Category: The Politics of Scripture

How is the riven social body, with its divisions between poor and rich, to be healed?

The Pharisees were not wrong to question Jesus, but as much as we might want to empathize with them, to agree that there are simply certain things good people do not do, Jesus rejects human propriety as an orienting standard. Jesus is talking about the human heart, something Christians today also must consider.

The witness of the land cannot be escaped. Whether in its memorials of divine faithfulness, or its testimony to our sins, it will not be silent.

Sometimes politics is less about the leaders and more about whether communities choose to live together in wisdom or folly.

Efforts to leverage “God” are often attuned to the dynamics of the symbol yet remain largely untroubled by the gaps such acts generate.

Victories can be devastating when they come at bitter cost. Yet both our losses and our costly victories are put into a new perspective when we take refuge in and receive the bread of God.

Nathan’s courageous condemnation of King David’s sin is a timely example of court prophecy faithfully performed.

The story of David and Bathsheba is a story of power’s corruption and of the cover-ups of abuse—a story with considerable resonance in our own day.

Many white evangelicals seem not to realize that American democracy has also been good for American Christianity and that too close an association between worldly and spiritual power will ultimately diminish both.

The power of state in both Greco-Roman times as well as today hinges upon a hierarchal power structure. Jesus, however, calls us to compassion in a horizontal social structure.

The Prophet Amos employs the plumb line as a powerful metaphor for justice in society.

In a modern political milieu where leaders are choosing strength over heart, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10 reminds us of Paul finding his strength through weakness.