Religious Leaders Speak Out on the Issues ... the Question is: Which Ones?

This morning in the pew, I was given the Cornerstone family pledge card, asking me to evaluate candidates on preservation of religious freedom, protecting innocent life, defending traditional marriage, restoring the rights of parents and free market policies for family prosperity.   

The sermon was on God and politics and focused on life, family and religious freedom as key issues of concern in these elections. 

Those are not the issues I think we should focus on.  Real change in these areas will happen as people change because of their commitment to follow Jesus.   Governments do not determine the sanctity of sex and marriage.  

Governments regulate contracts not covenants.   The Christian marriage is a covenant.  Not getting the difference is missing the message.  And yes, that's obscure.  And no, saying anything more confuses the issue. 

Governments should not be involved in sex.  Keeping that as part of the marriage covenant is the biblical solution.  Impossible, out of date and impractical.  But so it is. 

The choice made by the US Supreme Court to allow for freedom of expression, including religious expression, but keep the government out of supporting or controlling religious or other fundamental ideas is correct in my view.   In making this decision, the  court was rightly influenced by the Nazi and Soviet experience and their attempts at mind control.    

There is very little Biblical support for religious freedom.   Actually it started and grew because of extreme religious oppressions. When the emperor embraced Christianity he also started guiding doctrine, causing division and using the church to support his position, something that didn't stop for 1700 years.

The Bible makes moral choices.  But trying  to gain God's favor as a nation by putting the government in charge of moral choices is getting the whole message backwards.  

Guided by Amos' focus on the evil of greed and the need to care for the poor and oppressed, as well as  by the knowledge that ultimately our acts on earth will be judged not by our correct ideas, but by what we do for the least of these, other choices are possible.  Sojourners and a group of Christian leaders around Jim Wallis  focused on protecting the poor and on a moral budget.  Those are the choices that I would focus on.