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Christians in Politics: The Return of the 'Religious Right' pt. 4

This is a fascinating article by Stephen Carlson. While I don't agree with everything here, it's far too interesting to keep to myself. It's quite a long article, so I'm breaking it into a few parts. If you're impatient, you can read the whole article at http://www.lewrockwell.com/carson/carson17.html.
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Christians in Politics: The Return of the 'Religious Right'

by Stephen W. Carson
October 30, 2003

IV. 1900–1925: Prohibition, Modernist/Fundamentalist debates, Scopes Trial

To understand the sudden reengagement in politics of evangelicals in the late 1970s, I think we must first begin with what came before. Namely, how it came that a large segment of the American population stepped back from politics.

Coming out of revivals led by men like Dwight L. Moody, the 19th century was filled with religious activity. Marsden writes that "'Evangelical' (from the Greek for 'gospel') eventually became the common British and American name for the revival movements that swept back and forth across the English-speaking world and elsewhere during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries... the revivalists' emphases on simple biblical preaching in a fervent style that would elicit dramatic conversion experiences set the standards for much of American Protestantism. Since Protestantism was by far the dominant religion in the United States until the mid-nineteenth century, evangelicalism shaped the most characteristic style of American religion."

While the seeds of a coming split quietly developed among evangelicals, the late 19th and early part of the 20th century seemed to be a time of triumph for evangelical influence on society. There were massive missionary efforts abroad as well as new organizations at home like the YMCA. The Prohibition movement resulted in the passage of numerous state laws beginning in 1917 which culminated in the passage of the 18th Amendment in early 1919 which made the "manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors" illegal in the United States. This alcohol Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment in late 1933.

But the seeming unity among evangelicals was about to fall apart.

Marsden writes "... the vast cultural changes of the era from the 1870s to the 1920s created a major crisis within [the] evangelical coalition. Essentially it split in two. On the one hand were theological liberals who, in order to maintain better credibility in the modern age, were willing to modify some central evangelical doctrines, such as the reliability of the Bible or the necessity of salvation only through the atoning sacrifice of Christ. On the other hand were conservatives who continued to believe the traditionally essential evangelical doctrines. By the 1920s a militant wing of conservatives emerged and took the name fundamentalist. Fundamentalists were ready to fight liberal theology in the churches and changes in the dominant values and beliefs in the culture. By the middle of that decade they had gained wide national prominence. By a few years later, however, their support faded and they disappeared from the headlines."

Ed Dobson describes the origin of the term "fundamentalist": "The fundamentalist movement took its name from the publication of a series of booklets in 1909 named The Fundamentals: A Testimony of Truth, written by scholars from around the world. The authors represented Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal denominations and people of varying theological positions. These articles were designed to identify the essential (fundamental) doctrines of the Christian faith, which were under attack from the then-current tides of scientific inquiry. Five fundamental doctrines were identified as the basic tenets of the Christian faith:

   1. The inspiration and infallibility of the Bible.
   2. The deity of Christ.
   3. The substitutionary atonement of Christ. The liberal theologians had begun propagating the idea that the death of Christ was merely that of a martyr and provided nothing more than a moral influence on society. That is, his death was a good moral example from which all people could benefit. To the fundamentalists this was a denial of the heart of Christianity and the soul of the gospel. Christ died a substitutionary death, and in so doing, he provided atonement for the sins of mankind.
   4. The resurrection of Christ. Liberal theologians advocated a spiritual rather than literal resurrection... The fundamentalists, by contrast, loudly proclaimed the literal resurrection of Jesus.
   5. The second coming of Christ. The fundamentalists believed not only in a literal, bodily resurrection, but also in a literal, bodily return of Christ to the earth."

"By 1918 the liberals and the fundamentalists had clearly articulated their positions and were ready for a head-on collision. Conservative Christians held their first major national conference in Philadelphia that year, with more than five thousand people attending. The next year they met at the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago and decided to go on the offensive against liberalism by establishing their own organization, which would later be known as the World's Christian Fundamentals Association. They also began advocating the establishment of new Bible institutes and conferences to combat the influence of liberalism. This was a major change of direction. Instead of staying in the major denominations and fighting against the liberals for control, the early fundamentalists withdrew and began their own organizations."

