What the Next Generation of Christians Needs

How should Christians interact with politics?

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First, an announcement! The Good Faith podcast has moved homes. Please go to Redeeming Babel to comment on new episodes and listen to past ones.

The podcast feed should be back to full swing next week. In the meantime, you can listen to this week’s episode here.

On today’s podcast, host Curtis Chang and regular guest David French discuss what young Christians need to be formed for thriving. In this far ranging conversation, they explore negative partisanship, the fruits of the spirit, the revival at Asbury, and how Christians should best interact with the world through politics. Also, Curtis describes how anxiety is a surprising underlying cause of the political acrimony and divisiveness that plagues our culture today. This special Good Faith podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, a higher education association of more than 185 Christian institutions around the world.

SHOW NOTES:

–Pre-order Curtis Chang’s upcoming book, The Anxiety Opportunity. 

-Learn more about the theology of institutions via this online video course from Redeeming Babel

-Asbury Professor: We’re Witnessing a ‘Surprising Work of God’ (from Christianity Today) 

–More in Common: The Hidden Tribes Project

-Jonathan Haidt on the “Rider and the Elephant”

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Comments (3)
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  1. Fran.Sciacca

    Great work, gentlemen. Good Faith has become a blessing to this septuagenarian. It's thoughtful, prophetically provocative, and anchored in a solid Christology. Having spent the past 40 years teaching and training collegians and those bound for college, I was very anxious to listen to this particular episode. My "draft picks" would have been slightly different than yours, but you both did an excellent job isolating key issues for the rising generation. I probably would have pushed your thread about the "what?" needing to be discussed concurrently with the "how?" further back, though. I'm pretty much on the "exit ramp" of life and ministry, and there's a lot of highway I can look back on. But, I'd say that what's more important than getting to the "how?" is rediscovering the "why?" Space doesn't allow a rehearsal of all the iterations of Christianity I've lived through, but one thing I've watched happen, which I think is root to all you so excellently discussed, is the galvanization of a caricature of a "Christian lifestyle" rooted in systematic theology bereft of the ballast of biblical theology. I'm not throwing systematic under the bus. My seminary degree is in systematic theology. But, the emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy apart from a solid connection to the actual redemptive narrative of the Bible, and God's clear statements about His purposes, has been a sin-guilt-justification gospel that has become highly personalized and parochial. The "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" message is absent from the full biblical narrative. God has a plan for the fullness of time, and has a "wonderful place for your life," perhaps. What I've seen and continue to see among collegians is an absence of any understanding of the mission of God to restore shalom. Mishpat (justice) is the setting right of things that are not the way they're supposed to be. The restoration of shalom, in other words. Our guilt-justification gospel has excised the corruption side of sin, which has reached everything that breathes, or doesn't. The creation groans, the animals no longer are family, etc. If we understood God's redemptive purposes as the restoration of shalom (everything being "very good" substantially in this life) and saw ourselves as being tasked with truly being the body of Christ in space and time, now that we "have peace (shalom) with God," we'd have a "why?" that would force us to labor to forge the "how?" and perhaps create the circumference within which we'd isolate the truly proper "what?" Forgive me for both the length and perforated nature of this, but it's not likely we'll grab coffee in this life. Best I can do. But, foremost, thanks again. I turn everyone I know towards this podcast. Keep up the solid work. It honors Yeshua.

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  2. JohnAbides

    Thank you Curtis and David for having this conversation. I wish I could be optimistic that how many Christians participate in politics will change, but I am not. It seems to me that many of us Christians follow this great prophetic utterance:

    “Jerry, just remember, it's not a lie if you believe it” — George Costanza

    God isn’t being fooled by any of this. So why do so many of us lack actual reverence for God to seek justice and walk humbly? Instead it’s the same old same old. The OT and NT are replete with admonitions and exhortations regarding how we’re acting.

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  3. Rmock

    Both David and Curtis make great draft picks here. I especially appreciated David's linking of the fruits of the spirit with Micah 6:8 to draw a powerful picture of the kind of robust, active, justice-seeking mercy-loving humble civility that should mark every believer's participation in politics.

    I am also thankful for David's point that no follower of Christ would hire someone to commit a little consumer fraud for him. The "how" we do our politics really does matter as much as the policy outcomes we seek.

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