The (Politcally Active) Christian Citizen; Or: "That's right, IceMan, I am dangerous."

The latest issue of the Christian Citizen has just come out. The Christian Citizen is a magazine put out by ABCUSA focusing on issues of justice and faith-informed social action.

In his editorial "The Church and Politics" Curtis Ramsey-Lucas writes, "Simply because politics is dangerous does not mean that Christians have the luxury of opting out of the Process." He points to various political movements in our nation's history - the Civil Rights movement, the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, etc. - and underscores the fact that the Baptist denomination was intimately involved. (Of course, the Baptist denomination was intimately involved on both sides of the struggle for Civil Rights.)

What I find interesting is the fact that many who would say we ought not to "mix politics and religion" are oftentimes the very same people who will take great pride in the heroes of our faith who did just that. A case in point is the burgeoning interest in William Wilberforce and his role in putting an end to the British slave trade. The truth is that, when pressed, most of us will admit that the distinction between what is political in nature and what is religious is at best arbitrary and oftentimes altogether false.

I think that Ramsey-Lucas' statement about politics being "dangerous" may shed some light on what we as Christians really think. For something to be dangerous means that it may cost us something truly valuable - our job, our reputation and in some cases our very life. When we say something is "political" and therefore choose not to enter into the fray, what we are really saying is that we are not passionate enough about the cause to risk losing anything very meaningful.

Ramsey-Lucas closes his essay by saying that as Christians we have the "opportunity" to let our faith speak by asking those who want our vote in the 2008 election to tell us what they are going to do about poverty, hunger and educational inequality here and abroad. These are indeed the kinds of questions we as people of faith ought to be asking. But in order for these questions to be truly "political" in nature then we as Christian citizens are going to have to learn to ask them in risky or - to borrow a word from Ramsey-Lucas -"dangerous" ways.

I suppose this means that if we are going to ask a question that matters then we are going to have to put our own selves in the hot seat. We are going to have to ask these questions when others are telling us we ought to be asking or doing other things. It means we ought to ask them in a public forum when we could have gone home and watched reruns of "Friends" instead. It means we ought to ask them when it would be a lot nicer not to ask anything at all but just smile and get along and let the market do its thing.