Faith and Politics

I must admit, I do not claim to be a super political person. I honestly thought until about a year ago that “global warming” just meant that the temperature would get “warmer globally,” which I didn’t mind so much since we live in the mountains where the winters are long and cold. I know, I know, pathetic. But, at the motivation of my sister Cassie, I am reading through Tony Campolo’s book, Red Letter Christians. It’s all about faith and politics. He takes each major issue facing our country and gives some statistics and history, and then he talks about how people can really live out Jesus’s teachings practically in politics . . . in a totally nontraditional way. For example, he talks about what it means to obey Jesus’s command to care for the poor, as Campolo writes about world poverty and the AIDS pandemic. Chapters include: the environment, Palestine, abortion, gay rights, immigration, gun control, the federal budget, the war, and others. The tone here is definitely NOT the “far right, super conservative, Republicans-only, tunnel-visioned about one or two issues” tone I would assume many religious authors would use in writing about politics. It’s honest and far from dogmatic, but gives lots of information about the current issues and offers many Biblical challenges.

Anyway, I would highly recommend it as a good read, especially right now. If you know a lot about politics and world issues, then maybe this book would just be a good refresher course. I can’t say I totally agree with everything written in it, but it has opened my eyes to a lot of new ideas. And at least now I can say at least one smart thing about each issue when politics comes up in conversation.

And now I know what the big deal is about global warming, too. Cool. Or actually, no, not really.