Politics and Good Friday

Excerpt: But the last thing I want to do is to fight the "Christian Right" with a "Christian Left" that equally seeks to dress up it secular preferences in religious garb and claim the Kingdom for itself. Where does that leave this Christian? Well, for one thing, it makes me strongly support the separation of church and state on religious grounds, which used to be a pretty common attitude among Protestants in this country. And it also tends to make me a "liberal" in the American meaning of that word, if only because political principles like diversity or equality should come naturally for Christians, and also because "conservatism" has too often involved the tendency to semi-divinize too many things of this world, from race, class and country to The Market. That may just be a prejudice, and I may be wrong about all sorts of individual political judgments I make, just like anyone else. That's why we have political debate and political parties and elections. But please don't tell me that God demands that I vote for your candidate or support your "Christian" political cause. Unless you are willing to claim the role of Prophet, with the spiritual dangers that involves, you shouldn't even go there. If these ruminations offend any readers, or seem a ridiculous extrapolation from a meditation of the crucifixion or Good Friday, I apologize. But when I survey the wondrous cross, I see a world that has killed the living Word, and does so every day, and that can only be redeemed spiritually, not by those carrying crosses who confuse Christ's resurrection with the appropriation of divine power to their own earthly causes, however well-meaning. And this Holy Week is as good a time as any for Christians active in politics to seriously reflect on how Christ seeks to shapes our activism with His loving hand--even as we nail it to a cross. http://blog.beliefnet.com/progressiverevival/2009/04/politics-and-good-friday.html