Why Politics Will Always Matter

General Faith
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Links: Thread 1
Thread 2

Some in here are making a claim that should send a chill down the spine of anyone who values liberty, pluralism, or the everyday, unglamorous work of looking after each other and improving society. The claim is that faith must remain “unpolluted” by politics—that to speak of earthly matters like justice, governance, rights, or public policy is to betray the higher calling of religion. That engagement with the world is a kind of spiritual contamination.

Let’s not pretend this is harmless piety. This is theocracy- pure and simple. A worldview that seeks to elevate faith above the grubby business of democracy, reasoned disagreement, and evidence-based problem solving. It’s not just wrongheaded. It’s extremely dangerous.

Because history already ran this experiment. We had centuries with religious authority as the only authority. We got inquisitions and witch trials. We got feudal hierarchies and burned heretics. We got centuries of suffering under systems that claimed to speak for God but refused to answer to people. Strip politics out of public religion, and you don’t get holiness — you get unaccountable power.

Let’s be honest: religious belief may offer comfort, identity, and even inspiration. It may even be true. But it is spectacularly bad at certain things. Like structuring fair economic systems. Or designing infrastructure. Or crafting public health policy. Or ensuring equal rights for those who don’t share your particular theology. These things require dialogue, compromise, data, and accountability. They require the structuring of policy to get stuff done. In other words: politics.

The irony is almost too much to bear. In the name of moral purity, some are arguing for moral disengagement. As if the only righteous path is to withdraw from the difficult, pluralistic work of building a just society. As if the “cares of this world” are distractions to be avoided, rather than responsibilities to be shouldered.

Faith that recoils from the real world is not strength. It’s abdication. It’s a spiritual sedative. It’s not virtuous. And it does untold harm—not just to civic life, but to religion itself. Because once you cast our most urgent earthly concerns as irrelevant inconvenient distractions, you render yourself irrelevant to those who are searching for solutions, trying to alleviate suffering or simply trying to live decently in a broken world.

This line of thinking doesn’t purify religion. It hollows it out, turning faith that could inspire justice and compassion into a private sanctuary for those more interested in feeling holy than doing good. It replaces moral courage with pious retreat.

If that’s what “kingdom-first” means, it’s worth asking where that path could actually lead.

Even Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” He didn’t call for retreat from engaging with public life. He drew a line — but in so doing, validated our civic duties

As a secular, non-religious person, I’m often asked why I spend so much time thinking about religion and engaging with people of faith. It’s not to mock or convert anyone — it’s because ideas like these shape lives, policies, and communities. I want to understand where they come from, and when needed, push back — especially when they encourage retreat from the shared responsibilities we all have to each other. And if that opens up space for more thoughtful, compassionate engagement from within religious communities, all the better. We share this world — we need to find ways to share it fairly..

Because when your neighbour is hungry, it’s not your eschatology that feeds him.
When a family loses their home, it’s not your theology that rebuilds it.
When laws are passed that trample the vulnerable, it’s not your piety that stops them.

It’s your politics.

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Alright, philosopher, let’s talk plainly-because your eloquence masks a dangerous confusion, and your moral passion, while admirable, is hitched to a broken chariot.

You accuse Christians who seek to keep the faith “unpolluted” by politics of retreating from public life, of hollowing out their religion into private comfort. You call it dangerous, even theocratic. But here’s your first mistake: refusing to hand the gospel over to the machinery of political power is not theocracy. It is precisely its rejection. The theocrat wants to baptize the State into his creed; the disciple of Christ declares there is no king but Jesus-and that includes Caesar, Parliament, or any savior dressed in a suit.

When Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar,” He wasn’t validating civic religion-He was drawing a fault line. He didn’t endorse Caesar’s empire, He exposed its limits. The coin bore Caesar’s image, fine. But the soul bears God’s image-and that doesn’t get rendered to any state, ever.

You want the Church to roll up her sleeves and get political, but Jesus didn’t die to create a voting bloc. He died to crush sin, destroy the works of the devil, and raise a holy nation whose citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20).

You argue that faith must be useful to politics-that theology should drive public policy, social engineering, economic equity. But if the gospel is reduced to a tool for governance, it becomes a slave to pragmatism. Christ didn’t die to make people better Democrats, better Republicans, or better technocrats. He died to make the dead live. You want transformation? It won’t come from policy proposals. It comes from crucifixion-and resurrection.

Now you trot out the horrors of religious regimes: inquisitions, witch hunts, heresy trials. Fair. But those weren’t the fruit of New Testament Christianity. They were born when Church and State climbed into bed and produced the deformed child of power-hungry religion. That’s not the gospel-it’s precisely what the apostles warned against. Peter didn’t kill for Christ-he was killed by the State for refusing to stop preaching His Name. You’re not criticizing Christianity; you’re criticizing its betrayal.

