(1:40) Greg Boyd's 2004 Sermons — "The Cross and the Sword"

In the spring of 2004, Greg Boyd preached a series of six sermons, titled "The Cross and the Sword," in response to pressure from both members within his church and others outside it to use his pulpit to endorse conservative political candidates and causes — a pressure he described as "a constant urging to get out a specific message." As Carla Barnhill described Boyd's sermons in Christianity Today, they "encouraged his parishioners to look beyond labels like 'Democrat' or 'Republican' or even 'American' and instead consider what it means to be a follower of Jesus in today's world… Boyd suggested a radically different way of thinking about issues like political power, war, military service, and government. Boyd's message was that we are to be people of a kingdom where power looks like servanthood, not force, where peace triumphs over might."

Boyd describes the sermons as a teaching moment: "a time to lay out why, in our congregation, …how political issues are more often than not very ambiguous, and good and honest and decent, bible-believing people can have the same values, but they translate into the complexity of politics in different ways, even on things like gay rights, and abortion, and the Iraq war, and all of that. And our job as kingdom people is to let the politics take care of itself. Vote your conscience."

Some Woodland Hills church members applauded that message; others were upset by it, and in the months following approximately 1000 members — 20 percent of the congregation — left the church. Boyd stuck by his words, and the sermons became the basis of his 2006 book The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church. A few months after the book was published, The New York Times ran a front-page story profiling Boyd as an example of the internal debate going on among Evangelicals, and other national media coverage followed. Woodland Hills captured this coverage, and their Web site offers the sermons as audio downloads. The site also posts two critiques of Boyd's view — one by Chuck Colson and another by James K.A. Smith, a philosophy professor at Calvin College and guest in our program titled "Evangelicals out of the Box."

(02:03) Shane Claiborne and New Monasticism

Shane Claiborne is one of the founding members of The Simple Way. He describes the founding of this community in a 2007 newsletter:

Ten years ago, a group of college friends decided to try to do life a little differently. With dreams of loving God and neighbors like the early Christians, and with a fresh fire of revolution from living among homeless families in North Philadelphia, members of the student movement known as the YACHT Club (Youth Against Complacency and Homelessness Today – still rockin, by the way) formed a little group of 6 who called ourselves "Seid", a Gaelic word that means "peace after the storm". Surrounded by some close friends and wise elders, we officially launched The Simple Way as a non-profit organization in the fall of 1996 – united under a simple, common vision (that, like the name itself, took an embarrassingly long time to settle upon). That vision is still the heartbeat of everything we do: "Loving God, Loving People, and Following Jesus".

One of the first things we did was buy a double-decker bus to start a mobile hospitality service for folks on the street (uhhh, one of our first mistakes… as we later found Philly is not architecturally equipped to handle double-decker buses). In January of 1997 we bought a rowhouse on Potter Street to start an intentional community and house of hospitality (on Jamie's credit card). Over the years, from many struggles, triumphs, and mistakes we began to articulate how that vision of love gets fleshed out, and the things that hold us together.

The Simple Way

A member of Shane Claiborne's monastic community in Philadelphia, The Simple Way, stencils a sign in the basement of their house.
(photo: Robert Terrell/Flickr)

In 2007, following a fire that destroyed The Simple Way Community Center and surrounding housing on Potter Street, the organization began distinguishing between the original intentional community on Potter Street and a non-profit dedicated to national and international collaborations, and to oversight of relief funds and recovery efforts on Potter Street.

"New Monasticism" is the term used for a current religious movement of groups of Christians living within and serving communities of need. According to the site for the Rutba House, a New Monastic community in Durham, North Carolina, the term was coined by Jonathan Wilson, in his book, Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World. Wilson drew heavily on writings of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who wrote in After Virtue:

What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.

The Rutba House defines new monasticism as having 12 distinguishing characteristics, including:

• Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.
• Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.
• Hospitality to the stranger.
• Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.
• Humble submission to Christ's body, the church.
• Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community along the lines of the old novitiate.
• Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.
• Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.
• Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.
• Care for the plot of God's earth given to us along with support of our local economies.
• Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.
• Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.

