Engaging Culture

I've copied this from the STR blog.

Engaging Culture
A new Pew poll about religion and Christianity in the U.S. has soon good news and some bad news no matter who you are. Here are my thoughts on some of the responses in the poll.

I'm very glad to see that Americans can perceive the effort of to remove Christianity from the public square, and that it's not a matter of Christians inappropriately intruding in the public realm. All religions have a right to participate in the public square and it's contrary to a pluralistic society to try to vacate some or all religions from the public discussion.

Christians aren't trying to "impose" their views - they are vocally participating in the public square and the democratic process, like every other citizen and group with a stake in this country. It's really impossible to impose a view view the democratic process. After all, all candidates and propositions are up for vote for everyone to weigh in on. Some silly fears about imposing an American theocracy have appeared in print recently, but that is not at all what Christians are doing. They are doing what every American can and should do in the democratic process.

On most of the contentious and controversial social issues, Christians are on the defense not the offense. Christians are defending the status quo or the historically status quo from radical social change, very often being applied through the courts rather than the vote. Abortion, same-sex marriage, much going on in education are examples where proponents are aggressively advancing their views. Christians have not introduced "attacks" on homosexuals. They are responding to and defending the what has been the accepted norm in America.

Anytime a question involves "taking the Bible literally" it's unhelpful because different people read "literally" differently. This is often a way of phrasing it to make Christians look like back-woods ignoramuses against the modern world. We take the Bible as literally as the text indicates. The Bible has different kinds of literature - history, poetry, analogy, etc. - and it has to be interpreted as the author intended. The author and intent is the key to literalism.

Christians aren't imposing the will of God or the Bible on society. Those influence our values and views that we then exercise through our right to vote and engage in society. Every other citizen has background sources that influence their values and views that they also then use to inform how they vote.

Christians do need to exercise wisdom and charity because Christianity is not a political position, though it should influence our worldview and values that work out in our politics. But it's hardly a straight line all of the time. Thus different Christians have different political views. No one is trying to establish a church-state. We always have to be aware that these are two separate spheres, but they do interact in the real world.