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Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

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Jonathan Harnisch

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“Taking the Bible seriously should mean taking politics seriously. The major voices in the Bible from beginning to end are passionate advocates of a different kind of world here on earth and here and now. Many American Christians are wary of doing this, for more than one reason. Some are so appalled by the politics of the Christian Right that they have rejected the notion that Christianity has anything to do with politics. Moreover, the word “politics” has negative associations in our time. Many think of narrowly partisan politics, as if politics is merely about party affiliation. Many also dismiss politics as petty bickering, as ego-driven struggles for power, even as basically corrupt. But there is a broader meaning of the word that is essential. This broader meaning is expressed by the linguistic root of the English word. It comes from the Greek word polis, which means “city.” Politics is about the shape and shaping of “the city” and by extension of large-scale human communities: kingdoms, nations, empires, the world. In this sense, politics matters greatly: it is about the structures of a society. Who rules? In whose benefit? What is the economic system like?—fair, or skewed toward the wealthy and powerful? What are the laws and conventions of the society like? Hierarchical? Patriarchal? Racist? Xenophobic? Homophobic? For Christians, especially in a democratic society in which they are a majority, these questions matter. To abandon politics means leaving the structuring of society to those who are most concerned to serve their own interests. It means letting the Pharaohs and monarchs and Caesars and domination systems, ancient and modern, put the world together as they will. In a democracy, politics in the broad sense does include how we vote. But it also includes more: what we support in our conversations, our contributions, monetary and otherwise, our actions. Not every Christian is called to be an activist. But all are called to take seriously God’s dream for a more just and nonviolent world.”

ChristianityChristian LifeReligion And PoliticsPolitics And Religion
Book:Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most
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“We have inherited a tradition which has associated religion and politics in a way that has excluded some of our fellow citizens … When we become legislators, though, as we do when we vote in referendums, we legislate for all our fellow citizens. We do not vote as members of this or that church or faith. Of course we cannot leave our religiously based moral convictions outside the polling station, but we do need to remember the difference between civil and religious law. We also need to remember that it is possible to have deep and passionately held convictions without seeking to have those convictions imposed by the state on fellow citizens who do not share them and may have opposite convictions which are equally deep and passionately held.”

Politics And Religion
Author:Fr Iggy O'Donovan
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“What is government? What is the relationship between theology and politics? How should Christians think about their political participation? These questions typically get lost in our conversations. We jump into the juicy fight of the moment, whip out our favorite Bible verses, and completely forget to ask if we even agree on the nature of human government or the relationship between the church and earthly governments.”

GovernmentTheologyGovernment QuotesChristian WorldviewBiblical InterpretationPolitics And ReligionBible And Politics
Book:The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here
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“If anything under the sun must be divisive, men, in some cases, are right in letting it be precisely those matters regarding politics and religion. On questions of eternity for yourself and your neighbors, or the general well-being of nations and communities, these are the main things worth being so genuinely in love with the truth about that it risks oneself being exiled. On the other hand, the people to be most concerned for are those of the crowd who do not care about truth at all; for they are the ones who march us like troops in perfectly synchronized steps over the edges of cliffs.”

TruthReligionPoliticsConformityNonconformityStand For SomethingDivisivenessPolitics And ReligionLove TruthDefend The Truth
Author:Criss Jami
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