Shane Claiborne talks in much greater depth about his approach to a monastic life and more in our 2007 program, "The New Monastics."

(02:32) Chuck Colson

Charles "Chuck" Colson's bio provides a forthright summation of his history from feared and famed politician to prison ministry founder and Evangelical leader:

"Almost 25 years ago, Charles W. Colson was not thinking about reaching out to prison inmates or reforming the U.S. penal system. In fact, this aide to president Richard Nixon was "incapable of humanitarian thought," according to the media of the mid-1970s. Colson was known as the White House "hatchet man," a man feared by even the most powerful politicos during his four years of service to President Nixon."

When news of Colson's conversion to Christianity leaked to the press in 1973, the Boston Globe reported, "If Mr. Colson can repent of his sins, there just has to be hope for everybody." Colson would agree. He admits he was guilty of political "dirty tricks" and willing to do almost anything for the cause of his president and his party.

In 1974, Colson entered a plea of guilty to Watergate-related charges; although not implicated in the Watergate burglary, he voluntarily pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in the Daniel Ellsberg Case. He entered Alabama's Maxwell Prison in 1974 as a new Christian and as the first member of the Nixon administration to be incarcerated for Watergate-related charges. He served seven months of a one-to-three year sentence.

In 1976, Colson founded Prison Fellowship Ministries, which, in collaboration with churches of all confessions and denominations, has become the world's largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners, crime victims, and their families. Colson has spent the last 25 years as head of Prison Fellowship Ministries."

In 1991 Colson launched "BreakPoint," a daily radio feature providing a Christian worldview on everyday issues and conflicts. It now airs daily on over 1,000 U.S. radio outlets. In 1993, Colson was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion and donated the $1 million prize to Prison Fellowship. In 2000, Florida Governor Jeb Bush restored Colson's civil rights 25 years after his release from prison. Colson is the author of over 25 books, including Born Again (his personal story of conversion), God & Government, and The Faith.

(03:08) National Pastors Convention

The National Pastors Convention is an annual gathering of pastors and religious educators sponsored by Zondervan Publishing and InterVarsity Press. Speaking of Faith attended the 2008 convention in San Diego, California, where Krista Tippett moderated this conversation with Colson, Boyd, and Claiborne in a packed conference room before a live audience.

(04:25) Colson Reference to Jimmy Carter Being "Born Again"

A born-again Christian is someone who has had a sudden conversion to the teachings and ways of Jesus Christ. The born-again believer accepts Jesus as his Lord and Savior in this world and the next. The phrase comes from the first part of chapter 3 of the New Testament gospel of John:

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, "You must be born from above [often translated as "anew" or "again"].' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Stephen Prothero notes in Religious Literacy that most people use the the terms born-again Christian and evangelical interchangeably, despite sharp distinctions between the two. Prospero cites George Barna's polling research, which estimates that born-again Christians make up approximately 40 percent of the U.S. population. Evangelical Christians are a subset of born-again Christians, totaling about 7 percent of the U.S. population. Evangelicals take a much stricter view of the inerrancy of the Bible, the role Satan plays in our world, and salvation only comes through God's grace.

Colson cites Carter in a 2007 blog post about faith in the political arena:

"…How do you make a full disclosure of one's deepest convictions without 'using' your religion to win support? Right after I got out of prison and was a newly converted Christian, I was deeply impressed when Jimmy Carter announced that he was born again. I suspect that he got a substantial share of the evangelical vote that year, even though his opponent was very devout and a member of Bible studies, but would not talk about it. Carter was right in my opinion, Ford was wrong. Nor did I think that Jimmy Carter used his religion in anyway. He was simply upfront about what he believed."

Former President Carter was a guest in the 2007 SOF program "The Private Faith of Jimmy Carter." Hear him speak about his born-again faith, being commander in chief, and upholding the law while privately opposing abortion — the issue that Colson says "riveted the attention of Christians on the public arena" and "transform[ed] Evangelicals from a pietistic movement into a very activist political movement."

