We Need Prophets, Not Partisans

Brett McCracken makes a good point in his article called We Need Prophets, Not Partisans.

Many Christians today are being more powerfully catechized by voices on cable news, talk radio, and podcasts than they are by voices from within the church. The average American Christian is likelier to have their views shaped by a political pundit than a preacher...

The gospel’s power is not the power to win elections, legal protections, or economic prosperity. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16). It’s incumbent upon churches and Christian institutions today that they orient around this true gospel—the one given to us by God in Scripture—rather than around the various perverse gospels that tempt us: prosperity, power, politics, self-help.

Churches in America used to be places where people of diverse political opinions integrated and learned how to have civil, charitable political discourse. “But when politics affects whether and where Americans go to church, even our houses of worship become political echo chambers” (quoting Michelle Margolis).

The gravity of this problem cannot be overstated. If the church of Jesus Christ becomes more shaped by the temporal concerns of contemporary politics than by the eternal, kingdom concerns of Scripture, we’ve surrendered our last shred of relevance in a secular age. Why would a spiritually restless 21st-century person care about faith if faith turns out to be just another clanging cymbal in the deafening cacophony of politicized noise? Yet if faith offers something different—a confident, prophetic clarity that takes its cues from an eternal agenda and speaks to politics rather than from politics, or from anything else peripheral—then it might be worth preserving.