George Marsden in Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism tells the story of the decline of fundamentalism as a nationally prominent movement: "World War I had produced among many conservative evangelicals both a sense of crisis over the revolution in morals and a renewed concern for the welfare of civilization... German civilization during the war was portrayed as the essence of barbarism, despite its strongly Christian heritage. Could the same thing happen here? The strong winds of change suggested that it could.

"The central symbol organizing fears over the demise of American culture became biological evolution. German culture, antievolutionists loudly proclaimed, had been ruined by the evolutionary 'might-makes-right' philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Darwinism, moreover, was essentially atheistic, and hence its spread would contribute to the erosion of American morality. Accordingly, soon after the war fundamentalists began organizing vigorous campaigns against the teaching of biological evolution in America's public schools. This effort was greatly aided when in 1920 William Jennings Bryan, three times Democratic candidate for president and one of the nation's greatest orators, entered the fray against Darwinism. Fundamentalist antievolution efforts were essentially political and so attracted a constituency wider than the nucleus of theologically conservative evangelical Protestants. By the middle of the decade laws banning the teaching of evolution in public schools had been passed in a number of southern states, and legislation was pending in a number of others. These efforts led to the famous Scopes Trial testing the Tennessee antievolution law in 1925, an event that both thrust fundamentalism into worldwide attention and brought about its decline as an effective national force. John T. Scopes, a young high-school teacher who admitted to teaching biological evolution, was brought to trial and defended by famed criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow. William Jennings Bryan volunteered to aid the prosecution, thus bringing a dramatic showdown between fundamentalism and modern skepticism. The event was comparable to Lindbergh's transatlantic flight in the amount of press coverage and ballyhoo.

"Although the outcome of the trial was indecisive and the law stood, the rural setting and the press's caricatures of fundamentalists as rubes and hicks discredited fundamentalism and made it difficult to pursue further the serious aspects of the movement. After 1925 fundamentalists had difficulty gaining national attention except when some of their movement were involved in extreme or bizarre efforts."

Stephen W. Carson is a working software engineer and a graduate student in the Department of Political Economy at Washington University in St. Louis. This was delivered on September 12, 2003 at the Friday Night at the Institute lecture series sponsored by the Francis Schaeffer Institute.

Christians in Politics: The Return of the 'Religious Right' pt. 3

This is a fascinating article by Stephen Carlson. While I don't agree with everything here, it's far too interesting to keep to myself. It's quite a long article, so I'm breaking it into a few parts. If you're impatient, you can read the whole article at http://www.lewrockwell.com/carson/carson17.html.
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Christians in Politics: The Return of the 'Religious Right'

by Stephen W. Carson
October 30, 2003

III. Defense of the Religious Right

Now, before going any further it is my duty to defend evangelicals in regards to their political involvement from some of the charges that are more outlandish but unfortunately still get repeated in the mass media. This is especially important since later I'll be making a critique of that political involvement.

The key to understanding what brought evangelicals back into politics after 50 years is one term: "self-defence."

Since you may not trust me as a self-identified member of the "Religious Right," I'd like to call as a witness the great libertarian Murray Rothbard, sometimes called "Mr. Libertarian." I think his observations are particularly interesting because he was an agnostic Jew who spent his life criticizing the State and those who would use it to steal from and control others. I should note that he made these observations in 1994, so what he would say now, especially in light of the invasion of Iraq which was generally supported by evangelicals, would probably be somewhat different. I'm using a lengthy passage because I also think Rothbard's insightful and funny.

This is from his article, "Hunting the Christian Right": "Watch out, Johnnie and Janie, the Christians are out to get you!... You see, the problem is that Christians – those sneaky devils! – are on the march; they're taking over, in particular, the Republican Party. And, once again, as they have done effectively so many times, left-liberals, who wouldn't be caught dead voting Republican, are rushing dewy-eyed, to try to save the wonderful old GOP from those terrible, extreme, Christians.

"So what's wrong with these Christians, anyway? They're 'extremists!' Oooh! On what? Well, they're single-issue types: they're only interested in abortion. Soon, it turned out patently that that wasn't true: for example, the Christian Right (for they indeed, are the Christians under attack) are also passionately interested in saving their children from multicultural, socialistic, condomaniacal, anti-Christian public schooling.