(06:12) Rise of the Moral Majority

Founded in 1979, the Moral Majority was an influential organization in American politics for nearly a decade. The group represented social and religious conservative Christians, and is associated with Evangelical Christianity because of its founder, the televangelist minister Jerry Falwell.

The politically active organization advocated a "pro-life, pro-traditional family, pro-national defense and pro-Israel platform" in which they lobbied for issues it considered central to the upholding of Christian values and morals. The group fought for prayer and the teaching of creationism in public schools, opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, homosexual rights, and abortion. The group is credited with helping to elect politically conservative Ronald Reagan into office in the 1980 Presidential election. The Moral Majority was dissolved in 1989, but newer organizations such as Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition of America and a Falwell-revived Moral Majority Coalition endorse a similar political platform.

(10:22) "Replicate Calvary"

All four gospels of the New Testament of the Bible recount the story of Calvary — the location of the crucifixion of Jesus. In his book The Myth of a Christian Nation, Boyd "…asks us to consider the radical life of Christ and the kingdom He ushered in through His life, death, and resurrection. 'The kingdom of God looks and acts like Jesus Christ,' he explains. 'It looks and acts like Calvary. It looks and acts like God's eternal, triune love. It consists of people graciously embracing others and sacrificing themselves in service to others, whether they be friends or "enemies." It consists of people trusting the power of self-sacrificial love to change people's hearts, rather than acquiring power to control people's behavior.'"

(11:52) "Amish for Homeland for Security"

Krista quotes a passage from Shane Claiborne's book Jesus for President: "The question is not are we political? But how are we political? … not are we relevant? But are we peculiar? The answer lies not in what we believe but in how we embody what we believe." In response, Shane points to the Amish as an example of "peculiar" — people who have created a different culture in this world. On October 2, 2006, Charlie Roberts barricaded himself in a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Paradise, Pennsylvania, and killed 5 girls before committing suicide. Claiborne describes the Amish response to this tragedy in the essay "Amish for Homeland Security" from Jesus for President:

"Our friend Diana Butler Bass wrote an article just after the 2006 school shootings that killed five Amish children. Within the first week after the shootings, the Amish families who had suffered such terror responded in four ways that captured the world's attention. First, some elders visited Marie Roberts, the wife of the murderer, to offer forgiveness. Then, the families of the slain girls invited the widow to their own children's funerals. Next, they requested that all relief monies intended for the Amish families be shared with Ms. Roberts and her children. And finally, in an astonishing act of reconciliation, dozens of Amish families attended the funeral of the killer.

Diana goes on to share that she talked with her husband about the spiritual power of these actions, commenting: 'It is an amazing witness to the peace tradition.' And her husband looked at her and said passionately. ‘Witness? I don't think so. This went well past witnessing. They weren't witnessing to anything. They were actively making peace.' Her article ends with these words, as she reflected on that truth:

'Their actions not only witness that the Christian God is a God of forgiveness, but they actively created the conditions in which forgiveness could happen. In the most straightforward way, they embarked on imitating Christ: "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." In acting as Christ, they did not speculate on forgiveness. They forgave. And forgiveness is, as Christianity teaches, the prerequisite to peace. We forgive because God forgave us; in forgiving, we participate in God's dream of reconciliation and shalom.

Then an odd thought occurred to me: What if the Amish were in charge of the war on terror? What if, on the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, we had gone to Osama bin Laden's house (metaphorically, of course, since we didn't know where he lived!) and offered him forgiveness? What if we had invited the families of the hijackers to the funerals of the victims of 9/11? What if a portion of The September 11th Fund had been dedicated to relieving poverty in a Muslim country? What if we dignified the burial of their dead by our respectful grief?

What if, instead of seeking vengeance, we had stood together in human pain, looking honestly at the shared sin and sadness we suffered? What if we had tried to make peace?

So, here's my modest proposal. We're five years too late for an Amish response to 9/11. But maybe we should ask them to take over the Department of Homeland Security. After all, actively practicing forgiveness and making peace are the only real alternatives to perpetual fear and a multi-generational global religious war.

I can't imagine any other path to true security. And nobody else can figure out what to do to end this insane war. Why not try the Christian practice of forgiveness? If it worked in Lancaster, maybe it will work in Baghdad, too.'

