Book Recommendation - The Good of Politics
“Christianity, we believe, entails a way of life that is not spiritually separate from earthly culture and politics, but neither is it compatible with the American civil religious way of life.”
The Good of Politics
A Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Introduction by James W Skillen
Growing up as a kid in the 80s in rural North Dakota was a unique experience. In many ways, I feel like I grew up in the last disconnected generation in America. We didn’t have cable television much less the internet. Even daily newspaper delivery was out of reach out on the farm. In that environment, when someone said that they didn’t pay attention to politics, you not only believed them, it seemed like an almost foregone conclusion. If you weren’t home for the 10 minutes at the beginning of the 5 o’clock news hour, it was easy to be disconnected from Washington and the dysfunction that it produced.
Times are different. With cable news, talk radio and social media, politics has become America’s pastime (sorry baseball, you are too slow and boring, give me a committee hearing to be outraged about). The church, in many ways, has failed in it’s political discipleship and the slack that we have left behind has been enthusiastically picked up by many voices willing to win the hearts and minds of Christians and to win their allegiance.
If you feel the tension of trying to lead your heart (much less the hearts of your community) as you engage in the political conversations circulating in our culture, then I’d love to recommend a book that I have found to be very helpful in shaping my thinking around the role of politics in our society.