Kingdom Harbor

What happens when the gospel of the Jesus-shaped Kingdom of God is intermixed with a political ideology?  Answer: Listen to any political talk show pushing a political agenda while buttressing it with religious rhetoric usually involving the phrase “Judeo-Christian” values.  Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, offers a very timely reminder to the millions of American “Christians” whose political alliances may be clouding their understanding of a true, biblical, cross-centered, Jesus-shaped Christianity.  

Spencer asks the following question:

What do you have when you have a person who is…

-passionately against abortion and gay marriage (and able to explain why)
-self-identified as a “conservative”
-able to relate their social, cultural and political beliefs to their beliefs about God
–not distinctively anchored in the historic Christian faith, particularly its beliefs about the authority of scripture, the fall, the church, the Gospel and the Lordship of Jesus Christ. These doctrines seem to play little or no part in this person’s thinking/living.

Read his commentary and conclusions at The Limbaughization of Evangelicals.  Or, better, listen to his radio commentary HERE.

The best book out there on guarding the church’s unique Kingdom-centered, Jesus-shaped mission and message from being co-oped by the political ideologies of the day is The Myth of a Christian Nation by Gregory Boyd.

And if you’re wondering right now if I’m a Republican or Democrat, you’ve already missed the point and bought into the rhetoric that these are the only two conceivable religio-socio-political options.  The Jesus-shaped, Kingdom of God-centered mission and social ethic does not fit neatly into either of these categories.  Trust me.