Should pulpits remain silent on politics?

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

Whether or not you actually know anything about Church history.

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Why should I care about Church history. I am of the Kingdom, not the institutions of man.

timothyu said:

Why should I care about Church history. I am of the Kingdom, not the institutions of man.

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So between St John and you there were no Christians? Have you started your own Church? Are you the great restorer of the Gospel? A new Joseph Smith?

If you're going to condemn past Christians, despite knowing nothing of Church history, how can you claim to condemn them on any reasonable basis? I can make a pretty good case for condemning certain historical figures, their faults, the good they did, the downright evil actions they did, but this is based on actually knowing something about history and not assuming that everyone before me was some cartoonish super villain.

I might suggest Timothy that we can actually learn from Christians before us. That we have things like the Nicene Creed for a reason, which I presume you agree with.

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

That we have things like the Nicene Creed for a reason, which I presume you agree with.

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Nothing wrong with the NCreed. It's the religious instructions of man that were and are the problem. Same problem Jesus had

timothyu said:

Nothing wrong with the NCreed. It's the religious instructions of man that were and are the problem. Same problem Jesus had

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The Nicene Creed was literally written by a group of three hundred or so Bishops for the sake of religious instruction regarding who Christ is and his relation to the Church. Isn't this the sort of thing you hate? Also it was organized by Constantine a man you've said claimed to be a god (with no proof).

You are just being inconsistent. Why don't you condemn the Nicene Creed and repudiate it? Is it not 'man made,' by the people in the past you hate because they weren't perfect Christians?

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

The Nicene Creed was literally written by a group of three hundred or so Bishops

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No they simply compiled what was already in scripture. they made nothing.

timothyu said:

No they simply compiled what was already in scripture. they made nothing.

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They did a bit more than simply compile the bible, what they did was articulate biblical ideas in a way which is not natural to the bible. Terms like Hypostases which have a rich use in Greek philosophy and they articulated in explicit detail the ideas of the Trinity as a doctrine which had been formulating over the last 300 years since Christ. They understood themselves as being in continuity with the Christians who came before them, as carrying on that. They didn't neglect that connection or consider it superficial, like you do.

Yet we've gone off the discussion, mainly because you don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to this subject other than vague aphorisms of 'the kingdom is not of this world!', as if that means anything. By this same statement repeated ad nauseum you could stop all worldly activity and you have no ground respond, because ultimately it's a sort of Gnostic superiority you're appealing to. Not the first time you've done this by the way. It's a shallow worldview which views people as villains incapable of being complex and human. Constantine was the villain of Christian history who corrupted the Church by wedding it to the Roman State! If only the Church maintained it's purity and didn't become joined at the hip with Rome, then the world and the Church would be so much better!

Yet whenever I here this I never actually see this demonstrated. Yes it's impossible to demonstrate a hypothetical but when it's pointed out that there were good things that this change accomplished, there is this need here for many to endlessly deconstruct it, because it's almost an axiom at this point that the Church plus power equals bad. Yet I've not had anyone here say that it was wrong to outlaw pagan worship, because it wasn't. That it was wrong to outlaw crucifixion, because it wasn't. That it was bad that Christianity was promulgated even more so throughout the Empire, because it wasn't. Instead we get told that the majority of them weren't true Christians therefore it still shouldn't have happened that way and I'm left wondering what the people who want Christianity out of power want.

I can only conclude they want Christians powerless, unable to defend themselves, unable to organize as a political community and be utterly subject to powers that do not have their best interests at heart. They seem to lament the fact that persecution towards Christians stopped, that Pagan Rome disappeared.

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

'the kingdom is not of this world!', as if that means anything.

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Sorry, it is the ways of this world that don't mean anything to God or His followers

timothyu said:

Sorry, it is the ways of this world that don't mean anything to God or His followers

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This conversation is clearly over and you have no intention on engaging. Have a good day and try actually reading some of the Church Fathers, try actually reading some Church history. There were Christians before you and it's thanks to them you have the bible today and that you are a Christian today.

