course a good and necessary thing to do. What makes King a truly great man from a distinctly Kingdom perspective, however, is the way he did this.

Before marching, King would always tell his audiences he didn't want anyone marching who could not genuinely say she loved her white oppressors and was marching not only for her own freedom, but from the freedom of her oppressors (for King saw that oppressing another is as much a form of bondage as being oppressed). Not only this, but King would tell audiences he didn't want anyone marching who couldn't commit to refraining from all violence, even in self-defense. King explicitly based all this on the teaching and example of Jesus.

This makes what King did not simply a good and necessary social movement. It makes what King did a Kingdom movement. Indeed, I'd argue that the early civil rights movement, led by King, was one of the clearest expressions of the Kingdom in history.

It's unfortunate, though hardly surprising, that the beautiful Kingdom dimension of King's vision has largely been forgotten today. For the most part, King is remembered simply as a leader who fought for the rights of oppressed people, and the civil rights movement is remembered only as a political and social protest movement. In my opinion, this doesn't do King justice. It misses the most important thing about the man. While the civil rights movement spun off in a number of directions -- including some that contained violence -- the man who birthed it had a vision of a movement that would look like a giant Jesus, fighting for the freedom of all though loving service to enemies rather than relying on anger and force.

To honor King rightly, we must never forget this.

Indeed, to honor King rightly, we must never cease to practice this.

Live in love, as Christ loved you and gave his life for you (Eph 5:1-2).

Via Faith in Public Life, this looks like a book I need to add to the reading list. From the freebie chapter:

The notion that religion should be disconnected from politics always seemed odd to me simply because I couldn't understand how you could separate the two. If religion mattered, and if the content of your faith was true, it had to affect all you did. And if politics also mattered, the obligation of the believer was to sort out how politics and faith related to each other. The task was especially complicated for believers who saw religious and political liberty as gifts to be treasured and preserved. That meant working out the relationship between one's own faith and politics in a way that respected the beliefs of others--including those who rejected faith as an irrational illusion.

That, more or less, sums up the question I guess I'm trying to force myself to resolve as well. Reading through the full chapter available on Dionne's book, there seem to be as many parts that I'll disagree with as those that I'll agree with. He approaches the topic from what appears to be a distinctly Catholic background and it certainly adds a wrinkle in the reviewing of Boyd & Hunter which initially sent me down this trail.

Speaking of Hunter ... it looks as if the other Joel has endorsed Mike Huckabee for President. There's a part of that which ought not surprise me and then there's a part of it that does. That's about par for the course with my view of Hunter.

Meanwhile, Boyd's at least been reading up a storm on the topic of faith & politics ... also blogging on Huckabee's latest comment (more in his interview w/ Beliefnet). Leave it to Boyd to sell me on reading anything translated from French:

In Ellul's estimation, it's not appropriate for Kingdom people to either support or revolt against governments. This gives them too much credit. Rather, following the example of Jesus, we should ignore them as much as possible, put up with them as much as we need to, and stay focused on living out the radical Kingdom. If we do this, then we, like Jesus, will find ourselves revolting against the government (and culture). We are, most fundamentally, called to be non-conformists. Our service to the world is the way our counter-cultural lives expose the invalidity of all forms of government by manifesting the reign of God.

I hafta admit ... that sounds pretty alluring. Slightly tangent to this, I watched the video of last week's sermon at Woodland Hills - "Puppets and Dresses" ... serious. Boyd wasn't there, so it was Seth McCoy (youth pastor?). When I realized the guy was giving a sermon while wearing a hoodie jacket, I think I started to appreciate Boyd's call to non-conformity just a bit more. Anyways, I'm sure I'll dive into reading some Jacques Ellul sooner rather than later.

More to come ... primary day gets nearer and nearer.

I'll try and get around to some real, honest-to-goodness blogging around here tonight. For now, I thought I'd post a Ted Olsen op-ed from Christianity Today. There's a mix of good and ... well, questions ... based on this. But it's a good read to start with for the coming week. Here in Texas, there's primary politics to contend with on March 4. And while I'm fairly averse at mixing politics and religion here, I suppose that's at least something of an excuse to start vetting out some of the material I'm running through these days.

