By Mike Leno

The recent general election brought out the best and worst in America. And I suspect many of us still disagree on which was the best and which was the worst. But such is politics. High on my list of things for which I am thankful is that regime change in the U.S. takes place relatively peacefully; no bloody coups, no executions and no exiling of ousted leaders. So grateful am I that I’m tempted to put the rancorous debates, the petty partisan bickering and the campaigns of disinformation behind me. I’d like to just forget the whole thing and move on. But a few things keep bothering me, particularly about the mixing of politics and religion. An article by John Ortberg expresses many of my sentiments. http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2008/11/john_ortbergs_l.html.

Ortberg lists “Seven Deadly Sins of Evangelicals and Politics.” These include Messianism – believing that any one human can bring on the end of the world; Selective Scripturization – using scripture selectively in order to anoint one candidate and vilify another; Easy Believism – wanting to believe the worst about the candidate you hope loses; Episodism – involvement in political issues only when they are sensational enough to get our attention; Alarmism – predicting the worst if the opposition is elected; One Issue-ism – oversimplifying life and politics into a favorite issue or position; and the all-time favorite sin, Pride – putting too much confidence in our own rightness and creating an us versus them mentality. The bottom line is we need to repent of our ways.

My own religious tradition has a long tradition of avoiding some of these deadly sins. This avoidance has not been due to any inherent goodness on our part. Rather, it has been due to our traditional distaste for the mixing of politics and religion particularly when it impacts on our day of worship. The upside of that is that we will vigorously defend a person’s right to worship according to conscience. The downside is we often misunderstand the nature of politics and our part in society as a whole. This may be illustrated by our recent confusion over the gay marriage issue. Some saw an opportunity to vote for freedom, tolerance and the separation of church and state. Others, including some of our religious liberty departments, saw a responsibility to preserve Christian values; never mind that legislating morality is at best a dubious proposition. [1]