LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

An op-ed column asks whether or not the religious right is confusing temporal power with the spread of God's Kingdom:

The First Amendment protects political involvement based on religious faith. Anyone who suggests otherwise - that religious people acting on their convictions in the political arena somehow violates the Constitution - turns the First Amendment on its head.

But increasingly these days many religious people - and especially some well-known conservative Christian leaders- confuse their own temporal power and influence with the spread of God's kingdom.

The political pronouncements from the pulpit become increasingly more brazen and bold. At the Southern Baptist Convention recently, the Rev. Jerry Falwell told pastors that conservative Christians had re-elected George Bush and that their next task was keeping Hillary Clinton from election in 2008.

Leaving aside the extraordinary departure from Baptist tradition such partisan political talk represents, the marshaling of Christian legions in overtly political wars confuses political triumphalism with advancing the cause of Christ.

Perhaps the most extreme example recently of equating political correctness with Christian faithfulness was the North Carolina pastor who ordered members of his congregation who supported John Kerry to repent or leave.

The conservative evangelical publication Christianity Today sounds an alarm against the idol of political power in an editorial in its July edition, and notes that American and Christian creeds and precepts aren't interchangeable.

"In the heat of partisan politics," the editorial continues, "we are tempted to forget that the most potent political act - the one act that deeply manifests and really empowers a kind and noble society' - is the worship of Jesus Christ.

"In worship we signal who is Sovereign, not of just this nation, but of heaven and Earth. In worship we gather to be formed into an alternate polis, the people of God. It is here that we proclaim that a new political order - the kingdom of heaven - has been preached and incarnated by the King of Kings, and will someday come in fullness, a fullness to which all kingdoms and republics will submit..."

In the same issue of CT, Stephen Carter, who has written extensively on the right of people of faith to speak out in the public square, notes nevertheless that "reducing evangelical Christianity to a wholly owned subsidiary of any political party is a terrible thing."

At a time when issues such as the number of votes to end a filibuster in the U.S. Senate have suddenly been accorded religious significance - as if God were a partisan parliamentarian - such words are worth hearing and taking to heart.

Christians are supposed to stand out because they are different. If the world sees Christians as engaged in do-or-die political power struggles like everybody else, what is the attraction?