What We Really Want
Despite the rumors, evangelicals will not be on the sidelines this election.
A Christianity Today editorial | posted 1/15/2008 08:38AM

In the past two presidential races, evangelical voters have given a margin of victory to President Bush, and now pollsters and experts are handicapping the candidates to predict who will get the evangelical vote.

But evangelicalism doesn't function like an AFL-CIO, granting endorsements and delivering votes on election day. There isn't an evangelical vote. We are not some pious voting bloc up for grabs. Regardless of how pollsters might pigeonhole us, evangelicals come from across a broad spectrum of society--pragmatic, purist, and in-between. At least since the 1968 race, in which Richard Nixon was elected, individual evangelicals have voted for candidates who best mirror our core values and concerns and seemed credible (at the time at least). If evangelicals functioned as a voting bloc, Pat Robertson would have in 1988 soundly defeated then-Vice President George H. W. Bush for the Republican nomination. But Robertson failed, as did evangelical activist Gary Bauer after him, in the 2000 presidential race.

It is also a mistake to think that evangelicals are burned out and will this year sit on their hands in their pews. Hardly. But we get as tired as the next person of the way politicians and interest groups--including religious interest groups, left and right--try to manipulate our vote. And like most groups, we get frustrated when our political system is unable to produce a candidate we can support without qualification: there are compromises that must be made with every candidate.

While evangelicals favor different policy proposals and solutions, we are remarkably united on the issues the next President and Congress should address. In 2004, the National Association of Evangelicals approved a landmark document, "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility." In a presidential election year, it is worth recalling that statement's seven core commitments: freedom of religion and conscience; protection for families and children; protection of all human life; compassion and justice for poor people; global human rights; the pursuit of peace and restraint of violence; and biblically based creation care.

While the secular media handicaps the election as a horse race, asking whether Obama is black enough or Clinton is warm enough, we should press the candidates to answer questions such as these: What is your plan for Iraq? For the Middle East? What would you do to stop the genocide in Darfur? How would you expand religious freedom worldwide? What would you do to reduce abortion and to protect innocent life in general? How would you secure our borders against terrorists, reform our immigration laws, and permit more refugees to resettle here? How would you promote equal economic opportunity for all while protecting the environment?

Evangelicals, keenly aware of fallen human nature, know better than most that democracy is not perfect. We support it because it's just less imperfect than any other political system. We have a history of active political involvement that goes back to the Revolutionary War. One President's policies, one difficult war, one season of foreclosures--or whatever is supposed to discourage us--is not going to make us throw up our hands in despair. In fact, more than ever, such difficult times force us to ask tough questions.

So, candidates, beware of that raised hand at the next town meeting. It may be connected to an activist evangelical who wants some honest answers about the substantive issues that face our nation.

Mark Daniels has an insightful post on faith & politics that I've just now gotten around to reading. I can't recommend highly enough the importance of reading the whole thing, but here's a few blurbs that stood out for me.

Two factors have made Mitt Romney's Mormon affiliation significant this year. One is the importance of the Religious Right in the Republican coalition. Frankly, I dislike the Religious Right. (And the Religious Left, for that matter.) There is simply no way to draw a straight line from faith in Jesus Christ or the Bible as the Word of God to a consistent political philosophy. As a Christian leader, it deeply disturbs me when pastors or other Christian leaders presume to say that Jesus is a Republican or a Democrat. Or that God is a liberal or a conservative. Christians who make such claims subordinate the Deity, the One I believe to be Lord and Creator of heaven and earth, to temporary, temporal philosophies and preferences. In effect, they shove God aside and instead, worship their parties or platforms. Nonetheless, the Religious Right has put a premium on candidates conforming not just to their political views, but also their claimed religious doctrines.

Like Daniels, I'm among those put off by both the Christian left and right. I've followed the latter since the mid-80s and explored the former only recently, primarily via Jim Wallis' "God's Politics" and Sojourner's magazine. I still read actively from both viewpoints, but primarily because I share Mark Daniel's affliction as a political junkie.

