Prophetic Politics

We give some last thoughts before the 2020 election.

We talk about our hopes for the first 100 days of the next president.

What are our hopes and dreams for the next president? What advice would we give?

Does the Bible bind your conscience to a political party? or a candidate? We say no.

We're back! You all had more questions than we could handle in one episode so we did a second.

We tackled several questions from Twitter. Good stuff! Part 1 of 2.

Our fearless leader, Thabiti, was absent for this episode. But fear not, Nick and Ben spent the episode exploring why each came to the political conclusions and positions that they did. Works Referenced: The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek Modernity without Restraint by Eric Voegelin The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt The Republic by Plato Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels A Theory of Justice by John Rawls

Thabiti, Nick, and Ben talk about Biblical justice and how it interacts with secular visions of justice. Show Notes: Tim Keller: A Biblical Critique of Secular Justice and Critical Theory This is the article we reference a few times in this episode.

Thabiti, Nick, and Ben discuss the tearing down of monuments and how we understand the good and the bad in historical figures.

We're back from our impromptu midseason break! (Which really meant Ben's vacation, what a slacker). In this episode, Ben, Thabiti, and Nick talk about the Supreme Court and various judicial philosophies. Follow us on Twitter @ProphPolitics

The Supreme Court has long been a focus for Christians and non-Christians alike. This is somewhat unusual for Supreme Courts in democracies. Nick, Thabiti, and Ben discuss the court and how it could change. If you hear some voices in the background, that's Ben's family. Brothers, we are not professionals!

Nick, Thabiti, and Ben talk about religious liberty.

Nick, Thabiti, and Ben discuss how love of country can be idolatry, what rightly ordered love of country looks like, and what traps Christians fall into regarding syncretism.

Thabiti, Nick, and Ben talk about what good political leadership looks like in a crisis. They also reflect on the challenges of the pandemic, both as it relates to political questions and policy challenges. Note: This episode is a few weeks old and does not reflect the latest news about COVID-19 and its stats are out of date.

Thabiti, Nick, and Ben talk about the long history of police brutality against African-Americans. There are several policy positions that should be discussed and challenged when thinking about this issue. But more fundamentally for us, how should Christians respond? How do the three of us respond? Apologies for Ben's poor microphone, podcasting in the age of COVID was a bit challenging!

Thabiti, Nick, and Ben talk about the meaning of Prophetic Politics and what is distinctly Christian about being prophetic.

T, Nick, and Ben talk about what changes they'd like to see in the U.S. Criminal Justice System.

Epistemology, did I spell that right? How do we know what we know? How can we know what's true as it relates to politics? Nick, Thabiti, and Ben discuss.

Thabiti, Nick, and Ben talk social insurance, largely health care, and the various perspectives each has on the issue.

Sorry for the late upload! Ben's internet was broken. Today. Thabiti gives some Biblical background on taxes while Nick and Ben debate how much taxation is too much.

We're back from our holiday break! Hope ya'll had a great Christmas and happy new year. This week T, Nick, and Ben think out loud about their various grids for how they decide who to vote for.

Impeachment! It's all over the news. Thabiti, Nick, and Ben talk about the mechanism of impeachment, it's history, and why they are grateful for inclusion of impeachment in our governmental system. One note, this episode references an episode on elections, that will be released next week. We switched up the order on ya'll.

Thabiti, Nick, and Ben talk about voting rights in America. They take a quick walk through the history of voting rights, recent changes, and try to evaluate those recent changes in light of scripture.

Two foreign policy nerds, Nick and Ben, get to talk about all things realism and liberalism in regards to foreign affairs. Thabiti looks on in amusement. All three of them try to apply Biblical principles to foreign policy debate.

In the season 2 kickoff, Thabiti, Ben, and Nick talk reparations, the current debate over them, and how the Bible can help guide that discussion.

Thabiti, Nick, and Ben talk about how pro-choice arguments are lacking, what the pro-life movement gets right, and what it could do better.

Thabiti, Nick, and Ben talk about the history of abortion, it's cost, and why Christians feel so passionately about this issue.

Thabiti, Nick, and Ben talk about identity politics and how it is viewed in the political sphere. Are such identities biblical? Anti-biblical? How do questions of identity impact how we relate to one another?

Thabiti, Nick, and the new guy, Ben, talk about political correctness, speech, and how the Bible addresses how we should speak to one another.

Thabiti and Nick chop it up over race, racism, and the church.

