Beware of Obscurantism

"I can't go to your church, I'm not a Republican."

That was what a pastor friend of mine heard from a neighbor to whom he was reaching out. He eagerly replied, "You don't have to be!" to which his friend responded, "But everyone at your church is."

That's hard to argue when it is true.

So, why does that matter? Well, it matters in a way that might surprise you. You see, this is not a blogpost about politics, but about the gospel—and the need for it to be clearly understood.

Not Politics, But Gospel
The fact of the matter is that the more you to go church, the more likely you are to be a Republican. That's just math. (See my earlier article with cautions about that reality.) The less you go to church, the more likely you are to be a Democrat. (There are individual and group exceptions, but that is what the media call "The God Gap." Don't yell at me about it—I did not create math.)

At this point, there are lots of ways to respond to that demographic reality. I'm going to focus on one line of thinking—if unchurched people note that all their Christian friends are Republicans, they can assume that to be a Christian is to be a Republican.

They see a direct, correlative relationship between the Republican party and the Christian faith—and that's a bad thing if you want people to know that the gospel is not politics.

Since this will probably rile people up, let me illustrate this another way. Keep reading