Politics

"... Theological conservatives have tended to respond to the demans of politics in one of two ways. At worst, they have shunned politics as a dirty, worldly, and humanistic endeavor alien to the concerns of the gospel. At best, they have regarded politics as a legitimate enterprise only when placing it at a level of secondary importance to the "church's primary task of preaching the gospel." What both groups of conservatives have failed to see is that the gospel itself is, among other things, a gospel of political redemption. Conservatives have so often spiritualized the gospel as to be guilty of practicing a modern form of Gnosticism-surely a heresy no worse than the humanism of the theological liberals. Theological conservatives must recognize that political concers are not simply incidental to the message of the gospel, but integral to the very meaning of the gospel itself.

Conservatives have virtually immunized themselves from recognizing the political dimensions of the gospel. They are almost blind to the fact that the birth, life, and death of the Messiah were interpreted among his contemporaries in political terms. Conservatives have emphasized the priestly function of the incarnation at the expense of the prophetic and kingly functions which were all to be united in the Messiah."

Paul B. Henry (Son of theologian Carl F.H. Henry)