In this episode, I speak with Miranda Zapor-Cruz, author of "Faithful Politics," about the role of Christians in the political landscape as the 2024 presidential election approaches. We discuss the challenges of engaging with politics while maintaining spiritual integrity.
Miranda Zapor Cruz is a professor of historical theology at Indiana Wesleyan University. She holds a PhD in religion, politics, and society from Baylor University's J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies and an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary.
Suggested Reading and Listening:
4 Characteristics of Citizens of the Kingdom of God Who Inhabit the Political World by Miranda Zapor Cruz
Christians and Public Policy: Be Engaged, Informed, and Conflicted by Miranda Zapor Cruz
Faithful Politics: Ten Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters
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[0:17] Music. Hey everyone, welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in seeing where faith, politics, and culture intersect. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. So, we are less than a month out from election day. And I don't know about you, but I'm already feeling the kind of the anxiety as the day draws near. here. As we get closer and closer to the election, one of the things that I've been interested in is how do Christians kind of act, or how do we comport ourselves, and how do we kind of engage the political process? I think too often as Christians, whether we are liberals or conservatives or somewhere in between, we tend to follow kind of what are the ways of the world, kind of the, you know, whatever party, political party we belong to, we kind of just follow whatever they're doing. And that really begs the question, is there a specific way that Christians, regardless of our ideological preference, should act? And so...
[0:24] We'll be right back.
[0:45] Thank you.
[2:04] It matters that we engage in the political process. I'm not someone that believes that we should not participate, that we should just take ourselves out. But the question is, how do we do that? And how do we do that in a way that is a faithful witness to being a follower of Jesus Christ? So in this episode, I'm talking with Miranda Zapor Cruz. She is a professor at Indiana Wesleyan University, and also the author of the book Faithful Politics, Ten Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters. And in this episode, we talk about an excerpt from the book that appeared in Leading Ideas, that website, really about four characteristics of how Christians really should engage the political world. And I'm going going to put a link to that excerpt in the show notes. I'll also put another one. There is an additional link as well. I think that this is an important episode, especially in this run-up to the election of how do we have a faithful witness to be a Christian follower.
[3:16] And I think that this is important no matter if you are a Democrat or Republican or independent. So I hope that you will We'll really relish this conversation and let's listen in to this important interview with Miranda Zapor-Cruz.
[3:33] Music.
[3:50] Well, thank you so much for joining me to talk a little bit about how Christians should kind of engage in the political realm. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for having me. I think first I wanted to find out a little bit about yourself. I know that you are a professor at Indiana Wesleyan, but kind of your religious background and kind of your role at the university. Sure. I grew up in the United Methodist Church primarily.
[4:22] And then in high school, in addition to my involvement there, I started also attending a Pentecostal youth group. And then I went to a Presbyterian, a PCUSA undergrad and seminary and a Baptist graduate school, Baylor. And so I've always had since high school kind of one foot in the main line and one foot in the evangelical world. And so that's very much shaped me. I'm now a member of the Wesleyan Church, the denomination that's affiliated with Indiana Wesleyan University. So I love the local church. I am as involved as I'm able to be. And that's, you know, that's really core to who I am. But it's also because I have this kind of a little bit of diversity in my denominational background. ground, it allows me to kind of move comfortably in a lot of disparate spaces and also see a lot of different perspectives on things. And then here at Indiana Wesleyan, I'm a professor of historical theology. So I teach church history courses, systematic theology, sociology of religion, ethics, a pretty wide range of things. But my primary training is in history and theology.
[5:50] And so I've been here for over 10 years, and I love it. It's a great place to teach.
[5:57] So what brought your interest in, because part of also you wrote a book that just came out, Faithful Politics. What got you interested in politics and our faith? Yeah. When I was an undergrad, I took church history courses. I was a religion major. And so really church history was kind of my entry point into the relationship between Christianity and government in kind of the broadest sense. And I had the opportunity to travel to Germany twice and study the confessing church.
[6:36] And books like Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller. And it really drove the question home for me of what does it mean to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ in whatever political circumstances you may find yourself, be they very friendly to Christianity or hostile to Christianity.
