Lately I’ve been seeing something among United States/American Christians that has been frustrating me, and I think I should talk about it: We have Americanized our Christianity. While many of us will say that we know our allegiance to God is more important than our allegiance to anyone or anything else, we often act as if Christianity, patriotism, and politics are so interconnected that separating them is a sin. While being a Christian should certainly make you a good citizen and affect the way you vote, I see some Christians conflating patriotism and Christianity as if being one means you might as well be the other. I see some Christians acting as if “God bless the USA” might as well be a verse in the Bible. I see some Christians behaving as if belonging to a certain political party or voting for a specific candidate is the “Christian” thing to do, and anything else is almost apostasy. I see some Christians getting so wrapped up in their political ideologies and parties that anyone who disagrees with them must be misguided, must not really be Christian, or must not truly believe the Bible.
If you cannot separate your politics from your Christianity, you’re doing something wrong. Political differences should not hinder your love and fellowship with other believers in Christ, especially when you believe the same correct things about God and the Bible. Political differences should not hinder your love and care for those Jesus sent you to with the Gospel either. Yes, your beliefs should influence the way you vote and the way you think about the issues, otherwise what good are your beliefs doing? But God gave us volitions and minds for each of us to come to our own conclusions, and just because someone has different ideas from you does not necessarily mean that one of you must be right and the other must be wrong. In many cases, these are merely differences of opinion. You can be Christian and Republican just as much as you can be Christian and Democrat. Being a capitalist, communist, socialist, or whatever other -ist does not mean you are any more or less Christian than someone else. Left wing or right wing, a bird needs both to fly. We all have ideas, maybe we should sit down at the table and talk about them. We all know the problems and we all have ideas for solutions, maybe we need to stop arguing and actually listen to each other so we can combine the ideas into better ones and make the solutions.
Related:
Political Change versus Spiritual Change
Tolerance and Disagreement
Listen to People
Civil Discourse
Disagreeing While Still Getting Along
Live and Let Live
Legislating Righteousness
Freedom to Do God’s Work
Political Correctness and Moral Correctness
Why Do You Believe What You Believe?
Being Right