And we are back again for another week and for another fourth of July on this podcast.

I think it's the fourth time an episode has landed square on the holiday, at least our

fourth.

So happy Independence Day for those of you here in the States.

If the inbox is any indicator, questions over politics and patriotism in the pulpit are

perennial concerns for you all listening, when better than to broach the topic that I

did a day like today, Jameson, a pastor in Virginia, writes in to ask of this, Pastor

John, hello, and thank you for this podcast.

I admire your approach to politics and patriotism.

You seem to be very careful here.

Even when the heat is turned up in election times and pastors feel social pressure to

endorse specific candidates, you notoriously refrain from participating.

As you have watched this impulse in American Christian life for many decades, this impulse

among Christian leaders to periodically endorse candidates and to get involved in politics,

what observations have you drawn from your decades of refraining?

Maybe the most important or helpful thing that I can do in response to this question

is to point passages of scripture that capture the emphasis I think is needed, not just in

the American church, but in the global church, the church around the world, because the

tendency to confuse and combine Christian identity and its earthly expression, the church,

the tendency to confuse and combine Christian identity with political identity, ethnic identity,

national identity, or any other earthly identity.

That conflating tendency is so strong and I think so destructive to the radical call

...