[6:55] And so that kind of has been the driving question of my life academically and personally. And so my academic background focused on the church in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union. And that then naturally, well, naturally in my mind, segues into a much more broad interest of what does that question of following Christ faithfully in any circumstances mean for us in the United States? When it's historically a majority Christian country, but that's shifting and where the law sometimes has kind of aligned with or even reinforced Christian convictions, but it's also not a Christian country in any legal sense. And so that I kind of came into politics from the religion side. Some people come into it more from the poli-sci side of things, But that led me to earn my PhD in religion, politics, and society. So just bringing all of those interests together. And that's what I bring into my writing and my research now.
[8:09] So kind of looking at the article itself, you kind of talk about basically how Christians really should act. This is not about here are these issues. And usually in our discourse, sometimes it's like, here are these issues, and this is how people should respond to these issues. Mm-hmm. Article, and I'm going to guess probably the book as well, is really about how people should act.
[8:39] And I'm kind of wondering, was that intentional? Was that this was more important, at least more salient to you at this time than it was, here are these specific issues that we should talk about? Yeah, I think issues matter, of course, and I have positions on issues. The article and my book don't address specific hot button issues because what the issue of the day is changes and what party that's connected to, all of that changes. So I'm really focused on how do we approach politics? And part of that approach is our posture toward other people and toward the political party that we might kind of find ourselves leaning toward more.
[9:27] And I connect that specifically to the mission and witness of the church, that the way we're engaging with people reflects on Christ and has a real impact on whether people who may not know Christ or people who are not so sure or maybe grew up in church but haven't been there in a long time. We're either drawing people closer or driving them further away from Christ in a lot of the ways that Christians interact in the public square or on social media and the ways that people see Christians kind of uncritically aligning with one party and equating that party allegiance with allegiance to God. And I think all of that reflects so poorly on the truth of the gospel, but also reflects poorly on Christians and on the church and is doing real damage to our mission and witness in the world.
[10:29] Why do you think that that is that we, it seems especially now we're in such a polarized time that we tend to almost become uncritical of whatever party we are. We just assume that they are the ones following God's way.
[10:51] Why do you think that we've kind of lost that sense of, this is how a Christian should act, regardless of whatever side you're on, but that we focus more on, you know, well, if you support this issue, that makes you holy, and if you don't, then you're not. LSG Yeah. I think for a lot of Christians across the political spectrum, we don't have a very nuanced understanding of the relationship between our faith and politics in the sense of in what ways should the two be brought into to alignment or in what ways are they different? And so we have the sense that like, well, this is my conviction. And so either for some, they say, well, this is a religious conviction, so I can't bring it into the public square at all because of separation of church and state. So I'm just going to keep that completely to myself and do whatever I want to in politics because they're totally different. That's not a helpful or healthy approach. But then on the other hand, hand, you have people who'd say, well, this is my religious conviction. And so obviously, whatever I believe as a religious conviction ought to also be what legislation aligns with.
[12:12] And part of the challenge there is that not all Christians agree with specific policies or even have the same ideas about Christian convictions, or at least the same hierarchy of Christian convictions. So when we look at that, our convictions as Christians, and map that on to political parties, what we see is a little bit of overlap here and there with the Democratic or the Republican or the Green or whatever party, but not a complete alignment. And so I think for a lot of, our human brains don't like cognitive dissonance, right? And so we see this tension. We're like, okay, as a Christian, I think this, and that leads me to be a Democrat or to be a Republican. Right. But when I look at the party platform, I see that I can't agree with them on everything. My brain does not like both agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously. And so I either have to resolve that tension by just disconnecting from politics, as some people do, or by trying to change the party platform, which most people don't have any control over or are not involved in politics at that level. Or by changing the way I understand my Christian convictions to bring them into alignment with the platform.
[13:41] And that resolves the tension, but by compromising what it means to be faithful to Christ. And so we end up adopting positions that are at odds with Christian faith and then kind of baptizing them and defending them as if they were and demonizing people on the other side, sometimes literally talking about them as if they are possessed by Satan or something, and saying, to be a Christian, you must align with this party. That whole framework, that whole way of approaching politics is so deeply flawed. And really the goal of my book, and I lay out different approaches to political engagement so that people can see there are other nuanced options than just saying, I don't want to be involved at all, or my faith is completely private, or my Christian convictions need to determine all of the laws of the land.
