Many people are quite surprised when the church voices its
opinion or makes known its stand on hot potato political issues. But as the
salt and the light of the world, the church sometimes has to make strong
judgments about what is false, unjust, and evil in the society and this
inevitably means making forays into politics where deeply consequential value and
moral judgements are made in a democratic society. The dilemma however for the
church which has to contend with the pervasive error of privatized faith which is
privately engaging and publicly irrelevant is the opposite error of politicized
faith through which Christians become “useful idiots” for one political party
or another and Christian beliefs are used as weapons for political interests.
