Yes, there are risks involved in public forays of faith into the public sector, but there are also risks if one does not speak out. Politics is like fire: get too close and you will burn; stay away and you will freeze. One need only consider the work of people such as the British archbishop William Temple or the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr to see how Christians can shape, for the better, the political settlement of their day. And that is without even considering the positive legacy of Christians in advocating everything from the abolition of slavery, to indigenous rights, to action on
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