Monday Ministerial Musings
By Rev. Mark William Ennis
2021 Blog Number 1
January 4, 2021
Politics and Religion
On December 22, 2020 John Gabriel wrote an opinion piece for USA Today. This article which was titled, “God help us: We’re losing our religion and filling void with politics.” In this article he argues that religious participation in our country continues to decline but political activity continues to rise. His opinion is that politics has become our new religion even as Americans are rejecting religious of faith. I was disturbed by reading this but not surprised. Not exclusively, but much of the blame for this must fall on Christians who seem to talk politics more than faith.
I certainly am active on social media and am friends with Christians and non-Christians. I talk to Christians who consider themselves to be “right” of center and “left” of center but I still am unclear what these terms actually mean. During the recent presidential election, I saw posts from many of these Christian people who supported one candidate while demonizing the other. The rhetoric was rather harsh in many cases. Each claimed that the candidate of their choice was the candidate that God desired to be in the White House and would do God’s work. Absent from these political raves was much talk about what these people were doing to preach Christ. I heard more about political candidates than I did about Jesus during the election cycle.
I’m not saying that the Church and individual Christians should not have a prophetic voice. We need to speak prophetically to the powers of this world. I thank that we get off course when we become partisan in our prophetic voices and lose our prophetic voice. Maybe we need to stick more closely to the prophetic voice of Jesus. What did he say?
Jesus told us to pay taxes to Caesar but never called for his overthrow.
Jesus told us to pray for, not condemn our enemies.
Jesus told us to share with those who have less, not establish a social program to do so.
Are we preaching Jesus or are we preaching politics in our lives and on social media? This is a question that I hope we ask ourselves this year. We must preach Christ to people of every political stripe.
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To read more of Pastor Mark’s writings, please order a copy of his book: https://deepriverbooks.com/books/the-circle-of-seven/
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