"And so the anti-Christian left retreated to another line of attack: they're 'creationists'! They're interfering with the separation of church and state! They want voluntary prayer in the schools! But why is even discussing a Christian view in the schools a breach in this holy wall of 'separation of church and state,' while presenting all sorts of New Age propaganda, channeling, pantheistic mysticism, etc. is not a breach in such a wall? It is pretty clear that the only separation of religion from the public schools that left-liberals are interested in is from Christianity, not from religion in general.

"The liberal media have spun an entire web of disinformation and lies around the Christian right. First, there is the notion that there are two types of Republicans: the Christian right only interested in 'social' issues (bad), and economic conservatives interested in safe issues like taxes and economic controls (good). Or, alternatively, that there are three types of Republicans: the Christian right (bad), the economic conservatives (so-so), and the 'moderates' (wonderful), who are left-liberal on all issues, or who are willing to cave into the left everywhere.

"All this is baloney. The Christian right might well have been inspired into activism by abortion or by the horrible state of the public schools, but by this time the nature of the Enemy is clear, and they have become 'conservatives' on all issues, anti-tax and pro-free market as well as cultural rightists.

"...I'll say it only once more: it does not violate the separation of church and state principle for Christians to get involved in politics, or to take political stands. Or even for Christian ministers or priests to do so. For people who use this absurd argument, this point should be thrown into their face: All right, are you prepared to repudiate all the political activities of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King? Or of all the other black ministers? Are you prepared to condemn Catholic Bishops when they agitated for civil rights legislation? And if not, why not? And if not, please inter this idiotic argument once and for all. The blatant hypocrisy of left-liberals on this entire matter is a stench unto one's nostrils. They must not be allowed to get away with this intellectual fraud."

Stephen W. Carson is a working software engineer and a graduate student in the Department of Political Economy at Washington University in St. Louis. This was delivered on September 12, 2003 at the Friday Night at the Institute lecture series sponsored by the Francis Schaeffer Institute.

Christians in Politics: The Return of the 'Religious Right' pt. 2

This is a fascinating article by Stephen Carlson. While I don't agree with everything here, it's far too interesting to keep to myself. It's quite a long article, so I'm breaking it into a few parts. If you're impatient, you can read the whole article here.
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Christians in Politics: The Return of the 'Religious Right'

by Stephen W. Carson
October 30, 2003

II. Definitions – Evangelical (broad and narrow), fundamentalist, Religious Right

Before I go further let me define some of these labels I'm throwing around.

Besides being a political economist, another qualification I have for speaking on this topic is that I can pretty fairly be classified as a member of the Religious Right myself. Or, to use a less charged term, I am an evangelical Christian.

This means that I am what is called "theologically conservative." I hold that the Hebrew and Greek scriptures provide a historically true and spiritually profitable account of the dealings of God with man, most significantly the incarnation of God as the human Jesus of Nazareth and his subsequent bodily death, burial and resurrection.

To give you an idea of how many evangelicals there are in America, I'll cite George Marsden who writes that"...opinion surveys that test for evangelical beliefs typically find somewhere around fifty million Americans who fit the definition."

To be in the "religious right," on the other hand, has connotations beyond strict theology and implies socially conservative beliefs. This describes me as well. I believe sex is meant to be confined within marriage, that killing babies inside the womb is a destruction of human life. And even beyond these sorts of things I'm a strong adherent of "bourgeois morality": hard work, thrift, staying married even when it isn't fun, etc. I also, like many in the religious right, have no socialist sympathies and think that private property and voluntary exchange are the proper basis for a just and progressive economic order.

Now let me clarify that the term "evangelical" which is what I will primarily use tonight instead of "the Religious Right" has quite a history, which I'll touch on later, and more than one meaning. George Marsden, a major scholar of Evangelicalism in America, says there are two primary meanings of "evangelical," a narrow and a broad meaning.

Marsden writes in Evangelicalism and Modern America that, "...with the possible exception of [fundamentalists], evangelicalism is a transdenominational movement in which many people, in various ways, feel at home. It is a movement as diverse as the politically radical Sojourners community in Washington, D.C. and the conservative Moral Majority... Institutionally, this transdenominational evangelicalism is built around networks of parachurch agencies. The structure is somewhat like that of the old feudal system of the Middle Ages. It is made up of superficially friendly, somewhat competitive empires built up by evangelical leaders competing for the same audience, but all professing allegiance to the same king. So we find empires surrounding Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker [this book is a bit out of date], Jimmy Swaggart, and other television ministers. Card-carrying evangelicals are just as familiar with Campus Crusade for Christ, Youth for Christ, Young Life, Navigators, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, Francis Schaeffer's L'Abri Fellowship, and other evangelistic organizations...."

"We can see, then, that a decisive factor in distinguishing evangelicals in the more narrow sense from evangelicals in the broader sense is a degree of transdenominational orientation. So, for instance, many Missouri Synod Lutherans, Southern Baptists, Wesleyan Methodists, Church of the Brethren, or Mennonites whose religious outlook is channeled almost exclusively by the programs and concerns of their own denomination, are hardly part of the card-carrying evangelical fellowship, even though they may certainly be evangelicals in the broader senses."

The last term to note is "fundamentalist" which I will shortly explain more about in the context of the history of the term. Suffice it to say for now that "fundamentalist" currently refers to a subgroup of evangelicals who are marked by being more strongly separatist in regards to the culture and other Christian groups. An example of a fundamentalist institution is Bob Jones University. As we will learn, "fundamentalist" once referred to a much broader group.

Stephen W. Carson is a working software engineer and a graduate student in the Department of Political Economy at Washington University in St. Louis. This was delivered on September 12, 2003 at the Friday Night at the Institute lecture series sponsored by the Francis Schaeffer Institute.

Christians in Politics: The Return of the 'Religious Right' pt. 1

This is a fascinating article by Stephen Carlson.  While I don't agree with everything here, it's far too interesting to keep to myself.  It's quite a long article, so I'm breaking it into a few parts.  If you're impatient, you can read the whole article here.
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Christians in Politics: The Return of the 'Religious Right'

by Stephen W. Carson
October 30, 2003

I. Intro – The resurgence of conservative Christianity

One of the most startling things about the resurgence of the Religious Right is that it happened at all. Both modernists and conservative evangelicals themselves were certain that this movement would continue to diminish under the onslaught of modernism and a process that it was assumed went along with modernization, "secularization." Modernists thought that progressive forces of history were bringing the death of "primitive" religion as a wave of the future and these "fundamentalists" were clearly just bitter reactionaries who would become part of the past. Evangelicals themselves often adopted a premillenial eschatology (esp. fundamentalists) and taught that the true followers of Christ would shrink in numbers as society became more and more corrupt until the second coming of Christ.

The historian Paul Johnson writes in Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Nineties: "The outstanding event of modern times was the failure of religious belief to disappear. For many millions, especially in the advanced nations, religion ceased to play much or any part in their lives, and the ways in which the vacuum thus lost was filled, by fascism, Nazism, Communism, by attempts at humanist utopianism, by eugenics or health politics, by the ideologies of sexual liberation, race politics and environmental politics, forms much of the substance of the history of the century. But for many more millions – for the overwhelming majority of the human race, in fact – religion continued to be a huge dimension in their lives. Nietzsche, who had so accurately predicted the transmutation of faith into political zealotry and the totalitarian will to power, failed to see that the religious spirit could, quite illogically, coexist with secularization, and so resuscitate his dying God. What looked antiquated, even risible, in the 1990s was not religious belief but the confident prediction of its demise once provided by Feuerbach and Marx, Durkheim and Frazer, Lenin, Wells, Shaw, Gide, Sartre and many others... The secularist movement, that is militant atheism, appears to have peaked in the West in the 1880s... so that Lenin was a survivor rather than a precursor, and his secularization programme was put through by force, not established by argument. By the 1990s, the Museums of Anti-God and Chairs of Scientific Atheism he had established were merely historical curiosities, or had been dismantled and scrapped. The once-influential alternatives to religion, such as Positivism, had vanished almost without a trace, confirming John Henry Newman's observation: 'True religion is slow in growth and, when once planted, is difficult of dislodgment; but its intellectual counterfeit has no root in itself; it springs up suddenly, it suddenly withers.' Perhaps the most spectacular testimony to this truth was to be found in Russia, where the collapse of belief in the Communist ideology Lenin had implanted revealed, in the growing climate of freedom of 1989–91, that both Orthodox and Catholic Christianity had survived all the assaults made upon them by the regime, and were strong and spreading. Throughout the world, while spiritual bewilderment, neatly classified as 'agnosticism', was widespread, it is likely that there were fewer real atheists in 1990 than in 1890."