You say faith is “spectacularly bad” at building fair economic systems or infrastructure. Tell that to Basil of Caesarea, who pioneered hospitals. Or to the early Church, which fed widows daily while Rome fed itself on slaves. Tell it to the abolitionists driven by the imago Dei, not GDP charts.

Christianity doesn’t need your bureaucratic praise-it has already shaped the world you now defend with such secular piety.

You claim that avoiding politics is avoiding responsibility. But this is another category error. The Church doesn’t avoid responsibility-it just doesn’t confuse Caesar’s sword with Christ’s cross. When the Church becomes a political machine, it ceases to be prophetic. It starts trading votes for virtue. It starts confusing campaign wins with Kingdom victories.

You end with pathos: “When your neighbor is hungry, it’s not your eschatology that feeds him.” Actually, it is. It’s precisely because I believe in a returning King, in a final judgment, in a Kingdom not of this world, that I feed him, clothe him, defend him. If all I had was politics, I might feed him when it suits my platform. But if I serve a crucified Savior, I feed him because He is there, in that suffering neighbor, saying, “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me” (Matthew 25:40).

So yes, we act. Yes, we serve. But not because we’re trying to engineer utopia. We serve because Christ first served us, because He was crushed for our iniquities (Isaiah 53:5), because His blood speaks a better word than the best legislation ever drafted.

You worry that Christians are disengaging from the world. I’m worried they’re selling their birthright for the porridge of political relevance. You want to use faith to build a better system. But faith isn’t a brick-it’s the fire. It doesn’t ask to sit at Caesar’s table. It calls him to repentance.

So don’t mistake spiritual fidelity for cowardice. And don’t confuse prophetic distance for indifference. The gospel isn’t retreat-it’s revolt. Not against Rome with swords, but against sin with truth. You want justice? Then you need Jesus. Because without Him, all your structures will collapse under the weight of unredeemed hearts.

Keep your coin, philosopher. I bear the image of Another.

J.

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Peaxce to all,

True, we know to only judge our own souls. Faith in The Church transforms and sanctifies and glorifies and transfigures for all, logically.
Political knows they must render to God as Does The Church, to me in all generalization.

Peace always,
Stephen

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But to the matter in hand, your pasted in sermon is still not actually addressing the point I’m making. This is why it’s important to actually compose answers ourselves.

I’m not replacing the gospel with politics. I’m saying: if your faith calls you to love your neighbour, and your neighbour is being crushed by unjust systems, do you have any responsibility to do something about that? Not just pray. Not just quote scripture. But act — in the real world, where laws and policies shape people’s lives?

You keep giving me poetry about the cross and warnings about Caesar. But I’m talking about families being deported, kids going hungry, people being priced out of healthcare. That’s not abstract. That’s real. And if your faith has nothing to say about that beyond “the Kingdom isn’t of this world,” then we’re not living on the same planet.

This isn’t about “power.” It’s about compassion. And if you think compassion shouldn’t scale, or be structured, or show up in public life, then I don’t know what kind of love you’re preaching.

So I’ll ask again, simply:

Would Jesus want you to be so busy with your head in scripture that you ignore the suffering around you NOW and dont engage with ways to address it and solve problems together?

When the system is unjust — do Christians have a responsibility to help change it?

Because if the answer is still “no,” then all your talk about justice doesn’t mean much.

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Johann —

You keep thundering about crosses and kingdoms, but still haven’t answered the actual question.

When the system is unjust, do Christians have a responsibility to help change it?

That’s it. Not “replace the gospel with politics.” Just: should your faith engage with the real-world harm people face?

Instead of answering, you’ve gone full theatre — again. Sermons, ultimatums, and now tone-policing because I cracked a joke and pointed out how silly cut and paste answers can be (because the logical endpoint to that is removing ourselves from dialogue all together and just automate your AI responses so you can go and have a sleep or walk the dog.)

You call irony a fig leaf. I call your whole reply a dodge. Loud, poetic, unresponsive.

I’d really love an answer to my question rather than another few pages of pasted AI sermonising.

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Let’s settle this cleanly, point by point , with fire, clarity, and unflinching gospel truth, because the real issue here is not policy, but lordship.

CLAIM #1: “You’re not addressing my point. This is why it’s important to compose answers ourselves.”

No, I’m addressing your point too well, which is why you keep retreating to complaints about style instead of substance. I didn’t outsource conviction to a bot, I anchored it in the cross, the text, and the Kingdom Christ proclaimed. If the gospel offends your framework, don’t blame the formatting.

CLAIM #2: “I’m not replacing the gospel with politics. I’m asking if Christians should act in the real world.”

