Political Engagement & Kingdom Convictions: How to Avoid Common Pitfalls : Miranda Zapor Cruz

Full-Text Transcript

How can we avoid some of the common pitfalls when we engage in politics as Christ followers?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Miranda Zapor Cruz. Miranda is a professor of Historical Theology at Indiana Wesleyan University. She holds a PhD in religion, politics, and society from Baylor University, and she earned her Master’s of Divinity at Princeton Theological Seminary. Her most recent book is entitled Faithful Politics. Together, Miranda and I look at the unique dual citizenship that we hold as Christ followers in both the kingdom of God and the country in which we reside. Miranda shares how we can navigate some of the complexities and challenges and avoid common pitfalls when it comes to engaging in politics as Christ followers. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, so good to have you joining us. Welcome to another episode of Frontstage Backstage. I’m super excited about today’s conversation. Now, each and every week here at Frontstage Backstage, I have the opportunity, really the honor, to sit down with a trusted ministry leader and dive into a topic, all in an effort to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you embrace healthy, sustainable rhythms and help you flourish in both your life and leadership. We are proud to be part of the Pastor Serve Network. Not only do we bring you this episode every week, but our team also creates an entire toolkit that complements this conversation, and you can find that at PastorServe.org/network. You’ll find a toolkit for every single episode that we release. Now, in this toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. Now, this growth guide gives you the opportunity to go through, look at some insights, and wrestle through some questions to help you dig more deeply into the topic we discuss. We encourage you to use that for yourself. Then, use it with the ministry leaders at your local church. Again, you can find that PastorServe.org/network. Now, at Pastor Serve, we love walking alongside pastors, encouraging them, and helping them as they develop in their ministry. If you would like to learn more about how you can receive a complimentary coaching session with one of our experienced ministry coaches, you can find that information at PastorServe.org/freesession. Now if you’re joining us on YouTube, take a moment and give us a thumbs up, and if you have not yet subscribed, please be sure to subscribe. You can also drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. Our team loves getting to know our audience better, and we will be praying for you and for your ministry. Now, whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe or follow so you do not miss out on any of these great episodes. As I said, I’m very excited for today’s guest. At this time, I’d like to welcome Miranda Zapor Cruz to the show. Miranda, welcome.

Miranda Zapor Cruz
Thanks for having me.

Jason Daye
Miranda, super excited for our conversation today. Historically, the people of God have found themselves engaged in society. I mean, that’s just the reality of humankind, right? So, with that comes government, politics, and all of those types of things. Throughout the history of God’s people, we have had to kind of learn, discern, and determine how we can most faithfully engage both our faith and our politics, and what that might look like. As you well know, Miranda, we are in the throes of this here in the US for those of you joining from the United States because we’re in an election year. So there’s lots of conversation around this, and there’s been heightened conversation, it seems, over the last decade or so, around these conversations. It seems like that’s kind of the ebb and flow of different countries depending on what’s going on in your particular country. There’s kind of an ebb and flow of how pronounced this conversation becomes depending on what’s going on in the government, right? So, Miranda, you have written a book. You’re a professor. You’ve written a book. Your latest book is entitled Faithful Politics, a fantastic book. You really dig into some of the different ways and some of the different approaches that Christians have engaged in politics. It’s absolutely fascinating for those of you who are watching and listening along, I encourage you to pick up the book because you look at all these different ways that that, historically, Christians have done this. So I want to begin, if we could, Miranda, by just asking a question around the backdrop of how we can think through how our faith and politics relate. One of the things that you write about in the book is you talk about the idea of thinking cross-culturally in a way. You use an example of if we were to go to do a mission project in another country and kind of that experience. I thought that resonated so much with me as I read it, and I’d love for us to kind of start out there if we could. Talk to us a little bit about just that approach as we enter into this conversation, that cross-cultural thinking.

