When the church joined with the state, it tended to wield power rather than dispense grace.

When the church has occasion to set the rules for all society, it often veers toward the extremism

in John Adams' words, "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.

the Bible gives no direct advice for citizens of a democracy. Paul and Peter urged their readers to submit to authorities and honor the king, but in a democracy we the citizens are the "king.

President Bill Clinton tried to make that distinction. As a Christian, he said, he sought guidance on moral issues from the Bible. As president of the United States, though, he could not automatically propose that everything immoral should therefore be made illegal.

many such episodes it became clear that religion allied too closely to the state leads to the abuse of power. Christian experiments with church-state blending, whether in Geneva under Calvin or in Spain and Latin America under the Inquisition, may have worked for a time but inevitably provoked a backlash against the church, such as that seen in secular Europe today.*

Jesus did not mix his spirituality with politics.

The church works best as a force of resistance, a counterbalance to the consuming power of the state.

see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis once said that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

if requiring you to show your ID is a method of oppression, then there is an awful lot of oppression going on in this country. Airports are full of oppression. Liquor stores? Oppression. Want to buy a pack of cigarettes? Hope you like your oppression extra smooth. Want to buy a car? Careful, oppression loses half it's value the minute you drive it off the lot.

The moment for which I had waited so long came and I folded my ballot paper and cast my vote. Wow! I shouted, 'Yippee!' It was giddy stuff. It was like falling in love. The sky looked blue and more beautiful. I saw the people in a new light. They were beautiful, they were transfigured. I too was transfigured. It was dreamlike.

I remembered seeing the lines of people who had waited for hours and hours to vote in the first democratic election in South Africa in 1994. The lines snaked on for miles. I remember wondering at the time, as U.S. voter turnout was hovering under forty percent, how long that sense of joy and appreciation for the right to vote would last and whether there was any way to revive it in America among those who have never been denied the right to vote.