Still, the degree to which both views seem to appropriate God's word for that of a limited political viewpoint strikes me as entirely missing the point about what it means to be a Christian. That, to me, is the essence of what I've probably been avoiding writing about here. You can't help but go to a large evangelical church like Lakewood (or any other, for that matter) and not run into a segment of people who would argue the infallibility of one political viewpoint or another ... in Jesus' name. And every time I hear it, I remain even more convinced that there's something incredibly wrong with that. In the prophetic words of Derek Bell's "A King and a Kingdom:"

there are two great lies that i've heard:
"the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die"
and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him

Both lies, however, are persistent.

Romney, in his "Faith in America" speech, delivered at the presidential library of George H.W. Bush, seemed, in part, to deliver such a message. But then, he said that freedom needs religion and religion needs freedom. While I personally believe that the Judeo-Christian tradition fosters the kind of civility and respect for neighbor that allows for the functioning of democracy, Christian faith, in particular, hasn't needed freedom of religion to grow. Indeed, it seems to grow best and strongest when its natural inclination for subversiveness is given full vent. Historically, Christian faith has always grown strongest under the threat and persecution of repressive regimes. Freedom, then, isn't a necessary prerequisite for religious belief. Nor is it impossible for freedom to develop without religion.

Another lie that seems to permeate American Christianity - and one I don't seem to have picked up on as having been written about a lot - is the sentiment that Romney introduced in his speech. Before I go too far down this road, I'll say this for myself: Much like Lee Greenwood, I'm proud to be an American. And as a native Texan, I'm even more proud of that heritage. But they both pale when it comes to being a Christian. And the corollary of the lie that Christianity requires freedom seems to be that sometimes, the greatest lie that we've been sold on is that we, as Christians, have won ... and that it's our duty to enforce a presumably selective reading of, at best - a first century legalistic Christianity encoded into law; and at worst - a selectively chosen Old Testament law to live by. We've already won - Christians are in the majority - so what's to hold us back from manifesting Christianity through coercive government.

That the words "Jesus" and "Christ" do not seem to answer that for more people is a telling indicator that, in fact, we've not won anything.

I've written before that I appreciate most of the arguments put forth by Greg Boyd on the role of religion and politics. Boyd retouches on a few thoughts from "Myth of a Christian Nation" in his blog post about Mark Lilla's "A Stillborn God." Again, read the whole thing. But if this isn't provocative enough reading to kick off the new year with, then I don't know what else I might cut and paste to accomplish that with:

The secular concept of political freedom has only been around for several hundred years and the verdict is still out as to whether it will survive. The political theology of Nazism demonstrates how easy it is even for modern western people to slip back into theologically-based politics, and how harmful this can be when it happens.

I think Lilla is profoundly right about this as well. It's part of what concerns me when right or left wing Christians declare their political opinions to be the "Christian" position or to represent the politics of God.

I suspect many Christians would read Lilla's book as a slam on the Christian religion and a defense of full blown secularism. In a sense, it is. But I don't see this as a bad thing, for the movement Jesus came to establish -- the Kingdom of God -- can't be identified with the Christian religion. In fact, insofar as the Christian religion hasn't looked like Jesus Christ loving, serving and dying for his enemies (and let's be honest, if often hasn't), it contrasts with the Kingdom of God. It's in the interest of all Kingdom people to passionately point this sharp contrast out to people.

I've had to read and re-read that last paragraph several times over to really appreciate it. I'd be remiss to not recommend a closer reading of it to anyone else. It's worth arguing with, but I'd also recommend a little familiarity with Boyd before going too deeply down that road. When he's on a roll, he's not for the faint of heart.

I'm presently in a very slow-starting read through a great trilogy of books by Taylor Branch on the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. My aim was twofold. One, it's a seriously great read. But two ... as one of the more impressive displays of massive political resistance in recent American history, I expect it to push and challenge Boyd's thesis somewhat. Enough, I hope, that I feel I've gotten any lingering questions about it answered in my own mind.