Miranda Zapor Cruz
Sure, I think one of the experiences that many of us have had, if we’re in ministry leadership of any kind, is the short-term cross-cultural mission trip, right? Wherever you go, if you’re there for the first time, you just intuitively notice things that are different, and you might make evaluative judgments on good or bad differences, but ideally, you’re at least noticing, oh, we do that differently back home than we do here. So I think that’s a really valuable mindset if we’re to understand ourselves as being citizens of the kingdom of God or citizens of Heaven first, that we recognize that when we’re in our home country, and we’ll go with the United States since that’s the context I’m in. If we recognize, okay, I have a citizenship in heaven, and I have a citizenship in the United States. They’re different countries, and so I ought to be noticing differences. So instead of saying, Okay, well, I’m American, and I’m Christian, and the majority of people in the United States self-identify as Christian. Christianity has played a huge role in the historical development of the United States. So we kind of can expect American culture, American law, and American people to roughly align with Christianity. Because we have that expectation, we don’t always have the eyes to recognize where there is actually a distinction. So if we’re able to come into our citizenship in the United States or our home countries, expecting there to be foundational differences, not just surface-level differences, but really foundational differences, then we might be able to be formed by our kingdom citizenship in such a way that we come to be able to see where those actual foundational differences are in the United States, and then to really think critically about what does that mean for me as a citizen of heaven? How do I engage with this? That has to be at a much deeper level than just kind of discrete policy issues. I think Christians can be good at identifying here’s a specific law or a specific policy I disagree with or that I want, but aren’t necessarily as good at excavating the foundations to understand what the deeper level relationship is between our kingdom citizenship and our citizenship in our countries.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s incredibly helpful, Miranda. So let’s lean in a little bit there as we look at, as you said, excavating the foundations. Help us. How do we process through that? How do we begin to dig more deeply? Because I think it’s absolutely true, Miranda, what you say is that oftentimes we look at policies and we look at laws that are being passed. We look at the high level of things that are easily identifiable, and then we make those calls based on that. That can be helpful to a degree, but as you said, it can also maybe lull us into believing that some particular policy trickles down to something foundational that may or may not necessarily uphold kingdom values, right? So, how do we excavate into those foundations? How do we dig more deeply? What does that look like for us?

Miranda Zapor Cruz
Yeah, I think we have to start with the foundational presupposition that the United States or any other country is not the kingdom of God. It seems like a very basic thing to say, but a lot of Christian political behavior can erode that distinction and end up being an attempt by Christians to bring about the Kingdom of God through political action. So we can think, if I just get the right laws passed and the right people elected, then the kingdom of God is going to be realized on earth. The truth of the matter is that it’s God who sovereignly reigns, not humans, and God’s reign is not dependent upon human action. We do the same thing, contrasting, say, if this law passes or if this person is elected, it’s a kind of existential threat to Christianity, to our faith, and that simply isn’t the case. It has real-world consequences. I don’t want to downplay the importance and the real-world impact of laws. But to recognize that legislation, politics, and political leaders matter a great deal for the earth, should not be confused with thinking they’re somehow bringing about or hindering the reign of God. So if we have that foundational starting point to say, okay, the United States and the kingdom of God, these are different things. What is it that actually makes them different? Then we can start digging down at that deeper level and say, Okay, these are really different entities. So what is it that makes them different? I outlined some of those in the book. But I think those could be a starting point for digging deeper and saying, Okay, what else is different, what else is different, and then what does it mean to live as a citizen of the kingdom of God in a country that has different foundations, purposes, and values?

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s helpful, Miranda, and I’d like us to get to some of those distinctions in a moment. But first, the idea of influencing politics in such a way that it does good in things that uphold kingdom values, right? So, I mean, so that’s really the argument. It’s like, well, there are laws that help uphold kingdom values. Therefore, there are particular political leaders that either uphold kingdom values to a better degree or don’t. I mean, that’s just the reality, whether it’s the US or any other country. So, Miranda, that tends to be the place where people go and they’re like, Well, this is what I can do. Talk to us a little bit about, if you could just clarify, I just want to clarify this, a little bit about this idea of, what does it mean, first, to take political action in a faithful way as a Christ follower without assuming that that action somehow is bringing about the actual kingdom of God versus the kingdom values, right? Because those things can be confused or maybe misinterpreted. But help clarify that first a little bit, Miranda.

