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“A final irony has to do with the idea of political responsibility. Christians are urged to vote and become involved in politics as an expression of their civic duty and public responsibility. This is a credible argument and good advice up to a point. Yet in our day, given the size of the state and the expectations that people place on it to solve so many problems, politics can also be a way of saying, in effect, that the problems should be solved by others besides myself and by institutions other than the church. It is, after all, much easier to vote for a politician who champions child welfare than to adopt a baby born in poverty, to vote for a referendum that would expand health care benefits for seniors than to care for an elderly and infirmed parent, and to rally for racial harmony than to get to know someone of a different race than yours. True responsibility invariably costs. Political participation, then, can and often does amount to an avoidance of responsibility.”
― To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
― To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
“In public discourse, the challenge is not to stifle robust debate, but rather to make sure that it is real debate. The first obligation for Christians is to listen carefully to opponents and if they are not willing to do so, then Christians should simply be silent. To engage in a war of words is to engage in a symbolic violence that is fundamentally at odds with the gospel. And too often, on such hot button issues as poverty, abortion, race relations, and homosexuality, the poor, children, minorities, and gays are used as weapons in ideological warfare. This too is an expression of instrumentalization.16”
― To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
― To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
“The tragedy is that in the name of resisting the internal deterioration of faith and the corruption of the world around them, many Christians - and Christian conservatives most significantly - unwittingly embrace some of the most corrosive aspects of the cultural disintegration they decry. By nurturing its resentments, sustaining them through a discourse of negation toward outsiders, and in cases, pursuing their will to power, they become functional Nietzscheans, participating in the very cultural breakdown they so ardently strive to resist.”
― To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
― To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
“What is even more striking than the negational character of this political culture is the absence of robust and constructive affirmations. Vibrant cultures make space for leisure, philosophical reflection, scientific and intellectual mastery, and artistic and literary expression, among other things. Within the larger Christian community in America, one can find such vitality in pockets here and there. Yet where they do exist, they are eclipsed by the greater prominence and vast resources of the political activists and their organizations. What is more, there are few if any places in the pronouncements and actions of the Christian Right or the Christian Left (none that I could find) where these gifts are acknowledged, affirmed, or celebrated. What this means is that rather than being defined by its cultural achievements, its intellectual and artistic vitality, its service to the needs of others, Christianity is defined to the outside world by its rhetoric of resentment and the ambitions of a will in opposition to others.”
― To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
― To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
Naomi’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Naomi’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
90 books
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34 friends
133 books
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76 friends
121 books
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39 friends
1 book
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16 friends
10 books
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29 friends
6 books
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7 friends
2 books
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10 friends
1 book
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12 friends
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