Coming back specifically to the evangelical resurgence in America, Ed Dobson writes in Blinded By Might: "With the founding of the Moral Majority in 1979, evangelicals and fundamentalists ventured into the political process. They were not welcomed with open arms by either the political or religious establishments. Rather, they kicked down the door and marched in with such fury that they sent panic through most sectors of American society.

"The media were shocked. Where did all these fundamentalists come from? Who were they, and what did they want? Since the general public had assumed that fundamentalists disappeared after the infamous Scopes 'Monkey Trial' in 1925, it was at a loss to explain their sudden public resurgence. A kind of paranoia set in, and some began to assert that hoards of bigoted 'Bible-bangers' had formed a conspiracy to take over America. In September 1980, Newsweek magazine stated, 'What is clear on both the philosophical level – and in the rough-and-tumble arena of politics – is that the Falwells of the nation and their increasingly militant flock are a phenomenon that can no longer be dismissed or ignored.'"

Stephen W. Carson is a working software engineer and a graduate student in the Department of Political Economy at Washington University in St. Louis. This was delivered on September 12, 2003 at the Friday Night at the Institute lecture series sponsored by the Francis Schaeffer Institute.

An interesting juxtaposition - What do you think it means?

1 Samuel 8:1-22

1 When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. 2 The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. 3 But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.

4 So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. 5 They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead [a] us, such as all the other nations have."

6 But when they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. 7 And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do."

10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle [b] and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."

19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."

21 When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. 22 The LORD answered, "Listen to them and give them a king."

Romans 13:1-7

1Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. 7Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

A Thousand Questions

Willow Creek Leadership Summit: A Thousand Questions

A Prayer for a New President and a New America

A Prayer for a New President and a New America
by Shane Claiborne 11-07-2008

God of Abraham, Miriam, Hannah, Rizpah, and David…
God of Elijah, Amos, Ruth, Isaiah, Deborah…
God of Mary, John the Baptizer, Peter, Paul, Philemon and Onesimus…
God of Anthony, Ambrose, Dirk Willems, Teresa of Avila, and Francis of
Assisi,
God of Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, William
Wilberforce, and Oscar Romero
and God of love, grace, and hope…

Thank you for creating a perfect world.
Forgive us for the mess we have made of it.
Thank you for creating Jubilee, gleaning, and Sabbath as patterns to
ensure that the poor are cared for, the earth rests, and inequality is
dismantled.
Forgive us for choosing the patterns of empire.
Thank you for using the weak things to shame the strong and the
foolish things to confound the wise.
Protect us from becoming too strong or too wise.
Protect us from ourselves.

Forgive us…
for the groaning of creation
for the millions who die of hunger and curable diseases
for warehousing people in prisons and using them for labor
for the scandal of billions wasted in war
for worrying about tomorrow and storing up more than this day our
daily bread
for an economy that mirrors the seven deadly sins
for our Caesars and our Herods
for the violence and greed in our own hearts
Save us from ourselves.

Deliver us…
from the arrogance of power
from the myth of redemptive violence
from the tyranny of greed
from the ugliness of racism
from false hope and counterfeit change
from the cancer of hatred
from the seduction of wealth
from the idolatry of nationalism
from the paralysis of cynicism
from the ghettoes of poverty
from the ghettoes of wealth
from the blood-stained pages of history
and from the legacy of slavery.
Deliver us oh God.

Give us the courage…
to bless the poor in a world that blesses the middle class.
to bless the meek in a world that admires aggression.
to bless the hungry in a world that feeds the already fed.
to bless the merciful in a world that shows no mercy on evildoers.
to bless the pure in heart in a world of clutter and noise.
to bless the peacemakers in a world that baptizes bombs.

