More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I felt pressure from a number of right-wing political and religious sources, as well as from some people in my own congregation,
expose the danger of associating the Christian faith too closely with any political point of view, whether conservative or liberal.
unwittingly allowed political and national agendas to cloud their vision of the uniquely beautiful kingdom of God.
Since God is for personal freedom, Christians should vote for the candidate who will fulfill “America’s mission” to bring freedom to the world—and
assume that espousing a certain political position is simply part of what it means to be Christian.
Aren’t we supposed to be trying to take America back for God?
nationalistic and political idolatry.
fuse the kingdom of God with a preferred version of the kingdom of the world
winning the culture war,
keeping the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, fighting for prayer in the public schools and at public events, and fighting to display the Ten Commandments in government buildings. I
I do not argue that those political positions are either wrong or right. Nor do I argue that Christians shouldn’t be involved in politics.
What gives the connection between Christianity and politics such strong emotional force in the U.S.? I believe it is the longstanding myth that America is a Christian nation.2
Throughout our history, most Americans have assumed our nation’s causes and wars were righteous and just, and that “God is on our side.”
sanctuaries—the cross and the American flag stand side by side. Our allegiance to God tends to go hand in hand with our allegiance to country.
the geneva theme
guardians of a Christian...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
a holy city “set on a hill,” and the church’s job is to...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
this myth is being embraced more intensely and widely now than in the past precisely because evangelicals sense that it is being threatened.4
is actually losing its grip on the collective national psyche, and as America becomes increasingly pluralistic and secularized, the civil religion of Christianity is losing its force.
America is not now and never was a Christian nation, that God is not necessarily on America’s side, and
Instead of living out the radically countercultural mandate of the kingdom of God, this myth has inclined us to Christianize many pagan aspects of our culture.
set-apart
the American flag has smothered the glory of the cross, and the ugliness of our American version of Caesar has squelched the radiant love of Christ.
many now hear the good news of Jesus only as American news, capitalistic news, imperialistic news, exploitive news, antigay news, or Republican news.
“not from this world” (John 18:36),
the kingdom of the world acquire and exercise power over others,
It’s in the fallen nature of all those governments to want to “win.”
all of us, whether religious or not, vote our faith and values.7
distinguish between their core faith and values on the one hand and the particular way they politically express their faith and values on the other.
kingdom people who share the same core faith and values can and often do disagree about how their faith and values
My kingdom is not from this world. JOHN 18:36
You’ve got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops. And I’m for the president to chase them all over the world. If it takes ten years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord. JERRY FALWELL1
not to be a time in which we passively wait for the end.
We are to show ahead of time the eschatological harvest that is coming; we are to reveal the future in the present, the “already” amid the “not yet.”
learn how to be freed from our addiction to futilely trying to acquire worth, significance, and security for ourselves. We learn how to walk in freedom from violence, self-centeredness, materialism, nationalism, racism, and all other false ways of getting life.
God’s plan was always to bless the entire world through Israel
has always been the God of all the nations (e.g.,
that would include a...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
not to isolate them from their culture
The reason we are not to be of the world is so we may be for the world.
The hope offered to believers is not that we will be a peculiar elite group of people who will escape out of the world, leaving others behind to experience the wrath of God. The hope is rather that by our sacrificial participation in the ever-expanding kingdom, the whole creation will be redeemed
ongoing temptation to compromise it by reducing the kingdom of God to a religious version of the kingdom of the world.
“great trust: that it is not our task to make things turn out right, but instead to be faithful witnesses. We have to trust that God will be God, and do what God has promised.”11
has frequently traded its holy mission for what it thought was a good mission.
frequently forsaken the slow, discrete, nonviolent, sacrificial way of transforming the world for the immediate, obvious, practical, and less costly way of improving the world.
This growth came about not by Christians fighting for their rights, as so many do today, but largely by Christians being put to death!
it a crime not to be a Christian
the empire of Christendom.
Forgetting that “the god of this age” owns all the authority of the kingdom of the world and gives it to whoever he wills (Luke 4:6–8), church leaders of this time insisted that God had given the church the power of the sword and thus concluded the church had an obligation to use it.
the thinking generally went, it would be positively immoral to lay this power aside and “come under” the heathen.
