Street Prophets has an item on “Beyondism”, which describes a certain sort of holier-than-thou approach to secular politics that is alive and well in the debate within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.
Pastor Dan writes: “I don’t think we need to write the liberal-vs.-conservative divide of modern politics into unchanging truth. And there very well may be a better way of doing politics so that it’s not so partisan. But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that we can somehow transcend the human condition here. Like it or not, we are stuck with our differences of opinion as a basic condition of our existence. Until the day of final reconciliation comes, we’ll all be of different minds about lots of things, including politics.”
And: “Vive les politiques, then. Bashing one another over the head with political cudgels keeps us strong. And really, God bless us for that.
In answer to the inevitable question, yes politics is all about power. But that’s exactly my point. The “pesky divisions” of partisan politics aren’t really the issue. How those divisions are used to hold power over one another is a different question. Some people feel that faithful people must give up on power altogether. I think that we have to find ethical ways of holding and using power.”