But how do we address partisan political conflict? If someone has a religious devotion to some political faction, and you tell them that's not really the Gospel we find in the Bible, they invariably respond by saying you are just some blind follower of the opposite faction.PeterG wrote:The trouble with this thread and others like it is that, whether intentionally or not, they are positioned in the context of partisan political conflict, which tends to become indistinguishable from participation in partisan political conflict.
And I do think it's helpful to open our eyes to how much this influences American Christianity. When Christians get together, they often talk a whole lot more about politics than they do about faith or what genuine love is or what we are grateful to God for or how to live out our lives as servants to others or how to become more holy.
This confuses me. Isn't this hymn precisely an expression of political allegiance, expressed as a hymn that can be used in church services? The object is irrelevant - it would be just as bad if the lyrics were "Yes, we can!" (Obama's campaign slogan).PeterG wrote:Now, I know Bootstrap well enough to be confident that with the OP he intended to make a point (with which I fully agree) about conflating religion and politics, rather than engaging in partisan battle. But it doesn't necessarily look that way to the casual observer, because the object of political allegiance is emphasized, rather than political allegiance itself.