Theological Fragments

  How are Christians supposed to relate to their governments? In our hyper-partisan age, this may be one of the most pressing and perplexing questions faced by the American Church. Our culture gives us two options: partisanship or neutrality. Many churches choose to become partisan. Whether they say so explicitly or not, these churches insinuate by their teachings and behavior that the only acceptable, faithful Christians are the ones who support a certain political party. Both liberal and conservative churches do this. “Real Christians are pro-life.” “Real Christians are LGBTQ allies.” “Real Christians could never vote for Trump.” “Real Christians could never vote for Biden.” “Jesus was a socialist.” “Jesus was a capitalist.” The list goes on. There are many, many problems with this perspective, but this is not the side I’m focused on today. For now I want to focus on the alternative. Many Christians, rightly recognizing that the gospel does not align with any political party, instea