Which political party's worldview is incompatible with Christian history and doctrine? [View all]

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/01/which-partys-worldview-is-incompatible.html

Most criticism and rejection of Christianity is a rejection of the political movement. In most cases, what gets rejected isn't even genuine Christian faith, at least, not the kind of faith that comes out of a contextual, historical interpretation of the Bible. Evangelicals have a tendency to ignore history and context in favor of a fundamentalist brand of literalism, which distorts the message of the original authors of the Bible and which injects modern cultural bias into the practice of the faith. There's also an arrogance that has developed among conservative Christians, based on their belief that they've got it all right, and that those who don't see it their way are hell-bound liberals who have it wrong. They are blind to their presuppositions and incorrect assumptions.

Two of the church's early apostles, recognized leaders in the founding years of Christian faith, both write about the relationship between the church and the civil government. Recognizing that God is sovereign, they concluded that Christians are to recognize that all governments derive their power from God and obedience to the civil government, even if those involved did not share Christian beliefs, was an act of obedience to God. What is also clear is that the Christian church was given a mission and purpose based on the Christian gospel, and while it acknowledged the authority of the civil government, it was not instructed to use that power to advance its own mission and purpose, but was to see God's sense of direction.

Jefferson and Madison, noting that religion had been the cause behind centuries of European bloodshed and desiring that the kind of fighting Europe had endured would never find its way to American soil, took what I see as a Biblical model of the separation of church and state, and created a free church in a free state, so that both could thrive. For Christians, from my perspective, that makes the preservation of democracy and the freedoms guaranteed by it the highest priority for the church. Whether the church is empowered by the favor of the state, or persecuted by it, in neither situation is it free to be the church.