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

thanks to them you have the bible today

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Yes God used the gentiles to forward the scriptures. It is the Word of God, not man or our religions That matter. Remember who Jesus' adversaries were... organized religion. They have been notorious for taking what God has given us and making it over to support their own image.

timothyu said:

Yes God used the gentiles to forward the scriptures. It is the Word of God, not man or our religions That matter. Remember who Jesus' adversaries were... organized religion. They have been notorious for taking what God has given us and making it over to support their own image.

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He also used Christians to further the word of God. In fact he used us primarily. I understand you think there were no Christians before you but there's actually a long list of historical men and women we can point to who helped to spread the Gospel. Priests, monks, kings, Queens, laymen. But your faith is in a book, you don't believe in the Church, which faded from history and didnt appear until you read a book called the bible.

The brain of a Protestant on Solo Scriptura is truly disturbing.

Michie said:

In 1873, Charles Finney wrote to pastors challenging them to raise the moral standards of the nation through preaching.

He concluded: “If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it.”

In 1980, a very similar argument was raised by Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, and other leading pastors as they launched the Moral Majority. Churches had been lured into silence on moral issues that were prevalent in politics, and we were reaping unwelcome consequences from our inaction. Cal Thomas and I were both involved in leadership positions in the Moral Majority in 1980 and were—and I believe, still are—friends.

However, Cal’s recent column decries the idea that pastors exercise their right to fully preach about moral and political issues, along with giving their candid views on political candidates who have such a significant impact on these issues.

Continued below.

Should pulpits remain silent on politics?

Should churches avoid talking about political issues

www.christianpost.com

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Pastors should stick to moral issues - leave out politics.

The Bible is not concerned with "guns or butter" issues in the state.

It is concerned with morality. The Cross, the Gospel

Freedom of religion
Freedom to evangelize rather than a state-religion that persecutes all other Christian groups... etc.
Marriage between one man and one woman - Gen 2.
Thou shalt not murder Ex 20 -- no abortion

Definition of man and woman in Gen 1 and 2.

Freedom to worship God according to the dictates of conscience.

It's simply not possible for religion and politics to not intersect. Abolition, the Civil Rights Movement, to name to examples; were profound examples of where religion and politics intersected in important ways in American history. That intersection of religion and politics can be seen going all the way back to reading the Gospels; the proclamation of the good news of God's kingdom is religious and political--it isn't political in that Jesus was participating in the politics of the empire, but it's political in that it stands ideologically, prophetically, and theologically in opposition to the theology of empire.

So the question is not should the pulpit be silent on politics, of course it shouldn't. The question is what is the meaning and significance of the pulpit--in the proclamation of the Word--in the context of the temporal powers, in the midst of empire. Is the pulpit for forging Jesus' signature on the dotted line of endorsement for this or that politician or political movement; or is the pulpit for preaching Jesus and the Jesus-shaped kingdom regardless of who the powers happen to be? In the context of the US, is the pulpit for endorsing a candidate for president, or in praying that the candidates be good and just, and that whoever becomes president be a person of integrity, a person of good stewardship over the nation, a person of peace, justice, wisdom, and exercises the authority they have received by the will of the electorate in such a way that our neighbors are treated well, that our society be a just society. Do we preach moral accountability for our leaders, do we pray for wisdom among those vested with temporal power, in order that the poor not be neglected, that the marginalized not be dismissed, that oppression is minimized, and our neighbors are granted the capacity to breathe and thrive. In the pulpit do we demonstrate our allegiance to the Lord Christ through the faithful exercising of the prophetic vocation of preaching the word in the midst of empire; or something else?

-CryptoLutheran

BobRyan said:

Pastors should stick to moral issues - leave out politics.

The Bible is not concerned with "guns or butter" issues in the state.

It is concerned with morality. The Cross, the Gospel

Freedom of religion
Freedom to evangelize rather than a state-religion that persecutes all other Christian groups... etc.
Marriage between one man and one woman - Gen 2.
Thou shalt not murder Ex 20 -- no abortion

Definition of man and woman in Gen 1 and 2.

Freedom to worship God according to the dictates of conscience.

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Where are we taught to defend the freedom of worship to false religions?