[14:46] Yeah, I think one of the things that it seems like a lot of what the Christian faith is, is about living in tension, that you're never going to be totally comfortable in one place or another. But I think that that's also a struggle because, as you said, the brain really, it's hard to handle that kind of cognitive dissonance. But in some ways, that is really the Christian life, is living in that kind of a struggle.
[15:21] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm really trying to encourage people to see that tension as a good and necessary thing. And our discipleship happens when we're really wrestling in that tension and not allowing our citizenship in heaven to be eclipsed by our citizenship in the United States. So, in kind of talking about this, and in the article, you kind of talk about a discernible Christian-ness in how we act.
[15:53] And one of the things that that brought up is civility. And that made me wonder, how is this similar and how is it different from kind of the calls that you've heard in culture about civility in politics?
[16:08] I think civility would be part of it. But if we're thinking of civility in terms of our ability to have a substantive conversation in which we can, you know, each express the differences that we have and honestly state our positions and not have that, you know, come to blows or come to name calling. We can just have, you know, a mature conversation and mutual respect, even where there's disagreement. So that civility, I think all of that is compatible with a Christian approach to politics and should be a starting point. But a Christian posture, a discernible Christian-ness goes beyond that. And to me, that really comes down to, we could say, the fruits of the Spirit. It. Because you can have a civil conversation while being kind of unpleasant within it.
[17:05] You can have a civil dialogue that kind of leaves both people going, well, yeah, we didn't insult each other, but I don't really care to interact with that person again. Or they were civil, civil, but not very kind. And so I think beyond just we can have a conversation without mocking people, the way that our life ought to demonstrate, ought to overflow love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, all of those things can be expressed in the way we communicate about politics, and not just in the sense of.
[17:50] Well, God and I know what's in my heart, so whatever the other person thinks doesn't really matter. But we ought to be able to engage with people even on social media or TikTok or whatever in a way that could leave people saying, either I disagree with them still, but I'd actually really like to continue the conversation because there was something about them that I want to be around.
[18:17] Or to say, you know, they've made a really compelling case and they've made it in a way that has drawn me closer to truth. I think we can come across as trying to win an argument, which is not necessarily helpful and leads people to just drive into their own positions or come across as trying to search for truth together. And as Christians, of course, we understand Christ as being the truth, but that truth then is reflected in different aspects of our lives and particularly in our common life as citizens of the United States. So if we're able to approach conversations in a way, and our writing, our social media, in a way that comes across as a genuine desire to bring people into a conversation that leads us to a better place, I think that is discernibly Christian, even if the other person doesn't recognize, oh, they're like that because they're Christian. But we know we are so thoroughly transformed by the Holy Spirit that that transformation comes across in people interacting with us about politics and saying, oh, that was different and that was good and I would like more of that kind of interaction.
[19:37] Yeah, it sounds, in a lot of ways, it's helping to understand that the other person also bears the image of God. That even if you disagree with them on an issue, there is that whole kind of belief in Imago Dei, that that person is a child of God and that there's a certain way of how we should react with another person even if we totally disagree. Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things we see in Genesis 2, when the man and the woman are first introduced to each other. The man acknowledges the sameness of the woman first, and then acknowledges the difference and sees both as good. So first bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, then she's woman, I'm man. I think that's really a model for us in thinking about how we engage with people who are different in any way, whether that's politically or ethnically or religiously or whatever. So we're the same first, and then we're different, and both are good.
[20:49] In the article, you have kind of four different ways of how Christians should engage in politics. And it comes down to, I think we have it here as salty, prophetic, separationist, and pluralist. The saltiness one was kind of interesting because of course that is hearkens from the gospel and that we are called to be salt.
[21:18] And how in some ways our modern church doesn't always have, We're just not really salty. So I guess, could you kind of explain what does it mean in a political framework to be salty in our culture? Yeah. So by salty, I'm referring to Jesus telling us that we're salt, right?
[21:42] And so if we think about what salt does, it adds necessary flavor and it's a preservative, right? So I think of saltiness primarily in terms of that. It's adding something that's missing from our political discourse.
[21:56] And what's missing, I think, is a lot of that discernible Christian-ness that I was talking about. And so in being salty in politics, we can think in terms of both our posture and the ways we communicate that kind of adding a missing flavor. But also for Christians who do affiliate with a political party, and many do, even independents tend to lean one way or the other, our ability to maintain a critical distance so that we can critique where the party, where we disagree, I think that adds a missing flavor. Because so much of what we see is that kind of uncritical adoption of an entire party and saying, you know, I don't really know or care necessarily what they believe beyond these one or two things that I think are most important. I'm just going to defend this party. I'm going to vote the party line and not really think about it any more deeply than that.
[23:00] Saltiness says, because our Christian convictions cannot and will not be encapsulated in a political party, we need to have the critical distance to then say, you know, I affiliate with the Democratic or Republican or Green or Libertarian or whatever party for these reasons, but here's why I disagree with them, and here's what I'm going to do about it. And that doesn't necessarily mean we have the power to make our party agree with us on everything. But I think in that ability to point out points of disagreement, we're adding something that's missing and having the courage to not be drawn into that extremism or that push for ideological purity, but to say, I think this party gets it right on these things and gets it wrong on these things. And part of that as well is when one party is in authority or when a law is passed, even when we agree with a particular law or a particular government leader, we have to recognize that laws both benefit and harm. And if I vote, if I, you know, affiliate with a party and I like a lot of what they do, but I also recognize, you know, when this law gets passed, these are going to be some of the harmful implications.
[24:30] And so I have a responsibility to mitigate that harm in whatever way I can and not to try to pretend it doesn't exist or to, you know, talk it away because I want to defend my party. I can say, you know, I agree with this law and I also recognize that this group of people are harmed by it. And so I have a responsibility to do what I can to mitigate that harm. So those are some of the things that I think make us salty.
[25:00] Why do you think, though, because it seems like it's really hard to do that these days.
[25:06] I mean, I think it's always been that way. But I think it's even especially harder now in political parties to say things that you may not agree with on everything in their platform or their policies, which may have not been the case. Because I can go back, you know, 20, 30 years ago, there was more, I think, space for people to disagree on issues within parties. And now it seems to be you know here is here is the line you must follow it, So, I mean, it just seems like it's very hard to have that type of a witness, that type of saltiness in an age where there seems to be so much of a desire to conform to the party line.
[25:57] Yeah, we're in a moment now politically where there is this incredibly strong demand for ideological purity. And that's, you know, on the right and the left, people saying, okay, you can't just be, you know, a member of the party, you have to have all of the right positions on all of the issues. And if you don't, then we're going to force you out. And in our political process, that forcing out is being primaried, is the main way that happens. And so one of the reasons I think that we've seen this really extreme bifurcation and this push to ideological purity is actually because people are not participating in the election process.
[26:41] And so the people who are most engaged, especially in the primaries where the candidates are being chosen, are the ones who are the most ideologically aligned and who have the strongest views. And the people who have the strongest views also tend to have views kind of at the outskirts rather than in the middle. If you're really a true political centrist, you don't tend to bring you know, a huge amount of passion for that centrism, but people are really passionate about, you know, the edges of party politics. And so when moderate people, when centrists, when Christians who are being salty aren't engaged in those early steps of the process, then the candidates who are elected are the ones who are chosen by ideological purists, And then they go into the state house or the school board or Congress or whatever with that ideological purity.
[27:42] Uh, and the more that happens, the stronger, uh, the, the push is to say you, you have to adopt all of these positions in this way and vote with us every time, or else you're not really one of us. And we've seen a lot of people, um, forced out of politics because they were insufficiently, uh, pure in their alignment with their party. And that's left us with a lot of problems, in national politics, in state politics, and even down to city councils and school boards.
[28:20] Yeah, I think it in some ways then also becomes, well, at least for Christians, idolatrous because it kind of makes the party the God instead of God.
[28:33] Yeah, it has absolutely crossed that line for a lot of people. And I think a lot don't realize that, genuinely believe that their political alignment is a necessary expression of their faith in God, and I think don't necessarily realize when that switch has flipped in themselves, where it's no longer their loyalty to God and their politics is kind of an expression of that, but their loyalty to party and the way they talk about God. Is an expression of their party loyalty.
