Tom

“It is the ‘liberal’ in ‘liberal democracy’ that enables us to live with political and cultural differences, not despite being a Christian but precisely as a Christian.”
― N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies

“The Christian vocation is neither pious longing for heaven nor scheming to make Jesus king by exerting force over unwilling subjects. Instead, Christians should be ready to speak truth to power, being concerned with the righteous exercise of government, seeing it bent towards the arc of justice and fulfilling the service that God expects of governing authorities”
― N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies

“The dangers with post-liberal perspectives in the hands of governing authorities is that a government too insistent on promoting certain values can undermine liberty itself.49 Good government arises from the cultivation of debate, not ritual denunciations or intimidation. Tolerance properly understood means ‘the refusal to use coercive state power to impose one’s views on others, and therefore a commitment to moral competition through recruitment and persuasion alone’.”
― N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies

“The West might not have hard corruption such as that found in a banana republic, but it is infested with the soft corruption of corporations that fund political campaigns to further their own interests.”
― N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies