An audio version of this talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available via podcast feeds.
I’ve been thinking about politics and disillusionment that seems most characteristic of now, in the West at least, and thinking about the prepolitcal – what politics needs to work well. I’ve thought about Plato on beauty and Aristotle on ethics in previous posts.
Now a third guide, Jesus on… which isn’t immediately easy to say. And that’s the point. Some would say that Jesus and politics is easy to define. – a preference for the poor – the prosperity gospel – or Christian exceptionalism and oppressive regimes.
But the heart of Jesus and politics is not in practical policies or polities, I believe. He was in the world but not of the world. He stood for something more than was immediately obvious or practical He constantly acted so as to respond to the moment but so as to allow more to come in.
That was why he talked of the kingdom that is near, revising apocalyptic expectations and ushering the transformation of the self.
I mentioned David Lloyd Dusenbury’s book, I Judge No One, And my book, A Secret History of Christianity.