Sunday, November 5, 2017

Back to the 70s

It's the end of another weekend. My, my, how time flies. It's been a good weekend, but, as Jim Croce sang in 1973:
There never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do

Once you find them
And what I want to do is some writing. Specifically, I want to write about something I've been studying this past week.

Political Theory.

Yup.

Strange but true.

I was led to listen to some lectures on the topic this past week when a young friend said that Alexis de Tocqueville observed, in the 1830s, that "the reason why religion, mainly Christianity, was so prevalent and strong in the U.S." had to do with "avoidance of politics and holding strong ties to public office." That got me searching for an actual quote on the subject by de Tocqueville, and that led me to the lectures.

Why care about this? Partly it's because I've been concerned that some of us (Christians) are so connected to political parties or ideologies--or even political candidates and office holders--so dedicated to them that they're known more for those ties than for their dependence on Jesus.  

I wondered if public political positions of Christians make a difference to others, specifically, to non-Christians, as we speak about Jesus and His love?

I found an article written just after the election quoting various Christian leaders who were concerned that Trump's win would "harm the church's witness." I couldn't find any followup to that article, but then my young friend brought up the de Tocqueville quote.

That's how I was moved to study his work and the work of other political theorists during this past week.

It's interesting and important stuff. (After all, political science was my first college major.) Political theory is interesting and important because politics and government affect all of our lives, especially, perhaps, the lives of those who have the least power of their own.

Interesting, important, and often, nasty, corrupt, full of compromise and impure alliances. It's been a long time since I dropped that poly sci major (in my first college semester -- fall of 1974), but I haven't lost interest -- because somehow we need to work with others to do that "love of neighbor" work... work that brings us alongside sinful and self-interested and idealistic people (and parties, etc.), each of whom have their own reasons for being in the politics game.

This week, by the way, we'll be having elections in Minnesota -- and an election in our "Amalgamated Transit Union" local. I do tend to vote... so I'll need to do some looking into the issues and candidates in the next couple days.

And maybe I'll have time to get to the meat of Political Theory. We'll see.

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