Just before the 2004 election, the Christian media (especially the evangelical media) was awash with instructions to the Christian voter to think outside of their political boxes, to exercise “discernment,” to resist being a “one issue voter,” and even to abstain from voting altogether because of the allegedly inadequate choices.

Despite our own position at The New Pantagruel that unchecked liberalism “has become endemically exploitative in both the political right and left today, though for a time the areas of exploitation have remained distinct,” we editorialized strongly

against the foolishness of pining for an ideologically acceptable politics in which a Christian can comfortably rest, knowing that no evil is being done on his behalf. To the contrary, history is replete with the tragic lesson that political power is inherently corrupting of principle, yet the truth of principles cannot get any traction in the world without being in and of it. A moral man may choose sectarian withdrawal, itself a kind of politics by other means, or the tragedy of engagement on the edge of risk and ever-compromised necessities. But it is the immaturity of double-mindedness to choose one and pine for the other, and such a divided mind produces only instability where order is required.

The double-mindedness which produces electoral withdrawal as a kind of fortification against compromised engagement in the rest of one’s life is a symptom of the troubling trend among Christians to cocoon themselves in the “misunderstood minority” identity and abdicate any responsibility for power while simultaneously refusing to give up what power they have. We have become exemplars of the tendency to develop a mind so principled that it succumbs to either ideologism or an idealistic paralysis that comes from seeing through all the false choices.

Institutional power is what it is—always. If a system passes through revolution to the establishment of a new regime, it will merely play its own variation on the same old problems. Or as Pete Townsend put it, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” The best of our Christian political tradition teaches us, therefore, to align ourselves radically with the particular and the individual without actually believing that the institutional regime must be overthrown. One can thus work to mitigate and contain institutional power; living in love with the frail limits of existence—family, friends, community, and place—in service of truth, goodness, and beauty, yet knowing that even if good can be done, evil will be done too.

… Our broader hope [is for a political] discourse that does not minimize differences to “spare feelings” because ultimately we believe life is tragicomic and eucatastrophic. While we are engaged with the crises and catastrophes, a serious, taxing and often debilitating business, we can always look at ourselves and our situation from an imagined eternity where it is, if not farcical, a tragic agon tempered by the comic finish of the marriage feast.

On the flip side, large numbers of GOP moderates have far more in common with liberal Democrats than they do with anything resembling conservatism. So yes, I think there is a serious political realignment afoot. But if (when) it occurs, politics will still be warfare by other means — we won’t ever escape that.