Miranda Zapor Cruz
Yeah, I think some of it comes down to the language we use. I think most Christians are not cognizantly aware or actively thinking, if I do this, I’m going to cause the kingdom of God to come. I don’t think people are actually consciously thinking in that way. It’s more implicit. But we sometimes hear Christians use messianic language, salvation language to talk about political leaders. So like, Okay, this is the person who’s going to rescue us or to save us from whatever we think we need to be saved from, not generally salvation from sin from political leaders, but salvation from some kind of catastrophe. On the flip side, we use catastrophic language that can elevate the political to the spiritual, in the sense of thinking that if a law passes, it has catastrophic consequences for the church. The capital C church. Not merely the church as an institution or that it is somehow going to derail God’s plan for people. So I think just keeping those things in their proper place. We can be very clear that elections have consequences, that laws have a very real impact on people’s day-to-day lives and our own day-to-day lives, how we experience the world, and what our country and our culture look like. We can take that very seriously, while also reminding ourselves that God is the one who is sovereign, and our merely political machinations are not going to either catastrophically derail God’s work and God’s work is not dependent upon our political work.

Jason Daye
That’s helpful, and I think it’s good for us to think through other countries. For us in the US, to think through other countries and see the work of what the Spirit has done through the church, say, in underground China or other places where they’re in the midst of a government that obviously does not reflect the kingdom of God, and yet, God does amazing, miraculous things in the midst of that. I mean, I think those reminders have been helpful for me personally, and it is interesting as we process through this to think through how much we elevate the political arena and sometimes, I think that can get skewed. Sometimes we can give it much, much, much more power, not that it doesn’t impact the citizens of any particular country. But sometimes we elevate the power of politics to a degree that almost shoots it above what God is doing in the world. Would that be an accurate assessment, Miranda?

Miranda Zapor Cruz
I think so. I don’t think we always realize that we’re doing it. I’m a very politically engaged person. I follow politics very closely. I can get very wrapped up in current events and political news. So I remind myself very consciously that this matters. This is important, but it is not eternally important. It’s important, but people’s salvation does not hinge on it. My command as a Christian is not to bring people into agreement with me politically. My command as a Christian is to make disciples. Those are different things. So that just helps to keep things in their proper order. I think one of the ways that we can recognize in ourselves when politics maybe has supplanted our faith, that things have gotten out of alignment is when we find ourselves having such a strong alignment with a particular political party or ideology that we find ourselves doubting the faithfulness of brothers and sisters in Christ who landed in a different place politically, and say, Oh, if your political affiliation does not match mine, then your faith is not as my faith, and we divide the church where it should be merely political disagreement.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good because all you have to do is open up X or Twitter, scroll through, and you’ll see so many people on either side saying, that if you vote one particular way, then you really can’t call yourself a Christian and that’s painful. It’s painful for the church. So, let’s talk, Miranda, a little bit about, okay, so we dig deeper into foundations. You said there are some distinctions and you lay these out in the book. Some distinctions between the kingdom of God and any kingdom, country, or government on Earth. So let’s talk about some of those foundational distinctions that could maybe help clarify in our minds and our hearts, as we’re trying to be faithful to God, but also engaged in what’s going on in the government around us, and trying to be a responsible citizen as well. What are some of those foundations that we should be thinking about or some of those distinctions between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man?

Miranda Zapor Cruz
Sure, I think the ones that stand out to me the most are distinctions where we use the same word but it means different things in the kingdom of God versus in the United States. So the most prominent one, maybe in my mind, is the word freedom, or the concept of freedom. We use this word. It’s a big word for America. It’s a big word for our Constitution and for our self-understanding as a geopolitical entity. It’s also a really important word in Scripture and in the kingdom of God, but they mean different things. So in Scripture, where the way freedom is used is usually referring to freedom from the power of sin. That freedom that where we understand sin as a turning inward, as a selfishness, of pride, the opposite of love of God and neighbor. Freedom from that sets us free to be for our neighbor. So we have to be set free from sin in order to really love God and love others. But in the United States and other countries, freedom is generally thought of in terms of individual autonomy. So it’s the freedom as an individual to do what I want to do when I want to do it, as long as it doesn’t violate someone else’s freedom to do what they want to do when they want to do it. So it’s it’s an individualistic understanding of freedom, and those are opposite things. In the kingdom of God, I’m set free to be for others, and in America, I’m free to be for myself. But when we use that same word, sometimes it gets conflated. So you’ll see Bible verses about freedom superimposed on an American flag, for example, as if these freedoms were the same thing. So we can dig into that. What is the freedom that we’re called to live in? Then how as citizens of the kingdom of God, can we reorient our freedom as citizens of the United States to be freedom for others, instead of freedom to to self-actualize or to live out our own autonomy the way we want to? The other big example that I’ll mention is power. In Scripture, the power of God is made perfect in the weakness of Jesus Christ on the cross and then in his resurrection. So the way power works is manifested through humility. In the United States, in global politics in general, power is the power to coerce. So it’s the ability to get someone to do something. That’s power. I have power in my classroom because when I tell my students to stand up, they do it, right? So if we’re conflating power the way the world understands it, and then using scripture to justify uses of power that are in violation of a scriptural vision of what power is, then we’re getting confused about what the foundations are and about what our kingdom citizenship means for us as citizens of our countries.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s super helpful. Now, one of the things that you do, Miranda is in Faithful Politics, your book, you look at several different, 10 different, ways that, historically, Christians have engaged with politics. I was wondering if you could, obviously, you guys have to buy the book to really dig into these because there’s a lot here. I was wondering if you could maybe touch on some of these. I don’t know if we have time to touch on all of them but touch on some of them that are kind of representative of ways that we’ve engaged, and just kind of give us some thoughts and assessments around where it aligns or misaligns with the kingdom of God?

Miranda Zapor Cruz
So the one that was probably most familiar, at least in terms of the words that are used, would be a separationist approach that starts with the theological foundation of some version of separation of church and state. So that’s something that is more or less taken for granted in America. There are arguments about what exactly that means, but we’re familiar with the concept of separation of church and state. So I explained the Baptist and Lutheran different approaches to that, but the idea basically is that religion should be free from government influence and that Christians or people of any other faith are at liberty, the Baptists call it soul liberty, to choose for ourselves what faith we want to profess without a government telling us what we have to believe or implying that we have to believe something in order to be fully accepted as citizens, have our rights respected, and things like that. So that’s a familiar concept for most Americans. The caveat with it is that when we emphasize the separation of church and state, that can lead to a privatization of faith, meaning the idea that my faith is private. That it shouldn’t have any influence in the public sphere. That people shouldn’t talk about what they believe if they’re talking to the general public, or that politicians shouldn’t have any religious views at all, or if they do, we shouldn’t know about them. I think that that can be a real problem because our faith should be so transformative in every aspect of our lives and our way of thinking that if we’re capable of completely privatizing it, there’s something deficient about how we’ve been discipled. We can certainly be in kind of control of the language we use. How much am I going to bring the Bible into a particular conversation? Or things like that. But if we actually find ourselves able to so thoroughly compartmentalize our faith such that it has absolutely nothing to do with politics at all, then I think that’s actually a problem. So the question is not, how do you keep faith out of politics? It’s how does faith rightly impact politics? I keep at the forefront of my mind the mission and witness of the church. That’s kind of my lens for evaluating these different approaches. It’s really, what is their impact on how others who don’t know Christ perceive Christ on the basis of the political behavior of Christians. So if the separation approach can lead some people who aren’t part of the Christian faith to think, Okay, well, this must not be all that important to Christians because it doesn’t seem to affect their political behavior. Or even to think that Christians are kind of indifferent toward political things that maybe are deeply affecting people. So that’s one. Another I’d highlight, that would also be maybe more familiar, is what I’m referring to as a direct Christian influence approach. There’s not really a technical term for it, but I put it under the heading of Calvinist approaches. Not everyone who takes this approach is Calvinist by any stretch, but the approach is basically rooted in Calvin’s notion that the law of the land should be more consistent than not with the law of God. So for people who take a direct Christian influence approach, the line of thinking would be, that what God has commanded is what’s best and it doesn’t just apply to Christians. It’s what’s best for everyone when it comes to how we organize society, moral laws, and things like that. So with that starting point, Christians could say, it’s good and it’s appropriate for me as a Christian to expressly work to enact Christian-based policies, values, or positions in government because whether someone is Christian or not, that is what’s best for all of society. One of the caveats with that, it’s a legitimate approach, and many Christians take it. One of the caveats is that for people who are not Christian, it very frequently comes across as Christians grasping for power and trying to maintain a hold on a cultural majority that is slipping away. So for people who are kind of on the outside looking into Christianity, this direct Christian influence approach can often come across as actually alienating. It doesn’t come across as, oh, these Christians have such a deep love for me as a neighbor, that they really want what’s best for me and what’s best for our community. So some Christians who take this approach, they think, I’m doing this out of a motivation of love, or I love my neighbor, therefore these are the laws that need to be enacted. But it’s not coming across as love, often because of the rhetoric and the methods by which Christians attempt to enact legislative priorities. Those are two I can go into more.

Jason Daye
Let’s touch on that last one. So, Miranda, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so correct me if I’m wrong. I’m just trying to listen to what you’re saying. So you said that this is what you call direct Christian influence. That it’s a legitimate approach. An approach that could come from a heart that’s trying to honor God and love others, right? So, nothing wrong with it, just the caution is, how do we engage in that? What are the words and language you use around that? Is that what you’re saying, Miranda?

Miranda Zapor Cruz
Yeah, I think we, and sometimes for some Christians, it does that. What can start as a love of neighbor or a desire to work for the common good could actually morph into a desire for power and maintaining a place of dominance. So in our own hearts, we have to be cautious about that. But yeah, I think for Christians in general when we express love well, it’s received as love, and we know this interpersonally, right? Maybe some of your listeners have been through the difficult experience of having to have an intervention over alcohol abuse or something like that, and that family member might respond very poorly in the moment, but then recognize it as love and see, Okay, I understand that you’re doing this out of a place of love. I think a lot of people who are watching the methods by which and the language that’s used when Christians fight to enact Christian-conviction-based legislation, don’t experience that as a desire for their good or for their well-being, they experience it as an attack. I think that can’t entirely be prevented. Disagreement is sometimes going to feel like an attack and that’s unfortunate, but that’s the fallen world we live in. But I think in as much as it is in our power to do so, Christians who are taking this direct Christian influence approach, who would say, I think this needs to be the law because it’s what’s best on the basis of the law of God, can articulate that in a way that can be received as loving and as a genuine desire for the common good. I don’t think that’s an easy thing to do in our very divided political and religious context. But I think we can be clear about that in our own hearts and choose our words and our methods of political engagement very carefully, and try to stay above different types of corruption, backdoor dealing, or things like that. Try to be above board by the way that we’re engaging in politics and be transparent about what our goals are and why.

Jason Daye
Yeah, no, that’s helpful. Talk to us about some other approaches that at different times in history the people of God have embraced and have morphed into something beyond what really honors God. So talk to us a little about some of those approaches that we need to be wary of. As you said, just really quickly. The hope is that all of us, our intent is that we’re trying to honor God. We’re trying to be faithful. As you said, though, we can slip without even knowing it, into other places. So I think, above all, Miranda, I think this comes through in your book, is that a lot of this is heart check, a lot of this is really that we’ve gotta focus in on, we can get caught up in all the political stuff, but we really need to be checking our hearts in regard to God, the kingdom of God. If that’s a consistent practice in our life, then there will be times that we’ll notice that we might be slipping in one particular direction, and need to come back to allow the Spirit to convict us. Come back to be repentant and embrace kingdom values. So that really comes through in the book. So I think that needs to be said, regardless of whichever perspective you might take, right? That we need to be conscious of that and sometimes we get wrapped up in things, and we don’t even realize we went off the path or off the rails a little bit. So, Miranda, share with us a little bit, maybe some of these approaches that really, maybe, on the surface, might feel like they’re honoring God in some way. But really, when you dig down in the layers, it’s not healthy.

Miranda Zapor Cruz
Yeah, the biggest hot-button word that we have right now for this is Christian nationalism, and that is a term that has technical definitions. I’m a historian and study sociology as well, so I look at it through historical and sociological lenses. But the word, the definition, as we hear it being used, is being expanded so strongly that some people would see any kind of Christian engagement with politics at all as automatically Christian nationalist. So I try to be very clear about a distinction between that direct Christian influence approach that sometimes gets mislabeled as Christian nationalism versus actual Christian nationalism. So the distinction here is that Christian nationalism is not Christian doctrinally in any way. So what Christian nationalism emphasizes is not Christian belief in the Trinity, salvation through Christ, or anything that is an essential dogma in the Christian faith. Christian nationalism is a political ideology, and it uses Christian symbols, words, sometimes Bible verses, and things like that. But those Christian symbols, words, and Bible verses are in service of a political ideology. The core of that political ideology is a concern with maintaining the dominance of Western European heritage, which is where the Christian part actually comes into it because historically, Western Europe was Christian politically, culturally, and all of that. Since the early founding of the United States was by Western European-descended people who desired to maintain and elevate Western European heritage as part of Christian nationalism. Western European is also White supremacy. So Christian nationalism is white supremacist, and it’s racist, just by definition of what it’s concerned about. Then the other part of it is morality. So taking Christian moral values and kind of separating them out, saying, Okay, you have the moral value here as one thing, and then divorcing it from the theological foundation of that moral value. So taking what, on the surface, is a kind of traditional Christian morality and saying that needs to be the law of the land, but completely removing the actual Christian moral foundations from it. So Christian nationalism is indifferent to Christian doctrine. You have atheists who are Christian nationalists. You have people of other religious faiths who are Christian nationalists because it’s not Christian. I think Christians can kind of slide into Christian nationalism without necessarily realizing it because the symbols and the language are so familiar. So we hear someone quote a Bible verse and immediately there’s comfort in that. The Bible is familiar to me, so this politician, or this poster, or whatever has quoted the Bible and so I’m drawn to that. I feel an automatic kinship to that. Or they have a cross and they’re talking about Christian values. So as a Christian, I identify with that very naturally. But then if I scratch the surface, or I really look at okay, but how are they using this Bible verse? Are they using it to bring glory to God or draw me into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ? No, they’re using it as a political prop. So that’s the core difference between Christian nationalism and direct Christian influence. Christian nationalism is a political ideology that uses Christianity for its own purposes, that manipulates Christian symbols and Christian people in order to enact a political ideology. Where direct Christian influence at its best, is deeply rooted in love of God and neighbor and a genuine desire for the world to be a better place because Christians are in it and are influencing it.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s fascinating, Miranda. As you’re saying that, I’m thinking there are probably some people who would say they’re Christian nationalists, but by your definitions, they aren’t really Christian nationalists, right? That direct Christian influence is the camp that they’re in. But in their mind, because that term has become so widely used and tossed around to such a degree it’s just interesting that whenever we start thinking about language, rhetoric, and how we define things what you’re talking about as Christian nationalism is a very distinct thing. Different from, which I certainly appreciate in your book how you clarify those things. It’s interesting because some people who I would say, and these are people I just know personally, would be in the direct Christian influence camp. They have attached themselves to Christian nationalism because they don’t see it as a necessarily negative thing. They’re thinking that, hey, we’re bringing about God’s laws that are positive for human flourishing, so it makes sense for our country to embrace those things. So, it’s just fascinating when we start looking at definitions and how people define things. So talk to us a bit, Miranda, about that. How do we as pastors and ministry leaders navigate this crazy, because it’s a minefield to some degree, right? Based upon how people self-identify versus how we might think of these different categories or different approaches, let’s say, to faith and politics.

