Christians and Political Involvement

I ran acroos something interesting on the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals website the other day. They posted on article called "Five Basics for Political Involvement" by the late James Montgomery Boice. As usual, his thoughts are excellent. I'll give his main points, and if you want to read the entire arrticle, please go to the link above.

1. Church and state must be seperate from each other, in the sense that the church must not control national policy nor the state either establish or limit the free exercise of religion. But this does not mean that either the church or state is independent of God.
2. Christians are free to seek elected office, and some should be encouraged to do so. But elected officials do not have to be Christians to be effective leaders, and merely being a Christian does not in itself qualify one for office.
3. The Bible gives Christians guidelines for approaching national and social problems, and Christians should seek to be consistently biblcal in all their thoughts and actions. But the Bible does not necessarily give specific answers to problems, and reasoning from a biblical principle to a specific policy must be carefully done.
4. In attempting to advance a specific proposal, Christians must depend on moral suasion, asking God through prayer to give their reason favor with those having different points of view. But they must not retreat from this high position to tactics of mere naked pressure of coercion.
5. Christians must think, work, and pray effectively, trying always to place their specific programs within the framework of and overall Christian world and life view. And they must strive no less personally to model the reality suggested.

That's quite a bit to think about, but I think Boice has hit the nail on the head.