25 RELIGION, POLITICS, AND CIVIL DISCOURSE other. For example, Mark Noll, in his highly acclaimed book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, declares that among American Christians who identify as politically conservative, they view “all progressive political or cultural ideas, not as proposals to discuss, but as vicious attacks on everything God-fearing and positive in American history.”6 As Peter Wehner writes: “When the Christian faith is politicized, churches become repositories not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized. The result is not only wounding the nation; it’s having a devastating impact on the Christian faith.”7 What happens when a faith is driven more by politics than theology? According to Russell Moore, former President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and now Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today, he states, “We now see young evangelicals walking away from evangelicalism not because they do not believe what the church teaches, but because they believe that the church itself does not believe what the church teaches.”8 How should Christians in America respond to the hyper-partisan nature of politics negatively impacting not only our society, but the church as well? IMPLICATIONS Christians of all political backgrounds should be engaged politically. Who can argue with agendas such as the reduction of poverty and the instillation of strong family values? When a Christian approaches one’s faith holistically, one sees the need for both the social and individual realms of the world to be touched by God. While discussing the influence of Christians in American politics, Martin Marty infers the following: “To be winners, they [evangelicals] had to draw other lines, lines that matched the prejudgments if not the prejudices, the practices if not the doctrine, of their members and potential members.”9 As American Christians engage in partisan politics, they have compromised in order to protect the political power they had accumulated, losing their prophetic voices in the process. As Carter makes clear:
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