Christians Must Set Their Own Political Agenda

As a tax exempt non-profit, the group I lead, Christian Heartbeat, is prohibited from supporting specific political candidates and parties. That suits me fine. I suppose I could try to fudge the issue by endorsing here on my blog and not in my web magazine at http://www.christianheartbeat.org/. Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family seems to have gotten away with that sort of sleight of hand, having been cleared in a recent investigation of his obvious partisanship. From my perspective that’s his problem and a problem for his integrity I’d rather not have. I guess he has the lawyers to do it.
Identification with one political party or the other is self-defeating for conservative and progressive Christians alike. Ask a conservative evangelical how they can be so against destruction of a frozen embryo that shows no resemblance to a human being but have no problem with bullets tearing apart a fully formed child and they start to mumble some remote scriptural nonsense. Ask a progressive how they can get so incensed about the war in Iraq and still support nine months of abortion on demand and they too will spin into intellectual gyrations.
Believe me, I’m not a head-in-the-sand Christian who thinks our faith should be apolitical. I take my lead from Jesus on that one, and anyone who thinks I’m wrong simply doesn’t understand the historical Jesus. Our Lord was harassed and crucified because he opposed both the Romans and the Jewish aristocracy which aligned itself with the occupiers against the good of their own people. But Christ was original in his opposition, his point of view distinct from the Roman-friendly religious class and from the angry zealots who yearned to drive out the occupiers by force.
Peter used the phrase “a peculiar people” to describe Christians. He calls on us to set ourselves apart in our perspective--not in a way that makes us invisible, but in a way that makes us powerfully uncorrupted. When we do, our thoughts, our goals and our politics will clear like the sun melting away the morning mist. Then we’ll truly be worthy to call ourselves Christians, and we’ll begin to understand how to bring God’s values to a world much in need of redemption..

Don't Let the Innocent Get Treated Like Jesus

Christianity is a faith descended from a man falsely accused and falsely executed, so it’s natural that fairness in our criminal justice system should be a top priority for a predominately Christian nation. Among all the areas in which God’s values and God’s politics have been distorted by our culture, justice for the falsely accused finally appears to be moving in the right direction.
A New York Times article of Oct. 1 notes that all but eight states now have laws on the books allowing convicted criminals to access DNA evidence for testing that wasn’t possible at the time of their trials. And because the tide has begun to recede from a pervasive bias against the accused--often because their race or class made them look guilty to the majority--other evidence like eyewitness testimony and jailhouse snitches also is becoming suspect.
A 2005 study by Law School professor Samuel R. Gross of the University of Michigan uncovered 340 prisoners sentenced from 1989 to 2003 who now are exonerated. The majority were convicted of murder or rape. Almost half were cleared by DNA evidence and more than half the cases involved faulty eyewitness testimony. Another study this year by Professor Gross identified 86 death row inmates sentenced between 1973 to 1989 who were exonerated through 2004. While Gross concentrated on the most egregious felonies like rape and murder, he concluded it was certain many more innocents accused of lesser crimes occupy our jails.
The Times article, which can be reached at the link below, contains a great deal more about how states are pursuing clarity in the criminal justice system. So many of the concerns in our culture that run contrary to God’s values--like poverty and the failure of compassion--defy short-term solutions. Fairness in our justice system is one area in which action can yield results. Because Christ spoke out against just such a system and paid the price for it, we who follow Jesus should be energized by this fairness movement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/us/01exonerate.html?ex=1348977600&en=36c60fe4165c0c00&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink