Home > Work > The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor
1 " We conflate "political" and "partisan," and we isolate legislative and electoral means of social engagement as the only ones tainted by sin. "
― Kaitlyn Schiess , The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor
2 " The line between our political beliefs, our moral beliefs, and our theological beliefs is blurry, if not entirely invented. "
3 " We need need to unlearn our bent toward a private religion and a public politics - and see our participation in political life as a reflection of our very public faith. "
4 " In one way or another, almost any political or moral issue is about the honor and protection of human beings. In reality, every piece of legislation is trying to legislate morality. Every policy issue is based on moral principles and has moral implications. "
5 " We have missed a central implication of our own depravity and put far too much stick in our own ability to understand and apply Scriptures by ourselves. "
6 " When the church becomes accidental to Christianity, the weekly gathering becomes merely a social opportunity to confirm our prior personal experience with God. We've lost the sense of the church as the center of our corporate identity because we've lost a sense of any corporate identity at all. "
7 " It might be the most common perversion of God's people: to expect our religious devotion to excuse our injustice. "
8 " Our religious activities are worthless if they aren't causing us to live and act justly. God does not divide between justice and worship. "
9 " The church is a political body in that it is interested in the common good and not in the sense that it is a political party with members to represent. After evangelical flagship magazine Christianity Today published an op-ed by editor-in-chief Mark Galli supporting President Trump’s impeachment, the president tweeted that the magazine was looking for Democrats “to guard their religion” and that “no President has ever done what I have done for Evangelicals, or religion itself!”7 It not only revealed the president’s view of his relationship with evangelicals but highlighted the attitude many evangelicals share: Christians make political decisions based on what will protect them and their interests. But the church is commissioned to seek the flourishing of our communities, not special privileges for ourselves. "
10 " Political participation has a unique agility to inspire idolatry in people precisely because it so often involves promises of protection and provision, require sacrifices, legitimizes authority, and inspires submission and worship. "
11 " It (the church) is a political institution eschatologically oriented toward the redemption of all things and a social witness to that reality (Matthew 11:5; Romans 8:22). It is commissioned by God as the mediation of his mission and blessings on earth. "
12 " Low-church evangelicals like myself may be accustomed to treating what we do on Sunday morning with a certain level of inattentiveness: the important thing is the preaching, and everything else we do is more about personal preference. We can become largely unaware of just how important everything else is for our spiritual formation. "
13 " The problem with theories that harshly distinguish between political and ecclesial spheres is that in separating theology from politics, they create a political ethic untethered to theological considerations. "
14 " The most politically significant aspect of our faith is the reality that it is birthed and nurtured in an alternate political community that severs another king and awaits another kingdom. Jesus wasn't making converts - individuals who would pledge their individual support of him as a religious leader - but citizens of a new kingdom. "
15 " We may find ourselves represented in different positions at different times but the white American church in particular needs preachers who are willing to situate us in the place of the privileged and the powerful and to take on ourselves the associated judgements. "
16 " Perhaps our kitchens can be outposts of the kingdom of God, as well as our churches. "
17 " The discipline of hospitality might be the greatest example of this idea I'm desperate to advance: our political beliefs and advocacy are not primarily built on grand, sweeping claims to which we mentally assent; they are often built on ordinary impulses and biases that we inherit and absorb in small, everyday actions. "
18 " The sacralization of the political is a reality parallel to developments in our churches: we've blurred the line between patriotism and faithful Christian practice, we've allowed church services to take on nationalistic dimensions, and we've elevated the nation to the level of loyalty the church alone should occupy. "
19 " American Christians’ alignment with the Republican party became an idol because it made promises of protection, required sacrifices to be able to continue to make those promises, and worked less and less well at fulfilling them over time as the hold it held over Christians became stronger. "
20 " But for Christians, politics is not important because we ascribe great value to political ideas, but because we ascribe great value to the human person. "