Miranda Zapor Cruz
Yeah, I think one of the first and most important things that ministry leaders can do is be good models of what we hope to see in our congregations. We know that congregations have sorted themselves politically in the last 15 years or so. The data shows that congregations are just as segregated along political lines as they are along ethnic lines, and that’s a problem. But it means that clergy, some behind the pulpit, can have their own political views and then feel very free to promote those political views with the assumption that their congregation agrees with them, or even because their congregation is demanding and expecting that of them. So the sermon can become partisan talking points. I’ve heard this in churches locally where I live, and I’ll pop in here and there and listen to other local churches online and hear them praise specific policies or specific politicians as doing the will of God. I think this is a problem because, first of all, it reduces deeply held Christian convictions to mere policy positions. It can fool Christians into thinking that, okay, as long as I get the right law passed or prevent the law from getting passed, then I’ve done my job as a Christian. Even if I couldn’t understand theologically or I couldn’t disciple someone into an understanding of why that’s a Christian conviction. But I’ve done my job because I got the law passed or because I promoted the law. That’s just a problem for us. It also recreates this division that has driven a lot of clergy out of the pulpit. The data on pastors leaving pastoral ministry is just heartbreaking, and a lot of what they identify is that their congregation was so politically divided or so politically aggressive and demanding of them that they just couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t have a ton of advice for that situation other than to acknowledge it and urge pastors to find colleagues who can support them and resources that could help them to remain firm in faith in Christ. But we have to be real about the pressure that some pastors or others are under to reflect back to them the political views of their congregation. So I think having clarity about what the kingdom of God is is important. Again, modeling the way we talk about people with whom we disagree politically. So I think in a very practical sense, that means not making offhand jokes from the pulpit that presuppose that everyone in the congregation agrees with you politically, whether it’s a political joke or not even jokes necessarily, but just the offhand comments that are ‘othering’ that say, Oh well, the kind of things that makes people think, Well, obviously that’s what a Christian has to think politically. Where the visitor to your congregation that week may hear very clearly from what you think is an offhand comment that’s self evidently true, may hear, Oh, okay, this is not a place where I am welcome. If our political speech is alienating people from the church, then we’re failing at our basic job of drawing people to Christ. So I think we need to be very mindful and very intentional about the kind of language we’re using and the kind of behavior and political speech that we’re modeling in the church, outside of the church, on social media, and in one-on-one interactions. We can’t just be the leaders of the political divisiveness, and unfortunately, a lot of the people who are loudest in our current political division are also pastors.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s challenging. Well, Miranda, thank you so much for carving out some time and hanging out with us today. I really appreciate not only this conversation, but all the work you put into Faithful Politics, your latest book, and really trying to help us dig beneath a lot of the surface-level things that are bantered about day in and day out, and really dig beneath and really honestly assess and reflect on the kingdom of God, which is kind of the heart of all that you have shared and what you’ve written in Faithful Politics. If people want to connect with you or learn more about your work in this arena, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Miranda Zapor Cruz
I have a website. I haven’t written much new on it because I was writing a book. But MirandaZaporCruz.com. I have videos there of other different talks I’ve done. You can order the book from that website. There’s also a study guide for churches that’s on that website, and that’s also on the IVP book order page. So my husband and I put together a six-week study for churches who want to go through the book together. There’s also a discussion guide that’s a little more academic-leaning for college classes. I’m on Facebook, Miranda Zapor Cruz, Kingdom and Country. Those are probably the best ways to see what’s coming up next, or where I’ll be speaking, and that kind of thing.

Jason Daye
Awesome, excellent. Thank you so much, Miranda. For those of you who are watching or listening along, we will have all those links that Miranda shared to the book, to her website, to the awesome, I didn’t even realize that you had that small group guide, that’s so cool. What a great resource for our local churches. We’ll have links to all that in the toolkit for this episode, which, again, you can find at PastorServe.org/network. So be sure to check that out. You’ll find all that information along with the Ministry Leaders Growth Guide and lots of other resources to help you and the ministry team at your local church dig more deeply into this very important conversation that Miranda has helped us with on Faithful Politics. Miranda, thank you so much for taking the time and making the time to share with us today on Frontstage Backstage.

Miranda Zapor Cruz
Thanks so much for having me.

Jason Daye
All right. God bless you.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.