Jeremy L. Berg

In a 2006 issue of the Covenant Companion, a monthly publication of the Evangelical Covenant Church, Bob Smietana interviewed Greg Boyd on the relationship between Christianity and politics. There are few topics that are more central for Christians to come to a firm, Kingdom outlook on. Yet, few topics are more controversial and more hotly debated than the question of Christian involvement in the political square.

I have been deeply influenced by the Kingdom-centered political stance of Greg Boyd who himself stands firmly within the anabaptist tradition shaped by such Menonnite thinkers as John Howard Yoder. Greg Boyd’s book The Myth of a Christian Nation grew out of a controversial sermon series he preached back in 2004 called “The Cross and the Sword” that stirred up quite response and led about 1,000 people from his church to leave. Coincidentally, I just happened to be reading “The Politics of Jesus” by John Howard Yoder during my seminary studies when I first heard Greg’s provocative sermon series.

This book, these sermons and my subsequent studies on this topic have all led me to conclude that Christians have far too often let the two prominent political options of our day (Republicans and Democrats) shape and inform our readings of the socio-political teachings of Jesus. Thus, conservatives tend to concoct a Limbaughized Jesus who endorses their conservative ideals; while liberals do the same thing, inventing a Jesus who mirrors something closer to a 1960s Berkeley hippie launching a social revolution.  Neither come close to capturing the historical Jesus of first century Palestine.

What is needed is for Western American Christians — both political liberals and conservatives — is to set their worldly political passions aside long enough to give Jesus a fresh hearing.  Even more importantly, we must be willing and courageous enough to let Jesus’ countercultural, Kingdom-shaped political teachings “mess us up” and reshape the way we engage the political issues of our day.

Those who have been willing to put the teachings of Jesus above their favorite political pundits have found that Jesus and his Kingdom teachings don’t fit easily into any current worldly political molds. Kingdom people are too liberal for Republicans on many issues and far too conservative for liberals on other issues. We find ourselves part of a “third way.”

What does this “third way” look like?  How should “third way” Christians engage the political issues of our day?  How involved in the political process should we be?  These questions and more are addressed in this great interview with Gregory A. Boyd HERE. Go check it out!