Should Christians Be Politically Active?

BarbWire ^ | September 17, 2014 | Gina Miller

[Mamzelle]

Frankly, I’d suspect your friend of being a “seminar caller” employing Alinsky tactics to shut you up.

[wardaddy]

Crazy sort of Christian

I’ve never heard conservative Christians speak that way

[WXRGina]

If that’s the case, it backfired badly on her. :-)

[WXRGina]

Yes, I was astonished at her, since she had been visiting my page for a while, “liking” stuff I posted and commenting. My Facebook page is almost purely politics. She whipped out her “hidden face” that day.

[Fester Chugabrew]

I, too, have pacifist friends who live in la-la land. Drives me nuts.

Good government is a gift of God and requires participation on the part of Christians in order to be virtuous. It is never an end in itself, but through government our neighbor is served, being permitted peaceably to go about his business, which is also serving one’s neighbor though various stations and vocations along the way.

[Mamzelle]

If she’s really serving Alinsky, she’ll just shrug and move on to her next target.

[WXRGina]

Amen!

[Safrguns]

America would not exist if Christians were not politically active throughout it’s history.

Even more.. America would not exist if Christians had not been willing to take up arms against tyranny.

Today, Christians are losing the battle against that tyranny.

Beware when the enemy attempts to use your own beliefs against you.

[WXRGina]

I made those very points in the column.

[DCBryan1]

Christians need to be in politically organized, ARMED, community groups.

[Wage Slave]

Jehovah’s Witnesses enjoy the fruits of our society but give nothing in return. Perhaps she is one of them.

[Fester Chugabrew]

John the Baptist was not silent in matters of civil government. Just be prepared, as every Christian should be, to suffer persecution when you speak what is right and true. Take heart. Be of good cheer. Christ is risen, having been put to death for our transgressions and raised up for our justification before God.

[Buffalo Head]

Very interesting

[cripplecreek]

"It was Sunday morning early in the year 1776. In the church where Pastor Muhlenberg preached, it was a regular service for his congregation, but a quite different affair for Muhlenberg himself. Muhlenberg's text for the day was Ecclesiastes 3 where it explains, 'To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven; a time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted...'"

"Coming to the end of his sermon, Peter Muhlenberg turned to his congregation and said, 'In the language of the holy writ, there was a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away.' As those assembled looked on, Pastor Muhlenberg declared, 'There is a time to fight, and that time is now coming!' Muhlenberg then proceeded to remove his robes revealing, to the shock of his congregation, a military uniform."

"Marching to the back of the church he declared, 'Who among you is with me?' On that day 300 men from his church stood up and joined Peter Muhlenberg. They eventually became the 8th Virginia Brigade fighting for liberty."

"Frederick Muhlenberg, Peter's brother, was against Peter's level of involvement in the war. Peter responded to Frederick writing, 'I am a Clergyman it is true, but I am a member of the Society as well as the poorest Layman, and my Liberty is as dear to me as any man, shall I then sit still and enjoy myself at Home when the best Blood of the Covenant is spilling? ...So far am I from thinking that I act wrong, I am convinced it is my duty to do so and duly I owe to God and my country."



A Christian who isn't politically active is no Christian at all.

[elcid1970]

Jesus Himself reminded Pontius Pilate that his authority as gubernator came directly from God. Pilate realized Jesus’ ministry was no threat to Roman rule & wanted to release Him but was overtaken by events.

Anyway, this critic sounds like a real busybody who is especially harsh on Christians whose activism comes from the political right.

“Unfriended” on Facebook? Oh, the humanity.......!

[Scrambler Bob]

M4L

[WXRGina]

“Unfriended” on Facebook? Oh, the humanity.......!

HAHAHAHAHA!!! :-)

[Scrambler Bob]

I would be stronger.

Our form of government REQUIRES the participation of its citizens (even though it is ultimately flawed, being of man).

