Nearer, My God, to the G.O.P.

Nearer, My God, to the G.O.P. is a piece by Joseph Loconte in the New York Times. I like this guy's perspective. A couple of key quotes:

"'We affirm God's vision of a good society offered to us by the prophet Isaiah,' he [Jim Wallis] writes. Yet Isaiah, an agent of divine judgment living in a theocratic state, conveniently affirms every spending scheme of the Democratic Party. This is no different than the fundamentalist impulse to cite the book of Leviticus to justify laws against homosexuality."

and

"Christians are right to argue that the Bible is a priceless source of moral and spiritual insight. But they're wrong to treat it as a substitute for a coherent political philosophy."

He wrote in his closing paragraph:

"A completely secular public square is neither possible nor desirable; democracy needs the moral ballast of religion. But a partisan campaign to enlist the sacred is equally wrongheaded. When people of faith join political debates, they must welcome those democratic virtues that promote the common good: prudence, reason, compromise – and a realization that politics can't usher in the kingdom of heaven."

I sense a type of co-dependency going on in Emergent circles. Many are irritated about conservative and/or fundamentalist Evangelicalism. These theological conservatives tend to vote heavily Republican. Emergents want a more authentic faith. How do we do that? Too often, it feels like the answer is, "Don't be Evangelical." Ironically, that means Evangelicals still control the agenda for many Emerging folks because their "Emergent" mission is to "not be Evangelical." For many, by extension, that means not being Republican or giving approval to anything a Republican-voting-Evangelical might be inclined to support. In short, the Emergent folks become a mirror image of the very thing they said they found inauthentic.

The defining criteria for mission and action cannot be opposition to some faction. It must first and foremost be from communion with God and God's Word, in communion with the saints. That goes for theology and politics.