Hi, this is Chris Hubs.

I don’t know why you’re listening to this, but since you are, let’s talk about Christians in politics.

One of the interesting things to observe with the elections this week was how many people with theological training and who are ordained as Christian ministers won elections to national-level seats.

The big example, Senator-elect Talerico in Texas, who went to Presbyterian seminary and speaks very clearly about his faith.

But even right here in my home state of Iowa, my newly elected representative to the U.S.

House is an ordained minister in the PCUSA, and another Iowan who elected to the House is ordained in, I think, the Methodist Church.

And then there’s the senator-elect from Kansas, also ordained Methodist.

I don’t know for myself if, as a Christian, if I think I could handle the sort of challenge between the duties of a representative in the U.S.

democratic system and my responsibilities of conscience and how I believe I should live as a Christian.

But I’m glad that there are people who follow Jesus who are giving it a shot and think that they can, because I think the alternative is that we wouldn’t have anyone in those roles helping form our government and policies, and that feels like it would also be a bad thing.

Maybe in some very different idealistic world, Christian influence would work a different way within a country and within a system.

I don’t know, something for me to chew on.

Relevant to that topic, last night I finished reading a book called Scandalous Witness, subtitle A Little Political Manifesto for Christians by Lee C.

Camp.

I quoted from this a couple days ago.

I really enjoyed this book.

Small, digestible, 15 chapters.

Every chapter is a sort of proposition about Christians and politics.

And what wasn’t immediately clear at first, but becomes clear as you read through it, is that he’s building an argument and reasoning through these so that by the time you get to the 15th proposition, he’s sort of pulling all the threads together and coming to a conclusion.

And I was just so happy to get to that 15th chapter and read and appreciate the conclusion that he comes to.

I want to read a little bit from it briefly because I think it’s—I really appreciate where he lands.

And he says, We must make clear our insistence on taking seriously the way of Christ, even grander we’re always falling short, but our insistence on upholding the way of Christ should be the norm for our lives.

It doesn’t mean that we have nothing to share with unbelieving social orders that cannot or will not accept Christ as Lord.

This can be true, and I’m not going to read it.

This sentence, he’s got double negatives stacked up, so it took me about four times to parse it.

But what he says is that the social practices and the impact that the Christian faith and the gospel should have on the world are aligned and consistent with the fundamental nature of being human.

If I restate this, he’s saying that the aims of Christianity are consistent with human flourishing.

And so that gives us, he says, a great broad playing field in which we can make contributions to the world.

They can be contributions to concrete human problems, whether that’s in medicine or social or political or economic spheres, that Christians have good news and can contribute to each of those communities in ways that will advance human flourishing and that are completely aligned with the call of Christ.

And on the side of critique, he says we too can call rulers to change and take steps in the direction of the kingdom of God, and we can bear witness to the beauty of truth and goodness and encourage our leaders to take those things seriously.

Coming from an evangelical community where there was such a strong feeling about if you’re a Christian, you need to support a particular side or do whatever, then I was particularly fond of Camp’s.

When he says here, having a Christian approach toward government and rulers that way, with that eye towards human flourishing, grants us, he says, immense liberty.

Liberty we might hopefully note much greater than the bondage of party affiliation affords Washington politicians.

In strategic fashion, we can and should look for places of common cause, of moves in the right direction, and celebrate and facilitate such moves.

I’m going to call this week and the results of the election here in the USA a cause for some celebration and hopefully facilitation of moves towards ways that will look more Christlike and will be more in line with human flourishing.

We’ll talk later.