Great and well thought out and I agree that all Christians world wide should think this way. Tragically in America 🇺🇸 where I live the American 🇺🇸 Church(of all traditions) are I think disillusioned, confused, and divided on how the church should think about interacting with government and culture. What I hope we all agree on for the health of the Christian church world wide is that we oppose all extreme forms of Christian nationalism but not Christian civic engagement to speak truth to power. Overall great piece by the Bird Man!!
Yes. Love doesn’t coerce or control, so it recognizes that people may not do what is best for themselves or others. But that’s the only way to truly love people, is to let them be who they are. And that means being willing to accept differences, work through conflict, etc. That’s something we in the church could work on, disagreement without alienation, accepting conflict as a necessary part of growth, letting people make choices for their own lives instead of trying to control so much.
Spot on. And we should not be afraid at all of the natural fractiousness of liberal democracy. It is the safety valve and recalibration tool of a healthy system.
“The EU did everything to scuttle BREXIT … even to the point of trying to reignite tensions in Northern Ireland.” I’m really not sure this is the case. The implications of Brexit for the Good Friday agreement were widely discussed prior to the vote and dismissed by the Leavers who had no head for such details (or perhaps never thought they would win).
The behaviour of the British government during negotiations were disgusting in the extreme and largely relied on making threats around crashing out of the EU for a ‘clean’ Brexit (which would have been disastrous for all economies).
Brexit has been a disaster. I don’t disagree that the economic benefits of membership often accrued for those better off. It has to be accepted however that the level of public debate around such an important issue was shockingly ill informed and reflects a total failure of leadership and decency by many involved. Trying to make pantomime villains out of either side now is not helpful.
Among all the theories as to why Hillary Clinton lost the election, there's one I haven't seen mentioned: because she's a woman. Given that every single US president till then had been male, might that not have something to do with it? (Which is not to say that the other stuff isn't also relevant.)
Great and well thought out and I agree that all Christians world wide should think this way. Tragically in America 🇺🇸 where I live the American 🇺🇸 Church(of all traditions) are I think disillusioned, confused, and divided on how the church should think about interacting with government and culture. What I hope we all agree on for the health of the Christian church world wide is that we oppose all extreme forms of Christian nationalism but not Christian civic engagement to speak truth to power. Overall great piece by the Bird Man!!
Nick, glad you liked it!
This is really good, Mike. Spot on. And I loved your book on these issues.
Hi Mike
I appreciate your insightful analysis and agree with your conclusions.
Thank you for tackling these thorny issues with courage and informed conviction.
Peter Keith
Yes. Love doesn’t coerce or control, so it recognizes that people may not do what is best for themselves or others. But that’s the only way to truly love people, is to let them be who they are. And that means being willing to accept differences, work through conflict, etc. That’s something we in the church could work on, disagreement without alienation, accepting conflict as a necessary part of growth, letting people make choices for their own lives instead of trying to control so much.
Spot on. And we should not be afraid at all of the natural fractiousness of liberal democracy. It is the safety valve and recalibration tool of a healthy system.
“The EU did everything to scuttle BREXIT … even to the point of trying to reignite tensions in Northern Ireland.” I’m really not sure this is the case. The implications of Brexit for the Good Friday agreement were widely discussed prior to the vote and dismissed by the Leavers who had no head for such details (or perhaps never thought they would win).
The behaviour of the British government during negotiations were disgusting in the extreme and largely relied on making threats around crashing out of the EU for a ‘clean’ Brexit (which would have been disastrous for all economies).
Brexit has been a disaster. I don’t disagree that the economic benefits of membership often accrued for those better off. It has to be accepted however that the level of public debate around such an important issue was shockingly ill informed and reflects a total failure of leadership and decency by many involved. Trying to make pantomime villains out of either side now is not helpful.
P.S. I say this as a Brit.
Among all the theories as to why Hillary Clinton lost the election, there's one I haven't seen mentioned: because she's a woman. Given that every single US president till then had been male, might that not have something to do with it? (Which is not to say that the other stuff isn't also relevant.)