Well said sista', a lovely addition to the campaign. Jesus for President and the Amish for Homeland Security. Amen."

(13:45) "Unlike the Mennonites"

Mennonites belong to the Protestant community and are part of a larger Christian expression of Anabaptism. Meaning "baptized again," the Anabaptists were a radical reform movement during the Reformation of the 1500s. Although the Mennonite Church traces its origins to the Swiss Brethren, they take their name from a Dutch priest, Menno Simons (1496–1561), who took a moderate approach to Anabaptist teachings and doctrine.

Mennonites place emphasis on the Scriptures as the ultimate authority of faith. Baptism centers on a public confession of faith, which means a conscious decision to commit one's life to God and Jesus Christ. The Mennonite Church refers to itself as a "missional church" called by God to bear witness to one's neighbors across the street and around the world. They are deeply involved in social and educational issues, economic matters, and the importance of community. The ethic of love and nonresistance — a teaching based on the New Testament that rejects both war and the use of force to maintain order — is central to most Mennonites.

(14:45) Bonhoeffer and Wilberforce

Colson cites Bonhoeffer and Wilberforce as Christians who took on great transcendent moral issues and did not ignore moral evil. William Wilberforce (1759–1833) was a British politician and philanthropist who was prominent in the struggle to abolish the slave trade and slavery completely in the British empire. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) was a German theologian and pacifist who became a Nazi resister. He was executed for his part in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. In 2003, Krista interviewed director Martin Doblemeir about his documentary on Bonhoeffer. You can hear their conversation and learn more about Bonhoeffer's life and legacy in the SOF program "Ethics and the Will of God."

(17:20) "Precedent in Paul"

Boyd cites the story of the apostle Paul claiming himself as a citizen of Rome as biblical precedent of engaging in politics at different levels and talking to political powers, in Acts 22:22-29:

Up to this point they listened to him, but then they shouted, "Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live." And while they were shouting, throwing off their cloaks, and tossing dust into the air, the tribune directed that he was to be brought into the barracks, and ordered him to be examined by flogging, to find out the reason for this outcry against him. But when they had tied him up with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, "Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who is uncondemned?" When the centurion heard that, he went to the tribune and said to him, "What are you about to do? This man is a Roman citizen." The tribune came and asked Paul, "Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?" And he said, "Yes." The tribune answered, "It cost me a large sum of money to get my citizenship." Paul said, "But I was born a citizen." Immediately those who were about to examine him drew back from him; and the tribune also was afraid, for he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him. Since he wanted to find out what Paul was being accused of by the Jews, the next day he released him and ordered the chief priests and the entire council to meet. He brought Paul down and had him stand before them.

(17:45) Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae

Colson expresses his belief in the defense of life as part of the Gospel, citing this as a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church through Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae — the name of his March 1995 encyclical, or teaching letter, regarding the value and inviolability of human life. In reference to abortion, euthanasia, and the destruction of human embryos in medical research, the late pontiff says "I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral."

(18:34) U.S. Incarceration Rates

Colson says there are 2.3 million people in prison today because "we have had discriminatory sentencing laws, all kinds of injustices. I won't vote for people who support that because I was in prison." A 2008 report on incarceration in America from the Pew Center on the States stated: "At the start of the new year, the American penal system held more than 2.3 million Adults." And that "for the first time in U.S. history, more than one in every 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison."

(19:19) Mother Teresa: A Political "She-ro"

Claiborne cites Mother Teresa as an example of how Christians should live out their politics. He worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India, in the last year of her life, which he discussed in our program "The New Monastics":

Mr. Claiborne: You know, I start reading this stuff that Jesus said. And I'm just, like, 'Man, does anyone really believe this anymore?' And Mother Teresa was one of those people that I felt just lived so magnetically and authentically the simple words and teaching of Jesus. So we wrote her a letter, you know?

Ms. Tippett: Yeah.

Mr. Claiborne: We said, 'Hey, we don't know if you give internships out there in Calcutta, but we'd love to come work.' And we didn't hear back. And I guess she got a lot of mail.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah.

