What is the proper way for religious believers to engage in politics? Are we, as many on the secular left demand, supposed to leave our religious beliefs at the door? Jonathan Merritt and I discussed this very question when he joined me to discuss his latest book, “A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars.”
(Listen to our full conversation here. Or download the podcast on iTunes.)
Merritt dismisses the idea that Christians shouldn’t participate in politics. The question, he insists isn’t, ‘Should we be involved in politics? — but rather, “how should we be involved in politics?'”
He also offers his thoughts on the problems created by Christians viewing politics as warfare:
The question is: ‘What is the Christian calling?’ If the Christian calling is to win our country, well then, by all means we should fight a war. If the Christian calling is to be faithful and to follow in the steps of Jesus, trying our best to behave in a way that’s similar to the way he behaved, then I think it shifts the conversation.
… ‘Is this what we want?’ ‘Do we want to fight a war with each other?’ People die in war. Do I want to destroy my neighbor, that I’m called to love?
… [A]nd this is where the call of Jesus is so radical, and not necessarily the best way forward pragmatically. But it is the call of Jesus.
Reflecting on Kirsten Powers, a noted liberal who wrote the forward to his book, Merritt offers this nugget of thoughtful wisdom, “I want to listen to her, to hear her out, to seek to understand her even as she seeks to understand me….”
In other words, he wants to love his neighbor like himself. When we don’t, Merritt argues, we risk betraying our core values. “We treat them like enemies to be marginalized, villainized and destroyed,” he says.
In the end, Merritt knows there are battles to be fought in politics. The game is, after all, one in which losing can have serious consequences. The danger — at least as Merritt would suggest — is that we can all lose when we turn disagreements into hatred and warfare. And then, to paraphrase Richard Nixon (who knew a thing or two about political enemies), we destroy ourselves.