Jesus Is Not Your Political Property

Neither the Republican nor the Democratic party can lay a greater claim to "Christian values," because Jesus Christ didn't come to Earth to establish a political kingdom[1], and he expressly called his disciples to reject political and other worldly divisions. We are to be one in Christ, not one in any man-made political ideology.

Both the Republican and the Democratic parties in the United States are strongly influenced by Christian ideologies because Christianity has historically been and remains a majority religion in the United States. Furthermore, many members of both parties are Christians, not merely in name but in practice.

The reason that Republican Christians and Democratic Christians disagree about which party is more compatible with Christian discipleship is because Christianity has a complicated, millennias-old history of interpreting its own doctrines and sacred texts. Neither party is the party of Jesus.

This does not mean that Christians should be apolitical. Although we are called to be not of the world, we are also called to live in the world and to be a force for moral good in our communities by word and by example. But it does mean that we must avoid taking our Lord's name in vain by claiming (or even allowing ourselves to privately believe) that Jesus is "on our side" or "against the other side" politically. We are called to be on His side, and not the other way around.

Image: "Black Marble: Americas." NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Flickr. CC BY 2.0.

[1] We understand that following His second coming, Jesus will establish a kingdom on Earth which will be both spiritual and political, but it's not that time yet, and it would be the height of arrogance to assume we know what that kingdom will look like or how its government will function. Our sacred texts give us only a few clues, and those clues don't look much like any human government that we have any record of.