I posted the following in a response to a Strang Report on the meeting of 70 evangelical leaders who have offered their support for John McCain :
“From the perspective of someone who resides in Europe where the church has zero political clout, the american obsession with having a ‘christian’ president is a luxury. America needs a christian people, a people who not only believe the gospel but live it out, in a democracy the government will do what the masses of people want. The church should focus its energies on reversing the decline of the faith in society and obedience to the gospel among professing christians rather than politicking.
Europe went the route of the state religion, it did not work, it merely turned society against the church. Capture the hearts and minds of the nation, of the society, of the media and you will capture the government. I see no precedent in scripture for the church as a body backing a political leader against another, this simply weakens the church and turns it into the pawn of political authorities. America needs to wake up, it is getting dechristianised, not by the president, but by the lethargy of the church and the shenanigans of preachers.
Evangelicalism is not a political option and should not be hijacked by a group of ‘leaders’ and turned into the religious wing of one party. We in Europe have great difficulty preaching the gospel because we are immediately identified as the pawns of right wing americans who want to take over Europe. Religious leaders can support who they want but it is wrong to use the authority of the church of Jesus Christ, a divine institution to play partisan politics.
The church has always suffered from unholy alliances with political leaders, beginning with Constantine. Learn from the history of Europe, we cannot legislate morality, but we can convert people to Christ and teach them to observe the teachings of Jesus, and they will not kill their babies, indulge in perversion, even if the law allows them to.”
no i did not hear about the english registrar, will check out the story; good to hear from you; and i totally agree with your comments on the people God uses, in fact i am posting a response to a particularly virulent reaction i received to that blog entry on the Charisma site, and one of the things i said there was precisely that, Cyrus indeed was God’s man for the hour, heathen though he was, and thoroughly so too.
was encouraged, amused, uplifted, etc, etc, by your blog on american ‘christian’ politics. I too have been wary of americans christians’ obsession with ‘christian’ politics. I do agree with them that christians should have an audible, even loud voice in our countries’ institutions (did you read the case of the english registrar who refused to ‘marry’ two homosexuals?). However the americans take this one step further in their politics. I’ve heard several of their preachers lambast candidates from their pulpits, one of their favourites being deriding anyone who seems to oppose the president’s war in iraq. The american president, bless him, may be a ‘christian’ but he is still a man, not God. He needs his nation’s prayers for wisdom, just as any potential presidential candidate does. If these christian leaders carefully read their bibles, particularly the OT they’d see God used all sorts of people to achieve His purposes, godly and otherwise (Cyrus, Jethro, even a donkey!). Like you said, America will only be saved from america’s worst fears through the living gospel – the only thing capable of changing hearts and minds from evil to good – and not a ‘christian’ president.