Mixing religion and politics creates something far more corrupt than the sum of it's parts.
Well ..... you name religion and politics but actually, the thread is about
Christianity and politics so let me put in my tuppence.
What is politics? It is a handful of men and women who swindle you out of your earnings (in the form of taxes) and feed you with lies that render you terrified of the consequences of an existence without them.
What is Christianity? It is a handful of men and women who swindle you out of your earnings (in the form of "donations") and feed you with superstition that renders you terrified of the consequences of an existence without them.
So
"mixing" them, you say? Yeah, it's like being extorted by two rivalry streets gangs, both making guarantees to protect you from the other.
Sadly, you are not far off from a Biblical perspective
When Christ entered the world, we see how the politics of the day was. You had the oppressive Roman world dictatorship, and the religious leaders in Judaism who colluded with them. Neither the religious leaders, nor the Roman authorities, cared much about the people. Of course, there were exceptions like Nicodemus, but by in large all either was interested in was personal wealth, power, and prestige. Then enters Jesus. His teachings and healings created a rather significant following. This following made the political powers rather nervous because they rightly assessed it threatened their own power over them, so they approached him to see what he was all about. Unfortunately for them, he lashed out out at the religious leaders harshly. In fact, they were the only ones he lashed out at accusing them of hypocrisy and calling them out as to who they really were. You then had a political crisis of sorts. You have this poor carpenters son with a huge following and won't play ball with the political elites, so they hatch a plan to murder him. Interestingly, Christ defended the Temple where people worshiped God and where the religous leaders taught by driving out money changers in the Temple with a whip. For Christ, even though many of the religious leaders were corrupt he still defended the place of God as a place where people could still worship God and focus on God, much like how I view the modern day church. And remember, there are good cats in the church, just like Nicodemus who was a secret follower of Christ.
Humans are sadly political creatures as politics enters every crevice of our lives and ruins pretty much everything. As I have always said, looking at human history, at one point man claimed to be God in order to rule over others, but when that no longer worked man claimed only to speak for God, and when that no longer worked, man claimed that there was no God, thus making himself the ultimate authority once again. But Christ had others write about him and did not seek political power. In fact, after the miracle of the bread and fish, the crowd sought to make Christ a worldly king, but he rejected this offer and left them. The disciples were dumbfounded, not understanding that God's kingdom is not of this kingdom nor can be.
But we later see the same confusion as Constantine decided to create a theocracy, with all the evils that entered as we see in any sinful worldly political regime. You then had Inquisitions, the persecution of the Jews, the Crusades, blah, blah, blah. Yea, they forsook the admonition of Christ that his kingdom cannot be of this world. But Constantine was no Christian, let alone Biblical scholar. No, Constantine still worshiped the pagan gods and later even had his wife and son murdered in order to help secure his political power. For you see, Constantine embracing Christianity was a political calculated decision. He saw how it flourished despite Christians being thrown to the lions for hundreds of years prior, so he thought he could jump on the band wagon and benefit from its seeming success. Granted, it is rumored Constantine converted to Christianity on his death bed, or at least tried to have his cake and eat it too.
But his confusion about mixing the sinful politics of men, which is nothing more than the art of division to secure power over other groups of people, still continues as you see men like Warnock with the democrat party telling people that he speaks for Jesus and was elected.