[29:13] The other concept that you talk up here is prophetic. And that's always an interesting word because it brings up one, well, it brings up two images for me. The first, of course, is someone like Martin Luther King that is willing to speak a truth that might be uncomfortable. And I think the interesting thing about King was that he said things that were uncomfortable not just to white America, but also to blacks as well. And that usually, if I'm following what is in the Bible, that tends to be what a prophet does. They're not popular. That's kind of their role. But that brings up the other side is that in our modern sense, sometimes we tend to think that a prophet is someone that is speaking truth, but to the other side. It's not to our side because, of course, we're the good people.
[30:11] But how would you describe what it means to be prophetic in your sense and not in kind of the modern sense that we kind of think a prophet is? Yeah. So I have in mind for the prophetic role, I kind of start with the Anabaptist kind of approach to politics, which is more separatist. I don't think Christians need to go so far as being isolated in their separation. But by prophetic, I really mean having enough critical distance to be able to recognize the truth. This is what prophets do, right? They speak forth the truth of God, no matter what the cost is. And so we need to have enough critical distance. We can be kind of affiliated with a party. We can have our political leanings and be honest about that. But we have to have enough distance to be able to look objectively and differentiate to discern truth from error and be able to call it out. And I think that's especially when I talk about being salty and connecting that to being prophetic, I think that's especially important in our engagement with our own kind of people.
[31:29] I'm most critical of groups I'm a part of. And I think we should be. We have the most right to criticize the people we actually represent. And that doesn't mean we can't also critique in a civil way, you know, other viewpoints that we don't hold. Uh, but I think to be prophetic is to speak truth, to speak truth as defined by God, not just to like throw out Bible verses and things like that, but at a much deeper level to, to kind of be able to peel back, uh, the, the veneer of, you know, a party ideology and look underneath it and say, here's where the problem is. And here's what we might be able to do about it, if anything, and especially to do that in groups, institutions, party organizations that we're a part of.
[32:25] Yeah, and this kind of leads into that third one about the separationists. And you talk a little bit about the Anabaptists. And reading in the article, it seems what comes to mind to me is not as much that you're saying Christians should just kind of leave society or anything, but really that they should be able to kind of distinguish themselves from the larger society, which makes me think a lot about Dietrich Bonhoeffer in that case. And you talk a little bit about how Christians should, especially, let's say, in the role of religious liberty, that if we believe in that enough, that we should believe in that for someone who's Muslim or Jewish or whatever, that they also have that right to believe.
[33:18] To be who they are, kind of separate from the larger society. Would you be able to kind of expand a little bit about that,
[33:25] what you were thinking when you thought about what it means to be separate in society? LS Yeah. So for thinking about, I have two kind of categories. I have separatist and then separationist. And so separatist is this discernible difference, this critical distance from party politics rooted in the Anabaptist tradition, and then separation as something of what do we do with separation of church and state? Is that a good thing? What does it even mean? And so I explain in the book kind of the roots of that theologically in a Baptist iteration of it and a Lutheran iteration of it. But what it comes down to for me, as I said, my biggest interest is really in the mission and witness of the church.
[34:13] How are we representing Christ to the world? And so in that context, I see separation between church and state as a good thing in that where by separation, I don't mean we privatize our faith and it has no role on the public square at all. I think we should be able to, we should be able to say, I think politicians even should be able to say, I hold this position because of my Christian faith, and then to be able to explain, here's why I hold that position as a Christian. And also, here's why, even if you're not a Christian, that may be a compelling position for you to hold. I think if the opposite of separation of church from government is the conflation of the two, what we see in having a state church, having an official religion for the country. If we're thinking in terms of the church's mission to make disciples.
[35:14] Having no official state church is the better situation for making disciples, where people see Christian faith or other faiths as a choice that they are free to make, and where Christians, therefore, can't just assume that, well, someone's born here and so they're automatically Christian, or so people don't think that of themselves. We can say we actually have a role and a responsibility to make disciples. It's not the government's job to make the disciples. It's not the Constitution's job. It's not the culture's job to make disciples. It's the church's job to make disciples. And that happens best where the church is free from being owned in any way by the government, being official, being sponsored or supported by the government. Uh, and the, the history of religion in the United States has largely borne that out, especially when we compare it, uh, to Europe or countries that have a state religion. Uh, and so like I said, that, that doesn't mean we, you know, put our religion over here and put our government or our politics over here and we just can't let them interact with each other. It does mean that where there is interaction and we, where we do bring our faith into the public square, we need to be really thoughtful about how we do that.
