Christians and partisanship

I’m not going to argue that Christians should never be a part of a political party. There are perfectly good reasons for Christians to be a part of one. Simple and logical reasons are that there are places where if you want to fully participate in the electoral process, it only makes sense to be a part of one of the parties. I get that.

And yet…

Maybe there’s a better question than the all or nothing version of should Christians be in a political party or not. Maybe the better question is this — is there a clearly defined line that Christians should not cross when it comes to loyalty to party?

Maybe one way of looking at this is to say that Christians should not be party animals — as in the donkey and elephant. By that I mean, at what point does one’s party registration become more foundational to one’s identity than one’s faith? At what point has a Christian cross a line in which their party loyalty has superseded their faith?

Here’s the answer — I don’t know. What I do know is that there is not a nice uniform universal answer to that question. Some people are really good about being a part of a political party and knowing that it is secondary to their faith. For those folks, it’s not even close and not difficult. They stay far away from confusing their loyalties. How many people? I have no idea.

Unfortunately, there are folks though who, either consciously or not, have somehow turned their political identification into something more than what it started out…