Then stop acting like policy is the only form of action that counts. Christians have always acted, hospitals, orphanages, abolition, disaster relief, education, all birthed by the Church, often in defiance of law, not because of it. Your view acts as if compassion is invalid unless it’s bureaucratized. That’s not gospel compassion -that’s Caesar in sheep’s clothing.

CLAIM #3: “Your faith quotes scripture while kids go hungry and families get deported. That’s not real.”

First, Scripture isn’t evasion, it’s confrontation. The same Word that spoke the cosmos into existence also judges empires and raises up the lowly. You don’t get to frame the gospel as impotent just because it doesn’t march under your banner. The Church feeds the hungry, shelters the refugee, weeps with the broken, without waiting for state approval, and often despite state hostility. You want me to believe the Kingdom of God is weak because it isn’t centralized? That’s not compassion. That’s idolatry of scale.

CLAIM #4: “This isn’t about power, it’s about compassion that scales.”

Wrong. It’s always about power, because what you’re advocating is structural, coercive policy, wielded by the sword of the state (Romans 13). You’re calling for institutionalized compassion enforced by law, and then feigning innocence when Christians resist political entanglement. Christlike compassion doesn’t need handcuffs, subsidies, or tax codes. It needs a cross and an empty grave. And when compassion gets drafted into the machinery of power, it stops being mercy and becomes control.

CLAIM #5: “Would Jesus want you to be so buried in Scripture that you ignore the suffering around you?”

Jesus is the Word made flesh. To say “put the Bible down and help people” is to pit the King against His Kingdom. Jesus never divorced obedience from love, He said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). What did He command? Take up your cross. Love your enemies. Feed the poor. Visit the prisoner. Not once did He command: “Lobby Caesar.” If reading the Word doesn’t drive you to pour yourself out for the hurting, you haven’t read it rightly, but if you’re replacing the Word with political methods, you’re bowing to Pharaoh and calling it progress.

CLAIM #6: “If Christians don’t fight unjust systems, their talk of justice is hollow.”

False dichotomy. The apostles turned the world upside down without ever holding office, drafting policy, or appealing to empire. Why? Because the Kingdom they preached dismantled injustice at its root: the human heart. The problem isn’t just corrupt systems, it’s corrupted souls. You want to reform laws? Fine. But don’t call it gospel. Because until you get a crucified-and-risen Christ enthroned in the hearts of people, you’ll just trade one broken system for another.

So here’s the final answer, loud and clear:

Yes, Christians absolutely engage the world.
Yes, Christians absolutely care for the suffering.
But no, we do not hand our mandate to Caesar.
No, we do not need political relevance to obey Christ.
And no, your argument doesn’t call us higher, it calls us sideways.

You want scaled compassion without surrender?
Justice without Jesus?
Redemption through bureaucracy?

That’s not gospel.
That’s a secular substitute dressed in moral language.
And I reject it, not because I don’t care,
but because Christ’s way is higher.

He didn’t come to tweak the system.
He came to crucify it.

And that, friend, is the only kind of justice that saves.
J.

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You haven’t addressed it at all. Just pasted in some AI text. You’re allowed to do that (Fritz has clarified that) but you don’t get to pretend it’s an actual answer even less that it’s YOUR own answer.

I never claimed it was the ONLY form of action that counts. (please link to where I said or even implied that?)
I just said that to dismiss politics is to dismiss that particular avenue of influence.

Scripture on its own absolutely IS evasion. I didn’t say there’s no role for it. I said that when you reject other things you weaken yourself. As can be seen here.

It’s actually frightening that people think like this.
The state has responsibilities to make life better for the people it serves. Sane people generally dont find this claim controversial.

This answer ABSOLUTELY proves the point of this thread.
Abandon real life solutions.
Give up on trying to influence things for the better.
Just PRAY harder. That will do it.

That’s a terrible straw man. How naughty of our friends at Open AI to have served you that to paste in.
I never said that policy or laws are gospel.
You seem to be responding to a position I haven’t actually taken.
I just said that taking that off the table doesn’t help.
Nothing more than that.

The rest of your post was just another sermon so nothing to respond to.

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Let’s end the dance. You’re not asking a question; you’re staging a performance. A debate clothed in concern, but powered by condescension.

You keep demanding an answer, “Should Christians change unjust systems?” - but here’s the thing: I have answered you five times already.

Yes.
We feed the hungry.
We confront injustice.
We walk into fire for the sake of the broken.
We build hospitals, visit prisons, rescue orphans, and plead for the voiceless.
But we do it with a cross on our back, not a flag in our hand.

You don’t want that answer.
You want us to baptize your method.
You’re not asking whether Christians should do good, you’re demanding we admit that only your version of scaled, institutional, policy-centric action counts as “real” compassion.

