Marc Daly’s Reviews > Body Broken: Can Republicans and Democrats Sit in the Same Pew? > Status Update

We will therefore resist the temptation to equate the United States, or any human institution, or any human leader . . . with God’s kingdom. We will . . . limit our expectations regarding societal change through political means, remembering that the key to all such change is not a particular set of laws, . . . but the working of the gospel in the hearts of people, one by one.

Drew, Charles D. (p. 161).

Politics has recently been inflamed by a number of confusions: the confusion of personal religious affiliation with qualification or disqualifications for public office; the confusion of claims to divine guidance with claims to divine endorsement; the confusion of government neutrality among faiths with government indifference or hostility to religion.

Drew, Charles D.. Body Broken. (pp. 156-157).

When our devotional life dries up, we nevertheless press on—because we know that it is good and healthy to pursue the Lord in prayer and meditation. Similarly, when our efforts to make society a better place encounter opposition, we nevertheless keep at it, because we know that our Lord values justice and human love as much as he values prayer.

Drew, Charles D.. (p. 123).

While there is nothing wrong with trying to understand and critique a movement or a government as a whole, we often forget the most important thing—that movements and governments are made up of people.

Drew, Charles D.. Body Broken: Can Republicans and Democrats Sit in the Same Pew? (p. 109). New Growth Press. Kindle Edition.

We must not forget what all our obligations are. We must love America for Christ’s sake, not for its own sake, which means that we will love her deeply but neither blindly nor absolutely. Our deepest obligation will always be to Christ.

Drew, Charles D.. Body Broken: Can Republicans and Democrats Sit in the Same Pew? (p. 87). New Growth Press. Kindle Edition.

Surely God has blessed America and continues to do so. Surely many Christians and much Christian thinking have influenced us for the good . . . But to confuse these facts with the notion that we are in some special sense God’s country is to forget Jesus’ distinction . . . God’s love is simply too great to be bottled up in one language or in one location or in one people.

(p. 67).

It is not enough for us to be exemplary as individual Christians, we must also be exemplary as communities. The church . . . must commend the reign of Jesus by the supernatural quality of its love. Certainly this should be true of the church’s outward facing love, but it must be particularly true of its inward facing love.

Drew, Charles D.. Body Broken: Can Republicans and Democrats Sit in the Same Pew? (p. 49).

We must take seriously the possibility that the imposition of America’s political and economic traditions wholesale on a different culture . . . may not be God’s will, particularly if it causes such political distress as to shut down Christian testimony . . . if that testimony is linked to an American “takeover.”

Drew, Charles D.. Body Broken: Can Republicans and Democrats Sit in the Same Pew? (pp. 34-35).

Our primary concern . . . glory of God in the transformation of people through the gospel, should lead us . . .to be a place where people from varied political backgrounds . . . feel socially and politically safe. We must be a place where one’s politics does not make him or her a second-class citizen, but . . . where we can agree to disagree in the spirit of loving dialogue.

Drew, Charles D.. Body Broken (p. 30).

Jesus has called us to be the light of the world, and we are often little more than reflections of the divisive darkness that surrounds us. Why do we disagree so much? More important, why do we tend to disagree so heatedly? Why the distrust and name-calling?

Drew, Charles D.. Body Broken: Can Republicans and Democrats Sit in the Same Pew? (p. 16). New Growth Press. Kindle Edition.