Friday, August 17, 2012

No Definitive Christian Approach to Politics

The other evening, my son asked me if we were Conservatives. I responded that on many issues, but not all, we would be classified as Conservative. Then he asked me if God is Conservative. I said that God is neither a Conservative or a Liberal. However, while God is "above" politics, in some cases He is very clear on what is right and what is wrong.

In a 2011 opinion column titled Sargent Shriver’s Christian Politics, New York Times Op-Ed columnist Ross Douthat expressed it even better when he said:
...There is no definitive Christian approach to politics. There are lines a believer cannot cross and ideologies that cannot be embraced, but a libertarian and a social democrat can both claim a Christian warrant for their approach to political affairs, and likewise a neoconservative and a realist, or for that matter a monarchist and a republican. But the diversity and open-endedness of Christian political thought doesn’t absolve Christian politicians of the obligation to think seriously about the interaction between their personal faith and their public duties. Instead, it sharpens that obligation: Precisely because there is no single model for a Christian politician, every Christian in politics has an obligation to be a model — to make it clear, in words and deeds, how their faith informs their activism, and to constantly test their political convictions against their theological worldview.

No comments:

Post a Comment