The Christian blogosphere, Patheos, has published a guest opinion piece by Daniel Darling and Dean Inserra entitled “What Is Politics Doing to Our Witness?”. I have copied the two, closing paragraphs below. You can read the entire piece here.
“While the fracturing of friendships over politics is unnecessarily sad, even more tragic is the experience of those outside the church who may engage in a conversation about the gospel, because they have seen the church in action on their social media timeline and have decided that this is a gospel not worth investigating. Have we gained the world and lost our souls?
“As we steward our earthly citizenship, let us always be pointing, by the words we say and the way we say them, to a citizenship in a city whose builder and maker is God. Let’s not gain a political world and lose our missional soul.”
The authors thankfully remind their readers that a disciple’s citizenship in the kingdom of God takes priority over all other allegiances. I admit that I 
am biased here, because this is the core of my message in my new book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America.
Unfortunately – at least in my view – that is where the similarity between these two authors’ and myself ends. For, while they rightly lament the unseemly levels of hostility and slander that often characterize Christian political discourse nowadays, a concern for personal deportment marks the beginning as well as the end of their concern. Apparently, politics’ main threat to Christian “witness” is its power to fuel hostility within God’s family.
The glaring hole in this argument, however (and, again, I am not dismissing the importance of this solitary observation), appears in the authors’ failure to connect (a) the specific policies enacted by our politics to (b) the ethical norms demanded of us by citizenship in God’s kingdom.
The Patheos article leaves both the real-world consequences of our political choices and the personal demands of kingdom citizenship unaddressed, unspecified. Both “the kingdom” and “politics” remain blank cyphers waiting to be filled in by the individual in whatever way they think best. Of most importance is ensuring that our conversations on these subjects is always winsome.
Apparently, winsomeness is the key to winning people to the gospel.
But if the kingdom comes first, shouldn’t the kingdom be determining the shape of my politics, going above and beyond the shape of my demeanor when talking about my vote?
Is it ok to vote for genocide as long as I debate the decision with kindness? I am sure these two authors would say “no” to that question. But on what basis?
Here is my question: What if my political decisions are rooted in fear and hostility? Is that acceptable, as long as I talk about my xenophobic, fear-based political life in a calm, friendly, winsome tone of voice?
If the kingdom of God really does come first in my life, shouldn’t the Father’s kingdom ethics, as taught by Jesus, exercise control over my political actions – actions that go well beyond the way I talk with others about my choices?
Isn’t the content of my politics as (if not more) important to “my Christian witness” than my personal deportment?
That, my friends, is the crucial existential break that has set American evangelicalism and the Religious Right adrift, lost in its own sea of moral relativism. The compartmentalization of a contentless kingdom, discreetly isolated from our idiosyncratic political choices, has left America with an individualistic church fueling a heartless, destructive politics, all in the name of Jesus.