Mr. Claiborne: But we, we ended up just calling some of her sisters on the phone. And they gave us a phone number. So we called Calcutta. And I'm expecting a polite, 'Missionaries of Charity, how can we help you?' or something, you know? And I just hear this raspy, old voice go, 'Hello?' you know? And I'm thinking I've got the wrong remember and it's $4 a minute, you know? So I started talking really fast. And I'm like, 'Well, we're trying to get hold of the Missionaries of Charity or Mother Teresa's order out there, the Sisters.'

And she said, 'Well, this is the Missionaries of Charity. This is Mother Teresa.' And, you know, and I'm like, 'And I'm the pope. You know, what are you talking about?' And so, finally, I started asking her, you know, 'Well, can we come out and work?' And she says, 'Yeah, come on out.' And then I asked her what I think are logical follow-up questions, you know? 'Well, where are we going to sleep? What are we going to eat?' And she didn't worry a whole lot about those things. She just said to us, 'Well, God takes care of the lilies and the sparrows, and God will take care of you.' So I don't know how you argue with that one, so we just, we went over. And I worked there with other close friends of mine. And several of us have been over other times in the past 10 years. But it's, she was just a beautiful life, I think, well-lived.

Mother Theresa (1910–1997), born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, was a Macedonian nun who is known for her compassionate care for the indigent and dying in Calcutta, India. From the age of 12, she wanted to dedicate her life to God. She trained with the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin before being sent to Calcutta, India to teach in a convent.

Struck by the poverty she saw, she requested permission to leave the convent to work with people struggling in Calcutta's slums. She trained as a nurse, and in 1950 established her own order, The Missionaries of Charity, with the explicit aim to care for "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."

Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in 1979 and died in Calcutta at the age of 87. At the time of her death, the order had established itself in 130 countries treating nearly four million sick people every year.

(26:58) Citing Augustine

In discussing lessons learned from Christian history, the panelists refer to St. Augustine, the 5th-century philosopher and theologian widely acknowledged as one of the most important influences on the development of Western Christianity. Colson says Augustine's work City of God "strikes the fine balance… and he would be the last one to say we don't engage in politics. He would say we build the kingdom, and that is our first task, but in the course of building the kingdom we care deeply about the moral condition of the society in which we live."

City of God is Augustine's major work related to political thought. It discusses the relationship between Christian and non-Christian views of life, and between Christianity and secular political life. In it, he describes two cities — the city of God and the earthly city:

Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, "Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head." In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength." And therefore the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God "glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,"—that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride,—"they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." For they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, "and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever." But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, "that God may be all in all."

(City of God, Book XIV, Chp. 28)

Political theorist Jean Bethke Elshtain has had a lifelong fascination with Augustine as the father of just war theory. She's the author of Augustine and the Limits of Politics, and she spoke about Augustine in a 2001 SOF program following 9/11. In Augustine and just war theory, Elshtain finds a framework that she says can encompass the complexities of life in this world.

"I was struck immediately by [Augustine's] complexity and his richness, and the way in which he refused the comfort of a simplistic, dualistic universe — divided up between that which is absolutely good and that which is absolutely evil. That even people, for example, who are fighting in a just cause are undeniably caught up in doing some harm. So he's always trying to resist the attraction, the seduction of a triumphalistic moralism."

(31:08) Founding Fathers and Notion of Religious Freedom

Krista spoke with Steven Waldman for our 2008 program, "Liberating the Founders."

(32:29) Tony Campolo's Analogy of Mixing Church and State

Tony Campolo is an author, commentator, ordained Baptist minister, and a Red Letter Christian. Red Letter Christians (so-called in reference to New Testament versus printed in red letters to emphasize the spoken words of Jesus) strive for the Evangelical movement to transcend partisan politics and focus on the teachings of Jesus, particularly with regard to modern social issues such as poverty and the environment.

Tony Campolo has frequently stated his analogy that combining church and state is like mixing horse manure and ice cream, including in a February 2006 episode of The Colbert Report:

Campolo: I think the political system has changed religion. I mean putting religion and politics together is like mixing ice cream with horse manure.

