The NAE and Christian Politics

I'm following this story with some anticipation -- and I'm about a week behind in reporting on it. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) is drafting a new document concerning the role that Christians should play in the political process. According to the Detroit News story:

It affirms a religiously based commitment to government protections for the poor, the sick and the disabled, including fair wages, health care, nutrition and education. It declares that Christians have a “sacred responsibility” to protect the environment.

But it also hews closely to a traditional evangelical emphasis on the importance of families, opposition to homosexual marriage, and “social evils,” such as alcohol, drugs, abortion and the use of human embryos for stem-cell research. It reaffirms a commitment to religious freedom at home and abroad.

It also addresses consevative Christians' tendancy to play party politics:

In domestic politics, evangelicals “must guard against over-identifying Christian social goals with a single political party, lest nonbelievers think that Christian faith is essentially political in nature.”

The full document is available here. I'm going to print it out and read it tonight/tomorrow, and I'll comment more fully Tuesday evening. Right now, I'm excited. I think that this might start to emphasise to Christians that a lot of the things we want government and political parties to do , the church should be doing.

Posted by Warren Kelly at June 27, 2004 07:28 PM