Jesus Untangled: Crucifying Our Politics to Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb

by Keith Giles

Consequently, for the first time in almost four decades, the church in my part of the country has remained relatively quiet throughout this election cycle. I, for one, want to scream: “Hallelujah! Praise be to Jesus!”

Once Constantine had won the admiration and trust of many Christian leaders in the Church, he used that influence to oversee the codification of Christian theology into a set of doctrines that would now define who was truly “Christian” and who was not.

Under Constantine, the Christian Church began to dispose of notions like the “priesthood of all believers”—where every Christian was seen as a contributive member of the Body of Christ—and adopted more hierarchical elements of worship, where the Bishop presided over something that closely resembled a regal ceremony, with incense, choirs, great speeches, and elaborate liturgy. This shift became quite a natural process as worship began to take place inside temples which were formerly pagan.

The sort of political entanglement the Church finds herself in today is more about advancing the agenda of a specific party, not about helping the weak, the poor, the immigrant, the outcast, the orphan or the widow. Politics as practiced by Martin Luther King, Jr. looked like spending the night in jail, getting spit upon by his enemies, and eventually being assassinated for daring to stand up and speak out.

The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it”(Billy

Let’s just admit that, when we seek political solutions to the world’s problems, it’s because we’ve given up on changing the world by sharing the Gospel. Instead, we just want to pass laws to force people who are not Christians to act like we do so we’ll feel more comfortable in this society.