In particular, there is what seems to be a paradox between the points I accept by Boyd and those by Joel Hunter - another pastor I greatly enjoy reading and listening to. Hunter actively participates in political discussions, Boyd does not. There seems, to me, some points where Boyd suggests that we should let our faith inform our decisions on how to vote, but the point seems not entirely well defined for those of us who reside in that intersection of faith and politics for whatever reasons (and my own includes reasons of my professional work).

Hunter, more emphatically, points out that we should have a worldview defined by, and informed by a Christian perspective. Hunter has noted his conservative political views. Boyd, I like to think, borrows from Jesus' own practice of simply not answering the political question before him. But his expressed views are at least heartening to some range of people who reside, politically, in the center-left realm. To my way of thinking, there's an area where both men haven't fleshed out enough between their views (talk about your niche marketing!).

I'm picking up Joel Hunter's "A New Kind of Conservative" and I'm bound and determined to find some way to fit it into my schedule. I consider myself predisposed to liking it, even if I don't necessarily share his broader political viewpoint. For better or worse, I'm sure to be writing a little more about the topic.

After Hunter, my book of choice will be Amy Sullivan's "The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap." Amy currently is an editor at Time magazine, but I've followed her since her days as a mere blogger, working her way through grad school. I've always loved her take on matters of faith and politics and likely share far more of her political views than those of Hunter. I'm going in presuming the book to be more about the political than Christian side of the street, so I'm not sure how the book fits into the line of examination that I'm about to get into. But I also consider Amy a friend of sorts (thanks email!), so to suggest that I'm partial on this book is a huge understatement. I'm more than confident that it'll add to the discussion.

» Washington Post: In Speech on Faith, Romney Vows to Serve 'No One Cause' (Dan Balz)
» NY Times: Romney, Eye on Evangelicals, Defends His Faith (Michael Luo)
» Boston Globe: Romney vows a balance on religion (Michael Levenson)
» First Person: Romney Discusses His Faith (video)

Part of the reason why I've withheld politics on this blog is that I view it as something very separate from faith. For too often, I've met more than a few folks who would even go so far as to suggest that while they may not be considered "church-going," they vote a certain way or cling to a few political beliefs, so that sorta makes up for it. And then, I go to any number of Christian blogs only to find a political blog by any other name. To at least me, it's tiring and pointless.

Besides, I work around a lot of political clients. I'm pretty actively engaged in that area, blog about it even. But I try not to confuse the political with what it means to believe in Christ. There's by no means a perfect separation - I tend to agree with Joel Hunter's view that we should have a worldview inspired by and informed by our faith. But I also adhere to Greg Boyd's view that the worlds aren't the same and should not be confused as such.

There's obviously a lot of ground to explore between those two points and numerous authors have spilt a great deal of ink exploring it. Between now and about March or so, my own reading list is flooded with that ink. And with Mitt Romney's speech, the point now becomes worth talking about in both the political as well as faith-filled realms. I've only given the speech one pass-through, so I'll wait till the weekend to comment on it. The news links above give some breakdown on the topic. If you want a few opinionated takes, Michael Gerson and EJ Dionne offer theirs. While those two view it from different political angles, I at least claim a bit of respect for both writers. Christianity Today's Collin Hansen also offers his thoughts.

So, all that to basically say: More this weekend. I feel rotten whenever I don't get in much blogging time after my Monday & Tuesday video ritual. But the workday is picking up some steam and I'm once more facing some big projects with short timelines. It's a good thing I love what I do ... otherwise, I'd complain.

On a sidenote - and something of a complaint, I managed to start two different books this week: Francis Collin's "The Language of God" - an average sized book; and Taylor Branch's "Parting the Waters" - a HUGE first book of a HUGE 3-part trilogy on the civil rights years. I managed to make my way through about 1/3rd of Collins' book in mostly one sitting in church last weekend. But I've only been able to make my way through less than 50 pages or so of Branch's. I think I just need to get used to lugging around a hefty book for my so-called casual reading habit.