If you read only one book this year on the Christian's engagement in the political sphere I'd recommend @DTKoyzis excellent 'Political Visions & Illusions' (IVP Academic). The chapter on Nationalism offers a superb historical overview of the ideology...
...& the dangers Christians face by embracing a particular form of "nationalism with more evident Old Testament associations (by) Applying reference to biblical Israel to...contemporary American polity..." Koyzis notes four errors central to this approach.
1. Promises intended for the Body of Christ applied to the nation (this leads to the mass confusion we see in the 'Patriot' approach to church & worship) 2. Cultural norms of God's people applied to a past idealized period in the nation's history, norms that must be recovered.
3. Giving homage to the nation that is due to God alone (this is the exaltation into idol status, a disordered love, that I have noted elsewhere). 4. Unbounded allegiance to the Nation in an 'undifferentiated' community. Of course, unconditional loyalty belongs only to God.
The book includes chapters on Liberalism, Conservatism, Nationalism, Democratism, & Socialism, with fine chapters on developing a uniquely Christian approach in a pluriform society and world.
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere
in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
Love divine, all loves excelling,
joy of heav’n, to earth come down,
fix in us thy humble dwelling,
all thy faithful mercies crown.
Jesus, thou art all compassion,
pure, unbounded love thou art.
Visit us with thy salvation;
enter ev'ry trembling heart.
Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit
into ev’ry troubled breast.
Let us all in thee inherit,
let us find the promised rest.
Take away the love of sinning;
Alpha and Omega be.
End of faith, as its beginning,
set our hearts at liberty.
Come, Almighty, to deliver,
let us all thy life receive.
Suddenly return, and never,
nevermore they temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing,
serve thee as thy hosts above,
pray, and praise thee without ceasing,
glory in thy perfect love.
Imagine the theologically orthodox, world-renown communicator, & respected leader in Christian circles - and a sexual predator- still going. Imagine being a leader aware of that situation and turning a blind eye to the abuse & malpractice.
Add in the inexcusable alliance of the Church with conspiracy theories & violence, racism, the abuse & exploitation of children, the misogynistic disregard of women, xenophobia, & the sheer materialism of the entertainment-celebrity wing of the Evangelical Industrial complex...
And it’s enough to make lukewarm Laodicea look like a red hot revival. Americanized Church isn’t in need of a reset or a revival - if revival just means bigger crowds for more of the same. No. It needs a Christian burial in sure & certain hope of the resurrection. I believe...
My main problem with defining good expository preaching as communicating what the Bible says “verse by verse” is that the Bible wasn’t written in verses. Or chapters, for that matter. Fidelity to the text can’t be measured by a standard foreign to the text itself & imposed on it.
Every word, every jot & tittle, matters. All is to be opened up & announced in a way that reveals the Person to whom it all points - Christ. Yet there are many approaches that can do this, and not all passages weigh the same as another. There are matters of “First Importance”
So I believe in expository preaching that is proclaiming Christ as he is revealed to us in the whole Bible, standing with John on the banks of the Jordan and crying, 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!'
Edward the Confessor. Julian of Norwich. NT Wright. Handel. Bach. Mozart. Bucer. Zwingli. Meno Simons. Bunyan. Edwards. Colson. Denhollender. Charles Martel. Cyril. Faulkner. Melville. Dorothy Sayers. US Abolitionists. Jane Austen. Dickenson. Justin Martyr...