Religion is not banned, as in some countries. It is the opposite - Amendment 1. The representative process requires participation. Freedom of speech recognizes that we speak up and against as necessary. We live under the rule of law, not of a king.

So I must be aware, become educated, educate others, and vote.

This is for the good of all the citizens.

[Alex Murphy]

To mention in advance one critical point of difference, the colonists assumed that there was a right way of doing things. Any modern reader who lingers on the passage I quote in the Introduction in which John Cotton evokes the colonists' determination to establish "purity" is abruptly confronted with this assumption. Purity is purity, and purity is God's law, a premise Cotton translated into the argument that Scripture mandated how the true church should be organized and religion practiced....

....As I have learned from trying out some of this book on other historians, the Puritanism in these pages does not coincide with the entrenched opinion that the movement was authoritarian or "theocratic." For persons of this mind-set, the most "Puritan" aspect of my story may be the migrants' confidence in the "saints" and the attempts to establish "godly rule" (Chapter Three). But in contrast to interpretations that focus on social discipline or the suppressing of dissent, I bring other aspects of Puritanism as we now understand it into the story, including the currents of popular or insurgent religion that can be discerned in fears of "arbitrary" rule and ecclesiastical "tyranny," the emphasis on participation, and the importance given to consent. Nowhere do I presume that Puritanism embodied a particular political ideology, and nowhere is it translated into social control or top-down authoritarianism, for reasons I spell out in the Introduction and in more detail in succeeding chapters.
-- David D. Hall, Preface, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New EnglandAfred A. Knopf, New York, 2011.

...the Puritans had "a more elevated and complete view" of our social duties than the Europeans of that time. They took care of the poor, maintained their highways, kept careful records and registries, secured law and order, and, most of all, provided education for everyone — through high school. The purpose of universal education was that everyone should be able to read the Bible to know what's most important — his or her duties to their Creator — for themselves. Everyone must read in order that no one be deceived or suckered by others. This noncondescending egalitarianism was the first source of the American popular enlightenment that had so many practical benefits. "Puritan civilization in North American," our outstanding novelist/essayist Marilynne Robinson observes, "quickly achieved unprecedented levels of literacy, longevity, and mass prosperity, or happiness, as it was called in those days"....

....In Robinson's Calvinist view, generosity, liberality, and nobility are all synonyms in the Bible, and they express even better than charity the virtue that distinguishes who we are. What's left our culture, with our surrender of the common celebration of Sunday — what impressed Tocqueville as our most precious inheritance from the Puritans — is the respect, and so the time, for the disciplined reading and reflection required for us to practice the social, civilized virtues that are the truest source of our happiness.
-- from the thread Thanking the Puritans on Thanksgiving: Pilgrims' politics and American virtue

....we should not be surprised to find that the Calvinists took a very important part in American Revolution. Calvin emphasized that the sovereignty of God, when applied to the affairs of government proved to be crucial, because God as the Supreme Ruler had all ultimate authority vested in Him, and all other authority flowed from God, as it pleased Him to bestow it.

The Scriptures, God's special revelation of Himself to mankind, were taken as the final authority for all of life, as containing eternal principles, which were for all ages, and all peoples. Calvin based his views on these very Scriptures. As we read earlier, in Paul's letter to the Romans, God's Word declares the state to be a divinely established institution.

History is eloquent in declaring that the American republican democracy was born of Christianity and that form of Christianity was Calvinism. The great revolutionary conflict which resulted in the founding of this nation was carried out mainly by Calvinists--many of whom had been trained in the rigidly Presbyterian college of Princeton....

....In fact, most of the early American culture was Reformed or tied strongly to it (just read the New England Primer). Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, a Roman Catholic intellectual and National Review contributor, asserts: “If we call the American statesmen of the late eighteenth century the Founding Fathers of the United States, then the Pilgrims and Puritans were the grandfathers and Calvin the great-grandfather…”
-- from the thread John Calvin: Religious liberty and Political liberty