Greetings and salutations. This is Life and Books and Everything. I'm Kevin DeYoung.

Today of an article just recently came out in World Opinions. Do check out World Opinions

where I write every couple of weeks and lots of other good folks there as well. This is called

How to Think About Christianity and Politics, and this is the beginning of what I hope is going to be an intermittent series of several articles,

something I've been giving a lot of thought about,

and hopefully something in here might be helpful.

Subtitle, having an important conversation on how to approach the conversation.

In a recent essay for First Things, Ross Douthit,

a serious Catholic and a conservative columnist for the New York Times, begins with this question, how should contemporary

Christians react to the decline of their churches, the secularization of the culture,

the final loss of Christendom?

Now, granted, we aren't watching the literal sacking of Rome,

as in Augustine's day, but doubt its pessimistic assessment of our age is not far from the mark.

If the Christian foundations of the West have not been wholly eradicated, Christian assumptions certainly

have been. The relationship between Christianity and Western civilization is now more antithesis than synthesis.

It should come as no surprise then that Christians are talking and arguing a lot about politics.

We are all trying to figure out what is going on, where we are headed, and how to respond.

No doubt we need a lot of smart people reflecting on the intellectual principles

and the practical priorities of our moral philosophy. That's a crucial conversation, but that's

not the conversation most ordinary people are having a line in church and around the dinner table.

They, and I should say we, are having a messy, but if done right, a really important conversation about how to approach

the conversation itself. As Christians in an age dominated by politics, we are trying to think

...