In this episode, Thabiti and Nick break down the topic of immigration. They explore how Scripture informs both of their views on the topic as well as sheds light on personal experiences. While recognizing the government's legitimate right to enforce it's borders, they also explore what a Biblically-informed, Christian position on immigration might be.

This week, Pastor Thabiti and Nick discuss gun control and what the Bible has to say on this topic, if anything, as well as the Biblical principles Christians should consider as they think about this issue.

In this episode, Thabiti and Nick talk about political party as a source of identity, and discuss the dangers of letting that identity supplant our identities as Christians. We talk about the American Founders' approach to political tribalism, how tribalism is deeply rooted in the division of humankind into tribes in Genesis 10, and why saying something as simple as "I am a Republican" or "I am a Democrat" may go too far for a Christian. Finally, we try to give some practical guidance for how to approach political differences within the church. Biblical references: Genesis 10 - the Tower of Babel and the table of nations. Ephesians 2:11-22 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 - we are one in Christ, and Christ is our identity. 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 - be wary of divisions between Christians. Romans 16:17-20 and Titus 3:10-11 - be wary of those who bring division. Other references: Federalist 10 and James Madison on the question of faction - defining faction as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." Full text here: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp Niebuhr, "Christ and Culture." A short summary here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/christ-and-culture-an-overview-of-a-christian-classic/ On negative partisanship: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/negative-partisanship-explains-everything-215534 On blue shirts and red shirts (turns out it was actually yellow shirts!): https://news.wisc.edu/professor-finds-that-in-shirts-as-well-as-skin-color-matters/ Produced by Ben Brophy. Photo in Artwork Credit: John Brighenti via Creative Commons. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Microphone Icon Credit: Designed by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

In this episode, Thabiti and Nick provide an overview of an age-old question of politics: what is the role of government? We trace the development of our modern ideas about this to the 18th-century Enlightenment - noting that while it wasn't a Christian phenomenon, Enlightenment thinkers had an uneasy alliance with the church that papered over some of the fault lines we're beginning to see emerge today. We talk about different reasons for government to be bigger or smaller, but note that this specific question is beside the point. The real question is: is government doing what it should do? Biblical references: Genesis 9:5 - God's words to Noah after the flood, establishing that government is ordained by God as a coercive force, with the power of the sword. Romans 13:1 - the governing authorities - all of them - have been established by God. And, with a few limited exceptions, we are to submit to them. Genesis 41:46-57 - Joseph, in his service to Pharaoh, is just one example of a God-ordained role of government (in this case, a very statist, interventionist one!). Isaiah 1:16-17 - God's commands to Judah set the tone for what a people and its government should do: seek justice, correct oppression, plead the widow's cause. Proverbs 31:1-9 - God's commands to King Lemuel are a further manual for what it means to govern wisely. 1 Timothy 2:1-2 - we should pray for our leaders in government - all of them! Other references: The West Wing, Season 1, Episode 12: Toby Ziegler on whether "The Era of Big Government is Over" Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Self-interest is the engine of capitalism; we shouldn't be surprised when it sometimes produces bad results. Max Weber's much more strident take on Genesis 9:5 - that the state has a monopoly on the use of force. Produced by Ben Brophy. Photo in Artwork Credit: John Brighenti via Creative Commons. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Microphone Icon Credit: Designed by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

The purpose of this episode is to answer that one question - what are we doing starting a podcast on politics? Thabiti and Nick both discuss how they became Christians and what brought us to this topic. Thabiti reminds us that Christ's exhortation in Matthew 28:19-20 is for us to obey in every aspect of our lives, including this question of what a government does. He also notes that his blog was where he began writing about these topics, especially in recent years. Nick talks about his own journey to become a Christian. He started both of us thinking about doing something like this when, in the runup to the 2016 election, he had an idea for a blog post that Thabiti published on that same blog. The response was... discouraging. Nick followed up with a longer piece that tried to unpack things a little bit more. And then the 2016 election happened - and both of us felt like we didn't understand evangelicalism any more. We worried that its political convictions amounted to little more than kneejerk submission to the Republican Party. But we wondered if a new generation of Christians might be looking for something different - not a lurch in the opposite direction, necessarily, but an evangelical politics that is rightly uneasy with absolute commitments to any particular political ideology. In a word, a prophetic politics. Hence this podcast. If you're listening, hope you enjoy it! Produced by Ben Brophy. Photo in Artwork Credit: John Brighenti via Creative Commons. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Microphone Icon Credit: Designed by Freepik from www.flaticon.com