[36:40] Because it's not going to be convincing for a lot of people if I just stand up and say, well, the Bible says this, and so that should be the law. Well, not everybody's Christian, not everybody agrees with what the Bible says. And so that's going to push me to actually be more faithful and more deeply rooted in my Christian convictions because I'm going to have to understand what I believe and why really well to be able to explain it. And then also to discern where there are things that we'd say, okay, this is a Christian conviction, but doesn't necessarily translate to the law. So it takes something like tithing, right? Like that is a Christian principle. It would be, there aren't really Christians out there saying, we as Christians think we should tithe, and therefore we ought to pass a law that requires every citizen of the United States to donate 10% of their income to charity, right? So no one's trying to do that, as far as I know, or if they are, it's such a tiny movement that it's not making any impact.
[37:47] But there's all kinds of studies on the ways that Christian philanthropy benefits society in really tangible ways. And that encouragement of people to, that example that Christians have then can inspire people who aren't Christian to do the same. That's a very different thing than saying this is a Christian conviction and therefore it ought to also be the law of the land.
[38:13] The final one that you talk about is pluralist. And that is always interesting because we have, especially now, and I think one of the reasons that as a culture we're at where we are is because in a lot of ways we're grappling with a lot of diversity. In a way that I probably didn't 30, 40 years ago. What does it mean for a Christian in our culture to be pluralist?
[38:47] So in this specific context of the article and my book, pluralism isn't referring to ideological pluralism or to diversity. I would actually kind of put that under the idea of separation. They think, you know, we want people in America who are not Christian so that they might have the opportunity to meet Christ through evangelism, through discipleship, not through the law.
[39:19] So pluralism in this context refers to an approach to politics called principled pluralism, or also known as sphere sovereignty. And this is the idea that there are multiple spheres of society, like the church, the government, business, education, the family, there's all these different kind of components of society. So that's where the plural part comes in. There's multiple spheres of society. And so principled pluralism says that all of those different spheres have unique roles to play in society and should not be governed by any other sphere. So this rules out authoritarian government, where you have, you know, really the government controlling everything. You don't have any free press, you don't have any private or non-public public education options, that the government is really controlling everything. And we see all different kinds of authoritarian regimes all around the world right now. And throughout history, and say there is no freedom of religion in those kinds of systems.
[40:34] So you want this pluralism that says we don't want authoritarianism or autocracy. At the same time, pluralism says that the church has a really, really important role to play in society, but that role is not to be authoritarian. The church's job is not to control the government or to control the public education system or things like that. The church's role has to do with making disciples and helping people understand how to live as Christians in these other spheres of society, but the church's job is not to control the other spheres of society. So in that sense, there's a connection with separation, but it kind of goes a step farther and says, what is the church's role in a society that has all of these different types of systems and institutions? Is the church's job to try to take over those systems to Christianize them, or is the church's job to influence them by being the church and sending disciples out into those different spheres to live Christianly and to serve the common good?
[41:49] So we live in this time that is as we said earlier very polarized and, it's really I think very hard to all of these principles.
[42:06] We're kind of at this point in, I think the church is kind of falling short on all of these. How do we kind of help, and what would your advice be for communities of faith to develop these principles to, in a time when it seems like, again, as I kind of said earlier, there's just this desire to conform. Form, and really to, in some ways, it seems like, sublimate the church under some type of a political program, whether it's on the left or on the right.
[42:41] How do we have communities that can welcome tension in our world? Yeah, it's not easy. I think that has to come from the top and the critical mass of the congregation. Congregation but starting at the top i think pastors need to be really clear about who they are representing they're not there to represent a political party or a policy agenda or a particular candidate they're there to represent christ and so i think pastors in in every interaction both behind the pulpit and on social media and in one-on-one interactions need to model.
[43:25] This kind of Christian-ness and saying, you know, I'm not here to represent a party. I'm here to represent Christ. And the way I do that is certainly going to address topics that we would think of as political, that's part of preaching scripture, is going to touch on things that have political significance. But I think there's a really big difference and a significant difference between saying, you know, our Christian convictions lead us to value the sanctity of life, for example.