Give us imagination…
that we might not conform to the patterns of this world.
that we might shatter indifference and interrupt injustice with grace
that we might choose the cross over the sword
that we might be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves
that we might consider the lillies and sparrows as they shame Wall
Street’s splendor
that we might choose the dream of God over the dreams of nations
that we might cling to the God that so loved the world, not just America
that we might allow our Jesus to change America rather than America to
change our Jesus.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Note from my Lead Elder

Dear Church Family,

The elections are over and today each of us face choices irregardless of what our particular political preferences are.  There are those of you who woke up today feeling a new sense of hope for the future and then there are those of you who feel heavy hearted and disappointed.  I wanted to simply keep before all of us a couple of important things to remember:

1)      Ultimately, our citizenship is not in this world, but in a heavenly kingdom.  Paul says in Philippians 3:20, “But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives.  And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Lord and Savior.”  We are part of a spiritual kingdom and our prayer is this:  “Your kingdom come, your will be done.”  Caring for the sick, the poor, helping to alleviate suffering and injustice around the world, fighting for life, are not political agendas, but are God’s agendas.  These are the things that transcend any political party and reflect the things that are on God’s heart.  We can continue to help build this spiritual kingdom through acts of love and mercy.  I read an interesting quote this week from Shane Claiborne.  It goes like this:




What is more important than how we vote on Nov. 4 is how we live on Nov. 3 and Nov. 5. We vote everyday with our lives. We vote every day with our feet, our hands, our lips, and our wallets. Ultimate change does not just happen one day every four years. —Shane Claiborne

2)      We are one because of Christ Jesus.  In a world that loves to focus on our differences, Jesus comes along and tears down all of those walls that divide us and separate us.  One of my favorite passages in the Bible is from Galatians 3.  Paul is speaking to believers in the context of a world that knew some pretty significant divisions.  If Paul were speaking today, he might even include the division between Democrats and Republicans.  But here’s what Paul says in verse 26-28:  “So you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have been made like him.  There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female.  For you are all Christians- you are one in Christ Jesus.”

We are a pretty diverse church family, which I think is so beautiful!  Let’s continue to place our focus on Jesus Christ, who makes us all one.

3)      Our trust is in God.  Do we trust that whatever the outcomes were of yesterday, that God is still in control and is still on the throne of this universe? God is bigger than any political process and the results and is able to bring about his purposes through us, his people, as we continue to place our trust in him, obey and follow his voice.  Remember, fear is not of God.  Fear are the seeds that the enemy wants to sow.  Let your heart be filled with faith, which is the antidote to fear, which fills us as we place our trust in God.

Finally, remember that we are to pray for our leaders and to build them up.  It is never appropriate to verbally tear down those in authority.  As followers of Jesus, let our words be grace-filled, loving and kind.  God will honor that.  Let’s be known not as a people who are suspicious, fearful,  and negative, but as a people who confidently place our hope and trust in the Lord.

I really do believe that our best days are ahead of us.  Not because of what did or didn’t happen last night, but because of who Jesus Christ is in our lives!  Let’s continue to hold onto that hope.

An interesting progression

At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel the loan he has made to his fellow Israelite. He shall not require payment from his fellow Israelite or brother, because the LORD's time for canceling debts has been proclaimed. You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your brother owes you. However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. For the LORD your God will bless you as he has promised, and you will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. You will rule over many nations but none will rule over you.

 If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. Rather be openhanded and freely lend him whatever he needs. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: "The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near," so that you do not show ill will toward your needy brother and give him nothing. He may then appeal to the LORD against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.

Deuteronomy 15:1-11

This is an interesting progression.  Kind of like it's going from the ideal that God wants us to strive for to the reality of this fallen world.

The Reality of Politics in the US

Usprimaries_2008

It's interesting to see that the real line doesn't seem to run left to right, but from right/authoritarian to left/libertarian.  I find this to be very interesting since the Conservatives in America always accuse the Liberals of wanting to control their lives.  It looks to me that the Conservatives are the ones wanting to control people's personal lives, as long as no one messes with their money.  Interesting.