Colbert: Ben and Jerry's offers that, by the way. It's called Secretariat.

Campolo: Mixing horse manure with ice cream, it doesn't hurt the horse manure, it ruins the ice cream. And I think that this merger of church and state has done great harm to religion, and I think were going to live to regret the era we're in right now.

(33:20) Claiborne in Iraq

Claiborne went to Iraq in March 2003 with Voices in the Wilderness Iraq Peace Team, a group formed in 1996 "to nonviolently challenge the economic warfare being waged by the U.S. against the people of Iraq." Claiborne documented his experiences while traveling in Iraq through a series of twelve journals:

I am going to Iraq as a missionary. In an age of omnipresent war, it is my hope that Christian Peacemaking becomes the new face of global missions. May we stand by those who face the impending wrath of Empire and whisper: "God loves you, I love you, and if my country bombs your country, I will be right here with you." Otherwise, our gospel has little integrity. As on of the saints said, "If they come for the innocent and do not pass over our bodies , then cursed be our religion." May our lives interrupt terrorism and war, in small ways, in large ways, in moments of crisis and in everyday rhythms. These are extreme times. And I go to Iraq as an extremist for Love.

(33:54) C.S. Lewis on Patriotism

Colson cites a passage from C.S. Lewis' writing on patriotism, The Four Loves. Here, Lewis explores the four types of love described in Greek thought: affection (storge), friendship (philia), romantic love (eros), and spiritual love (agape) in the light of Christian commentary on ordinate loves.

"Love of one's country is also morally ambivalent, having both worthwhile and misleading aspects to it. Patriotism can be seen as having 5 possible ingredients, ranging from a wonderful love of home which is a prototype for charity, to the fatally dangerous belief that our country (or any other group) is superior to all others and so bestows special rights and duties, and warrants our love because of that superiority."

(34:54) "Render Unto Caesar What Is Caesar's"

Colson is referring to a pivotal passage in New Testament scholarship and theological discussions about striking the proper balance in a Christian life between allegiance to God — and the values and priorities of the kingdom of God — and allegiance to earthly realities, or the kingdoms of this world. Following is a fuller excerpt of that passage from the gospel of Matthew (22: 15-22):

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

(36:08) John Howard Yoder

John Howard Yoder was a Mennonite theologian. His 1972 book The Politics of Jesus is a classic in Christian theology, laying out the case for pacifist theology. In it, he wrote:

The key to the obedience of God's people is not their effectiveness but their patience. The triumph of the right is assured not by the might that comes to the aid of the right, which is of course the justification of the use of violence and the other kinds of power in every human conflict; the triumph of the right, although it is assured, is sure because of the power of the resurrection and not because of any calculation of causes and effects, nor because of the inherently greater strength of the good guys. The relationship between the obedience of God's people and the triumph of God's cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection.

(38:05) Romans I

The first chapter of the book of Romans is a common passage cited by conservative Christians as an explicit condemnation of homosexual relationships:

For though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.] For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

(39:08) Harmartia

In the Bible, hamartia is the Greek word used to denote sin. It's translated as "to miss the mark."

(42:06) Colson Reference to Al Quie and Harold Hughes

In response to Krista's question about how Evangelicals can move toward walking together, Colson mentions his relationship with two of five men who "discipled" him when he became born again, including Al Quie (then a Minnesota Republican congressman) and Harold Hughes (then an Iowa Democratic senator). A 1974 article in Time magazine describes how Colson turned to this prayer group after receiving his sentence of one to three years in prison for Watergate-related obstruction of justice.

(43:50) A Niebuhr School

Colson's use of the phrase "a Niebuhr school" refers to the 20th-century public theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (check out our program "Moral Man and Immoral Society" for an in-depth view of this influential figure). Niebuhr was part of what is called "liberal Protestant tradition." But he was deeply critical of his fellow Christians' failure to face the world's complexities head on. He innovated the term "Christian Realism," a middle way between idealism and arrogance — making an impact by challenging political systems through one's Christian faith while realizing one may face certain ironies in acting politically and religiously.