[43:59] That's a political issue, but we're not talking about it in the church as a policy issue. We're talking about it as a theological conviction. And so rather than saying, we believe this, therefore you need to vote for this person, or we believe this, therefore this This is a policy you have to support. You can say, we believe this about life, and therefore we need to have a conversation about the different ways that that plays out in society, because the world is more complicated than just saying, well, this is a conviction, and therefore it should be the law. Um, so I've heard pastors do that really well. I've heard pastors do that very poorly. Uh, so I think that that's part of it in the, in the way that we talk about people we disagree with about anything. We, we kind of set the tone for our churches in that way. Uh, and then where you do have those people in the church who, uh, who have that kind of posture, who, who have the disposition that would allow them to have, uh, more nuanced conversations. I think those are people who need to be brought into roles and opportunities to kind of shape, you know, a small group or, you know, a Wednesday evening study session or whatever.
[45:18] I've seen churches do a really good job of having small group conversations around, you know, hot button issues. If you have the right people moderating those, then those can be really fruitful, thoughtful conversations. A big part of our challenge right now is that people have self-selected their churches along political lines. And so a lot of churches don't actually have much political diversity in them. And so I think even in that circumstance, pastors can model how do we disagree well and can also challenge, you know, if you're the leader of a congregation where you would guess that 90% of the people in it vote Republican, you can actually have that prophetic witness to not say like, here's why we need to call out the Republican church on this or Republican party on this issue. You, but to say, here is a Christian conviction, and that is a Christian conviction, whether it aligns with your party or not. And so what does it mean for you to hold that Christian conviction as more important than your party allegiances? I think that's a fine line. It's complicated. There's not an easy answer to that.
[46:38] But I do think that pastors really need to take the lead. and identify those people who can help kind of shift the way that their congregations are approaching politics. That happens best in smaller settings, just practically than just saying things from the pulpit. But I think speaking prophetically is also one of the main roles that a preaching pastor has. So we're not excluded from that either. there.
[47:08] You kind of actually read my mind because I was going to, I mean, especially in a lot of the churches where I'm familiar with and as a pastor, they are self-selected. Being where I am in the Twin Cities, it's usually they're more on the Democratic side than they're on the Republican side. And I think that that's a challenge of how do you help people understand that the church is not, a political party at prayer, as the old saying sometimes go. And to understand that tension, even if you agree with the party platform, to understand what comes first. And it's not the party. But that can be a challenge. Yeah, absolutely. None of this is easy. Nope. If it was, we'd be doing it already, probably. Yeah.
[48:06] So if people want to learn a little bit more about you, I will put this article in our show notes. Where can they find you? Sure. So I think if you find the article helpful, then certainly my book is the next step, Faithful Politics, 10 Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters. It came out in August from IVP Academic. And then I have a website, MirandaZaporCruz.com. And you can find some of my writing there, videos of different talks and sermons and podcasts and things that I've done. And then I'm on social media as well. I'm not super active behind kind of sharing podcasts and things like that right now. Well, I'm also a full-time professor and a mom, but those are all places where you can find me and keep kind of engaging with these ideas. Okay. Well, Miranda Zepo-Cruz, thank you so much for taking the time to chat today. This was a really helpful conversation, and I'm hoping it will be helpful for people who listen to it, especially in this election season.
[49:21] Music.
[49:52] So as I might kind of like to always ask at the end of these conversations, I'd love to hear your views. You could drop me a line sending an email to churchinmaineatsubstack.com. Also, I have put links to the articles by Miranda as well as a link to her book and to check those out. And always, if you want to learn more about the podcast, check out past episodes and even donate, go to churchinmaine.org. I also have a sub stack, churchinmaine.substack.com that you'll have related articles. I also sometimes I'll do put up links to my shows there as well. I would encourage you to subscribe to the podcast and your favorite podcast app, leave a review. That's really important. important helps others find the podcast. And finally, also consider if you want to subscribe also to the Substack as well, that when articles are written, you will immediately get them. So that is it for this episode of Church and Main. Thanks again for listening. Take care, everyone. Godspeed. And I'll see you soon.
[51:11] Music.
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