That’s not dialogue. That’s manipulation with a halo on top.

And let’s talk about the “AI” accusation. You keep pointing to formatting, tone, and style, as if eloquence must be artificial, and conviction must be copy-pasted.

That’s not critique. That’s lazy dismissal, the rhetorical version of plugging your ears and saying, “Too polished, doesn’t count.”

Irony? Let’s be honest, you didn’t crack a joke to lighten the mood.
You did it to dodge the weight of what was just said.
You mocked because the argument cut deeper than you expected.
And now you’re trying to cast sincerity as inauthentic, Scripture as “theatre,” and theology as escapism,
all while positioning yourself as the one doing the real, gritty work of “loving your neighbor.”

But here’s the twist:
The moment you start requiring political alignment as the proof of love,
you’ve stopped preaching compassion and started enforcing conformity.
The cross becomes a prop. The Kingdom, a slogan.
You become what you claim to resist:
a high priest of a new legalism,
with policy as law and social alignment as righteousness.

So let’s drop the act.

You’re not engaging, you’re shaming.
You’re not asking questions, you’re laying traps.
You’re not defending the oppressed, you’re defending your method of defense,
and labeling every other method “inauthentic” if it doesn’t mirror your playbook.

But there’s a crucified King who never held office,
never wrote a policy,
never cast a vote,
and He turned the world upside down.

So if that offends your framework,
then maybe it’s not our theology that’s hollow.
Maybe it’s your throne that’s shaking.

Repent, not because politics matter,
but because they don’t matter enough
to take the place of Christ.
J.

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Knock off the whole AI complaints.

Keep it on topic or refrain from replying.

Thank you.

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I didn’t start this thread to score points or bait believers. I started it because I think the idea that Christians should disengage from public life — that they should see civic action as beneath them or irrelevant — is dangerous, reckless, and deeply unwise. I’d think that even if I were the most devoted Christian alive. Because the world we live in doesn’t get better by accident. And if people with moral conviction opt out, the space doesn’t stay empty — it gets filled by something worse.

So I asked a question — directly, repeatedly, and in good faith:

When the system is unjust, do Christians have a responsibility to help change it — not just through personal charity, but through civic action and democratic engagement?

That’s the point at issue.
I’ve had some very poetic and floral answers with lots of theology, and metaphors and more sermons. But not engagement with the actual topic.
Not a reply to the actual question I asked.

So, if anyone else reading this has a view — especially those who do think Christians have a role to play in shaping just systems — I’d love to hear your perspective.

I’m not here to mock faith. I’m here to ask why, in a broken world, moral voices would choose silence.

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Everyone is allowed to participate in this thread as long as they abide by the terms of service.

One does not get to pick who is allowed to participate.

Please stay on topic and should one have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding my statements here please direct them to me in DM or in an email to Community@salemwebnetwork.com

Fritz
Community Admin
Crosswalk.com Forums

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Blindwatchmaker, I hear the frustration in your words, and fair enough–you’re asking for clarity, not a chorus of theological interpretive dance. So let’s quit pirouetting and hit the point.

Do Christians have a responsibility to engage with unjust systems? Yes. Emphatically yes. But here’s the distinction that matters like fire in a dry field: engagement doesn’t mean endorsing the world’s tactics. We bring salt, not slogans. Light, not leverage. Truth, not trendiness.

Jesus didn’t avoid systems—He upended them. He called out Herod as a fox, flipped temple tables, and confronted both religious and political corruption. But He did it without ever hitching His mission to the machinery of empire or the mood swings of the crowd. His kingdom wasn’t of this world, but He sure wasn’t silent in it.

Romans 13 says governing authorities are “God’s servants for your good.” That doesn’t mean we bow to every law–it means we’re called to shape just law by holding systems accountable to divine truth. That’s not optional. That’s discipleship with spine.

If Christians stay silent in the civic square, we’re not being “spiritually pure–we’re being spiritually passive. Proverbs 31:8 tells us to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.” That’s not a suggestion. That’s a charge. Silence in the face of injustice isn’t holiness–it’s cowardice dressed up in reverence.

So no, the Christian doesn’t get to float above the fray while the world burns and call it faithfulness. We’re ambassadors of a coming kingdom, yes—but we’re also stationed in this one. And while we’re here, we represent the King. That means showing up with wisdom, conviction, and courage that doesn’t need permission to speak.

The goal isn’t to baptize politics. The goal is to disciple the world. And sometimes that means getting our hands dirty in the arena–not to win power, but to bear witness.

So yes, you’re right to push this. Christians aren’t called to disappear from the public square. We’re called to inhabit it with truth and refuse to let lies go unchallenged.

—Sincere Seeker. Scripturally savage. Here for the Truth.