church and/or politics 5

Today Jan hosts church and/or politics 5. She probably doesn't need to explain why, but I always like to include the host's rationale for a particular topic, so here's Jan's intro:

Churches of different denominations are working towards having Consecration Sunday for tithing commitments to be made. As these are being planned in various churches, our local community is opening up national voting for early voters before Election Day. All this seems to be coming at the same time as we all ponder WHO to vote for!

So for today's Friday Five, share about your thoughts and/or struggles about this time in church and/or political time of the U.S. nation: Think of five aspects of either or both that you want to bring up!

A little over a week ago I wrote (actually a day late) about the October synchroblog topic, faith and the public square, and expressed some of my thoughts on this subject; if you have a few minutes, I'd love you to read that post that backgrounds these 5 additional ideas. Directly related to this Friday 5, I know some of the history behind the USA not having an established church, as well as a little knowledge of the sad theological and practical outcome of countries that do have established religion, and I think it's a horrendously bad idea.

1. I'm blogging in green, because the health, safety, welfare, and integrity of planet earth set the stage for the well-being of all the critters who make it their dwelling-place; my candidates need to emphasize or at least do their best to provide for sustainable living that's as green as possible.

2. The church where I first became involved was ABC-USA (talk about separating religion and politics!), and from within that small, activist community I first began learning (I'm still trying to learn) to interpret scripture in a comprehensive way. Both Old and New Covenant Scriptures reveal God's passion, interest, and concern for every aspect of being human; in our own lives we sometimes emphasize one, sometime another.

3. The First Commandment to have no gods other than YHWH, and Jesus' Great Commandment to love God, neighbor, and self are at the center of it all—the rest is commentary, though in any case living out those commandments can be very confusing and difficult, close to impossible when anyone tries to pretend this is a binary world.

4. No matter how strong and vehement your own historically-informed or immediate reaction to the other political side, please try to hear and understand their perspective and please do not engage in rude rhetoric, esp online where misunderstandings abound and where no one can retrieve a single word once it launches into cyberspace.

5. Whatever your choice of candidates for whatever position, whatever your confusions or convictions about ballot initiatives and propositions we have here in the Western part of the USA, please read and listen to as much as you can tolerate from different sources, please pray about it, please vote!